Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast

We spend our lives squinting past the inevitable reality of our own death. But suppose we were able to talk about it openly, to shape it, to embrace it so that by contemplating a good death, we could become fully alive?

Dr Judith Wester is a thanatologist: an academic who specialises in the study of death, dying and the cultural rituals of many nations.  Her life is given to teaching others of all ages and in all walks of life how to broach this subject with themselves and so with other people.  In this deep dive into death, Judith explains the difference between death, dying and dead, between grief, mourning and bereavement - and looks into the ways we could explore beyond the inevitable mortality of each of us, to the mortality of our culture - and how something new might be reborn from the ashes in this time of Corona Lockdown.

Judith's website is here: https://cedareducation.org.uk/

If Lockdown is a moment of death and rebirth, what do we want to conceive?  And how can we connect to the Web of Life in ways that will help us to conceive the best possible future?  Angharad Wynne offers the wisdom of a life lived on the edge of being - and a close encounter with death - to this conversation of ancestors, Brythonic lore and red kites. 

Angharad Wynne is a visionary, land-walker and storyteller. She works to reconnect people from around the world with the wild lands and ancient lore of Britain.

Her own encounter with death has transformed an already-deep connection to the land, and the lore of the islands of Britain.  She draws inspiration from her storytelling - and the ways it is led by the deeper needs of the ancestors to have their voices heard - and from her spiritual practice, leading pilgrimages deep into the edge-spaces of Wales.  She is a profoundly spiritual individual with a deep, grounded, authentic understanding of the potential of this moment - and the world's most beautiful voice.

Her website is here:  https://www.angharadwynne.com

Cae Mabon is here: https://www.caemabon.co.uk

and the book she mentions is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancestral-Medicine-Rituals-Personal-Healing/dp/1591432693/ref=sr_1_1

What do we do with this time of lockdown? How can we use it in ways that will lead us to a more flourishing world, without guilt-tripping ourselves or adding pressure to an already-pressured time?  Nathalie Nahai of The Hive podcast and Manda Scott of Accidental Gods, share thoughts, feelings and explore the edges of being.  

Nathalie's humanity, and her deep, broad grasp of psychology, particularly the psychology of online influences and the ethics around them, informs all of her work. In this conversation, we explore together what lockdown means, and how we might grasp this moment in ways that will leave all of us better when it's over, but that won't leave us guilt-tripped or (even more) exhausted.  

We explore what it means to be human. How to transcend the moment and the psychology of pleasure versus happiness.  Join us, and enjoy… 

I'll put up a meditation as a podcast after this, but if you want more, deeper, try here: https://accidentalgods.life/what-if-imagining-the-new-future-our-hearts-know-is-possible/

As discussed in episode 9, this is a thirty minute mediation focussed on the question of WHAT IF we got it all right from this moment forward. 

If we can really begin to feel the emotional reality as a physical thing, a felt-sense in our bodies, so that it suffuses all of us - then we can aim for this. 

If you want longer variations - or if you live in the Southern hemisphere and would prefer to go north, than south - you'll find more here: https://accidentalgods.life/what-if-imagining-the-new-future-our-hearts-know-is-possible/

Rob Cobbold is founding editor of consciousevolution.co.uk. He's a critical thinker, a program manager for the Green Schools partnership and is studying for a Masters in Sustainable Leadership.  He's a key mover in the world of conscious evolution and here, he describes why consciousness is the next evolutionary step and how we might get there.   

I haven't often had the pleasure of speaking with someone else whose life revolves around the concept of conscious evolution: what it is, why its time is now  (with increasing urgency) and how we might move the great, hypercomplex, super-connected web of humanity towards it.   Rob has both a materialist and a spiritual perspective on the ways we might reach conscious evolution so this was a particularly interesting deep dive into what it will take to reach our critical mass.

Rob's website is https://www.consciousevolution.co.uk
He refers to John Stewart's Evolutionary Manifesto, which is here: http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/man.pdf

He recommends Charles Eisenstein's 'New and Ancient Story' podcast which is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-new-and-ancient-story-the-podcast/id1047290956

He refers to ‘This View of Life’ by David Sloan Wilson - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246844/this-view-of-life-by-david-sloan-wilson/ 

I mentioned 'The Listening Society' by Hanzi Freinacht, which is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Listening-Society-Metamodern-Politics-Guides-ebook/dp/B074MKQ4LR/ref=sr_1_2 

...and he recommended that I talk to John Stewart, and Daniel Schmachtenberger... both of which have been invited to feature on the podcast. 

Visionary, healer and author of two books on ancient indigenous and contemporary shamanic practice, Chris Luttichau is a beacon of grounded integrity in this time of upheaval.  In this week's podcast, we explore how the indigenous peoples' view this time, and how we can respond to the challenges of the moment.

This was recorded on the third day of lockdown in the UK. Our world is changing and we're feeling things we've never felt. Or feeling them more deeply. Or strangely.  If ever there was a time to re-connect with our heritage, to re-discover the ancient teachings of the indigenous shamanic peoples of every continent, that time is now.  In this podcast, Chris Luttichau shares the teachings of the Inner and Outer Minds, of the Four Attentions, and offers a meditation to help us to become grounded in our own Heart Minds.
 
If we're going to step into a new way of being, if we're going to connect with the More than Human world, to make the step into conscious evolution, these are the skills we will need.

Chris Luttichau's website is here: Northern Drum
His books are 'Animal Spirits' and 'Calling us Home'
And the YouTube version of the HeartMind girl dancing, is here. 

As our world turns over, we turn to the new-old ways to discover how we could do things differently. In this raw, deep, honest conversation with shamanic practitioner, Ya'acov Darling Khan, we talk about what we can do - and his new book.

Ya'acov Darling Khan is an international teacher of Movement Medicine and a shamanic practitioner. His new book: 'Shaman: Invoking Power, Presence and Purpose in the Core of who YOU Are' is out on 30th of March - a clarion call for the new era where we know our globalised links and have found that we can co-operate in ways that leave the dinosaurs of our governments far behind the curve.
 
In this insightful, raw conversation, Ya'acov and Manda Scott explore the nuances of the present moment, their own personal responses to it, and the sense of opening and transformation that we could lift from now... along with the rage, grief, desperation and horror at all that is happening.  In the words of Greta Thunberg: 'It is no longer enough to be the best of ourselves. We need to be better.'   Here, we explore some of the ways that could happen.

The world is not as it was. Every one of us is touched by this. We are a global community now, striving to find sovereignty, balance - and a way forward that is healing for us all. In this podcast, Manda Scott explores the routes to inner resilience, without which, there can be no outer coherence. 

Joanna Macy calls this the Great Unravelling - a time when everything changes.  And we are human, so most of us live somewhere on the spectrum between finding change unsettling, to finding it genuinely terrifying.  Where we are on that scale is often dictated by our inner resilience: our ability to return to inner stability after a destabilising shock.  So just now, when the shocks are coming daily, our ability to find resilience is critical.  In this podcast, we explore some of the ways we can return to a place of inner wholeness, of balance, from which we can generate the courage, clarity, connection and compassion we'll need to flourish in a world of uncertainty. 

 Daniel Thorson, host of the ground-breaking, innovative - and hugely courageous - Emerge podcast is a Buddhist monastic, activist and meta-modern thinker.  In this conversation, we dive deeply into what it means to be human - and how we can live as the best of ourselves.

The Emerge podcast is a must-listen for anyone interested in exploring human potential as we surge into the anthropocene.  Its host, Daniel Thorson is fearless in exploring the ways we can evolve, interviewing thought-leaders in the fields of psychology, philosophy, spirituality - all individuals engaged in finding ways we can become the best of ourselves - and better.   

A former activist/organiser at Occupy Wall Street, Daniel has spent tens of thousands of hours in meditation, and almost as many thinking deeply about the ways we can move forward in the heart of the Anthropocene. In this conversation, we have the opportunity to join his enquiry, to find out where his work has taken him, to dive deeply into what it means to be alive now, and the ways we can move forwards as individuals and as a collective.

His suggested must-read book is The OverStory by Richard Powers
His suggested listening, is/are Rob Burbea's Dharma Talks
And the Emerge podcast website is here

Happy listening!

As ever, if you want to connect with us, we're at Accidental Gods. 

Rabbi Jill Hammer is committed to an earth based and a wildly mythic view of the world in which nature, ritual and story connect us to the body of the cosmos and to ourselves. In this conversation, we dive deep into the meaning of life, the role of dreams in a spiritual life and how we might find hope in the face of climate breakdown.   

Jill is an author, midrashist, mystic, poet, essayist and Hebrew Priestess. Director of spiritual education at the academy of Jewish Religion in New York and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.  She is committed to an earth based and a wildly mythic view of the world in which nature, ritual and story connect us to the body of the cosmos and to ourselves - she has been called 'a Jewish Bard'.
 
In this episode, we explore some of her extraordinary life, and how her Jewish roots have led her to explore the gendered nature of Divinity, the Kabbalah, and how to interpret dreams in a way that is at once thoroughly modern and absolutely ancient. 

Links:
Rabbi Jill Harmer
The Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute
The Academy of Jewish Religion