For our April Residency at Nowadays present John MacLean aka The Juan MacLean

John MacLean, aka Juan MacLean / The Juan MacLean, is a ceremonial facilitator who has
studied extensively both in the Amazon jungle of Peru and also various western contemporary
modalities concerning the intersection of consciousness, sound and healing. He is also a multi-
instrumentalist, DJ, and music producer of electronic music, with an interest in exploring and
questioning issues around recreational use of psychedelics and the ways in which, if any, the
container of a club settings might resemble traditional ceremonies that involved repetitive
rhythmic music as a way of entering into a trance state for healing and communal bonding.

John will speak to his experience and journey of awakening that was initiated over 25 years ago
by the spiritual emergency of opiate addiction, and subsequent recovery through various
meditative techniques and ceremonial psychedelic use. He will also speak to issues of cultural
appropriation, cultural extraction, and the ongoing struggle to find a respectful and healing
container for these ancient psychedelic technologies in the current context of Capitalism in
which they are reemerging into the mainstream. He will explore issues around club culture and
the entertainment industry in general and whether or not these experiences and ‘products’ are
tools of healing and transformation, or simply ways of assuaging existential anxiety in order to
keep a broken system running smoothly. He often refers to the Krishnamurti quote “It is no
measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society” as a reference and
framework for his work with psychedelics.

There will also be a brief sound experience with some vibrational as a demonstration of the
kinds of techniques used in psychedelic ceremonies as a way of entering into a non-ordinary
state of consciousness.