Mind Lumen & Lumara - The Next Phase
An update on our transition to a hybrid organizational model
Dear Community:
A lot has happened in the past 2+ years since the idea of Mind Lumen was born. It the fall of 2021 when the first inclination of wanting to do something in Psychedelics came to me. It was after several of my own facilitated macro level journeys, that I realized that I need to do something different with my life.
Psychedelics, therapeutic use, changed my life
The changes had many wild up and down swings for me since 2015. I felt lost till June of 2021. Things started to change after that. My 15 year marriage ended starting early 2022 and while I was in the middle of divorce, I was unsure of who I was, what I wanted to be, how I would get to wherever I am supposed to go?. While I had a sense of what I wanted to do with my life, it felt vague. I had lots of doubts, fears, uncertainties about what I wanted to do professionally. Personally though, I felt I was on the right path because it opened many doors that I didn’t even knew, existed. I felt like I was in survival mode for that period to the point that I had to leave the Bay Area and move to Thailand for a while, starting in early 2024. I tried living in Portugal in middle of 2023. Life was chaotic and getting more and more challenging. I felt lost and had several bouts of deep depression and anxiety.
Despite those challenges, I was able to manage my ADHC (condition, not “disorder”) quite well. Luckily Psychedelics was decriminalized in Portugal where I had suffered deep bouts of depression but it was also a time that I went to Boom Festival with my friends, hung out with my friend in Porto, and was invited to participate in the first bioethics conference at Oxford University together with Johns Hopkins University. I hid my depression well.
When I returned from Portugal knowing that it wasn’t the place for me to be right now, I had decided the next logical place for me to go was Thailand so I focused on shedding everything in San Francisco and moved to Thailand in January 2024. By September of 2023, my mindset had shifted. I had come out of depression.
Since then I have been living a blissful life despite the ups downs and painful periods. In June of 2023, Mind Lumen was officially created as a non-profit. We have filed for our 501c3 tax exempt status (pending).
Transition to Hybrid Organizational Structure
Mind Lumen was setup as an education, advocacy, and marketplace platform initially for access to psychedelic therapeutic care with ethics as the core tenet. It was expanded to support research on ethics adjudication, creating regenerative models of organizational governance. As a neurodivergent Indian with ADHC, I also felt the need that the non-profit should include in its mission to elevate Asian voices and create a safe space for the largest and most stigmatized population in the world.
As a result, I decided to segment the organization into two entities:
A non-profit that focused on the social impact of our work and a separate Public Benefit Corp to focus on the marketplace platform that matches seekers to ethical and reputable facilitators, clinics and retreats, called Lumara.
Ethics is still at the core of both organizations. When I gave my talk a Oxford University, the title was “Can we be ethical in care, if we are unethical in business?” For us, ethics has to be at the center of psychedelic and by extension, the mental health and wellbeing space. Ethics cannot be a nebulous concept. Ethics must be observable, measurable, and auditable. I am also fortunate to be invited to participate in the Harvard University bootcamp on psychedelics research, law, and policy this summer (2025).
This can only be done by an independent organization that is unencumbered by any provider conflicts of interest. Mind Lumen is the ONLY seeker centric organization that is objective, unbiased, independent and therefore trusted by SEEKERS, who are the people we are trying to help.
I was this person, and it took me 3 years to find help with a lot of friction in the navigation process. We also wanted to ensure that facilitators, clinics, and retreats don’t have friction in the process of them providing care. By removing the conflicts of interest for them, elevating the most ethical and reputable people and organizations, they can focus on providing a safe and ethical container so nothing os getting in the way of the healing process between the Seekers and Facilitators.
Mind Lumen’s Non-Profit Mission
Mind Lumen is the ethics watchdog of the industry that is seeker centric. It is also the education, advocacy organization for decriminalization and risk reduction policies. It is there to empower seekers to take charge of their own mental health and cognitive wellbeing. It also supports access by providing financial assistance to SEEKERS who cannot afford it, and facilitators for continuing education and training on practical observable ethics. It is the keeper of the Ethics Reputation Score (ERS™) model that is licensable while being incorporated into a new Ethics Certification Seal (similar to B Lab’s B Corp seal — launching soon)
Learn more about the why behind Mind Lumen
Mind Lumen accepts donations and contributions of service from people. We look forward to partnerships and collaboration with like minded organizations.
Lumara’s Public Benefit Mission
Lumara is the platform where SEEKERS are matched to ethical and reputable facilitators, clinics, and retreats. It is a membership model. We’ll automatically match based on needs, expertise, geo, and ethical reputation score for any consciousness experience in permissible jurisdictions around the globe.
Lumara is a stakeholder driven organization and will take investment. The majority stakeholder is Mind Lumen. The profits accrued will be for the purpose of advancing Mind Lumen’s mission first. We need to have a sustainable revenue source along with donations for Mind Lumen over the long term.
I am guided by the experience of working in silicon valley where even though I had a “successful” career, it felt unfulfilled. I developed my own philosophy on how I wanted to create organizations. There are many more tools available for us to build an organizational and governance model that benefits the community as a whole. We don’t have to be extractive capitalists. Capital is still needed for us to do the work but how we generate that capital can be done ethically, responsibly, and keeping the stakeholders in mind without being extractive.
We can apply the principles of Tao to build decentralized organizations that can still make decisions at speed and scale. We don’t need centralized authority to build effective structures just like we don’t need them for finding the spirit within.
Progress To Date
Re-designed both websites - Mind Lumen and Lumara - saved $10,700 as a result
Launched and maintaining the state legislative policy tracker
Launched the demo of our navigation service so you can see how it works. Experience Lumara
We are a MAPS Psychedelic Science 2025 community partner and discussing potential collaborations with other reputable organizations.
How you can help?
We hope that you believe in what we are trying to do and help support us. Here’s how:
Donate to Mind Lumen
Invest in Lumara - Join Our Community
Lend your expertise in skills - HIRING a fund raising expert to be on our Board
Volunteer with your super power to help us build Lumara. We need expertise in product, engineering, social media marketing, and AI tools.
Join us to advocate for policies to make psychedelics decriminalized so they can co-exist along side medicalized model.
You can hire me to teach observable ethics, consult on building effective ethical businesses, create customized music for journeys, to participate on panels, speak at conferences, etc.
The Next Step:
I’m looking to have mission aligned technical founder to join the Lumara team. If you know of someone, please connect them to me. 🙏🏻 ☮️