Crowdfunding and cacao: Inside Andrew Keegan’s spiritual community
The New York Post/September 30, 2016
By Maggie Coughlan
Crowdfunding and cacao: Inside Andrew Keegan’s spiritual community
Andrew Keegan has found his seventh heaven. Now he just needs to find $111,000.
The 37-year-old actor, known for his roles in 1999’s “10 Things I Hate About You” and “Party of Five,” has been fighting to keep Full Circle, the spiritual community he co-founded two-and-a-half years ago, in its landmark building in Venice, California, as companies like Google, Snapchat and BuzzFeed open shop in the rapidly gentrifying area.
Full Circle is desperate to secure funds that will cover rent and operations at the 111-year-old building, which houses their spiritually focused programming and is currently on the market for $6.5 million. They also hope to eventually purchase the property.
The Rose Temple’s exterior is cloaked in a colorful mural depicting an otherworldly scene and peering eyeballs that declare, “We Are All One.” Inside, the temple plays host to emotional freedom technology workshops (which the group describes as “a simple yet profound tool to rewire your brain, heal your emotional body and step into your greatest potential”), guided meditation, yoga and live music.
“We put our heart into it. There’s no argument, no ulterior motive. It’s purely love for a space and for a community. Maybe it’s too good for people, though, and it’s too much,” Keegan recently told Page Six over coconut waters inside the temple.
At a three-and-a-half-hour “prayerformance” event earlier this month, a crowd of shoeless guests sat atop rugs and on the temple’s shiny hardwood floors. A sun-kissed couple dressed in white, gauzy clothing swayed back and forth as singer Larisa Gosla crooned “I wish you love” and the pair’s dog lazed at their feet.
Keegan later revealed that Gosla played music during the 70-plus-hour delivery of his daughter, Aiya Rose, whom he and girlfriend Arista Illona welcomed to the world in March.
To the left of the stage, a woman flailed her thin frame, twisting and turning to the sound of Gosla’s voice as she excitedly painted a canvas, every brushstroke a burst of energy.
With the group needing to raise $111,000 by Nov. 11 and with only $27,011 raised at press time, Keegan’s luck could change thanks to a Netflix series.
The second season of “Flaked,” a sitcom starring Will Arnett as a troubled self-help guru living in Venice, will feature a storyline inspired by Keegan and Full Circle and has been filming at the Rose Temple, Page Six has exclusively learned.
“Gentrification … has been a plot line throughout ‘Flaked’ and does mirror much of Full Circle’s story,” a source close to production said.
While the show will shine a spotlight on the changes happening within the beach community and Full Circle will be compensated for the use of the Rose Temple, the former “7th Heaven” actor and the organization’s executive director Jason Dilts have launched #GiveHeart, a crowdfunding campaign.
“Any time that you have celebrity, there’s a perception that there’s an unlimited amount of resources, and that doesn’t match with reality,” Dilts explained. “Andrew’s funded a lot of this project, and he now has a family, so this project needs to fund itself.”
An $11 donation rewards supporters with two rose quartz heart bracelets that “will be placed on [Full Circle’s altar during] our Sunday meditation.” Full Circle writes that the crystal heart bracelets will be infused with “the love of our community” prior to being delivered. At press time, nine bracelets had been claimed.
“One of the first experiences that I had [at the Rose Temple] was with a rose quartz heart crystal that was a gift from someone and it was one of the first moments that I had here in the sanctuary,” Keegan said. “The significance, of course, is the frequency of love that is within the rose quartz crystal. Really with the world and the way that it’s going with all of the things bringing people back to that kind of a moment. Having them take recognition too that being the real core and essence of life is love.”
He continued, “I think that without that, you know, we would just be a bunch of inanimate objects floating around the universe. I believe in more than that theory that we’re just insignificant. I think we’re significant because of that kind of experience.”
“And we’re also on Rose Avenue,” Dilts chimed in.
A $50 donation bestows upon donors an autographed poster from Keegan’s “own collection” with a personalized message. Zero out of 33 have been claimed.
On Full Circle’s website, Keegan is described as “passionately [seeking] to inspire and empower the community to co-create a better world.” But an August 2014 Vice profile of Keegan and the organization’s then-eight-person “inner circle” seemed to say otherwise, hinting at cult-like practices and describing the actor as having “the ultimate say on all things.”
“I’ve had to struggle with that for a long time,” he said of the piece. “It’s really hard because it’s like [Vice was] saying something that’s totally not here, and I get it. You’re going to make a lot of money off of this, but you’re really hurting us.”
Despite his critics, Keegan insists the organization is about far more than just crystals.
He recalls that one of the first events Full Circle held was a waterwheel ceremony with an “indigenous elder.”
“All these little things are recognized. It’s like, ‘Wow, we really are in the same movement.’ It’s beyond important now. It’s getting to presidential involvement. Things that have never happened before. This group and gathering that happened and [protests that are] happening in North Dakota [have] been happening since the 1800s,” Keegan explained.
Dilts agreed, “Our activism isn’t going through traditional channels. If you’re an activist, you’re not necessarily going to a political party. You want to find something that’s a little more authentic and not inside a traditional system, so we’ve seen a lot of that energy kind of coalesces around the circle because everybody here in some way is an activist.”
During the recent “prayerformance” event — which was advertised as “high vibe music, cacao, community, dancing, song and circle” for a $20 to $35 sliding-scale admission — it was clear Keegan knows most everyone involved, opting for hugs over handshakes.
After Gosla exited the stage to make way for the cacao ceremony, a man assured attendees there were “no psychedelics” in the cacao concoction, made from the plant from which chocolate and cocoa are derived. Commonly associated with shamanic prayer, cacao has been known to create feelings of euphoria and release negative energy after ingestion.
During the ceremony, a woman offered a blessing in which she invoked “all the elders and ancestors … and indigenous beings” who grew and prepared the cacao. Soon after, another woman sang in Spanish of the benefits of cacao, as those participating in the ceremony took turns sipping the elixir from mugs. The scent of chocolate wafted past the plants hanging from the temple’s exposed beams, the starry-eyed millennials, the photographs that lined the walls.
Dilts described Full Circle as “a new take on the idea of an intentional community,” but the ceremony made a point to acknowledge those who came before. These included the Krishnas, who, according to Keegan, had “long been evicted” from the Temple, and others who gathered to worship at the Rose Temple over the past century.
“We’ve tended to think of intentional communities as going to the farm and all living together and that’s not what we do here. We’re in an urban setting, and we all go to our own homes, but we come together in this community to be a part of something,” Dilts said.
Keegan appeared to take in his colleague’s answer with a smirk.
“We’re just a bunch of crazy kids doing our thing,” he said.
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