Intimacy with the world

Joanna Macy begins by telling us about the possibility of experiencing the earth as our larger body, as our mother, as our grandmother as our source of everything, and how this sometimes manifests very intimately and sometimes as being held by the earth itself.

Our conversation soon goes to Georgia in the former Soviet Union, and Joanna tells us about being stuck in an hotel room with a great big samovar emitting eucalyptus steam and a Russian orthodox religious man trying to guide her into being less of a monkey person and to rather become more of a kitten person - this was his metaphor for the great surrender that he think she needed in order to heal.

The topic of surrender brings us to Rilkes poetry and from there to covid, which Joanna also sees as part teacher to us all - teaching us to stop, to slow down and see the natural worlds beauty around us.

Joanna also shares how grateful she feels to be alive at this very time that is so precarious, how meaningful it feels, when every choice you make actually matters so greatly for the future of complex life on earth.

She also tells us that if we are going to save the planet, we need to do it with joy, wonder and gratitude, not by complaining. “We have to be glad to be here if we want to make any change for the better. Only the joy and gratitude can awaken the imagination to do this.” She says.

Joanna also takes great interest in my native Islands, The Faroe Islands, and in my childhood growing up there, and she tells us about her own childhood, both in Manhattan and on her grandfathers farm in upstate New York.

She said that on her grandfathers farm everything came alive, and how she discovered that all life had its own being and mystery.

We also speak about the late Norwegian philospher Arne Næs, who was a great inspiration to Joanna Macy with his deep ecology and his notion of the ecological self

We speak about working with despair and other difficult feelings about the devastation of the planet, and about how easy it is to just Numb out. Which is where The Work that Reconnects comes in. And she speaks about how we need to take this work beyond anthropocentrism by truly opening the heart and mind. And how in this spirit she, together with John Seed invented the Council of all Beings.

Joanna also tells us about her heartbreaking work at San Quentin prison. And we do ofcourse speak about her work with the Tibetan refugees and The Dalai Lama in India, and her time there with the peace core. And she tells us about the Khampagar monastery in Tibet and Tashi Jong monastery in Northern India.

She describes that what she saw in the Tibetan refugees in the sixties, was that they had a much vaster experience of self than she had seen before, and that that was the root to their happiness.

The tibetans taught her mindfulness practice, which she says has sreved her so well ever since. And she does tell us about the notion of no-self, of no separate self, but that we are more of a stream of experience, and how we can watch this process of being taking place. And she takes great joy in the buddhist teaching, that all we have to do, is just to see through the self. That is the greatest gift.

Joannas greatest message is for us to learn to open to everything, to the planet as our own larger body, and she says that life wants to live itself through us, taste itself through us. And she ends by telling us how much joy she takes in being breathed by mother earth, our larger body!

Joanna Macy’s website: www.joannamacy.net

My website: www.duritaholm.com

We have become indoor beings far removed from the natural world, and our modern technologies have altered our lives so far away from how we for millions of years evolved to live. Can we rewild this domesticated version of ourselves and rediscover our life affirming connection with nature for the mutual benefit of humans and the planet?

Micah Mortali shares insights from his book Rewilding, Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature.

We talk bout reconnecting people to the natural world, and how rewilding is an attempt to come back to who we really are. Coming back to our roots.

In our past we humans were for the most part outside, and connected to our natural surroundings. We had a dynamic, alive relationship with the oceans, the lakes, the streams, the hills, the seasons the trees and our food sources. For most of our history we we were connected to the 5 senses and beyond, and much has been lost by this radical shift in living circumstances.

When we talk about rewilding, we are not talking about a wildness that is out of control, we’re talking about aliveness and about the awe-factor. We are also talking about slowing down, and just being present and mindful of what we are doing and the beauty of every moment.

Mindfulness increases awe and curiosity, and our sense of the mystery, the wonder and the magic in life.

Micah tells us how many of us suffer from life force deficit. And we dive into what the life force is: the ki, the prana or the Great Spirit. And how our ancestors talked about and knew this force very well. We speak about the notion, that there is more lifeforce in natural surroundings, by waterfalls, by the ocean, or in the forest. And of course Japanese forestbathing gets mentioned

From his own experience Micah also tells us about doing lots of yoga and pranayama inside a building and then walking outside into nature, and being almost overwhelmed by how much lifeforce he was open to.

We evolved to be in dynamic relationship with the natural elements. Not to live inside temperature controlled houses, he says, and furthermore elaborates on how we have been removed from our natural habitat. And how this can make us suffer both mentally and physically.

Its an illusion that we can live cut off from nature, he says. We can’t live without clean water clean air and clean food! He also believes, that we are going through a profound time of transformation now, and maybe we can turn to nature to inspire and teach us how to move forward.

Now many of our technologies are man over nature instead of man with nature, but there is a lot of good technology, medicines and so on, but we are not a happy bunch, so something is missing. We do need to find a new balance with nature.

Micah tells us how he enjoys exploring his Celtic roots, The Oak king, the Holly king, and the Goddess, the spirit of the forest and the deer. He talks about how there was an intimacy, a reciprocity and nourishment in the way they lived. It’s an inquiry, and a journey to connect to our ancestral ways and practices.

Being open to what the land has to offer, can be life changing, and he quotes Lakota elder, Luther standing bear: “a lack of respect for green growing things soon leads to a lack of respect for people too”.

We speak about how separated we are from the sources of our food. The taking of life for us to eat has lost its original meaning. How we take things for granted, and loose the reverence, respect and reciprocity with all life.

Our hearts can become cold and hard when we are removed from nature is also a frase from the wise Dakota elder, and Micah compares that to dart wade, just being wrapped in cold, hard technology. 

Micah Mortalis website: www.micahmortali.com

My website: www.duritaholm.com

How can we come into wholeness with our body, mind and spirit? This is what we explore on todays episode of Intimacy with the world podcast.

Dr. Mario Martines says that he realised that any good science comes from frustration. He realised that psychology wasn’t going to explain everything, nor neuroscience, nor neuro-immunology nor anthropology - it had to be a convergence of disciplines, like a meta-paradigm to explain the complexity of who we are

We begin by speaking about how we humans always want to classify and put everything into defined boxes or categories, and just cant handle uncertainty. Mario says:

“Uncertainty is my best friend - I navigate uncertainty with chaos as my guide”

His speciality is bringing culture mind and body together, and he says that the brain is cultured and the immune system is cultured

We even speak about what a humanbeing actually is, which brings us to epigenetics, the importance of language, and how it defines our world, and the functioning of our brain and our immune system. We speak about the bio-symbols of culture and the bio-informational field, and how the same thing can mean different things in different cultures - like the menopause f.e.

THis brings us to psycho-immunology: How thoughts and emotions affect the nervous- immune- and endocrine system, and how Shame, f.e. causes inflammation in the body.

We speak about the meaning of words for menopause in different cultures like Japan and South America with the words “konenki” which translates as second spring, or “bochorno” which translates as shame.

We speak about Fibromyalgia and other auto-immune diseases, and how we can reprogram our body and mind

We touch upon how our immune system is actually a bio-ethical system, it loves meaning, purpose and pro-social behaviours like love, kindness, honour and gratitude.

Mario tells us about the difference between hedonic and eudaemonic behaviours.

Hedonism turns out not to be so healthy - it is bad for the immune system. And addiction is extreme hedonism.

Aristotle said that hedonism is not enough for a fulfilled life

Eudemonic implies meaning, purpose and finding pleasure in meaning and purpose

People who are eudemonic have better CTA markers (immune-response) than people who are hedonic.

So pleasure without meaning and purpose is not good for us

A human being needs to feel meaning and purpose to thrive and be healthy.

While exploring archetypes we even get around to speak about Steve Jobs, and how we need to know how to balance several of these archetypes according to different circumstances

You cant just live in one archetype, this is why Maslow said, you cant just live like a hammer, then you will just see nails everywhere

The Self is a conglomerate, it is a hologram that is in constant flow.

We have multiple archetypes to handle multiple situations - so there is no self as the Buddha pointed out. It is a process rather than an entity.

We explore how meaning and purpose have to be imbued with a sense of belonging, a sense of joy and of companionship. And what can we do when we actually don’t feel any meaning or purpose?

Mario suggests starting with these question to get to the roots of meaning and purpose:

Who am I?

What am I doing here?

Who cares?

And how you will build an incredilbe ressiience if you have these 3 questions sorted in a deep way.

We also talk about the universal ways that centenarians think and feel, and waht we can learn from them about longevity and living a joyfull life.

Dr. Marios website is: https://www.biocognitiveculture.com where you can find his books and other offerings.

My website is: www.duritaholm.com

A conversation about creativity, life and spirituality with film- and theatre director, musician and all things creative, Búi Dam from the Faroe Islands

Búi Tells us how he right up until he was 16, just wanted to be a professional football player, and how he has always been very driven in whatever he was engaged in: “I always wanted to be the best at what I was doing! When he was 11, is when he started playing music.

He also tells us, how he likes to be creative in a team, and he tells us that in his opinion all humans are creative, that is what being human is, because we are part of creation itself.

And he thinks people who say they are not creative, are lying… But, that creativity is also a craft to be honed.

Búi sees himself as part of the big bang, part of the ever existing, expanding and becoming of creation itself, but he also emphasises that he works very hard at it. Both approaches are needed: tapping into creation and working hard at it.

We also talk about surrendering to and serving creativity itself. And he tells us about the magic moments when he all of a sudden sees something clearly, and he admits that he doesn’t know where that deep clarity in art comes from.

He also shares that he doesn’t have any hopes of understanding the human condition, that more than anything he is just playing with life, and more interested in the questions than in answers.

“Being human means joy, pain, and an acceptance of the very fact that you can’t actually understand it.”

He also tells us how he used to resist being tied down in one place and becoming a family-man and preferred being a creative nomad, but trough a personal and spiritual growth journey, his greatest joys are now family, creativity and spirituality. And he very lovingly tells us that now he will go wherever his soon to become wife goes: “I will follow her where ever she goes”

We proceed to speak about his 5 year healing journey, that started when he got diagnosed with depression by western medicine, but instead of going on the prescribed medication, he chose a different path involving Kria yoga with Swami Janakananda and a whole transformational spiritual journey, that took him to India where he met his spiritual mentor.

Interestingly he describes his mental sufferings more like internal demons - like being possessed by something.

“I don’t understand the word depression, but I understand the word demon.” He says.

His healing journey took him to many parts of India, learning from spiritual masters in the lineage of Swami Satchidananda. Ayurveda also became a part of his healing, as well as seeing the severe suffering of others, which helped him get out of his own ego.

Today, he says, That he is actually very grateful for that 5 year spiritual quest, which cost him a lot on many other levels.

And he tells us that the demons are still there, but that they now form part of the source to his creativity.

To Búi yoga is not jus something you do on the mat, it is a way of life, and his creative work is his yoga, his practice.

He tells us how his voice became more independent after his spiritual transformation - his own voice became clearer. And how coming to this place was a very brutal process for him. He had to symbolically slaughter a lot of old relationships.

We speak about the human necessity to make art, and where this need comes from.

This brings us to the topics of religion, spirituality and myth, and Joseph Campell does of course get mentioned, so does the tantric path and Kashmir Shaivism and we even speak about Karma.

We come full circle by musing about the deep acceptance of who we truly are - how that becomes a deep grounding in life’s basic okayness.

My website is: www.duritaholm.com

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). She is the author of The Little Book of Being and the co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness. Her work has been mentioned in the New York Times, O Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Allure, Women’s Health, among others. The LA Times calls her one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness.” A former Buddhist nun, you can find her on the UCLA Mindful, Waking Up and Ten Percent Happier apps or at www.marc.ucla.edu and www.dianawinston.com

In this episode Diana gives us an Introduction to classical mindfulness, and how we train our attention to stay on one object in the present moment, but mindfulness isn’t just that. There is a whole territory of mindfulness teachings, that teach about something more expansive and spacious. Diana Winston calls this “natural awareness” and it is like classical mindfulness is like the lens of our awareness and attention very narrowly focused, whereas natural awareness is like opening that camera-lens of our awareness wide open.

Diana also tells us about her experience as a nun in Burma, and how she totally crashed after a while, feeling so frustrated with her meditation practice, and how that is when she discovered the teachings and practices of natural awareness where the gist of it is that there is nothing to get, nowhere to go, there is no goal, it is all about the awareness that is already existent. The awareness that is already present inside of us, and how we can open up and get access to that natural awareness and experience a shift in our being, in how we experience ourselves ant the world around us in that moment

Interestingly Diana shares, that it tended to be the westerners at the Burmese monastery that got frustrated in their meditation practice, perhaps because we are so goal-driven and have a tendency to over-effort - which is not beneficial when you are meditating.

We also talk about this frase from her book: “I wanted to reach enlightenment so badly because I didn’t want to be me!” Ad about how that really was rooted in a sense of unworthiness, and how inherent in the natural awareness teachings is a notion, that we inherently are filled with natural goodness. And she also talks about her practices with loving kindness and different compassion practices

She also dives into what awareness actually is and from there she goes into explain the spectrum of awareness: focused awareness, investigative awareness, choiceless awareness and natural awareness

She explains to us that there is no hierarchical relation between natural awareness and classical mindfulness - but that each of them is called for in different situations

We speak about Our modern lives of speed and distraction - why do we want so badly to distract ourselves from ourselves?

Mindfulness brings us face to face with ourselves

Diana says: Meditation is like a doing in the service of being.

And of course in this regard se speak about neuro plasticity.

And she explains to us how awareness is capable of holding anything and healing anything.

How awareness doesn’t judge, awareness is infused with a compassionate holding. The willingness to sit with ourselves without exiling any part of us, but bringing compassion to the wholeness of who we are - also our traumas. How awareness can provide us with that safety.

She speaks about Enlisting the wisdom mind

And of course Diana leads us trough a glimpse practice!

My website: www.duritaholm.com

In this wonderfully honest conversation with one of the most significant and beloved spiritual figures in America today, teacher and musician, Krishna Das, we touch upon a lot of different things, both personal, and more general teachings.

KD tells us how some of the emotional sufferings from the past are still with him, but how the energy has gone out of them, land that makes all the difference.

We speak about surrender, what it is, what it isn’t and how actually does the surrendering…

We speak about the ego and the longing to be free, and how he views intention in all this

KD tells us to hold our practice with a very light hand, heart and mind, without pushing and without pride and without stories of how great we are because we are practicing, or how bad we are because we don’t think we are doing it right, or getting anywhere

“I don’t think about myself that much anymore - that’s happiness…”

“If you don’t add a practice to your life, you don’t even notice how gone you are - away from your being…”

KD tells us why chanting is so effective… and how different things work for different people, and different practices work at different times

He also tells us about his experience and the benefits of his Buddhist practices

And we speak about romantic love… the expectations, the beauty and the shadow… And how love is not something we fall in or fall out of, love just is - it’s not even an emotion, it’s what we are

And when we talk about this love, he says, it’s synonymous with presence and pure beingness

He also tells us why Maharaji sent him back to America. And how Maharaji was friends with the head of a criminal gang! And - can you believe this - Maharaji had his own cell in the prison in Agra, where he could go to hide from his devotees!!!

Kd also tells us how he feels that he betrayed Maharaji, by not going back to India immediately when Maharaji asked him to… how he was too attached to a woman back in America

We speak about purpose in life, and you can also hear what KD’s favorite thing to do is, apart from chanting.

Kd tell us that the fruit of the practice ,is spending less and less time thinking about oneself

I also ask him about his relationship with nature

KD also tells us about his deep awakening experience in India in 1995

And he tells us what Krishnadassness is ;-)

Enjoy!

His website is:  www.krishnadas.com

My website is: www.duritaholm.com

Kelly Wendorf is an expert in the artform of taking people through transformative change and on to their greatest levels of success, meaning, purpose and profound fulfillment. For about 25 years, she has extensively researched this question: what conditions need to be created to allow people to live a life of deep authenticity, freedom and joy? This conversation has its basis in Kellys new book: Flying lead change, 56 million years of wisdom for leading and living.

We talk about using the wisdom inherent in nature as our master teacher to find our true autehenticity, to learn to truly listen to ourselves and others. And what we can learn from horses, a 56 million old and wise species, where f.eks. it is not, as popularly thought, the strongest stallion who is the leader, but the most caring mare.

We speak about how care is often a misunderstood phenomena.

We speak about how we need to rewild our domesticatede selves.  And how we need to rewild ourseves back into our own bodies.

How we need daily rituals to to make sure we stay true to ourselves

We speak aboutthe importance of setting healthy boundaries and space around ourselves, and how these boundaries and spaces don't seperate us, but quite the opposite, how they connect us.

How to claim our dignity, and how meaning and purpose have to o with an existential sense of belonging to the greater whole

and how the goal must be to just feel whole in and of yourself

The thread throughout our whole conversation is: How can we live deliberatly instead of on autopilot!

You can find Kelly Wendorf at: 

www.equusinspired.com

and you can find me, Durita Holm at:

www.duritaholm.com

In this episode I am speaking with Michael Sandler, the host of the Inspire Nation Show, one of the top spiritual and self-help podcasts and YouTube shows worldwide, and he is also a former professional athlete.

Michael elaborates on how his imperfect childhood in an other sense was just perfect, in that it sets us on our path, to become who we are today. He also speaks about how our deepest hurts can be gifts, depending on how we choose to perceive them, and how we can see “misfortunate” events as course correctors.

Michael tells us about his near death experiences, and how our mindset is crucial for healing our bodies.

He also tells us, how he works with his ego,

How everything happens for a reason (which he learnt from Wayne Dyer)

About deep surrender

About having desires, but not attaching to them

How to love what is, no matter what is

About automatic writing

Taking meditation in to real life

How fear isn’t necessarily bad

How to work with discomfort

And how to engage in inquiry about our lives

The visually inclined can watch this episode on youtube, and you can find me and my offerings at:  www.duritaholm.com

Annika Hoydal is a singer, a songwriter and actress from The Faroe Islands. She is regarded as one of our national treasures, for the big role she has played in shaping faroese culture, and many of her songs have formed more than a generation. In this episode we speak about the importance of walking one's own path, and about how we can frame difficulties and challenges so that they too become pearls on that string that is our life. Annika also talks about the importance of not assuming a victim role when life is tough. We also talk about creativity, where it comes from and how to tap in to it. And we end on a note of trust - the importance of trusting in life itself... 

I speak with Tim Ecott about the magnetic power of nature in the stormy Faroe Islands, and about the modern longing for a life more connected to the natural world. Tim's book about the Faroe Islands: The Land of Maybe, a Faroe Islands year, is the foundation for our conversation about the comfort of darkness, the dreamlike spell that islands hold in our imagination, and so much more .Tim Ecott is a former BBC World Service correspondent. He is also a non fiction author drawing heavily on his fondness for the natural world. Tim has worked all over the world, and lived on many tropical paradise islands, but these last few years he has fallen in love with The Faroe Islands, way up in the North Atlantic.