Transformation | Awake Media

Media Creates Culture

by Lakshmi Narayan | Feb 25, 2025 | Audio & Video Production, awakening, Branding, Learning Management Systems, Logo Design, Media Creates Culture Blog, Psychedelics, Technology, transcendental cinema, Transformation, Web Development

I conceived of using media to awaken consciousness while I was witnessing the Twin Towers toppling on TV. At that moment I knew that we as a species were going to need to spiritually awaken to transcend the trauma and turmoil that we have created at this level of consciousness, in it’s materiality. I decided to devote my skills as a designer and communicator to creating media that awakens.

For a long time it remained somewhat of a New Age aspiration, without any legs, but after my ibogaine journey in 2015, I began to see a purpose for Awake Media that could actually facilitate that spiritual awakening. Today, in 2025, as I witness the unravelling of our culture and species in so many ways, I see that the need for media that awakens has become urgent on many fronts– in transcending trauma, ending addiction, finding purpose, righting relationships, and reconnecting with the divine. Enter entheogens, my preferred word for psychedelics.

Awake Media offers integrated branding, design and technology services for the entheogenic and transformational wellness community. We can help you create a memorable brand and extend it across your website, membership platform, an email marketing campaign, a book cover, conference graphics, a video or documentary, or crowdfunding campaign. Click here to schedule a complementary discovery call.

From Hosting to Film: A Digital Media Ecosystem for the Psychedelic Community

by Lakshmi Narayan | Sep 2, 2022 | 3D Animation, Alliances, Audio & Video Production, awakening, Branding, Consciousness, Learning Management Systems, Logo Design, Media Creates Culture Blog, Psychedelics, SEO and Content Strategy, Social Media Management, Team, Technology, transcendental cinema, Transformation, TransTech, Video Editor, videos, Web Development

From Hosting to Film: A Digital Media Ecosystem for the Psychedelic Community

Awake Media has evolved from a solo studio into a digital media ecosystem with a renaissance team of media experts who can serve the transformational community to create and send out their awakening messages and teachings quickly and powerfully. Ease of use is a key consideration for us because we find that if the processes have been streamlined, the creativity flows and we can create something great together. In the world of design, this is called Design Thinking, and we apply this to all our work.

Services

hosting and domain management

wordpress web development

transmedia storytelling

entheogenic social network

books and ebooks

web video and animation

branding

film

print design

coalition of independent contractors

subject matter experts

global renaissance team

The Awake Media Ecosystem

We are careful about who we work with and are seeking to “find the others” those who know in their heart of hearts that “There is no Other.” We want to harness the power of media for you and with you to create culture and quicken an awakening. Email or text Lakshmi Narayan at 619-366-7788 or

Transformative Technology: Brain Waves of the Future

by Lakshmi Narayan | Dec 11, 2016 | awakening, Consciousness, Technology, Transformation, TransTech

Last month I attended the transformative technologies conference at Sofia University in Palo Alto California, where some of the brightest minds on the planet discussed the next billion dollar industry: technologies for self awareness and awakening.

Quantitative & Qualitative

Still in its infancy, the focus of transformative technology is wearable devices (hardware) and apps (software) that measure, collect data and give you feedback on breathing, heart rate variability, brain wave activity, stress and fear responses and other signals that when measured, monitored and adjusted can help you manage your moods, have a more effective meditation practice, learn to live, breathe, think, feel, and perform better. Its true that these gadgets increase self-awareness. It begs the question, what is a Self? The question is, can a Wearable get you there? How much data do you need to gather to know God?

Habit Forming

For example, moti.io is a Pavolovian style mouse-like gadget which helps you entrain a new habit by flashing different colored lights at you to remind you to ‘do’ whatever new habit you are trying to form, like remembering to drink water frequently, stretch your body etc. I can see the usefulness of such a thing to break the mold of a prescribed daily habit. You shed one habit that of not drinking water and you inhabit another, that of an incessant relationship with a gadget. Other gadgets are conceived as wearables, like the Lief, an ECG patch which has been ‘scientifically shown to improve control over your flight or flight response’, that a cynical friend of mine described as a choke collar, or a VR device that visulaizes your breath as a puff of snowflakes or colored lights that allow you to ‘move’ through a virtual landscape, making breathing a game. The more deeply you breathe the more mobility you have. If you haven’t developed somatic awareness or spend too much time in your head, these tools are helpful.

A-muse-ment

I sat in a crowded anteroom with a headband on my head from a company called Muse, that promised to help me meditate better. As I breathed in and out, Muse would measure my brain waves and play the sound of crashing waves in my ear if my mind was wandering and give me the sound of birds chirping if I hit a moment of ‘no thought.’ In 5 minutes of meditation the birds chirped 3 times for a few seconds, and the lady told me that was ‘good’ and I felt how low the collective bar was for “no thought.” What’s wonderful about a device like Muse is that it gives one somatic feedback for what ‘no thought’ feels like, and in time you can entrain yourself to hit that state even without the device, if in fact that is the state being measured. One way to self-check is to keep in mind that states of profound silence and stillness have an ‘Eternal Now’ feeling to them. These states can’t be maintained very long without a kind of inner training and the discipline to still the mind consciously for periods of time. That stillness is like a reset button. In that stillness thoughts ‘arise’ in your mind from the pre-frontal cortex instead of from the amygdala, and you, the thinker, recognizes that while these are ‘your thoughts’, they are qualitatively different from your normal mind stream, which you now recognize as the fear-based mind-chatter that we all experience from time to time. These thoughts ‘ARISE’ in your MInd. You feel more like the Witness than the Thinker, and yet, they are your thoughts. They inspire you and make you feel grateful

Did you know Your Brain Waves Can Make Art?

One of the nicest things at the transtech conference was a large LED wheel or ‘chakra’ with colored lights on it that would change pattern depending on the brain waves of the people who were attached to it by a bluetooth wearable. This was created by laser light artists and programmer Peter Tjeedsma of Illuminationart.org It was a beautiful non-judgmental, ever-morphing panorama of this amazing brain and unfathomable mind we possess.

Mastering our minds: from healing bi-polar to transcendence

I was late for this workshop and I walked in to the words ‘Bipolar is the low-hanging fruit of enlightenment” That caught my attention because I have been feeling for a while, that this thing we call mental illness is a serious misdiagnosis of a condition that is really more of a shamanic encounter along an evolutionary path. Tribal cultures regard what we call ‘psychoses’ as shamanic initiations, and there is a certain logic to that. The shaman journeys within, to reconcile, find God, the Great Unity inside. In doing so he or she is healed. That’s the sum of it. Because of the centuries of limited access to the Plant Technologies, which are sophisticated al-chemical processes designed by nature to help us climb that evolutionary ladder between in-divid-dual Self and God, we live in a culture of mental dysfuctions like ADD, ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, PTSD, sanctioned psychosis, violence, war and more. Gino Yu, a professor from Hong Kong presents a perfecty logical idea that the ‘bipolar’ person is actually experiencing the energy of transformation, but is unable to ground it in their body because they have an overlay of fear, desire, and need distorted by many mental concepts or projections, that they are unable to ‘decouple’ from. Decoupling is an important word in this explanation, because someone with bipolar is in a dualistic mindset.

Your Body is the Ultimate Wearable

Awakening to your ‘natural state’ or ‘true nature’ is the breaking or melting of a much bigger mold than addictions or bad habits. It is the mold of the over-thinking mind and the frozen heart. I maintain that this meta-mold cannot be broken or melted without God entering the picture. Whatever picture or ideas that word ‘God’ conjures up for you, I’m referring to an experience of ‘Divine Union’ within, and it is a triune leap– physical, psychological and metaphysical. You know God. You become One with God. Whether you achieve this with breathing, yoga, fasting, entheogens, writing, painting, cooking, or some combination thereof, its characteristics and effects are the same for all humans. You heal because your issues melt into the melting pot of ‘divine mind’ the collective consciousness. You step into the master of archetypes. About the Author: Lakshmi Narayan is the Creative Director of Awake Media a design studio that build brands and websites. She believes that the current systemic dysfunctions and crises are precursors to a global spiritual awakening.

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Sacred Geometry in World Famous Logos

by Lakshmi Narayan | May 20, 2016 | Branding, Logo Design, Psychedelics, Transformation

Sacred Geometry in World Famous Logos

Sacred geometry is a map of the invisible. It’s the structures and patterns, atomic and galactic, that define forms and systems.

Understanding sacred geometry gives meaning to life, and simplifies navigating through an increasingly complex world. Consciousness is fractal and holographic. Patterns repeat themselves, by definition, in species and objects, in social systems, in behavior, and in cycles of change. They manifest as symbols—in business brands, in art and architecture, in mythology, and music, and religion, in number and word. Words, are made of letters and letters are FORMS, they’re Geometric, and Geometry is symbolic Mathematics. ‘LOGO’ means ‘WORD’. ‘LOGOS, is the ‘Logic of Word’ or ‘the person of.’ Here are a few corporate logos and the sacred geometry imbued in their symbols. We don’t know whether these symbols were designed with this understanding in mind, but it’s because of the meaning they imbue that people are attracted to certain forms. These forms keep repeating themselves through history.

The cross is a coordinate of a vertical and a horizontal ordinate. X and Y, which stand for direction, and also designate the male and female chromosomes. It symbolizes direction and crossroads, and of course, when viewed from below it is the Christian crucifix.

The pentagram is the five-pointed star, associated with Pentagonal symmetry, also associated with renewal and the Devil.

The Texaco logo derives it’s power from these 2 secular symbols, the pentagram and the cross, symbols of Christ and the Devil, or crucifixion and renewal, a union of polarities.

The Christian fish symbol, comes from the center carved out of the intersection of two circles whose circumference just touches the center of the other. This geometry is called a Vesica Piscis—’vesica’ means ‘bladder’ which could be likened to a sac containing something fluid, in this case “piscis” which means ‘pointed oval’. Two wholes, or two poles, left and right, male and female, good and evil, yin and yang — the sacred space formed by their intersection is, appropriately, the symbol of Christ. If you draw another vesica piscis inside the center and erase everything but the oval in the center, you get a pupil, a symbol used in Hindu mandalas, and geometric meditation diagrams symbolizing “vision.”

The Vesica Piscic geometry is the foundation of the Flower of Life symbol, as well as the Christian fish symbol

TWA used the same geometry in their original logo, symbolizing the union of different worlds through travel.

And Mastercard uses it to denote the power of credit.

In all these cases, the form derives it’s original power from the meaning of a union of opposites. The meanings associated with it by brand came later. Those are more individual to the brand. The power of the symbol is universal and archetypal. VIEW OUR PORTFOLIO OF SACRED GEOMETRY LOGOS

Awakenings

by Lakshmi Narayan | Sep 6, 2012 | awakening, Consciousness, Media Creates Culture Blog, Transformation | 0 comments

Five Years Old, New Delhi, India: An afternoon with hailstones big as marbles. Myself, excited about going to the circus. Circus cancelled. I lived in New Delhi, I had never seen hailstones before. I ran to the front stoop and watched them fall on the grass. Then the sun came out and they gleamed in the sunlight. I crept up to the grass and picked one up. Holding it gingerly in my hand I crunched on the hailstone, totally absorbed in the act, as children are. At that moment, an expansive mature awareness washed over me, (still imprinted in me today by the crunch of ice in my mouth)——I was aware that I was God in a body, and that I was born to forget this. That was the covenant I had with my soul. I would forget by the age of 7, and then life would afford me opportunities to remember. And if I didn’t remember all my life and died in ignorance it was okay because I would have another chance, and another. As many as I wanted. Until I got tired of the game and decided to wake up.

Fourteen Years Old, Mumbai, India I am walking home from school. Pelting warm rain. Soaking wet. I’m walking down a concrete hill, gazing idly at the 20 ft. stone wall to my left. There’s a crack in the wall. I trace it’s course. Then suddenly, without reason, I begin running, full-tilt down the hill. I hear a thunderous sound behind me. Trembling, I turn around and see that the entire wall has collapsed in the exact spot where I had been. I have been pushed by an unseen hand. My life preserved for reasons I can’t see.

Thirty Three Years Old, Taos NM, USA Waves of ecstatic blue-electric energy coursing through my veins, without any substance at all. Just the elation of having completed a firewalk, plus three days of new metaphysical knowledge and 4 am Theta Meditations. The ecstatic state lasts for three weeks even after I return home. Then it leaves and I fall into a void, a depression. I work hard to reclaim it, and years later when I do MDMA for the first time, I say: “I know this state. It is our birthright, but we have to claim it and purify to contain it.”

Age Thirty eight, Sedona, Arizona: I am doing a journey with Ayahuasca and mushroom tea with a dozen other people. The brew is mild, everyone says, not very potent. But God comes forth in me anyway. I am sitting with my eyes closed waiting for the journey to begin, and I say fervently: “I want my life to be a living prayer.” Minutes later, I begin to tremble like a leaf in the wind. Even my teeth are chattering. I shake for a long time. Then I feel a surge of energy begin to pool at my groin, both hot and cold at the same time. The energy begins to ascend up my spine. As this happens I ‘see’ in my inner vision, the geometric petals and colors of the charkas opening up, and pulsating. The colors are vivid. And this is not the kind of seeing where I am ‘looking at’ something on the screen of my mind. I am inside the thing being seen, there is no subject and object, it defys the laws of physics. As each chakra opens fully, the channels become clear for the energy to ascend. Finally it reaches my head, and the thousand petalled lotus opens, in humble majesty. The central channel of my spine is like a hollow tube, with a soft wind whistling through it. On either side are two channels, one hot, one cold. In Sanskrit they are called the Ida and the Pingala. I am at the center of all this movement, perfectly calm, tranquil, in love.

For many hours I experience this opening that is happening in my body. Then it’s done, and I spend the rest of the night understanding balance and imbalance in my body, and how it manifests in my life. I spend the next few weeks after this experience writing ecstatic poetry, waking at 3 am in the morning with words spilling rapture onto the page, images burning like jewels in my inner vision, God filling me with rapture.