The Unplug Podcast: Activated Living for Truth Seekers and Critical Thinkers in a Collapsing World

If you’ve been a long-time listener of this podcast, or even if you’re a new listener to this podcast, you’ve likely noticed the gap between the last episode and this one. A while back, I made a decision to officially end the podcast. But then inspiration that I wanted to share would hit me and I felt the need to record it and offer it to listeners. So I decided that the Unplug podcast would become inspiration-dependent. Recently I’ve been sparked by some significant inspiration by a connection I now have with Dharma teacher and author, Catherine Ingram. It felt necessary for me to invite her into a recorded conversation that I could share with all of you.

I feel it pertinent to share that It’s been a notable gap between the last podcast and this one, primarily because this year has been a challenging one for me personally. These challenges have been important in helping me reach a place inside of myself that brings more light and expansiveness into the topic of this podcast episode.

For those who follow my blog, you will know about my painful personal situation regarding the shocking and heartless breakup of my 20-year relationship that left me reeling just before the covid lockdown and pandemic narrative took hold of our world. Needless to say, I’ve been navigating a lot of grief, confusion, bitterness, betrayal trauma, and creating closure where there was once absolutely none. It’s also been a Powerful exercise in letting go, acceptance, and personal transformation as I cocooned myself into a healing phase that I’m only now emerging from. I finally feel steady enough on my feet to share my voice once again. And in sharing my voice, I’m feeling a deeper sense of meaning.

I’ve moved through a lot of personal healing to reach a place of acceptance with my personal reality while, at the same time, discovering deeper layers of acceptance with the state of our world and our planet. That is the foundation for my potent conversation with Catherine Ingram in this special episode: acceptance. How it impacts us in our personal lives and how it ripples outward in how we navigate our global reality. Acceptance is a powerful realization that has great potential to transform our lives. I’m thrilled and deeply honoured to be in conversation with someone who gets it; someone on a similar journey with a similar mindset inspiring a very different way of life.

To offer a little background about Catherine Ingram is, she’s an international dharma teacher with communities in the U.S., Europe, and in Australia where she now resides. She’s also A former journalist who specialized in issues of consciousness and activism. Catherine is also the author of two nonfiction books, In the Footsteps of Gandhi, and Passionate Presence, and one novel, A Crack in Everything. In February of 2019, she published the long-form essay “Facing Extinction” which is how I first discovered her immense body of work. Most recently, she’s been featured in the beautiful and deeply moving documentary by Michael Shaw, Living in the Time of Dying.

Catherine and I recently connected after I felt a strong internal prompt to reach out to her with the unifying bond of our parallel messages. The connection was instant, kindred spirits. It only made sense after that to invite her into a recorded conversation that I’m now pleased to share with you as we we explore The Winding Path of Acceptance in End Times.

Here is a beautiful short video by Catherine about the importance of tears for acknowledging our grief and our humanity.

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Join Birju Pandya as he engages in conversation with Deb Ozarko to explore a perspective that is rarely voiced – acceptance that our civilizational story (as that of all civilizations) will eventually become compost for something else, and feeling into what is born in that exploration.  Birju’s work has intersected with global overshoot, systems collapse, and resilience; he is focused on inviting greater inner and outer capacity as we collectively experience ever more volatility in this process. This call can also be watched at this link.

 

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Peter Melton and Deb Ozarko in discussion with Michael Shaw. Now that we are aware of our grand predicament, who are we choosing to be now? This is a deep dive conversation about our times: Hope, acceptance, reality and presence. We are being asked to be students of our moment in time. Living in the Time of Dying. TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thms6…

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Peter Melton and Deb Ozarko in discussion with Michael Shaw, the creator of the Summer 2020 Documentary Living in the Time of Dying. In this session we discuss the process Michael went through, before, during and after the Documentary. TRAILER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thms6…

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Regenerative conversations exploring overshoot grief, grounding, and gratitude with Michael Dowd. According to host Michael Dowd, “A post-doom mindset is a hard-earned and often fluctuating state of being. Classic stages of grief mark a well-worn path. However, mere acceptance of what is unavoidable need not be the endpoint. Michael Dowd (with occasional co-hosts) invites guests to share their personal journeys along this trajectory and especially the gifts they have found on the other side. Participants share personal stories, perspectives, and tools that go beyond emotional detachment, stoic resolve, and spiritual transcendence.”

If Deb’s words hit home and you find value in her work, please donate:

The greatest illusion is that humankind has limitations.

—Robert Monroe

Note: By clicking on the above audio link, you can listen to the recorded version of this post.

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The past several years have been a profound act of letting go. Letting go of conditioning, habituation and old beliefs: about myself, the world, reality, and most recently, what it means to be human. The more I let go, the more I discover. The more I discover, the more I expand. The more I expand, the more I recognize how little I know about “reality”, existence and Life. And therein lies the magic. Freedom from the confines of certainty allows space for endless possibilities. In the infinite realm of this space, everything I’ve ever been taught about “reality” disintegrates and I’m free to ponder, explore and experience so much more of the vast mystery of consciousness.

Exploring Inner Space

The year 2012 was a significant marker for me. Fresh out of the profound personal discoveries that my 2011 studies of NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) revealed, I knew there was still so much more to explore and understand. My hunger for evolutionary expansion had been activated, yet despite the immense personal growth that followed, I’d barely been satiated. With a solid taste of the limitless nature of possibility, I knew that what I hungered for defied the rules, rigidity and dogma of the paths already known. I wanted to know, intimately, the Essence at the core of my Being. An intense exploration of consciousness was about to begin.

Before discovering the brilliant, life-changing, paradigm-altering work of Louise LeBrun in 2013, I spent a great deal of time at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia discovering the expansive nature of what I am, experientially. In those ineffable experiences, I experienced, first-hand, the infinite nature of my Self. I realized then that I am so much more than my physical body. In these provocative explorations of consciousness, I experienced profound healing, massive insights, and a deeper, more intimate connection to the Universal energy of Life.

I realized then that consciousness is so much more than a state of awareness of myself and my world, it is the unifying energy of Life. It is non-local, non-physical and ever expansive. Unlike the puny worldview of consciousness residing within the confines of our mortal brains, it is eternal and deathless. It is the creative force of Life: physical and beyond. It cannot be created or destroyed and is constantly moving in the direction of expansion. What this means is that we are limitless in our capacity to evolve in consciousness and connect more deeply with Life, allowing for infinite expressions of magnificent creativity. Having said that, we are equally limitless in our capacity to suppress our consciousness and disconnect from Life, allowing for infinite expressions of mindless brutality. Quoting Sufi author, Idries Shah, “Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, (s)he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.” Tragically, this is our suppressed consciousness reality; immense creators with infinite potential designing dysfunctional lives, civilizations and worlds.

While our beliefs/conditioning/behaviors/habituation can throttle the flow of expansion, the power of consciousness inevitably prevails. The need for perpetual growth persists, even if it means dis-ease, illness and death to eliminate barriers for expansion. This applies personally and collectively in both the human and more-than-human worlds. The most pertinent metaphor in our world today is that of our conscious, organic, living planet.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the impulse to record another Table Talk conversation with Louise LeBrun. Even though we see each other regularly and our conversations are always profoundly meaningful to me, there are many times when I feel compelled to just keep them for myself. That said, I’m always open for the potential of a conversation that I feel inspired to share.

As it happens, the impulse finally landed for me to once again bring out the mic. With a deep curiosity about what could possibly emerge from within the two of us, I started recording. As always, there was no agenda. Just an open space for a free-flowing, organic conversation. As we often do, Louise and I covered a lot of interesting terrain.

Because our conversations are always intimate and personal, we go to places that are familiar to our own shared experiences. To provide some context to aid in your understanding of the direction we embarked on,  Louise references two of her powerful creations: the Decloaking and Living Authentically experience and the Engaging and Awakening Others experience, both of which were unfolding with a local facilitator at the same time as our conversation. You will hear repeated references to both of these experiences as metaphors for how reality can rapidly shift with an expansion in consciousness, starting at the personal level. While Louise is officially retired from leading these experiences, she references them as powerful avenues toward Self reclamation in the face of collapse. Because I have personally engaged with Louise’s work in a very committed and intimate way over the last several years, you will hear me share my own life-changing personal experiences—experiences that now offer me the deep Self connection I feel is so critical during these tumultuous times.

I confess that because our conversation is so personal, I found myself wondering: would anyone else care? Would anyone even understand? Would they discover anything for their own Selves? Does it even matter? Should I even bother to release this conversation? And then, I thought to myself: why wouldn’t I bother! Because I know that those who continue to follow my work are the hardcore searchers of their own insights into their Life, especially with the intense provocation that accelerating biosphere collapse is providing.

A few of the topics we discuss in this conversation include:

* How people are either ignorant or terrified in the face of today’s collapsing world.

* Consciousness as the driver for collapse.

* The futility of resistance-based actions in the face of collapse.

* The illusion of grief as a means toward Self intimacy. 

* A new conversation about powerlessness.

* Acceptance and surrender vs. Giving up.

* The illusion of time.

* Standing in the now and continually moving forward.

* The repetitive monotony of the human existence.

* Learning how to “be”.

* A new mindset around resourcefulness.

* And a different conversation about “death”.

Of course there is always so much more.

Throughout this chat, you will hear the everyday sounds of life in my household including the sounds of playful, meowing cats and the occasional barking dog. They are as much a part of these experiences as I am.

This is a higher order conversation for those who are willing to surrender their intellects to something far more powerful.

To enjoy this conversation, simply click the audio link at the top of this post.

In this conversation with Michael Dowd and Ganga Devi Braun, I share my personal evolution toward a life of activated presence in these times of social, ecological and climate collapse. This interview is part of the Post Doom Conversation series that will be released later this year.

According to Michael Dowd, creator of the Post Doom Conversation series, the theme of the Post Doom conversations is as follows:

“A foreboding sense of climate chaos, societal collapse, and ecological “doom” is now widespread. Acknowledging our predicament and working through the stages of grief takes one only to the midpoint: acceptance. What lies beyond? Michael Dowd (with occasional co-hosts) invites guests to share their personal journeys along this trajectory and especially the gifts they have found on the other side of the post-doom doorway.”

Michael describes a post-doom heart and mindset as follows:

“Living, loving, and relating honorably with full awareness that there are levels of climate chaos beyond human control, our predicament encompasses all aspects of life, human-centered measures of “progress” are ecocidal, technology and the market are false gods, and the near-term extinction of Homo colossus is both inevitable and necessary and the extinction of Homo sapiens is possible.

A post-doom mindset is a hard-earned and perhaps fluctuating state of being. For many, classic stages of grief are among the stepping stones; the darkness of despair can rarely be avoided. Nonetheless, mere acceptance of “doom” (civilizational, ecological, our own species) need not be the endpoint. Indeed, what we hope to explore in this series are possibilities other than emotional detachment, stoic resolve, and spiritual transcendence. Rather, what shifts in perception, understanding, relating, and identity become possible when we walk through a post-doom doorway? How do priorities, lifeways, and outer-world involvements shift and clarify on the other side? And how do such changes call forth genuine equanimity, even joy?”

This is an important conversation that I feel will resonate with those who have chosen a different way in the face of biosphere collapse. Those who have chosen a path of deeper connection to their Selves and to Life—both embodied and beyond—will no longer feel so alone.

To listen to this conversation, simply click the audio link at the top of this post. Alternatively it can also be viewed with embedded video above this post.

NOTE: Michael has granted me permission to share this interview before its official release.

While the prevailing global collective dig their heels deeper into sustaining the status quo, many others are becoming activists, enraged by the infinite list of atrocities being committed around the globe. As seemingly more people fight for change these days—with grandiose expectations for governments, corporations, media, and the global public to wake up and do something—notable progress continues to evade us.

With a lifetime of advocacy in my experience, I know well the trenches of activism. Having lived through almost six decades of human potential, I’ve born witness to, and participated in several activist uprisings. The passion behind these acts of revolt was often so impressive that one could easily be convinced of a shift in collective consciousness. Why then, do we stand in the precarious place that we do today?

An abbreviated timeline of the past 60 years tells an interesting story about the efficacy of activism to create meaningful change in our world.

The ’60’s brought to us a formidable anti-war movement filled with the promise of peace and love through flower power, hippie subculture, and meaningful music. The Women’s Liberation Movement of the ’70’s seemed unstoppable in its mission toward the creation of gender equality in an oppressive, patriarchal world. From the Stonewall riots in 1969 emerged the Gay Liberation Movement of the ’70’s and ’80’s. Social equality for all who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender sparked powerful momentum for today’s LGBT movement. The growing environmental movement of the 80’s spawned the “green” revolution of the ’90’s and early 21st Century. In tandem with the green revolution was the bourgeoning animal rights movement. Countless celebrities and wealthy philanthropists used their clout to speak up for a more compassionate world through animal rights and veganism. In 2011, the Occupy movement gained significant traction and inspired a new way of thinking about democracy and social justice. While it did little to change the culture of sexism and the mindset of patriarchy, the Women’s March of 2017 touched the lives of millions of women around the world. And in 2018, impassioned survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting inspired a powerful movement for gun control in one of the most weapon-loving countries in the world.

So much promise. So much “hope”. So much momentum, energy, and passion channeled toward the creation of something more aligned with our better nature. But as Albert Einstein once said, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Without fail, many of these movements fizzled out only to be swallowed by the oh-so-familiar and oh-so-comfortable dominant paradigm once again. The systems that make up human civilization (political, corporate, social, market, education, religion, health care, mass media, etc.), and the overwhelming inertia of the status quo who adhere to these systems, remain deeply entrenched in the mediocrity of changelessness. The sheer density of this mass consciousness ensures the impenetrable stasis of what has always been.

In the 60-year timeline just mentioned, we have essentially taken two steps forward and several steps back. At a time of rising isolationism, tribalism, racism, and authoritarianism, we currently stand in a place where the right-to-bear-arms mindset is as deeply entrenched in the American psyche as ever; ceaseless wars rage on throughout the world; corporate control has become more globally oppressive with each passing year; homophobia still runs rampant, racism is as prevalent and ugly as ever, and animals, women and the natural world are more brutalized than ever before.

While relishing a beautiful summer day in our lovely screened porch, Deb Gleason, Louise LeBrun and myself enjoy another compelling Table Talk conversation about, Who Are We in the Face of Collapse.

In this conversation we explore how we are so conditioned to tiptoe around difficult conversations under the guise of “protecting” others and how this comes at great expense to the fullness of our most authentic expression.

We also talk about how the most difficult conversation in the global predicament we are living in today, is that of collapse: of civilization, of ecosystems, of the planetary biosphere, of Life on Earth. Few are willing to go there, and it’s not uncommon for this conversation to be negated, dismissed, mocked, and denied. But what if we stopped skirting the edges of difficult conversations such as these and allowed ourSelves to speak our truth? Not to educate, advise or convince, but simply to tell it like we know it within ourselves?

We delve into an exploration about the distraction of activism and the addictive nature of its expression that perpetuates a victim mentality. And of course, we talk at great length about the evolution of consciousness that propels us out of this box and into an entirely different way of being.

Other topics of exploration include:

* How the critical conversation is not about collapse or climate change, it is about evolution of consciousness. Consciousness is what creates reality.

* How activism hasn’t changed anything. If fact, things are much worse than they’ve ever been despite decades of activist movements.

* Living with end-awareness. Redefining the meaning of longevity as living fully in the end.

* A very different conversation about grief as a provocation for personal evolution.

* And the power of choice, and the ripple effect of living authentically.

References within the conversation:

Fully Conscious…Alive! Interview with Dean Walker

Discoveries from a Retired Activist

The Perpetual Illusion of Change

To enjoy this conversation, simply click the audio link at the top of this post.