Thought Leader

A must-listen for anyone interested in how the stories we tell shape the lives we lead and the societies we create. Whether you're looking to better understand your own place in the world or seeking ways to impact the broader societal narrative, this discussion will provide valuable insights and practical tools for navigating the complex interplay between myth and reality.

This episode is a recording of a talk I delivered at The Walled Garden Philosophical Society in August 2024, in which I explore:

• The Influence of Historical Myths on Modern Identity: How do ancient stories and cultural narratives continue to shape our beliefs and behaviours? We uncover the threads connecting past mythologies to current societal norms and personal identities.
• Authenticity in the Age of Social Media: In a world dominated by digital personas, how can we reclaim our true selves? We discuss the challenges of maintaining authenticity when online platforms encourage conformity.
• Awakening to Personal Agency: What does it mean to 'awaken' in a culture steeped in preconceived narratives? We contemplate the process of recognizing and asserting our individual sovereignty within the emergent tapestry of societal roles and myths.
• Navigating Cultural and Psychological Landscapes: How can we help ourselves and others navigate complex cultural narratives? This conversation provides insights for those guiding others through the labyrinth of societal expectations and self-discovery.

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"If yoga, breathwork and meditation are the way to establish the internet connection and improve the clarity of that connection, BEYOND THE MAT is the way to upgrade the operating system, upgrade the browser, download new updates and create a new map by which to explore the boundless internet of human potential."

This Episode outlines a game-changing and proven approach to holistic self-mastery tailored for those navigating the pressures of urban life, corporate demands and general overwhelm.

We discuss the necessity for us to embrace practices and modalities that take us "beyond the mat", to empower us in our efforts of wellness and personal growth, complementary to, not replacing, essential technologies such as Yoga, Breathwork or Meditation, but using those as starting points for journeys of self-awareness and self-knowledge that are informed by psychology and neuroscience but remain approachable and digestible enough for us to become the debuggers of our own complex operations systems.

"Beyond the Mat" is a project that leverages the foundational benefits of Yoga, Breathwork, and Meditation to address the deeper complexities of our personal narratives. It enhances self-understanding and upgrades our internal dialogue, giving all yoga practitioners a new dimension in wellness practices.

SUBSTACK ARTICLE:
https://eyeswideopenlife.substack.com/p/beyond-the-mat

ENQUIRIES:
[email protected]

SOUL SPEAKING EXAMPLE:
Close Your Eyes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP1ps4rI62U

JUST BE LIKE THIS TODAY EXAMPLES:
Forgiveness: https://eyeswideopenlife.substack.com/p/forgiveness
Daring to Dream: https://eyeswideopenlife.substack.com/p/daring-to-dream

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This is a recording of a teaching session on the online platform created by Eyes Wide Open Life called myMojoDojoLife.com. It is a session that would be very relevant and meaningful to everyone right now.

The main theme of the session was the troubling invitation to consider how our entire lives have been described in the language of the Left Brain, of sterile facts and details, that are actually too small to accurately describe or define our fuller and deeper experience, and by refusing to hold the other side of that conversation, the one about our Hero Journey, our personal Mythos, the language of Imagination, we actually cauterise and abandon our vitality and essence along the long road.

The dedicated practice I mentioned at the back end of that recording can be found here: REFRAMING YOUR STORY (YouTube)

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"You are the crowning emergence of your own process."

This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is part of a series of daily invitations to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

Shame is the mind virus of our society, accidentally arrived at, as a result of tribal survival mentality designed to optimise for social cooperation. If you inspect closely any modern virtue, any fear you have, beneath all the masks, you will encounter the parasite of shame.

Self-acceptance is not about being worthy by some universal standard; it is about becoming your own worthy leader precisely because no one else is coming. We are all imperfect. And all any of us can do is commit to the code that says “As soon as I know better, I do better.” 

You start from where you are with what you have.

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A thousand times the waves will come and a thousand times you must say: Not Today!

This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

The real trick is to invest the lion’s share of your energy and attention, not for what seeks to unmake you—the silence from the gallery, the old stories of inadequacy—but rather on how resilient you are in holding together and mending, and the blessing of your life for making you so.

You are either riding the waves, being tossed by the waves or you are perhaps making the waves. Either way, there will be waves.

Every wave you ride becomes a wave you make!

This episode includes a reading of my masterpiece of encouragement called Not Today!

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Opening the cage, and taking flight...

This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

You get the dream you live, if you aren’t daring to dream your own dream, you are living someone else’s. Maybe that’s why some of it feels like a bad dream?

Overwhelm, Burnout, Depression and Anxiety are some of the Body’s ways of waking up the Heart, out of the bad dream, and getting the attention of Attention into the dawning Reality of what is Unfolding and what is Possible.

This is a 13-minute exploration of the essentiality and practice of Dreaming.

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The Power of an Examined Life.

This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

It helps to think of your life in packets. There was the packet you spent in the womb. There was the packet of your infancy, then the toddler packet, and so on. In a way, this last cycle you have been through was a packet. And if you are open to the idea of renewal, it means you will be getting ready to pick yourself up and face a new cycle, a new packet. To live an examined life then, implies that you have to look back, and examine the packets of your life. How far back, is up to you. Your heart will tell you what magnitude of death and rebirth you are facing right now.

If you want to move forward you have to plan forward. If you want what you have never had, you must do what you have never done. You need to look back to see forward more clearly.

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On Being okay with Not Knowing...

This is a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

Trying to figure life out is like rummaging in a sack trying to pull a mystery object out, that you are looking for, without knowing what it is. Having a phone in your pocket means you never get to sit with a question and let it nag at you. You have become used to having instant answers on tap. You have normalised the abnormal.

The recording is a short guided reflection on the necessity and power of Sitting with Questions, even ones that do not have ready answers.

—there is a way that you can shape the hand of your grasping mind as if it knows what it is trying to grab and draw out. Sometimes the way you are holding a question is exactly what will make the answer evade your grasp. This is what the Zen Koan means: Not Knowing is Most Intimate. A Koan is in fact a tool used in the Zen tradition that poses a riddle or question, that is not meant to be solved. The work, if it can be called that, is done in the interstitial space of uncertainty.

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Forgiveness is both the province of the well and the door to wellness. You will notice those who struggle to forgive, struggle also to be well.

This a recording from Just Be Like This Today!

This is a daily invitation to grant yourself permission to drop all your other nagging ‘Musts’ and ‘Shoulds’ about self-improvement, personal development and living a virtuous life. Just enjoy this one cup of Living Wisdom, just choose this one thing and sit with it today.

Forgiveness is always so much less about someone else than it is about you. And yet paradoxically, only when you hold the same wish for the other person to also be made again both whole and free, do you find a way for yourself to be both whole and free.

If the wound is great, we will have to let it go many times.

The recording is a short guided reflection on the necessity and power of Forgiveness. 

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In this episode I discuss Actualization, unpacking what I mean by this, and the Power of Permission, which we need to give ourselves, to pursue our intents, to take mastery of our life and our choices, to enter courageously into a conversation with the Universe and with the reality of our lives, where it becomes okay to 'fail', so that we can learn, grow and develop.

Indirectly I also discuss in some detail what the entire project of the Eyes Wide Open Life podcast is about, what my motivations and intentions are, and what my main thesis in all of my work is, which is found throughout the @rocco.jarman humanitarian art project on Instagram and the Courses and Coaching I deliver via Eyes Wide Open Life.
 
I also cover:

• feedback loops
• self-measurement and reflection
• radical honesty and vulnerability
• peerlessness
• the false attraction and pursuit of wisdom vs the more authentic project of actualization and discovery of self

If you take nothing else away from this episode, this is the part i hope truly lands:

I believe, and in many ways, Iam living proof, that the pursuit and attainment and the successful negotiation of all the obstacles that stand in the way of self-mastery and self-liberation, is at bottom, psychological.  

That is, our pursuit or failure to achieve connection, is as a result of the ideas we carry, ideas we have been infected with through conditioning, the ideas we have failed to challenge and correct in ourselves.  

Ideas about love, acceptance, forgiveness, worthiness, power, belonging, divinity, and consciousness, are the ideas we need to get straight, and redundant impediments like shame, guilt and the confusion between Fear and Danger, between Pain and Injury, between Discomfort an unbearability, that discernment, is KEY.

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