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New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
The Globalization of Remote Viewing & IRVA: A Presidential Dialog with Luciano Arruda
01:21:06
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- [00:00]
Luciano Arruda
We're growing in all directions and it's a fantastic time in the industry where we're all sort of reinventing ourselves. We're all having to calibrate our expectations of what's possible and think really big.
- [00:14]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Keep watching to learn more and don't forget to subscribe for early access to.
- [00:20]
Narrator/Announcer
Our videos and livestream events. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter and@newthinkingallowed.org New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science Mind Body Spirit University, a leader in fully accredited in person and online US College Degree programs. In the topics we cover here, visit their website at CIHS Eduardo Book four.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
In the New Thinking Allowed Dialogue series is Charles T. Tart, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
- [01:12]
Luciano Arruda
Thinking Allowed Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
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Dr. Debra Lynn Katz
Hi, I'm Dr. Debra Lynn Katz, and you are watching New Thinking allowed produced.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
By Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove.
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Dr. Debra Lynn Katz
Now, many of you are aware that in addition to being a guest host on this show, I have also been serving as the president of the International Remote Viewing association, otherwise known as IRVA. I've been in that role for four years, and I came onto the IRBA board around 2019, just a little bit before COVID What many of you don't know is that I am retiring from that position and the board as of this month, and I thought it would be really helpful both to introduce and.
- [02:13]
Jeffrey Mishlove
To interview my replacement.
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Dr. Debra Lynn Katz
He was just elected by the entire IRVA board to fulfill that position, and his name is Luciano Arruda. Luciano has been serving in the Silicon Valley, multiple positions, multiple companies, focusing on the same thing he's been focusing on within the International Remote Viewing association, which is global development. So we're going to be talking to him about that. We're going to talk about irva's future. We're going to be talking about the future of remote viewing, because remote viewing and the International Remote Viewing association are so closely linked now. Initially I was a little concerned that maybe we were getting too much into the weeds with the topic of a single organization.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
However, I think this conversation is going.
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Dr. Debra Lynn Katz
To be interesting to those of you who are curious about where is this field going, who have an interest in global development within nonprofits and for profits. There's so much we can learn on this topic from Luciano, and I know that Jeff Mishlove for New Thinking Allowed has an interest in in growing the foundation internationally as well. So I'm so thrilled that you're with Us. I hope you'll stay with us throughout the entire interview because there's so much to learn from Luciano about this topic and so many more.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
So, Luciano, I'm so happy to be talking to you today as Irva's outgoing president. With you coming in as Irva's incoming president, we have a lot to discuss. And why don't you start off telling the audience a little bit about your background as it relates to remote viewing and these topics.
- [04:18]
Luciano Arruda
Sure, yes. You know, I mean, I started remote viewing not long ago, in 2022. This is when I became aware of remote viewing, the protocol itself, and the organization, you know, International Remote Viewing Association. This was when there was a conference in Mellopark, which was just 10 minutes from my house. And, you know, we were just coming out of COVID I think, or, you know, just coming out of COVID And I was so isolated. I was feeling so down because I had already done a lot of meditation and I had taken a lot of instructions for the last. Since 1989. I started to. To do meditation and practice different forms of communication with myself and try to explore sensory abilities. And when I saw the conference in Melopark, I thought, wow, this is really something that I'm going to enjoy. So I joined the conference and I met you there. I think at the end of the conference, you, as a president, you were mentioning that you wanted to grow the organization globally and you were looking for people who are interested in helping with that. And so I thought, you know what? I work with globalization. I know a little bit about scaling infrastructure and reaching out to global communities. Maybe I can help. And I think that's kind of how I started engaging with remote viewing. But besides that, just being in a conference with people like, these are professionals, scientists, and people with tremendous background in spirituality as well, because, you know, all of this involves multidimensional aspects. I felt so at home. It was just wonderful how I started, you know, engaging with the remote viewing community.
- [05:53]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah. And I know that you trained in clairvoyance and clairvoyant reading and healing techniques, even a couple decades ago or longer. And can you talk a little bit about that and the intersection between that and remote viewing and also how. Whether you found that to be quite different once you got into remote viewing.
- [06:18]
Luciano Arruda
Sure. Yes. So, you know, I mean, you're right. I started looking at ways to understand, you know, sensory abilities back in 1989 when I attended meditation class at a place called the Berkeley Psychic Institute in Orange County. And I was really privileged to, you know, to Learn techniques from Michael Tamura, from David Pierce and John Fulton and, and even Louis Bostwick and, and his wife Susan Bostwick. Those were the founders of the Berkeley Psychic Institute. So I took a meditation class to, to get acquainted with, you know, like how do you listen to your higher self? How do you connect with others spiritually? You know, you learn how to run energy, you know, and, and then just kind of how to find your space and ground. So those were like critical fundamental tools in order to like, for me to quiet my mind and then get into a space where you can actually interpret information that you see in your mind's eye, let's say. So the Berkeley Psychics Institute was a place where I took several meditation classes and healing classes and I also ended up taking a one year clairvoyant course with them. And I think later down the line, I think I met you in Berkeley when I took a few teachers programs and I think I even became a pastor to the Berkeley Psychic Institute. And then for the next 10 years I, I ran and I meditated, I ran energy and I meditated and you know, practiced the teachings of the Berkeley Psychic Institute. And then the way it relates to remote viewing is, you know, I mean, it's when you're looking at something clairvoyantly, let's say a person, an event or a place, you're kind of practicing remote viewing at that point in time. You're collecting non local information about a situation, place, or anything that is not connected to time and space. So it's, it's a lot like it. However, the remote viewing, I felt that remote viewing provides a safe space because there's a protocol that you can follow and you can always fall back. So as a, as a clairvoyant, you may be subject to what we call matching pictures, right? Which are experiences that someone else has or that you have with the target. And you may be processing information with a little bit of emotion. And that as a matching picture might kind of drive you away from what you know, maybe looking at because you kind of go on a personal trip and, and in remote viewing you have what's called aol. And AOL is an analytical overlay and which is potentially similar to gathering information and processing it through personal filters and then finding a connection with the information, but through your own experience. You know, that's something that's kind of a, interesting parallel from, you know, clairvoyant readings and psychic activity that we practice and remote viewing. And then the other thing that's different is that if you Are if you are practicing clairvoyance on your own, you kind of, you know, you're on your own. So you basically don't have a team to help you give feedback of what did somebody else see? It's very easy to sort of like kind of get yourself into a situation where you need others to help when you're doing clairvoyant reading on your own. And with remote viewing, usually you have a team of two or three, and there is some project manager who can support reviewing the feedback that everybody had. And so, you know, you can be wrong sometimes you can be inaccurate. It's not that you're wrong or inaccurate. You're interpreting. You're putting a layer of interpretation in between, and someone else can catch that. However, I have to say that at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, we did have a line and we had multiple readers, and we also had a moderator, someone who would be checking the energy of those who were in the reading. And it kind of had a similar, you know, a similar aspect as well. So this is what I can say for now.
- [10:00]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, those are such great comparisons and differences. Now, I had a very similar background to you, which is ironic. I know we had met each other a couple times. It's interesting how we, you know, really didn't have any contact until over the last few years. But very similar program, course of study back then, I studied with some of the same instructors. And yeah, you know, the meditation and the tools that could be helpful in intuitive sessions were also just so much for helping one to regulate their emotions and to stay centered and focused first and foremost in one's own life. And then also when doing a session. And when I first got into remote viewing, I really set those all aside because I said, oh, I just want to learn this new protocol. I don't know how open my new remote viewing teachers will be open to these tools and techniques. But over the last couple years, I've really started to bring some of those back, especially since there was such a focus on visual. And ironically, even though remote viewing is called remote viewing, I think it should be called remote sensing, a lot of remote viewers actually need some extra help with the visual because there's so many writing techniques with the ideograms and sketching and everything, sometimes that modality tends to. Or just using writing and paper, it tends to, like, bring about your other senses, your other claires, perhaps, and not so much the visuals. So I've just even been with my own students, trying to give them more clairvoyant tools and then also you know, even we spent a lot of time like learning how to connect to subjects like to specifically to people. That was also the difference where it was more about reading people though. People live in physical places, they have physical bodies, so there's physicality there. But I've been finding recently with remote viewing, various physical targets, just using some of those techniques that we started with. I also talk about them in my book, you are a psychic, an extraordinary psychic, but techniques for like tuning into a subject and getting like really connected so you know you're connected with the right target. I've been finding that that combined some of those tools are useful for remote viewers as well. So just a side note there, but you mentioned the international aspect and you have done such a fantastic job over the last couple years as our international manager. You've been on the board of directors and really you've really helped establish the whole international program. Can you talk about that, like what you feel the accomplishments are of that program and talk a bit about our communities of special interest in those who are now running, those from all over the world that you really helped recruit and train and manage?
- [13:15]
Luciano Arruda
Sure, yeah. I mean, you know, we're just getting started, I have to say. In the last two years we had a chance to form our relationship with several, what we call CSI team leaders. Those are community of special interest members of IRVA who are helping to share information about the programs that IRWA has and the activities and new initiatives, and also to communicate to IRWA a little bit about what they're doing locally. And what we have is we have a fantastic group of seven right now who are actively involved in their local communities. We have folks in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, in Norway. We also have representatives in Argentina, in Chile and in Brazil. And we will be adding more in the next month. I think we're going to be adding a couple more members and then eventually from there we're going to continue to expand. But the main thing here is to, to emphasize the fact that there are way more people who don't know about remote viewing than people who know about remote viewing. So we have an incredible opportunity to partner with members of IRVA and to add new members who are, you know, either wanting to learn or have been learning on their own and practicing, but not connected to IRVA to our platform. And so there's tremendous potential for affiliate programs to emphasize the professional aspect of remote viewing and to also kind of show to everyone that it is something that everybody can learn, that is, this is something that is reproducible, is teachable and it can be validated because, you know, IRVA has a very strong background in terms of tracking data and looking at percentages of accuracy and such. And I think that we can, we can bring that to the world in any country, all continents. So I really, I'm a strong believer that international community engagement is going to happen and I look forward to supporting with it.
- [15:05]
Jeffrey Mishlove
And you've also been reaching out and talking to different professional organizations and research organizations lately. I know that's something that I've been doing myself. I know other organizations like the Parapsychology association, they're doing their next conference in Sydney, Australia and then they had a conference in Mexico last year. There's the Society for Scientific Exploration, there's the SPR in the uk. What would you see that the international committee at IRVA could do both to promote bringing in more international members, but also getting connected with these other parapsychology based organizations who have similar goals?
- [15:53]
Luciano Arruda
Oh, well, I mean, that's an excellent point. I think that it's very fresh, you know, very new. We are talking about having our first international conference in Europe. We've been discussing with our team members in, in Germany, in Austria and Switzerland to host, to host a conference there and then look at what levels of adoptions we can have. And this is going to automatically prompt our engagement with the local institutions. Right. So the local parapsychological societies and organizations that are looking at the same topics that we are. The same thing with Latin America. I was on the phone with a gentleman in New Mexico who is a member of the Parapsyl Parapsychological Organization in Mexico. And we were talking about having an online conference in Spanish where we can invite members from all of Latin America who are interested in those topics and also join irva. So we have the ability to adjust cost of membership based on the local economy so that people can join without the burden of, you know, an expensive dollar membership. We can adjust to that. We can also incentivize local meetings in their own language with groups that are affiliated with IRVA to grow membership and also to better, you know, the understanding of what remote viewing is. Because there are so many applications for remote viewing. Right. And I think people, you know, most people have no idea that. Have you seen like so many examples where in 10 minutes someone does a little target and four or five people who had never done remote viewing, they actually find the target. It's just amazing how, you know, like this is available for everyone and in, in, in one hour you can find out a lot about it.
- [17:30]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't take long to see that you can have some level of success. It, it definitely takes longer to find out that you can use it like for practical real life purposes. Although that being said, if you're just looking for something in your house or on your property, that doesn't have to take long either, you know, but if you're working on finding a missing person or solving a crime case or some complex scientific question, that could take more skill and training and stuff like that. More than just a simple sketch just to see that, yeah, you can tune into a photo. So many people have success the first time though. That being said, you, you know, both you and I and several of the other IRVA board members have been doing outreach within the United States this year. So we've been going to different conferences and expos that we hadn't normally gone to where people would be open to these topics, but not necessarily that well versed in remote viewing specifically. And we usually have what we call the what's in the Box contest where there's the box on the table and then we ask people to fill out a paper to describe what's in the box. And I have been surprised because at some of these expos, like Contact in the Desert, which was the UF conference or the Conscious Life Expo, you know, you have people that are really into just about everything except for remote viewing. And then when you have them do that contest, some of them really, they really don't know how to direct themselves. Like they're guessing, you know, they'll, they'll put down and you know they're guessing because they're just putting down like a single word and it's not a great match. And then like we have to instruct them like, oh, you know, don't, don't just like guess, but tune in, you know, sit there, meditate for a little bit. Imagine maybe you're opening up the box or imagine you're going into the box and, and make sure you do a sketch. And sometimes those basic instructions move them in their mind from like, what would logically be in here to okay, let me like move myself into the right mental space to get this information. So it's not hard to do the latter. But a lot of people need like just even you know, five minutes of instruction and then they start to really actually tune in. Getting out of their logic. Now IRVA has been around for a long time, right? Like we're, I think we're in our 23rd, 24th year and international has Been in the name the whole time. It's just there really wasn't that much emphasis for that matter. When I first came onto the board about six, seven years ago, 2019 noticed one we did need to improve the international aspect, but also we didn't have that great of an organizational structure. So irva's mission has been to. To promote the history, to promote the education and the research. We. And you know, it was, over the years all of that's been happening. But what I wanted to do was to get a firm organizational structure. So we created basically like departments. So we had the IRVA Research Unit, IRVA Education, IRVA Ed on the IRVA Historical and Archival Committee. And in doing that, then we were able to appoint managers and then they had staff and volunteers. And that structure seems to really have helped us a lot. What else do you see in IRBA that you feel we need to improve? Whether those divisions or those programs or just anything within the whole organization? Because now you're going to be the new president. So what do you see besides for international, that you'll be doing with the organization as a whole?
- [21:46]
Luciano Arruda
Sure. So I mean, international applies to all those three verticals that you described. So, you know, each one of those, they apply, you know, around the world, but international, you know, it requires some strategy for doing that to scale. But in regards to the education and research, I think that IRVA will benefit greatly by creating affiliate programs and creating a better relationship with educational institutions. And I'm talking about colleges and universities and maybe even down into high school and middle school level where we can maybe start to engage with people at an earlier time, because the next generation of remote viewer teachers and professionals will come from that. And so it is very important. One of the verticals you mentioned was the Historical and Archival group to preserve the history of IRVA and to preserve the accurateness of the protocol and all the different types of remote viewing. So it is very important that we keep that nice and clear and that we go out and reach out to educational institutions to further research and also to explain to people that this is something that they can practice. So this is quite important, the next generation, right? And then on the international front, we have, like I said, There's 500 million, 600 million people in Latin America now. There's tremendous potential in Asia. It is important that we make it easy for people to join irva, to lower the barrier for membership and to increase the levels of engagement. So an abundance of classes and events, a global calendar, so anyone anywhere in the world can join an event if they want to, depending on their time zone. And then this brings us the topic of technology. So technology is deflationary. It costs less to do things over time, and you can do them faster and better. One of the barriers for growing internationally is the inability to communicate actively. But as you can see, in the past two years, AI has helped us tremendously to improve the quality of communication and to a point where we almost can get to instant translation in writing. And we experienced that in our conference in New Mexico, where we had a few German guests join and they could hear the presentation translated in real time to some degree with assistive technology. This will continue to improve, and that kind of will play a picture in Urwa's growth, which is this, you know, a strong technology foundation where people can communicate more easily without the language barriers. So that's another point that I think I can contribute and I can help because of my background.
- [24:28]
Jeffrey Mishlove
And you've really been involved in the business world for quite a while. Can you talk about some of your experience in the business world?
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Luciano Arruda
Well, I've been working for, you know, close to 25 years with technology companies here in the Silicon Valley. I primarily help companies to mature when it comes to their globalization experience. So in some companies, they, you know, they need a lot of help in the engineering side to make their products and services actually able to work in other languages. And, you know, I would say right to left, Arabic and Hebrew would be challenging areas for a lot of companies. You know, double by characters like Japanese, Korean and others. Like some companies will struggle with that because of the encoding that they had set up their products. But more and more, it's becoming more, with AI, is becoming more a challenge of how can you improve the user experience and how can you provide better outcomes to global users. So through the years when content and products were created in the United States and distributed around the world, there was a gap of maybe a month. So it was launched in the US today, and then maybe 30 days from now, it was launched in other countries. Because it took time to translate all of the content and also to strategize, this gap has been shrinking. Now actually, the reverse can happen where ideas can come up in other parts of the world and they can exist in America within, you know, days from the time conceptions. We're growing in, you know, in all directions. And it's a fantastic time in the industry where we're all sort of reinventing ourselves. We're all having to calibrate our expectations of what's possible and think really Big. So this is the experience I've had in the last 25 years is working with engineers, working with writers, working with marketing teams, with the legal teams, infrastructure and facilities for companies like Google, Adobe, Uber, and now I work for a company called Automation Anywhere that is going through a fantastic phase as they're growing internationally.
- [26:33]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So it sounds like you've worked mostly for for profit businesses. And so what have you been finding different or challenging now being in the nonprofit arena with irba?
- [26:48]
Luciano Arruda
Well, you know, I think that's an important point. You know, when, when you're working in a, in a for profit, you, you have to respond to a board of investors and there's a lot of transparency that needs to, to be had. And when you work in a nonprofit, you also have to have the same level of transparency. But you're not, not maybe as interested in profit. Right? You're not trying to accumulate resources, you're trying to spread your resources and give you back to the community. So, you know, instead of trying to grow IRVA so that, you know, we basically accumulate revenue, we want to make sure that we reapply that, that revenue that we create to grow the organization globally. And this may transform into making our conferences free at some, some point in time or nearly free. Making it possible for any teacher to present at IRVA and have access to a global audience without the cost of infrastructure that it would take for them to do that on their own. So IRVA can increase the availability of our platform to folks around the world who can have a voice and we can reinvest in the community and reinvest in research. There are so many places where IRVA can contribute to the growth of the understanding of remote viewing, but also to the learning and you know, to improve people's lives. So I think that that's a big difference.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
So I have such a range of feelings as I'm hearing you talk. On the one hand, I would absolutely love to see that anyone who wanted to come to a conference, at the very least, you know, they wouldn't have to pay entry fee. That would be incredible. It would be incredible that we could just offer any classes and they'd be free to everyone. Like I think that would be such a fantastic goal for the organization. I, that that would just be really, really so helpful because I know it's a barrier and myself, you know, I teach classes and some of them are not that cheap because I can only have so many people in the class. But this is what IRVA could do and it would make such a difference on the other hand, when I first came onto the board, we had about $7,000 in the bank. Now, we're doing way, way better than that. But still, you know, it's not like we're doing so far better than that. I mean, we've got a couple hundred thousand in the bank now, but. But if we're going to offer everything for free, then we are going to need a lot more money than that. And I can say both as a criticism of the existing Board of Passports, the one area that IRVA is deficient in is in fundraising activities.
- [29:33]
Luciano Arruda
That's right.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
You know, did very little on that front other than trying to make the organization one that people would want to join as members. But that's different than actual, let's go out there and get grants and raise millions of dollars so we can offer these free things to. What do you see as far as what IRVA can do on that level? And everyone said for a long time, oh, yeah, we need to have someone focusing on fundraising, but we just simply haven't done it. So what do you think about that?
- [30:05]
Luciano Arruda
No, I think that, that, you know, that that's probably the part of my previous statement that was missing. So in order to offer lower cost in conference attendance, because there's. There's a real cost, you're renting a physical location and people are going to eat and people are going to spend a lot of time using this facility, you know, for sometimes three, four, five days. So it's hard to basically say, everybody who wants to learn about it just come in and enjoy. But it is, it is what you said maybe to shift the expectations of. So there's two things that can happen here. We have the idea of business of scale, right? Oh, we maybe we have a. We have less than a thousand members today, and we have less than a thousand members who are maybe contributing with, you know, a $45 membership fee. So we could have 5,000 or 10,000 members. And so that would drive the cost of the membership down and still provide with the financial resources that we can expend. As I mentioned before, technology is deflationary. The cost to deliver information, it is going down. It will keep going down. So to effectively reach a global audience, when we have content that can be available in 10, 20, 30 languages without much of a cost, you can, you can double, triple the amount of members you can have globally. Right. Provided that you adjust the cost of membership to the local economy. And then a huge point that you just mentioned is the donation and the handling of our financial Resources, meaning investment of money that's available. And by the way, you did a tremendous job. I mean, like you said, you flipped the, you flip the book from 7,000 to close to 200,000. That is money that can be invested and it can also be used to create more money. So like you said, fundraising events. We have a new member on the board. His name is Greg and he's a CFO and has very good awareness of fundraising and other activities as we discussed previously with him. So I really look forward to using that arm of the organization and get grants as well to grow.
- [32:10]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, I think that's so important is to really have someone whose main job it is and hiring a professional fundraiser. But you know, other organizations have endowments, you know, and longtime donors. And irva, we had started to do a legacy program. Basically a legacy program allows for people, once they pass on, to give an inheritance to the organization. And we had planned to get that program more together and then we just, it kind of petered out and I don't think that happened. Yeah, it's great that you'll be focused on that. And anybody watching this interview, if you're interested in donating, you know, just imagine like even if people want to donate like for specific purposes, like say someone donated $5,000 with the purpose that that's all going to go towards free education for, for the public. I know you're big on online, online conferences and things like that though. I know you also appreciate the in person and what, what's your vision of that as far as the future? Sure. Do you see IRVA having more online conferences and how does that intersect with the need and joy of people getting together in person?
- [33:42]
Luciano Arruda
You know, one of the things that I really enjoy with irva, you know, it's the, the online conference draws an international audience by nature. You know, online you can have anyone attend from anywhere. But the in person conference, it's also a fantastic experience because you get to talk to people from, you know, organizers to all of the speakers and all of the other members and people who are just starting out with remote viewing and on the other side of the spectrum, folks who have been doing this for, you know, 50 years or their whole life. So we should continue to do the on site conferences. And like I mentioned, we're going to try our first conference in person in, in Europe may, May, May or June next year. If we can have a successful experience with Latin America with an online conference, we can follow that with an on site, on the ground conference where we try to reproduce the Same in the beginning, we might have to infuse this event with speakers from the US or speakers from, you know, specific topics and domain expertise. But eventually we will find those experts locally and we can create the same idea of getting involved with local educational institutions and the local parapsychological societies and we can build groups locally, that is they're sustainable to have an on the ground conference. I also wanted to mention that on the revenue creation front, one of the things that I'm probably going to be focusing strongly is on partnership across, you know, organizations, affiliate programs. And as you know, very recently our YouTube channel was allowed to monetize. And so through social media we may be able to create revenue and that would be globally by creating content in multiple, multiple languages. And then you mentioned in the past also that we could publish through Amazon and through other channels and actually help to create additional income. And this income can be purposed, you know, can be repurposed in country. So income that is created in Europe can be applied to growing, you know, URVA and supporting organizations on site in Europe. So I think, yeah, this could be interesting to explore.
- [35:50]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, I would love to see that, like even to take the content from IRVA's magazine, which has been published pretty consistently, at least a couple times a year or throughout its inception, and to take a lot of those articles and put them into some books that could be published as well. Though, you know, with AI right now, I'm a little bit uncertain about, you know, how viable any publishing efforts are going to be as far as producing income in the future. Right now, you know, the book world still seems, the book business is still strong, but that could go down the tubes any moment, I would say, but we'll see. But you know, there are some people, there's always going to be people in the remote viewing community who have some concerns. One concern with our international focus is could we get to a place where there's not enough focus on Those in the U.S. you know, who have so strongly supported IRBA all these years? You know, some might feel a little bit ignored or even I was accused by a couple people when I first came on as president about four years ago. They were like, well, you know, you're just concerned about people overseas or you don't, you don't like white men, you're opposed to them. And clearly, since you were my first choice as my replacement for president, I really don't have any problem with white men. But although I guess you are originally, maybe I'm putting my foot in my mouth because you are not originally from the US I believe. If you could tell us a little bit about your background. But also what can you say to these people that are worried that going to get left in the dust and we're not going to care about them enough?
- [37:47]
Luciano Arruda
Well, you know, to begin with, as a, as a new president for irva, I have to be backed by a board, right? And our board has a very good mix of folks from all kinds of background and ethnical groups. So IRWA doesn't. I'm not the person who's going to make decisions for IRWA alone. IRWA makes decisions as a board and we can always take an advisory committee to help make sure that we're well leveled and well represented. So I know I would not worry about any domination. Let's just put it this way, that emphasizes only one aspect of what ERVA can be. And then the second part is that, you know, my background is interesting in some ways because I, you know, I'm from Latin America, I was born in Brazil, so I speak Portuguese and I speak Spanish. And I also have Italian background. So I actually have Italian citizenship and traveled there recently, so quite acquainted with European values in European customs. But I have, you know, I call myself American because I have been here for the majority of my life. I have lived in the United States longer than any place else, and I will continue to be growing, you know, concepts in the United States. So I think, you know, I might kind of have a mix of three, you know, three continents. But like I said, we're backed by a diverse board. And on that level, I also wanted to say that we have a pretty good balance of men and women on the board. And as I grew the csi, I always kept in mind that, you know, we wanted to have men and women as CSI leaders and we will continue to make sure that we have that diversity and that people feel welcomed and represented. And there's no doubt in my mind that the American audience will not be lost on the, on the dust. There's a lot that's driven from the US and this will continue to be a vibrant, you know, participation and audience.
- [39:40]
Jeffrey Mishlove
And what would you say to those that are worried that the history, you know, remote viewing coming out of the government and military programs, on the one hand, there's people that are worried that that history could get lost or blurred, and then on the other hand, there's people who felt that that history was a little bit too emphasized and maybe those that were not so pro military. So you've got these very two opposing I don't know if you'd say factions, but just different mindsets. One that really wants to uphold that history. You know, that history is what has helped remote viewing stand out from all other side based communities. Other people that are like, are looking for new directions. And what do you think about all of that?
- [40:32]
Luciano Arruda
No, I, I understand the question. And those are two sides that need to be preserved. So I think that for those who worry about the history and the origins of remote viewing being diluted by too much emphasis on new applications, I would say that IRVA's main obligation, one of the foundational aspects, is to preserve that history and to make sure that as the new generations take on remote viewing, that they don't forget that. And so when young people learn remote viewing, there's going to be a variety of applications, there's going to be a lot of creativity, and there's going to be a lot of users that are not military. In fact, Urva, it is a civil organization. We're not a military organization. So we have to allow that to flourish and to develop into the new thing. What we can do is we can provide guidance and we can provide assistance to those who are learning so that they understand the original protocol and they can preserve it. Because I think that, you know, remote viewing is a human capability, right? This is, you can almost say that this is part of nature. And so the military use of remote viewing was an application and was what made it, you know, become so successful because they, they had very good practices of building protocols and distilling methodologies so that everyone learns the same way and everybody knows how to communicate within that scheme. And so I think IRVA has what it takes to continue preserving that through research. We can also reemphasize that, you know, we are focusing on the fundamental aspects of remote viewing and learning how to improve it. But I wouldn't worry about losing the history. That's one of IRVA's obligation, is to preserve history and also to allow folks who have a military background to continue using it and learning about it. But as an application, just as it is possible to use it for mat apps and it's possible for, you know, it to be done in investigation and crime and other, you know, applications.
- [42:30]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, I'm so glad you're saying all of that. And that brings to mind the conference we just recently had in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which was where the very first IRVA conference was held. So many two and a half decades ago, basically. And this last conference, I think it really exhibited both the Old and the New had some of the founding members of IRBA who are also continue to be the leading remote viewing instructor. Lynn Buchanan, Paul Smith, we had some of their direct students. I'm trying to think who else we had from way back this, this year. So some of our founders are getting up there in years and aren't traveling as much, but they were definitely very present. And so, you know, we'll sure you're on board with continuing to have the founders and early remote viewing professionals present. There's also some people that are part of the history but that haven't been emphasized. And I've been in talks with some people to see if we can bring some of those people in who maybe haven't been heard from in years. But you know, when you go look at some of the archives, like the Ingo Swann archives at University of West Georgia or the AEDME archives at Rice University, people mentioned in those files who still are around but just really haven't been part of the community, I'll definitely send those people your way as I find out some of their contact information. But at the same time lost my train of thought there at this latest conference. So we had the founders, but we had brand new people that are like Chase, who has Social rv and we had both Cindy Miller, who's doing so much with her Enigmatic technologies platform and programming AI to do all phases of a remote viewing project, including analysis, but carrying out like project management there. We had other people talking about can. Jerry Bond was talking about can AI even do remote viewing? It's south. And so we had some brand new speakers who have never been there before. So I think continuing to bring both of those together is going to, you know, at our conferences, teaching classes, publishing in publishing, urba's Aperture magazine, you know, all of those things, we can keep the old and the new going together. But I also wanted to ask you, since you have done so much with recruiting our CSI leaders and for people who find that that term communities of special interest a little confusing, that really came about because originally we were trying to establish chapters, like international chapters. And then we met with our attorney who pretty much talked us out of using that term per se, because there's a lot of red tape involved if you're having. But it's essentially a very similar idea. But what have you found to be some challenges in both finding appropriate leaders and keeping them. And especially since there's kind of different mindsets around all of this. What would you say to that?
- [45:57]
Luciano Arruda
Well, you know, the international communities they started learning remote viewing, most likely through content that was shared by the very same folks you mentioned, those who started some of the hardcore groups that started remote viewing. And what happens is one of the challenge that happens is they may take some of that content and they will repurpose it and they will maybe transform it and they will dilute it a little bit. And so one of the risks is that the history and the facts that are around remote viewing, they get changed a bit, and sometimes they get adapted culturally so that they capture the attention of their local audience. But that modification could be a compromise because you can have thousands of people learn history in a slightly twisted way, because it is more easy to digest locally, let's say, sometimes not intentionally. That's one, yeah.
- [46:52]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I'd like to stop you there before we go on to the others. So one of the things that gave me the idea to really try to help Erva expand, which is then when you came in expand internationally, was after closely examining Alan Kardec's work. Of the spiritualist movement and spiritualism. And I was really shocked because I had heard of Allen Cardick for a number of years. But what I didn't realize was when I was in the Philippines, I was going to spiritualist churches. And it wasn't till later that I realized that those really were offshoots of what Kardec had started. But the forms that they took and the practices, you could see some similarities. But Kardik was in the UK and he was really part of the physical mediums and seances and promoting all of that. And in these other areas like the Philippines and Brazil, what they were doing was like modifying those practices more for healing with a focus on spiritualist energy healing. And then that progressed to psychic surgery, which the psychic surgery really wasn't part of what cardiac was doing in the uk. So some of these forms became. Became very, very different, but they all came out of that same movement. So what do you do? Do you try to stop that from happening? And is that even possible when cultures are so different, they're going to modify it regardless? So do you try to mitigate that in some way, or do you just let it happen naturally?
- [48:46]
Luciano Arruda
Well, I think that, you know, I mean, in some ways, over ourselves, right, We. We cannot control what other people do. They will do what they will do. But what we can do is we can emphasize that the initial, the original protocol and the actual information that has to do with how this was created and how this was developed, that has to be preserved. So if anyone is presenting On a topic, they happen to be a CSI leader, they can do what they want to do. But do not mention that this is part of urva. Right? There has to be a clear division. When you speak about remote viewing and when you speak about IRVA and the history and whatever other new development that's been taking place, I'm gonna comment on an exception. But if you are in another country, for example, you are in, let's say, somewhere in Asia, and you develop a new technique that improves remote viewing based on your experiments, and you can. You can show that that is valid, you can show that that is reproducible, and you can show with numbers that this is always accurate. So the best thing is to present that to ERVA through our channels, either on a conference or engage with our research unit so that you can have a stamp of approval and you can say this is IRVA endorsed content and available, you know, for anyone who you want to teach or further research. If you go on your own and you develop some technique that is, like you said, the spiritualist modification, adaptation and a huge, you know, deviation of what the Alan Kardec initial teachings were, there has to be some level of disclosure that, you know, I am not saying this on the behalf of Urba. This is not remote viewing. This is something that is a variation of remote viewing. It's a new interpretation. And this is something that I am sharing as myself, not as erva. So on that context, they can do whatever they want, but if they want ERVA's endorsement, they should present it, circulate to the community, and have it vetted, and then, you know, then ERVA can endorse it.
- [50:50]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, that makes sense. Just in the same way that you and I started off talking about our backgrounds with clairvoyant reading and healing, and we can articulate the differences. Say a different culture takes a food. They're making pizza in China or they're making Chinese food in America. And while it's quite called Chinese food, we think that's what we're eating. But you come to find out that's not how they make it in China. Maybe the people you work with directly, being with this analogy, if you had. If you trained a chef, you could control what they're doing. But then 10 years, 20 years down the line, everybody's cooking just in adding their natural, even. Even what's available in the country, like the flavors, the what you have to cook with, you know, that impacts how authentic you can be. And what if in some of these countries, they don't even have the same words that we have for these concepts. So there's going to be naturally, some things that start to change.
- [51:50]
Luciano Arruda
Yeah. The best we can do is to provide a solid, you know, glossary to make sure that the key terms and the main terminology that's connected to remote viewing is available, you know, in other languages in a most accurate way. And then the other one is to provide introductory courses and classes, probably, maybe erva's job to make sure that the history is available in multiple languages in a way that it is true and honest about, you know, what happened. And then the vision behind, you know, ERVA as a mission, I think that's a good start. But that mix and mash of values and cultures and it will generate new expressions. And that's kind of what, you know, the world is kind of constantly evolving and creating new experiences that are more in tune with the generation that's adopting. So I think that's kind of hard to stop, and in some ways it needs to be welcome.
- [52:40]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So then we were talking about some of the other challenges you were encountering as you were recruiting and training leaders. Did you have any more?
- [52:50]
Luciano Arruda
Yeah. So a second one that's super easy to mention is because they are absorbing information from the original founders of the remote viewing sort of protocol. Not only they could be changing, you know, information, they can also be copying it and claiming it to be theirs. So, you know, maybe someone came up with trv, right, or with arv, and we'll explain those a little later, but different techniques, and they may say that they invented it. So that's a big one. And then you kind of fall into the copyright issue because someone may be completely duplicating presentation materials or claiming to have, you know, being the founder of some methodology. So that's one that's hard because ERVA doesn't control what people do. People will do what they do. But in some ways, we try to interact and engage with folks who are ethical. We have a code of conduct that they sign. We want to make sure that they're also amicable to other members of their community because there can be some level of competition. So a lot of people have spent their lives trying to develop and understand remote viewing, and so they want to teach that skills, you know, within their country and their. Their culture. And maybe there are two or three others who are also trying to do the same. And this is maybe, you know, small thinking, because like I said, there are way more people who don't know remote viewing. And there are so many different applications to remote Viewing that when you fight for a small group of students, you're basically hurting right on the field. So I think that that's something that we need to communicate and do a good job about. The copyright part, where someone copies content from the other and then next day they claim to be an expert. So those are things that we need to watch for.
- [54:38]
Jeffrey Mishlove
It's a combination between a person being super enthusiastic and also knowing that there is going to be a lot of work involved. So they may have a remote viewing business, they may have one of the only remote viewing businesses. And so we have been trying to put protocols in place so people can take responsibility as a CSI leader in a different country or a particular country, but at the same time not take ownership of that. Like they're stewards, they're in that position for a while, but we don't want them to create a monopoly and we want them to know that they're taking care of that community for a while and then they're passing it on. And the same way like you and I, we're in these leadership roles on the board, but this is not our organization. And we also, whether it's the board or a CSI group in another country, there has to be some boundaries, very strong boundaries, between those person's own businesses and the organization. That's something, I mean, I've had to navigate that because I run my own school and have my own remote viewing intuitive business, but also running irba and it's certainly not impossible, but you always have to have that at the forefront of your mind. What role am I in? Who am I supposed to be? What organization am I supposed to be promoting right now? Is it okay to ever blur those boundaries and be promoting both? We had someone who created a logo where they took their country flag and then they took the IRVA logo and they put it onto their country flag. Like they, they, they merged the logos and then their own business name and the country flag had a pretty dramatic image on it. So it looked very cool. But we were like, no, you can' do that. You can't take the, your IRVA logo and be mixing it up within your business.
- [56:49]
Luciano Arruda
Their identity, their identity has to be preserved, separate from erva's identity. So they may be able to convey some level of expertise because they're connected to irva and so they're in touch with the latest and the greatest and they are actually able to organize initiatives with IRVA to deliver new content and new experiences to their local community. So it is a privileged, it is a privileged position. And on that capacity, there has to be some neutrality and not mentioning of their business because they're representing IRVA within the community. So in some ways, the Urwa team leaders, they almost would be best, you know, served if they knew that they are coordinators. So they're really coordinators in country, but they're very well placed and very strategically grouped so that they can engage with coordinators from other communities. So our CSI calls are amazing because we have ideas that are coming from all over the world. And then there's opportunity to engage. Right. And form new alliances and then invest in projects and initiatives that are not necessarily directly with irva. You know, they can kind of work with each other. So it is a challenge. What you said is a challenge. And, you know, it's something that we have to be comfortable with. There's some level of trust that is needed and there's some give and take where you allow them to have some flexibility to engage with their students and engage with someone else's students and then create something new or grow. We shouldn't make that a focus. The focus should be the opportunity to grow and how much more space we can gain by sharing information.
- [58:19]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, well, and then we've also encountered where there were different factions within a country who were kind of doing battle with each other.
- [58:29]
Luciano Arruda
Right.
- [58:30]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I know you had to, in a couple instances. You've spent quite a bit of time helping to mend relationships and work those out. Anything you can say about that, it.
- [58:41]
Luciano Arruda
Is always worth it to create a space where people who may have differences can coexist. So this happens in around the world. Countries are not always friendly with every other country and they have to find ways to build relationships and have agreements. And that's why we have diplomacy. Right. So when multiple remote viewers who are wanting to be a, a leader in a country are fighting with each other, we have to find out what we have in common and then kind of build a platform that allows to highlight the commonality and, and the aspects that benefits every single one of us and then put a lot of focus there and minimize the differences. They can continue to work on their differences in a personal level and it's none of our business. It is something that they can do forever. But there are some things that we have in common that we all benefit from, and those are the areas that will be reinforced when engaging with irva. And on that level, I really don't have a problem working with people who, as long as they can behave politely when they're engaging with IRVA and The community that they represent is not being misled and not not being disturbed by their personal differences. I think that that's something important to put on the table. But if the communities cannot engage with each other and the leaders cannot engage with each other, then it's probably not a good match for her. So that's something that we have to recognize that maybe not everyone is in line with collaboration, but it is diplomatic thing. You have to find what you have in common and you need to work to improve those.
- [60:19]
Jeffrey Mishlove
That's what I really appreciate about you is you've spent a lot of time helping people personally or strategizing to see how you can bring people together who did have conflicts. And that's also myself departing from irva. I think that there maybe tends to be people that I would gravitate towards or now have had some of my own conflicts with it. And I know you like recently had a meeting with someone who I maybe would have just rejected as, oh yeah, they're not too open to Irva or to myself. But you had a meeting with them and I was so glad that you did because I think anytime there's a changing of the guard, it is presents new opportunities to men, relationships to bring people in. I know when I came in there were past presidents that had different alliances with some people and then some people totally avoided the organization because of that one person. And you know, I did what I could to try to convince people things change over time, reconsider the organization and say the same thing with me leaving, you know, there may be people that either for whatever reasons, hard to imagine, but you know, drilled with me or the organization as it was. And this is a brand new opportunity now for maybe some people who left to return or some people that. One of the things I've observed with you is while you try to help resolve conflict, I've never heard you speak poorly about anybody. I've never heard you, you know, you just don't get into some of those relationship issues that other people seem to do. So any thoughts on that?
- [62:09]
Luciano Arruda
Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, you know, first and foremost, I don't have the same history that others have on the same position. So I don't have the anchors and the relationship turbulence because I. I'm really new to remote viewing. Right. So this kind of helps to create sort of a fresh approach because there's. There are no hooks or areas where someone can say you did this to me or you blocked me here, or we had some differences that never really were resolved. So I don't have any of that and I also don't highlight those. So like you said, I will very, very seldom I will comment on any relationship or any aspect of a relationship with anyone. Even if I wasn't thrilled and happy with it in general. I will try to resolve that with the person directly. And I think that the main thing is that there has to be an intent to improve the relationships. They don't have to be perfect, but there has to be an intent to make it better. And then if we can find a way to create a win win situation where you could be partially happy and others can be partially happy, then that's probably where we want to begin with. But some people, they are decided that they're not going to be happy and it is fine. I can still have a relationship with that person. I cannot bring that person into the contextual engagements with a larger population, but I can still have a positive relationship with someone for whatever reason. They have their opinions, you know, it's. It's their opinion about how life should be, you know, and how IRVA should behave. And, you know, that's to be respected. Not a problem. But I do look forward to, like you said, engage with folks who have not been involved with IRVA and maybe give them an opportunity to express what are the areas that they would like to see flourish in IRVA or ideas and concepts preserved and then make a statement, you know, that makes them feel safe about committing their time to them.
- [64:04]
Jeffrey Mishlove
And just a couple more questions. So on the vein of relationships, can you talk a little bit about the rest of the board and the, and not just the board, you know, we've got our board members, but now we've got a much more active volunteer program. That's something I think we could be even expanding more. One of the things that I had realized in, in really promoting a volunteer program was that you really need middle level managers because it takes a lot of management to manage volunteers. And we were getting volunteers because the board was so busy, but then it was like, okay, now the board's a little too busy to manage the volunteers.
- [64:49]
Luciano Arruda
Yeah, no, no, this is a great question. Because if we're going to be talking about scaling as a global opportunity, we want to make sure that people are experts in certain areas, right. And that we committees that allow volunteers and thought leaders to be able to engage in a space that they can be productive. And sometimes you have different personalities, right? You have a more social, let's just put it like the sales and marketing person is quite different than the accountant, who is quite different than an IT backend kind of person. So, you know, we need to take advantage of everyone who wants to engage with IRVA and volunteer and help us. But, you know, it is going to be on a more specialized role. So I'm kind of thinking about creating committees for airu, the research unit, and committees for the education, and then a committee for CSI so that we can expand. And then the directors or the, you know, those who are on the board, they can be summarizing activities in our meetings and talking about the higher objectives, the top, you know, three or four goals that we have for irva. And as a board, we can focus with congruency to make sure that we make sure that certain goals are come to realization. And then the committees are going to be maybe more involved with deploying the operations, the infrastructure, and kind of the logistics around the goals that are assigned for that particular vertical. So, you know, I think that we, we're going to be breaking things down a little bit more into tasks, goals and projects and people who will take on certain projects and so that the board members don't have to be doing everything. And that's maybe a little bit more of a business setup. You know, we'll see if we can expand that way. But that allows for everybody to engage in the areas that they know best. And I think that that's something we.
- [66:39]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, that's a great idea.
- [66:41]
Luciano Arruda
I think we have a good mix on the board. We have folks who, you know, are very committed and they're sometimes emotionally committed to the areas that they're, they're coordinating. But more and more we want to make sure that the board can again focus on the higher, on the higher objectives and that they can back each other up a little bit. So there are certain aspects of each program, the history and archival, the csi, the education and the research, and let's not forget the Applied Precognition project that is joining erva. All of these areas are very specialized, but we want the board members to know a little bit about each other so they can back each other up. So I would like to see the owners of each of these units train a backup and to have a second person who can replace them anytime if they happen to be unable to perform their, their function on the board or they have to go on vacation, you know, or just take time off. We need to have a strong backup for each one of those units. And each one of those units should have a committee of volunteers that they can delegate activities so that they don't have to be lost into day to day details and they can kind of keep their higher vision of what, you know, what is the higher goal that we're trying to achieve here as far as relationships. I think that the variety that we have today provides for good feedback. I think that some people are more analytical, other people are more free thinking, looking about, you know, it's just not so one thing after the other. They can kind of handle multiple things happening at the same time. And I think that feedback to each other is important. So I don't want to see a uniform board that thinks the same way. I want the variety on the board and we do have people who know about social media and advertising and we're going to enhance that with more affiliate programs and more of what we spoke about social media revenue opportunities and any multiple languages. We have a fantastic leader for IRU vertical, Jennifer Proctor, we have Elizabeth working with Ed and education can be quite busy and we need to kind of make sure that we have the proper support there so that, you know, it doesn't turn into one person doing everything alone. So that these are my thoughts. And then the csi, as I take on the position of a president, I will continue to be involved in the csi, but there will be someone to replace me as well. And there should be a committee, like I said, for Latin America. We have five or six Spanish speakers who could be doing presentations and panels very often and doing workshops. And in Europe we're forming a very solid base that should be able to allow an European sort of wing to develop. And these people should be able to engage with the community on their own and maybe just report to the board on the higher level.
- [69:30]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So Irva's in the process of revamping its entire website, the whole platform. And you have really been spearheading that along with our webmaster, Andy. Can you talk about that and how is that going to help improve operations overall?
- [69:51]
Luciano Arruda
Wow. Well, first of all, working with Andy has been a pleasure. And you know, I think that we're just starting on things we think alike and he has very good experience with online platforms and he is quite engaging. So, you know, thanks for that introduction, Deborah. But what we're doing is we're changing platforms and we're consolidating technologies. So one of the big changes that's happening to IRVA's new website is that we're going to be able to do things under one roof and that allows us to consolidate the data sets that we have from engagement with the people accessing the websites. Now with artificial intelligence enablement with information about who received communication from IRVA and who re engage with irva. There's opportunity for us to build a platform where instructors from multiple countries can post their content and become, you know, recognized and have visibility within irva. So we can have a lot more content that can be repurposed within the platform. And to deliver for the instructors, we can deliver reoccurring income. Right. And it doesn't have to be so large in the beginning, but this over time will grow the number of professors, teachers, researchers who want to share information on the platform and you know, reach out a larger audience. We also have the professional remote viewer membership that it is very fresh and thank you for creating that program. And I know that it wasn't you alone, but it was an idea that came in while you were president and it is actually available on the website. We wanted to kind of grow that that portion on the web on the website and we wanted to have an opportunity for anyone to find who is the instructor, who is the professional that I can hire both to teach me on a specific subject or topic or that I can hire to address a use case, an application of remote viewing. And so we look forward to developing more recognition and more opportunities to, for those who can provide services to make them available through the website. In addition to that, you know, having a global forum, having a calendar that is global, and having easier access to our archives through different membership levels, I think that we can control those accesses a little bit more easily with the new platform. So I'm looking forward to using it. There's plenty of, plenty of growth through affiliate programs, social media, everything is under one roof. We can deploy solutions from there using different plugins and different integrations.
- [72:22]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, that'll be terrific. And I know it's going to look beautiful. It's already looking really, really great.
- [72:30]
Luciano Arruda
Yeah. So I'm really crossing my fingers here that we can complete the migration this week. We're coming to the end of December and then actually the migration has, you know, 95% done. We just have to go through some final integration and then hopefully we can turn it on and, and everyone will enjoy them.
- [72:46]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Be awesome. And then it sounds like we have a date and a place for our in person conference in October. It's going to be in Dayton, Ohio, is that correct? And that is one of the locations. A lot of people don't know about it, but there is a historical element there. Dale Braff, who was the Stargate coordinator with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rest of the different agencies. He has a lot of contacts there, and I don't know all the history there myself, but it sounds like that there were some activities happening there. So do you know anything more than I know at the moment?
- [73:31]
Luciano Arruda
You know, I have been so busy with different things that I haven't researched much there. But I do know that a lot of people are looking forward to attending that conference. And I know that there's going to be some great keynote speakers that will potentially open up conversation and help to bring the historical aspects of Dayton, Ohio, and then, you know, with Dale and his background there. But I don't have a lot more information on that for now. I apologize.
- [73:59]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah, no, that's fine. I know that Bridget Gibbs, our new vice president, and Cindy Miller, our treasurer, are working hard on the conference along with Dale, and they're even looking at bringing in a professional conference organizer. So the board could relax at conferences a little bit and not be quite so busy and stressed. So that will be good. And any final words, maybe, about working with your vice president, Bridget Gibbs? She's someone that I've known for a long time and hard. She has so many skills.
- [74:35]
Luciano Arruda
Oh, yes. No, I, I, I love working with, with, with her. We, we had a few calls already and shared some ideas around what are some of the things that we would like to focus on. And so we spoke about, you know, some higher goals. And I think that she wants to, you know, take ownership and really hit one of them, which is engagement. Right. Engagement in conferences, engagement in events, online engagement. And I know that she's very big on that and that that's foundational for erva, that, that I'm completely in agreement that engagement is a top priority for irva. And that might be like lowering the cost of engagement, allowing more people to become members. You might be reaching out to new communities and new organizations that don't know about IRVA. So, I mean, there's a lot there, and I'm 100% behind, you know, her initiatives. We're going to be talking a little bit more. Oh, during Christmas, there's a lot of family time, and it's kind of a transitional month, but as soon as January comes in, I really look forward to working with her. I think that she has a lot of skills that we haven't tapped on yet. And she's also warming up to serve as a recent member on the board. So we have a lot in common. And I look forward to. Yeah, I totally look forward to work.
- [75:48]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Yeah. She's been working with nonprofits for Many years, including she's with the American Red Cross right now in the leadership role. And she has a lot of human resource experience, which is definitely needed within any nonprofit organization. So we've been getting more and more formalized with all of that staffing, applications and contracts and things like that. There's still definitely room for improvement there. But that'll be great to have the two of you working together. And then we still have Cindy Miller, who's been on the board now for a few years and she's the treasurer. And then we've got Julia Ashley, who's our faithful secretary. And she's really. She's been on the board for a long time now as well. So she's going to be able to keep maintaining that board history and keeping everyone in line with our bylaws and protocols. So I could not be more confident that as I exit the board and move on to focus more on research and maybe getting outside a little bit more once a month. So instead, instead of never, that the organization could not be in better shape. And I, I wouldn't feel as confident as I do about leaving if it wasn't for all of you and especially yourself. So thank you. Thank you for that.
- [77:17]
Luciano Arruda
Oh, those are kind words, but I think that that's kind of a creation that you, you manifested. You manifested a friendly board and a very stable environment. And so we're lucky that, you know, we had you drive initiatives at IRWA in the past few years. We're really lucky. We're extremely well positioned, thanks to you.
- [77:39]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I have a very low tolerance for being in any situation where I'm not happy and are really enjoying the people that I work with. I'd have to say that's the thing that I'm going to miss the most is just Our Marathon Law 3 hour plus meetings once a month. You know, I already missed that and you know, just really not going anywhere because I'm still involved in like BL Irva research grant with three other people on the board and I'm still going to be very involved with Airu, the research unit and also working on Aperture magazines. Really not going anywhere. You guys know where to find me. Oh yeah, I knew we're going to meet up at conferences too and everything. I'll have a little more free time now. So. Yeah. Thank you so much for this wonderful interview and your time today and we'll have to do a check in and some months ahead and see how things are going.
- [78:42]
Luciano Arruda
Most definitely. And thank you for, you know, the idea of having this conversation. I think this helps everyone to understand a bit more where we're coming from and where Irva is going to. But like I said, like you said, this is not the end of our engagement. Eventually we're going to form a committee, an advisory committee, and you're always welcome to join and stay in touch and you know, maybe call in now and then and check on things. Always welcome.
- [79:07]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, thank you, thank you so much.
- [79:18]
Narrator/Announcer
New Thinking Allowed is a non profit endeavor. Your contributions to the New Thinking Allowed foundation make a meaningful difference in our ability to produce new videos. For early access to our videos and live stream events, sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science Mind Body Spirit University, a leader in fully accredited in person and online US College degree programs. In the topics we cover here, visit their website@cihs. You can now download all nine copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org this is Deborah Katz.
- [80:23]
Dr. Debra Lynn Katz
I'd like to tell you about my three volume set that helps you understand your own intuitive potential and also how to meditate and how to access your abilities to levels you may not have realized were possible. Check it out on Amazon or visit my website@www.debrakatz.com.
- [80:56]
Luciano Arruda
Sam.