I first spoke with Ehren Cruz and felt something I do not get often in this space, grounded optimism. He runs a retreat center north of Asheville and guides people through psilocybin journeys with a process that looks more like a rite of passage than a thrill ride.

Here is how he works. He starts with a real assessment. Meds, mental health history, trauma, and whether he is the right person to help. Then a month of preparation. Sleep, food, time off the treadmill, and intention. He teaches basic emotional regulation so you are not surprised by your own mind. Only then do you sit. Music, instruments, careful facilitation, and a room that feels safe. Afterward comes the hard part, landing the craft. What did you learn. What will you change. Who do you need to forgive. How will you embody that tomorrow morning.

If the language around psychedelics feels too soft, Ehren can meet you in plain English. He talks about neuroplasticity and the way a wider thalamic filter lets you consider ideas that your habitual self would ignore. He also talks about something older. Fungi as a living partner, not a static compound. You bring your healing intelligence. The medicine brings its own. The work happens in the space between.

We talked about the fear of change. Many people know they need it but stay put. The familiar pain feels safer than the unknown. Ehren gave me a frame I like. Letting go happens when the risk of staying the same finally outweighs the risk of stepping into mystery. You do not need to force it. You prepare the ground and notice when the fruit is ready to drop.

You can do a lot without medicine. Ehren recommends patient practice, Vedic meditation, time with discomfort, and the discipline to ask what pain is trying to teach. Microdosing can help some people create capacity, but he is clear that the big session is not the only door. It is the deep end of the pool. You get dunked. You come out with an imprint you cannot unknow. Then you act.

Who should reach out. Curious people who feel stuck. People doing honest mental health work who want a held container. People hungry for individuation, not only symptom relief. He reminds everyone that a ceremony is a step in a longer arc. Not a miracle. Not a single ticket to awe. Part of a continuum of growth, supported by community.

If you want to learn more about Ehren’s work and his programs, he is at thesparc.co and active on LinkedIn. If you got something from this conversation, sit with it. Make one small change this week that your future self would thank you for.

Robots do not need pep talks. They need power. In the field, cables and careful hands are a liability. That is the problem Quaze is trying to solve, and it came through in my talk with Francis Roy, their Chief Strategy Officer.

Quaze’s pitch is simple. Turn big surfaces into charging points. Not small targets that demand perfect alignment. Broad mats that you can fold, carry, and drop on dirt or concrete. Plates you can mount on a vehicle so small drones can return, touch down, and sip energy. Panels you can fix at a pier so an underwater vehicle can press, recharge, and push off. If the machine makes contact, it takes power. Shape does not matter. Maker does not matter.

The mat is the first product in the wild. It accepts power from what you have on hand, a truck, a wall plug, a solar array. It gives that power back to whatever lands or rolls onto it. Useful, but the point sits deeper, in the electronics that make a surface act like a fuel pump for electrons.

That core is the Q6 module. One box, many uses. Mount it in a troop carrier to turn it into a mothership for small drones. Fix it near a net where quadcopters cycle through sorties. The receiver that rides on the aircraft is light, about forty grams in the demo Roy showed. It slots between battery and body. The cost and complexity live on the transmitter side, which keeps retrofit work on the airframe cheap and fast.

Numbers matter. Today the Q6 pushes roughly one hundred to two hundred fifty watts. Feed a one hundred watt hour pack at one hundred watts, plan on about an hour, in clean conditions. Field work is never clean, but the point holds. You want steady cycles, not lab trophies. Go, return, touch down, take power, go again. No human kneeling in the dust.

Adoption is under way. The mat has early buyers inside the NATO world for testing. That is a good first beachhead. After that, the real work starts, where concepts of operation rule. Where do you place the surfaces. How do vehicles queue. What fails over when a unit is soaked, iced, or shot. Quaze says it has nine integrations in two years with robot makers and prime contractors. That suggests teams can take the electronics, wire them in, and field something real.

Why not sooner. Part of the answer is habit. With people hauling batteries and plugging cables, the problem can look solved. Once the people leave, your charge point must work on first contact. Large, forgiving surfaces cut out the alignment dance that kills missions.

There are limits. The current power band caps how big and how fast you can refill. Heavy platforms still want generators or pack swaps. Every charger you drop is another box to harden, maintain, and secure. None of that breaks the idea. It is the cost of turning electrons into a supply line.

The upside is plain. Uniform energy access across mixed fleets. Fewer hands at risk. Less babying of small drones. A path from one-off hacks to a standard practice that operators can trust.

If autonomy is going to move from demo to duty, edge power must be boring, rugged, and always there. Quaze is pushing in that direction. That is worth attention.