Ali Norman

Norman says she no longer needs an audience or success for her art to be valid, and that fear or scarcity taints the work.

“The real good art is tainted if you have that fear or scarcity or that just like gets in the way of you being your authentic channel”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 35:16

Norman explains that in etching, line weight is determined by time in the acid rather than by drawing.

“So the longer that it's in the acid, the more bold your lines will be. So you don't really draw like bold lines”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 6:54

Norman says she values etching's unpredictability, describing it as a collaboration requiring surrender of control.

“I like that little bit of element of, chaos or unpredictability and surprise. It's almost like a collaboration where you have to surrender a little bit of control to do it, which I like”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 4:38

Norman says she recognized etching as her medium the first time she tried it as an elective.

“And like the first time I ever did it, I was like, this is it. This is the thing I've been looking for”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 3:02

Norman attributes the fire materially to a neighboring coffee shop's illegally installed roaster and symbolically to her own burnout.

“the coffee shop next door illegally installed a coffee roaster and burnt the building down”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 25:58

Norman describes reaching severe burnout before the fire, including autoimmune problems and weighing 80 pounds.

“I got to such a place of burnout and I was like having autoimmune stuff and I was 80 pounds and I was totally in some kind of manic creative state”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 24:49

Norman says she wanted to create a community print studio because she sees herself as a torchbearer for printing technology that could otherwise die out.

“I really feel like I'm like a torchbearer of this technology that I really want to teach people and make sure it doesn't die”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 24:19

Norman says she signed the lease and received the keys to her studio on March 1, 2020, one week before pandemic lockdowns.

“I had signed my lease and I got the keys on march 1st of 2020”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 23:24

Norman argues that collective belief makes shared reality more malleable and responsive than individual intention alone.

“the more people gather together in that headspace of really breaking down these constructs that we have of our beliefs, and then that makes the collective reality more squishy and more responsive”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:39:28

Norman argues that the news is a weakening egregore while social media generates its own shifting egregores.

“people watch the news less and the news as an egregore is less powerful than it used to be”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 54:44

Norman defines an egregore as an idea that gains reality in proportion to the intensity of belief people invest in it, regardless of whether that belief is positive or negative.

“the more people believe in the idea, the more that the idea exists”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 53:41

Norman says she now regards the enlightened state as knowing that you do not know, rather than transcending form.

“now I think that the enlightened state is knowing that you don't know”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:06:44

Norman says traumas are only beliefs, and that embodying a divine archetype is no less real than identifying as a traumatized artist.

“me being the embodiment of the divine goddess like why i love vadriana that's basically the premise of vadriana is that like me being the deity archetype is no less real than uh me being some kind of traumatized artist”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 58:40

Norman says the peak experience of art lies in the act of creation rather than in a finished product seen by others.

“To me, like the peak experience is in the actual like creation. The peak experience isn't in like having a final product that's done that other people see”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 43:03

Norman says her recurring mantra is that everything is already perfect in the present moment and that joy only exists now.

“right now, everything is already perfect. It's already exactly how I want it right now”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 39:39

Norman says that whenever she admits she does not know what to do, an answer reveals itself better than what she could have planned.

“I never worry about what I'm going to do next. The second that I just ask, the second that I just open to whatever the possibilities are, it just happens”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 30:43

Norman invokes a hermetic principle of Saturn holding that misfortune ripens karma and offers an opportunity rather than a punishment.

“everything that's bad that's ever happened to you has been for your benefit of the ripening of karma”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 19:42

Norman describes AI's distinctive quality as mirroring the user's own consciousness back to them.

“I could never have this conversation with anybody else because I'm basically having it with like a mirror version of my own consciousness”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 14:31

Norman says she has fed her own artwork into Midjourney for years and is untroubled by questions of whether the output is still her art.

“is this my art or not? I don't know. Yeah, it is, but I don't care. I'm having fun”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 10:38

Norman describes a dying one-eyed water moccasin approaching her while she performed Chöd drumming practice by a lake.

“it had only one eye and it was definitely dying. And it's almost like it like came to the sound of the drum to like die there”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:35:21

Norman says the sober backpacking retreat produced an altered state comparable to taking mushrooms.

“like we got to the tree place. It was like, felt like I might as well have eaten a bunch of mushrooms”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:32:34

Norman identifies Thoth with Hermes Trismegistus and Mercury and describes the hermetic tradition as perennial because it reappears wherever it is suppressed.

“it's called the perennial tradition because if you cut down Hermes in like one place, it's going to pop up two more. It's like a weed”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:21:33

Norman says the ultimate Dzogchen view is that karma does not exist and only affects us because we believe it does.

“karma doesn't even exist we don't even have karma the only reason we are affected by karma is because we believe that we're affected by karma”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:13:29

Norman describes Padmasambhava's killing of a baby as karma-free enlightened activity because he acted from non-dual awareness.

“He killed a baby, but it was enlightened activity”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 1:07:55

Norman recounts joining a women's performance-art backyard wrestling league in North Georgia during grad school under the heel name Dragon Your Ass.

“I had a character that was my name was a dragon your ass. I have like a little dragon horns. It was like a little heel”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 47:38

Norman says she learned electroforming after her studio burned down and that building the setup sent her to the emergency room to have her eyes flushed.

“I did actually, when I first built it, I ended up having to go to the emergency room and have my eyes flushed out because it does like off gas, like horrible chemicals”

Seekers of the Eternal: Ep 65 - Ali Norman - "I Was a Backyard Wrestler!" (May 30, 2025) · Listen from 16:11