Intimacy with the world

The importance of having an understanding of the body as an equal to the mind in our sense of who we are, and of experiencing our body as a source of deep wisdom and grounding to the earth.

Cristina Quijera's website: https://cristinaquijera.com

and my website: https://duritaholm.com

I speak with Jonathan Foust, a mindfulness and meditation teacher, with a speciality in body centred inquiry, which we also touch upon in our conversation.

Jonathan was born and raised on a Pennsylvania farm by quakers, and one day as a young child sitting under a tree, he had a strong mystical experience, which really set the course for the rest of his life. For example he lived at the Kripalu Yoga and meditation centre for 24 years.

Today Jonathan lives in Washington DC with his wife Tara Brach. Jonathan leads retreats, he teaches meditation teachers to be. And he basically works with all things to do with mindfulness and meditation.

www.jonathanfoust.com

My website: www.duritaholm.com

We dive into the difference between doing something in the outer world that most people think is heroic, but which in Joseph Campell's understanding of the term "The Hero's journey", might not actually have much to do with "heroism" at all, and the inner journey of exploration and adventure, that through the encounter with dark challenges of the underworld, can deliver you to a place of true courage and resilience.

In this episode I am not speaking with a guest, it is only me, Durita Holm, telling you a bit about my own personal journey, and how such a hardheaded and hard hearted person like me came to be a mindfulness and meditation teacher, always working on softening the edges and opening the gates to real intimacy and connection with the whole world and the web of life.

My website is: duritaholm.com

Wild and soft adventurer Sarah Outen rowed solo across the planets big oceans and cycled across the continents. She tells us what the oceans taught her, and how the ocean is such a good metaphor for life. Those big waves that throw you around and sometimes crush you, but how, if you just let them move through, and trust the process, good weather will come back…

Sarah tells the back story to how she came to row across the Indian ocean, and how the grief over the sudden death of her father was a key factor to her deciding to row solo. And how that first journey lead to a quest to seek out more oceans and continents

link to Sarah's film: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sarahoutenhome/393996855

website: sarahoutenhome.com

My website: www.duritaholm.com

In this conversation with David Loy, we speak about the intertwinig and connection between the current ecological crisis and our personal existential feeling of lack of wholeness. A lack created by consumerism, todays dominating religion acording to David Loy.

These are some of the themes of our conversation:

David Loy's website: www.davidloy.org

My website: www.duritaholm.com

Already early on in her life Geneen had a relationship and appreciation of the natural beauty, and she also often slept outside, and would be transfixed by the starry night sky and the milky way.

Geneen became a systems engineer in Silicon Valley. But seeing the stress at work, just seemed meaningless to her, and she realised that she couldn't stay, and instead went for a bit of a walk about to wild places.

She then lived in a tipi for a year and worked as a river-guide in Jackson Hole, by The Yellowstone National Park, and she felt like she really came alive there. She realised that we can live with so much less. And she loved the experience of getting close to the cold, the other creatures and the night sky.

We speak about how she observed how every animal and being has its place and its purpose in nature, and that everything fits in perfectly in this web of reciprocity, so she wondered what our human role would be in this eco system? what is unique about the human in the eco-system?

Geneen is fascinated by our human capacity to imagine what doesn’t exist. Other forms of life don’t imagine things that have no relation to anything they haven’t experienced. We furthermore have this capacity to create the things we imagine. This imagination is both our gift and our place of unconsciousness, says Geneen.

She also believes that something is happening to our consciousness at this moment in time. There is a way in which the intelligence of this planet is trying to reach us through our generative human imagination, she says, and it seems to be expressing through poetry and other creative arts. F.ex. like Thomas Berry’s book The dream of the earth or James Hillman’s: A psyche the size of earth.

She also speaks about how earth based people have an understanding that everything is cyclical, but that we now understand that there is also a linear development going on. This idea also comes from Brian Swimme, cosmologist, who says that one of the dynamics is chaos and disruption, but there is also another principle of greater and greater coherence.

Geneen also mentions Teilhard de Chardin in speaking about how the greater the complexity, the greater the consciousness or the more encompassing it can become. And she sees the psychedelic renaissance in plant medicines as a sign of changes to the collective consciousness.

Geneen also speaks about how having access to our imagination, being able to imagine the possibility that everything is alive, and has its own longings and awareness, that this opens a gateway in our consciousness, it enlarges it. And she says that the other than human world responds to our appreciation.

She says that our ancestors knew that we have to give gratitude and offerings to the natural world, and we can recover that mind and enact as if our world is holy and sacred, and this is something for each and everyone of us to do - it changes us, and it changes our community

She mentions Howard Thurman, and how he says: do not ask what the world needs, but what brings you alive, because that is what the world wants - your aliveness

You can find Geneen Marie Haugens offerings here: www.animas.org 

And these are links to some of her articles: Council of the Wild Gods - Kosmos Journal

It's All Unceded Land | Geneen Marie Haugen

Homo imaginans: The Imagining Earth – Kosmos Journal

Wild Imagination, by Geneen Marie Haugen | Parabola Essay

Buddhist teacher Catherine McGee tells us about soulmaking and soulfulness in a buddhist context. This is about being able to see and sense in more soulful ways, to be able to see and sense ourselves and others and the world with more beauty and sacredness.

We start of by exploring what comes alive when exploring the word soul. Then we explore soulfulness in relation to ending suffering, which is at the core of the buddhist teachings.

Catherine tells us that the dharma opened her up to a mythic journey with so much sensibility, and the richness of that sensibility of body mind and feelings is very soulful. In essence this also touches upon presence, that when one stops - Presence can emerge, the senses feel more clear - there is more richness.

Soulfulness is not however directly equatable with heartfulness - it would include heartfulness, but there is even more to soulfulness.

When one is not soulful, there is poverty of soul, one can still have heartfuness, but feel a poverty of soul.

The goal of soulfulness and dharma is also to be able to train the heart and the mind to se more beauty and sacredness. To learn how to unbind, to loosen the bind of our sense of self and our patterns, as there is suffering in this binding of self other and the world

Soulmaking then, is to haven seen the binds, and then being able to loosen the binds. Leading us to being able to engage in a sense of perception in a soft and elastic way, in a way that nourishes soulfulness.

soulmaking is premised on already being able to loosen these binds a little bit.

There are different degrees of loosening, and then recognising that I can loosen more, but I might choose not to, to stay in my sense of myself and engage fully with my experience.

What sacredness can offer is a placeholder, for there being more than just what we perceive. More than what we have been told about the earth f.ex.

That more than, can inspire the heart and inspire the desire to light up, and it can open access to more dimensions of sacredness. A skilful relationship to desire, can also open up for more richness.

Our limited materialistic view of the world limits the soul, limits us in seeing more dimensionality and richness, limits the beauty of fantasy and story making.

We can speak about two types of sacredness, the one that is not about you, that is out there, and the other in soulmaking dharma, which is personal to you.

Eros is a kind of desire, but it doesn’t have to be sexual. It is a wanting to come closer to the beloved, what ever it is. The question is: What are we putting our eros in service of?

Eros can gaze upon the beloved without grasping nor rejection, and then the image can open, can flower, and you don’t actually need to possess it. You can never really have a thing anyway. And this desire isn’t just mine, it also belongs to the dive.

We can let eros open the body, the mind, the imagination and the intellect.

Whatever we do, we need our embodiment for sanity!

In soulmaking dharma, we open our imagination, and for it to be legitimate and helpful, we need to have our body, so as not to spin into all directions and just spiralling out. To be grounded in our body, so as not to spin into unskillful mindlessness. We want the imagination to be in service of something skilful.

Catherine McGee's mailing list: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16Vxwezi6JFf6ydblUd2HGz9BTfPuFW1BSG8JKS_HC30/edit?usp=sharing

You can also find out about her here: www.gaiahouse.uk.co 

My website: www.duritaholm.com

Leon Vanderpol, the founder of transformational coaching and author of “A shift in being” tells us about deep coaching in this conversation

We speak about his adoptive country Taiwan, as well as the wild beauty of his native country Canada, and how we often appreciate nature even more as we mature, and how that also nurtures our wish to care for nature, and how it is becoming urgent to care for it.

We speak about what deep transformation actually is, and how it is often spurred on by a longing for something that we don’t even know how to name in the beginning.

Leon tells us how important it is not to judge anyone, and this also ties in to the acceptance of what is unfolding in every moment. Can you just hold this as it is, becomes the question.

This weaves into the inquiry if you can become the space yourself in which transformative potentials of the world are possible.

This means you need to do that work, so you can become that space, but it is always an invitation, not a forcing.

We don't have to be blaming, and judging, we can be that transformative space, Leon says.

One of the practices is to slow it all down, to be able to listen, if you want to go beyond the surface - this is the biggest challenge, he says.

Slowing down is the precondition to any deep meaning full work. As well as to growing our consciousness. This is difficult, because we see the word out there striving, so we think we need to be striving too.

The 5D world is not about striving, you let it unfold, you facilitate that unfolding. This is Less about gold setting, and more about intention. Intention is a very creative thing. When you operate from intention you are co-creating, and then trust that life is listening. And trust is also a practice, and this trust in life makes you more relaxed, you allow life to take you where it wants to. Says Leon.

Zorba the Greek and his catastrophic facilitating the butterfly get out of the chrysalis, also gets mentioned.

We need to hold space and bear witness for our struggles. Not in a detached way, but in a supportive way with a lot of presence and normalising the difficult experience.

Leon’s favourite question to hold is: Who do you choose to be. And it is a question about Your beingness, about the quality of your consciousness.

Leon speaks about the soul level awareness, and meeting people where they are, about this embodied beingness - the ebb and flow of beingness - and what are the barriers to living more in our beingness. He also says that soul consciousness is more loving, more peaceful and more compassionate and spacious.

We also have to be willing to relinquish some things, to gain an inner understanding, and surrender to life. But there is still Economy in the 5D world works differently than in the 3D world, he says. There is another world to bring about good conditions for life, engaging with the mind and consciousness, it’s a partnership with life.

We need to bring our growth mindset to our inside, and not so much to the outside.

We also talk about how men often hold to this external level - creating on the outside, building something, and feeling a sense of accomplishment and self worth from it.

The beauty is that when we create spaces, in which people can relax and feel safe and open up to their vulnerability inside, and connect with that, they will make good choices, not from fear, because when the fear starts to fade, they make powerful right choices.

Kate Rawles is a philosophising activist adventurer with a special love for cycling and sea kayaking for exploring the environment and biodiversity, and she says she is relieved that she can not be fit into any one classifiable box. And that the main reason she left academia, to become more of an environmental activist, was exactly that unwillingness to be put into any one box.

In 2006 she cycled through the whole Rocky Mountains, from Texas to Alaska, to see what climate change meant in the belly of the oil-beast under George W. Bush.

She likes combining adventure and environmental activism to reach more people with her message. And in 2017 she quit her job to ride the whole length of South America, along the spine of the Andes mountains.

She cycled 8300 miles, or 13.340 kilometres on a bamboo bike that she herself had built. His name is woody!

She tells us the story of the local resistance in Colombia against Anglogold Ashanti, who have a terrible human rights record, and how this gold corporation was going to devastate the environment in an agricultural area in Colombia where they wanted to open a gold mine, called La Colossa.

Kate Rawles says, that If we are going to tackle climate change or the loss of biodiversity, we need big systemic changes of how the economy operates, how corporations are allowed to operate, and the whole consumerism paradigm.

We also need to rethinking our relationship to nature, and the separation we perceive between us and the natural world, perceiving us as superior to nature.

Another thing we need to rethink, is who we are in terms of what makes us happy, and what actually gives us self esteem and respect, and what counts as progress. In our current model consumerism plays a big role. We are all indoctrinated to think that stuff and money gives us worth and happiness, but it turns out that this consumerism actually makes us unhappy.

We then speak about the hedonic treadmill, and Kate thinks, that happiness is partly jumping off it - then I can just be who I am. More important are connections to our near community, but also to the more than human community - that separation that we feel is part of our pain.

We also talk about Lifeforce deficit that can come with modern lifestyle.

We will need this spirit of the adventurer to embrace the challenges ahead, in this human dominating era, the anthropocene era. Kate says.

There are lots of uncertainties in what lies ahead, and to achieve sustanability we need the spirit of adventure, which evokes a much more positive mindset.

Adventure has a certain magic about it. Kate says. You have to take that step into the unknown, and then things start happening. There is power in embracing the challenge.

Extinction rebellion and the young people are speaking up, they want a future, and they are starting to claim it - claim the needed system change, and that is hopeful. Things are however never as simple as they seem, f.ex. all our electric cars use lithium in the car batteries, and that then needs to be dug out of the ground.

Next, Kate would like to look at rewilding projects. Rewilding as a conservation strategy, but also as interesting philosophically, as it is about us relinquishing control.

We also talk about the carbon footprint we leave when we fly as compared to sailing.

Kate herself is on a flight ration, she only flies once every 3 years.

We also touch upon Bill Plotkins book Soulcraft, where he writes about meaning lying where our passion meets the hunger or need of the world.

And ofcourse, we speak about true toughness, what it is, and what it isn’t.

Kate Rawles website:

https://www.outdoorphilosophy.co.uk

My website:

www.duritaholm.com

We put emotions into some different, special category of the human soul - like we don’t need those, or those are silly or those are dangerous

The way we have learned to work with emotions, is as if they are something very different from sensations or thoughts - Karla McLaren says they are actually not that different.

She tells us how she grew up in a spiritual new age community where they hated emotions - and how horrible that was

They could only function with happiness and joy, nothing else was allowed. And how self-soothing became what they turned to - sports, herbal remedies, distractions of all sorts in a constant flow, so as not to feel all the unwanted feelings.

We explore a concrete experience of how to work with shame when it arises

There are no bad emotions, all our emotions have something to tell us, and we should listen. Yes its painful, but its okay to feel pain if there is a purpose to it and a meaning in it

Sometimes, however, says Karla, we need to resist, for example when there is injustice. And sometimes we even need to resist being normal.

We explore the messages from anger: what do I value, and what needs to be protected and restored.

We also touch upon the difference between having shame about who you are and to feel shame about a particular thing.

Karlas practice for emotions is called: Empathic mindfulness practice

She herself grew up with a lot of self hatred, and thinking something was wrong with her, and she had to learn how to remove this toxic messaging

And we can not think our way out of these things, because emotions are much more powerful than thoughts.

Your emotions are trying to protect you, Listen to your emotions, is Karlas message

Emotions are always true, but they are not always right, because they don’t always have all the information.

Emotions are the voice of the soul, because they remember everything.

So much in our daily life is very shallow, but the emotions know the depth of things. And our emotions can hold us to a higher standard.

Sometimes however, we need to gently retrain our emotions. But there is always a genius underlying the emotions.

We explore the difference between sadness and grief, and talk about the need for grief rituals

There is a gift in depression, and if you know the gifts, then you change your whole relation to depression.

Depression tells you to not move forward the way you have been. So it pulls the energy away from you, so you can not move forward in the same way. There is always a reason for depression to arise. Depression is like a reality check, and it can be painful to take a really honest look at our life, at what is actually not working.

Karla says we pathologise emotions. It is however okay to sometimes distract yourself into a different feeling, but we cant do it all the time. Intentional distractions are okay.

Become an ally and a friend to your emotions, protect them as they protect you

These ar Karlas four pillars for a whole life: art, practice, ritual, community

People don’t really understand what emotions are, they are a fundamental part of cognition, she says. And they are befriending an important part of your soul.

And In the shadow is where the power and the freedom lyes, we conclude.

www.karlamclaren.com

www.empathyacademy.org

My website: www.duritaholm.com