Prior to Nonprofit Formation
Belinda has been studying and teaching spiritual practices and techniques for over 3 decades. She has studied with specialist teachers and experts from all over the world, helping thousands of people with her work.
Belinda and Erik have been working together for 8 years, hosting community events and classes focused on the goal of helping people to improve the quality of their lives and health.
We have recently formed a nonprofit, to assist in the continuation of this mission in a more formal/official manner.
Goals of Forming a Nonprofit Organization
To help people seeking community and connection, with others who are also seeking to improve themselves and the world around them.
To share information on ancient tehnologies, ways of thinking, and ways of organizing communities that may help us to navigate the complexities of the modern world.
To share etheric technologies like new forms of meditation, which are designed to help empower people to improve themselves and the world around them.
The Problem We Seek To Address
Current technologies and solutions aren’t well adapted to solve the problem of human incapacity.
The world is much more complex than it used to be, speeding up ever faster.
People are less healthy, less happy, less productive, and the general sense is that things aren’t getting better anymore.
Connection / Community
One solution to this problem, based on study of the historical record, is community. Therefore one of our prime goals/missions is to help people to connect.
New Perspectives from the Past
The second way that we are seeking to improve the world around us is by sharing stories, wisdom and techologies from the past that may be applicable today.
In ancient times, civilizations were more diverse. The most long-lasting, effective civilizations created cultural gene banks in the form of stories and myth. These cultural myths taught them how to live in the world, how to solve 'black swan' environmental and societal problems.
But over the past several thousand years, this has created a fairly monolithic world culture.
We are seeking to help restore that cultural gene bank.
Etheric Technology
The third way we are seeking to improve the world around us, is by utilizing another time-tested solution -- 'etheric technologies' like prayer, meditation, yoga, or ritual.
Etheric technologies are based on ancient ways of understanding the link between mind and body and the world around us. These methods tend to have effects which are subtle and difficult to replicate.
We seek to share effective etheric technologies that have been tested, iterated upon, and optimized for the modern age.
We offer these modernized etheric technologies at no cost to members, and at a nominal cost to non-members. These purchases and donations help us to continue the work of our organization.
About Erik Schimek
I've been a DIY entrepreneur for 30 years. I've been a cook, a schoolteacher, and a wooden fence builder. Most of my practical experience is related to marketing and e-commerce.
I grew up in a town of 100 people in Minnesota farm country, but have since traveled extensively as a 'digital nomad.'
I like to explore ideas, learn about the world, create cool new things, and help friends to monetize their projects.
I enjoy organizing events that help to foster the development and nourishment of communities.
I studied history, politics, leadership, management, educational theory, law and economics in college and graduate school while working on political campaigns focused on the issues of income inequality, free and fair elections, and lifting up marginalized groups.
3x successful bootstrap entrepreneur. 20 years ecommerce experience including digital ads, SEO, website design, conversion optimization, customer journey tracking, business management.
Graduate studies in Public Administration (MPA), Masters of Business (MBA).
Erik has extensively studied a wide variety of self-healing techniques, integrating different types of self-healing modalities to maximize effectiveness.
Student-Centered Teaching, Handcrafted Furniture
After college, I rebooted a distance learning program for at-risk high school students. My program offered flexible curriculum that students could complete at their own pace.
My work was successful enough to create net positive revenue for the school district, and helped students to catch up on credits so that they could graduate on time.
My primary work of the past 20 years has been helping a traditional Amish community in Minnesota to sell their beautiful handmade customized furniture online, providing their community with over $15 million in revenue based on a handshake agreement.
Self Healing PTSD
Life was challenging growing up, my home was chaotic and unstable.
School was worse, I was frequently bullied and mocked by other students. Not fun. So I spent most of my time in isolation.
During my senior year of college, I was diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities. I saw a series of doctors and specialists over the course of 10 years to understand and cure my ever increasing sensitivities to chemicals, allergens and food.
My sensitivities increased substantially after the stress of losing my teaching job due to disability discrimination.
After a decade of painful tests and a steep decline in health, the doctor's conclusion was that there was no cure and my sensitivities were high enough that I probably wouldn't live much longer.
I didn't accept this as an answer, and I spent 15 years testing various methods to heal myself.
It was a trial and error approach with a lot of rabbit holes. When I found something that worked, I leaned into it. Then I’d hit diminishing returns, and move onto the next modality. My goal was “I want to be healthy, happy and free” and I made that my catechism.
The key for me was accepting that I had to heal myself, that no one else could do it for me.
I tested and practiced a variety of nontraditional healing methods ranging from 10,000+ hours of intense self-administered amygdala reprogramming, Paleo fitness and nutrition, biofeedback training, trauma release practices, meditation and energy healing therapies, and integrating all of the above into effective self-healing modalities.
When I found these techniques to be ineffective at healing my deep emotional and mental trauma, I dove into the spiritual side of things in an attempt to complete my healing and recovery. I didn't want to be an emotional zombie-in-a-semi-haze for the rest of my life, so I kept the self-healing process going.
Each forward step helped me to reclaim more of my life and health, but it was a very difficult road that can be fairly described as tortuous.
In total, I was in some form of emotional and mental fog for over two decades.
4 years of that time were spent in near-complete monastic isolation in the northern Wisconsin forest.
When I was at my sickest, I nearly died several times. The only thing that carried me through was a determination to heal, to improve, to tell the doctors to fuck the fuck off with their fucking drug pushing which would only poison me further, and to reclaim my freedom.
Beyond Civilization
My healing process has helped me to understand myself much better, both my limitations and capabilities. Since I’ve been in a state of shock in some form for most of my life, this period of reflection has proven to be very beneficial for me.
I’ve learned that operating in a healthy, harmonious, and low-chaos space is essential for me to thrive and reach peak efficiency. I’ve learned to lean into this, because life is a lot more fun when you’re in harmonious creative flow.
David Abrams said it best:
"I discovered the real value of my hypersensitive nervous system ... only when I ventured beyond the confines of civilization. The feelings that played through ... seemed less confined or bottled up and more a part of the general circulation between cedar trees, humans, woodpeckers, mountains, lizards, between cloudburts and streams studded with trout.
My porous nature seemed much less of a problem here. That permeability had always meant that I was too easily affected by other person -- by other nervous systems shaped so much like my own.
Yet such porosity was just right, I now realized, for engaging nervous systems very different from my own. It was just right for entering into felt relation with other, non-human forms of sentience."
-- Quote from Becoming Animal, An Earthly Cosmology, by David Abram
I remain sensitive to a variety of things, my sensitivities are still occasionally life threatening.
I have little to no trust in modern medicine, my process of self healing involves isolation meditation, neuro-linguistic programming centered on the amygdala, and detox-specific vitamins.
My Western medicine trained doctors told me I'd be dead by now several times over, so I'd consider that a win.
About Belinda Ortiz
Belinda has a lifetime of experience learning spiritual practices and etheric techniques from all over the world,teaching and sharing with others. She is very skilled at combining the best ofwhat she’s learned into practical, effective technologies which can be learnedand practiced by others.
Belinda was raised in Aguascalientes Mexico, she speaks four languages fluently (Spanish, Hebrew, French and English).
Belinda is working on a longer bio, which will be forthcoming soon.