Intuitive living and finding attunement with Stephen Buhner (Part 1 & 2)
Intuitive living and finding attunement go hand in hand as we grow in our lives. Developing our feeling sense and slowly learning to sense beyond rationality helps us develop a deeper attunement. Stephen Buhner talks about the feeling sense, the climate of our minds, and re-learning to live through the heart. Join us as he shares stories with us and we acquire more wisdom together. Open your eyes and see the realities of the world's systems. Join us if you want to learn about how the act of leaving your rational mind behind can guide you in your journey into feeling.
Show Notes Links:
Learn more at:
www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/about/
Full Podcast Transcription:
Intuitive living and finding attunement with Stephen Buhner (Part 1 & 2)
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Stephen Buhner 1
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[00:00:00] Hey, I hope you're well, and I just wanted to extend out my loving appreciation for you and for your decision to engage with this moment with us. If it's your first time here, welcome to the today, dream a podcast, the show is more of a space that's created to allow you to explore what cultivating the practice of presence in your life looks and feels like so that we may be able to deepen the way that we participate in the emergent world and the emergent world story.
[00:00:52] So, um, we're here in this moment together, so. I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath with me to kind of pause and just kind of come into this space together, I guess, into this place beyond time and space, where we can just be here for a moment and with nowhere to go, nothing to do. So if you haven't already feel free to gently close your eyes and as slow as you possibly can inhale through your nose,
[00:01:35] Guest: taking your
[00:01:35] time with it.
[00:01:37] And whenever it is that you may eventually reach the peak of the mountain, feel free to just pause and notice any subtleties
[00:01:53] Guest: of your
[00:01:53] ever unfolding experience.
[00:01:57] Guest: In that space before releasing with grace on the way
[00:02:47] and on your next exhale, wherever that may be, there's a gentlemen rotation to. Slowly synchronize the opening of your eyes. I might like to imagine that it's the first time that you've ever opened your eyes and connect the space of presence with your eyes closed
[00:03:13] Guest: with this
[00:03:18] more open
[00:03:24] and visual, I guess aspect.
[00:03:27] Guest: Well,
[00:03:27] since
[00:03:30] Guest: of being
[00:03:34] today's guest is Stephen peer now, and I'm going to just run through his bio a little bit. Um, when I came across Steven's work, I was quite taken aback because it he's kind of. Already written the book that I've been wanting to write for awhile, although in his own kind of language. And he's just really, I just feel really connected with Steven in the ways that he thinks.
[00:04:03] And, um, some of the ideas that he's shared. So yeah, just kind of just, yeah, really taken aback and I felt really compelled to have a conversation with him and see if we could, um, you know, see what emerged from that space out of curiosity and love really sorry. Uh, He is an earth poet philosopher. Stephen Harold Buhner is the senior researcher for the foundation for guidance studies described as body naturalist.
[00:04:39] He's the award-winning author of 19 books, including the last language of plants, the secret teaching of plants and sacred plant medicine. His most recent book is plant intelligence and the imaginal realm before retiring from the road in 2013, he taught for more than 30 years throughout north America and Europe.
[00:05:03] And he now lives in silver city, New Mexico. So, uh, four, we get into the chat with Steven. If you are enjoying the show, Please feel free to kind of get in touch and connect more deeply with myself and the community here. You can do that by sending an email, letting me know what you think. Um, any kind of questions or recommendations are always welcomed.
[00:05:28] Um, you can also leave a comment or a review if you like, um, don't feel pressured or forced. Um, but that, that's always a nice thing. Um, or just kind of maybe just tell a friend about the show. If you're getting something out of it, they might also, so that we can kind of spread this energy far and wide to anywhere anyone that may need to hear it.
[00:05:49] This conversation is going to be a two part series. This is part one. There will be a part two, it's a longer form, um, type that I'm experimenting with. So yeah, hope you get into it and I hope you get something out of it. And I hope you can feel really into this one, uh, with your heart rather than your mind.
[00:06:12] Guest: Well, um, the, the thing is the stuff that I've been working on now is kind of gloomy because I've been working then my newest book is called earth grief, the journey into, and through ecological loss. And while, you know, I found a way to, I think, um, cycled the book in such a way that by the end, the reader was feeling uplifted, but not in a sort of false hope way.
[00:06:46] Um, but it's do is feeling so much with the concept of grief and with, um, Uh, you know, sort of the ecological realities that we're in, that nobody really wants to look at. So that makes it a more gloomy kind of talk. Um, and I don't know if that's really where either of us really want to go. Um, uh, you know, when you mentioned in sewing language a lot in your original emails, and I've sort of been, um, orienting myself around that.
[00:07:28] And I play with that to some extent and earth grief, but a big part of the early part of the book is looking at dissociated mentation, which has always been a, um, a part focus of buying because it's so incredibly common in the Western world. And especially in the United States. I mean, you know, the, the English, they sort of.
[00:07:54] You know, I was reading this great book by this English writer the other day, and he said this, he had this great line. We almost hugged. But fortunately at the last second we both remembered we were English. That was great. You know? So there's that sort of reticence of emotional expression that I think the Australians have the, the Americans really have it, even though we're different than the English.
[00:08:23] And that I would think, I would say we were much more, um, well, they would say we're much cruder, but we tend to be more, um, physically expressive in a lot of different ways, but not necessarily all that more amenable to males, um, engaging in recreational weeping, you know, or something like that, that, uh, We're we tend to be focused more on the outward rather than the inward.
[00:08:53] So, you know, that whole thing is part of what I was looking at because I wanted to get away. And that book from, you know, I read everything I could find on ecological anxiety and climate grief and all of that. And virtually every one of them was they didn't want to feel feeling sorry. They wanted to redefine it so that if we do all of these things, we won't have to feel the grief anymore.
[00:09:25] So it was about descent and to, um, kind of ashes and loss, which they'd given that you've lost your mother. You've obviously, you know, unless you were totally a stranger, something you've been dealing with some of that I'm sure. So that's, um, that sort of a thing, but. And, uh, anyway. Yeah, I
[00:09:53] think with the, with the recent loss of mother, I was really interesting connection that came up through, you know, this ongoing process of, um, like a connection with the great mother as well.
[00:10:06] And, uh, I think a more deeper connection into that sense of grief as well. Um, which was, yeah, it just kind of, it just hit me like a ton of bricks and, you know, across the face or across the heart even, and all of a sudden as well, and yeah, it's, it's been a, uh, an active exploration of mine as well. And you're right.
[00:10:29] It is quite a gloomy vibe, um, in some respects, but there is, there is this kind of strange twisted beauty to it as well that I've been feeling, um, which is, which is an interesting space as well, that I've never really felt into, um,
[00:10:50] Guest: So the most men don't like to feel grief. And I'm, it's certainly true of me because I found grief to be a passive emotion, like anger. Like I'm afraid that I can get angry and do stuff about it, you know, or if something pisses me off, I've got all this energy or if I'm happy, I've got all this energy. But grief was just this thing that had to be felt.
[00:11:19] And till it sort of was, had its way with me. And then after a while, I found that it could start to move into more of a motive force, but it's an odd one. It's a very slow, um, deeper. Sort of movement 10. It has to sort of over while what happens is when the grief becomes integrated. Because at first it's not, it's just this massive event that comes from outside that we feel.
[00:11:53] And it's sort of, I mean, serious grief. It just really takes over the self. You, you can't really do much. It's like being in the middle of a hurricane or something. And, um, um, the closer that the, the thing you've lost is to your essential heart, to your self identity, the more difficult the grief is, the more overpowering it is when it hits.
[00:12:18] And over time it begins to integrate, but it takes awhile. And once severe grief is fully integrated, then it sort of there with joy and anger and fear and all of the other sort of primary emotions. But it never really goes away after that. And it sort of 11 the tendency toward, um, grandiosity or the tendency toward, you know, um, the scent wide going up and finding the light.
[00:12:50] No, we're all high. And those are the kind of stuff because it brings you like Robert boy had this great line that I've been thinking about a lot lately. He said, uh, wherever there's water, there's someone drowning.
[00:13:06] It's a great line. And that's exactly what grief does like to most people, if I say, oh, there's water, they're going to make up generally, a lot of positive stuff. They'll have positive associations like swimming, or, you know, drinking them cool water on a hot day or the way that the ocean looks in the sun or something.
[00:13:27] But then that juxtaposition, you go from that sort of immediate, um, associational thing that happens to there's somebody drowning. Then you sort of start to get the integration of what grief really means when it's fully embodied with everything else, because there really isn't anything that is solely.
[00:13:55] Um, the light are solely wonderful. And so when you get that integration, what starts to happen as a certain kind of gravity toss, you know, which has the same root as gravity and grave that there's this deepening part. And yeah, I've been thinking about wisdom for 20 or 30 years now. And it seems to me that wisdom can only emerge from that particular soil.
[00:14:22] And it does, but wisdom tends to be a bit quieter than, you know, it's a slower, quieter, deeper, um, thing then excited, um, happiness you might say, or happy or excited years. So those are kind of the things I've been working with in part, just because of my own illness, which is rather serious. And. Um, it's not going to go away.
[00:14:51] So, you know, it shifts frame of reference considerably because I'm not living in forward time anymore. I'm living in ending time and that's a whole other thing. Most of us are immersed in forward time. Most of our lives we're creating and building and going towards something. But then when you get to the end of life, it's a whole different orientation.
[00:15:19] And, um, so it flips everything in this really unusual way. And because of the way our cultures are now, we don't have a lot of. Uh, skill base, um, about that, um, you know, I was the generation before me. I was born in 52 when people died, they died in their bedroom upstairs and they were born in their bedroom upstairs.
[00:15:47] And when they died, the women would wash the body and then they would, you know, the men would put it in the coffin and then they'd set the coffin in the, and on the front room by the fireplace. And then they'd bury a middle, uh, the family plot or the local cemetery. And it was all very interactive. You might say that way.
[00:16:10] Um, but people don't have a lot of exposure to that anymore, which is one of the reasons I think that the ecological grief and anxiety people are feeling is so much more difficult because they're not used to that kind of cycle of life anymore.
[00:16:31] Would you be open and speaking to kind of a texture of experience from transitioning, um, in the modes of time that you, that you mentioned and you know, how that, how that may relate to kind of what we're going through on a collective level?
[00:16:46] Guest: Well, say it, say it more, say it a little differently so I can make sure I'm getting
[00:16:50] what you mean. Yeah. So you mentioned that you were, you know, at one stage of your life, it's all about kind of seeing time as being this forward movement. And then once you kind of, kind of moved into the process of acceptance with the illness that you have, it's, it's kind of switched a little bit and that, and the switching or the transitioning from those two modes is what I'm pointing to, I guess.
[00:17:15] Uh,
[00:17:16] Guest: yeah. Well, that's certainly we'll start with something more fun and then we can get to that. I mean, I don't mind talking about it because. It's something I've been working with and pretty deep contemplation the last eight or nine years. So we can
[00:17:33] definitely go fine. I was just kind of following the general,
[00:17:37] Guest: just, uh, and then now that we've talked a little about it, you could get a kind of sense of how I'm working with it.
[00:17:44] And, uh, but, um, so, you know, my, my work has all been about sort of this journey of, uh, uh, uh, kind of like a, a psycho, not, you know, I like these explorations of state of being, and mind and heart and engaging with the world as fully as possible with all of my senses. And that of course includes language very much so.
[00:18:17] Yeah.
[00:18:18] Yeah. I, I feel the same way and it's interesting. I think. Just kind of looking at, I kind of see something emerging and I'm not quite sure if, um, I'm, I'm giving it kind of the, I don't know what the word would be, but if I'm wrapping the right words around it, but there seems to be this sense of, um, possibly like, uh, going back deeper into nature as a contrast to kind of going deeper into the kind of technological metaverse.
[00:18:49] And, um, it seems like both things are kind of happening at the same time, um, in this kind of, um, I'm not sure about equal way, but it just seems that way. And I'm feeling into kind of the link between, uh, coming into, back into the senses and kind of reigniting the sense of liveliness amongst this kind of shift.
[00:19:11] And, um, I mean, when you speak about, uh, the kind of residents of the heart and this feeling capacity. Oh, when I've written about it and thought about it, it's always in terms of hypes or, um, kind of translating that into some sort of modern language or there's an attempt to do that. And the different even like gloominess would be kind of one type of vibe.
[00:19:36] So looking at it through that lens, I guess maybe there's a bit more fun
[00:19:40] Guest: with, that's a great place to start somewhere along there. Yeah.
[00:19:44] Yeah. So, um, yeah, I I've, does anything come up for you in that area? It does. It kind of, it's kind of open exploration. That's my work.
[00:19:53] Guest: Yeah. It's the movement from dissociated mind to engage sensory experience and in particular, um, The response of the heart to what's presented to the senses that, um, because we all have that.
[00:20:10] If I stand too close to you, you will know that I'm in your space, but nobody's really spend any time, like kind of analyzing what that is and really what it is is you've got that a field around you. And that if I get into it, um, it starts feeling funny. It's like, uh, I don't have to even touch you. It's just, it starts to feel odd.
[00:20:31] And it's because you have a sensory field that extends out from your body that can feel the touch of the world upon it. And then, you know, indigenous or, you know, ancient cultures, they could extend that field out very, very far. Um, and that was a big part of the way that they move to through the geography of, of, uh, the world.
[00:20:57] Um, because every. Thing they encountered has a sort of a unique vibe to use these more current terms, but, um, care to set an intimation of mood or feeling to it. Or there's Tim duke. This great writer up in Canada says it has a climate of mind. And so the climate of mind we have inside us is what leads to the climate out there that surrounds us.
[00:21:27] And that is a whole is becoming the climate averse. And unfortunately, um, so yeah, we're, we're kind of in this conflicted place about the two paths in front of our species. And I think most people are confronted with that path choices. Well, um, and it's, uh, the civilizational structures urging us to take.
[00:21:59] One particular path and for whatever reason, there's something in a lot of people that saying that it just doesn't feel right to do that. There's some, you know, a lot of them saying there's gotta be something else, something better than that.
[00:22:14] Yeah. And this idea of kind of the path to kind of allowing out sensory perceptions to, to move more into our kind of, or, or kind of blend more into the kind of thinking realm or thinking from a different space.
[00:22:30] And, um, even just taking that a couple of steps, maybe prior for me, it seems like coming into a sense of presence or, or, or quietness even, and, and kind of, um, getting back to basics on some level in terms of, um, you know, the ability to kind of listen to what that, that may be, or to hear. What may be kind of cold for us or which way we're going in which direction.
[00:22:57] Um, and it seems like there's certain things that may be dull, dull, the, the trajectory of, of, of the potential or the potentiality of that at like certain distractions or moving deeper into view into that kind of technological realm, if this is just how it seems to me and
[00:23:18] Guest: yeah.
[00:23:19] Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, is there anything, um, I'm trying to feel into kind of where the question around this, because I mean, there's some obvious things about that path that I I'd be curious to know if you found any kind of intricacies or interesting findings that are, um, maybe not so obvious.
[00:23:39] Um, and yeah, just to kind of, I dunno, I'm trying to feel into this space right now.
[00:23:46] Guest: It's a good thing to explore. And all we have to do is start with, um, that particular thing. I mean, you're basically all of my teaching and my writing has been focused on, um, so basically Descartes who I'd never really liked to much.
[00:24:10] And when I was, you know, 17, 18, I took a class, a philosophy class and they said, you know, they cards, cookie dough, air goes, whom I think, therefore I am. Anybody's like, oh yeah, yeah. You know, that makes sense. And I thought, yeah, I don't know if that makes sense. So actually thought about it really contemplated deeply for a little over a year.
[00:24:30] And then I finally decided, no, I don't exist because I think I just, because I feel, which would be since SHEEO air goes through and that, and actually since SHEEO to be sentient actually means to feel. Does it mean to have consciousness or to think it means to feel so. And it was since the people that are extreme rationalist who want to dissociate from their feelings, self to be objective are basically making themselves insentient or losing their sensations, you know, which I think is a hilarious way to put it.
[00:25:14] And I was doing that today with some people that got all of that. I think it's funny. They go, no, it's not, you know, you're just saying I'm not conscious. So I was like, well, not really, so, but I have a word for humor anyway, so, but it's that kind of distinction that's been present in my work from the beginning, the path of feeling and in this particular sense that I speak of.
[00:25:46] And, uh, reinhabiting the, um, my inner being with the world that way, basically. Yeah.
[00:25:53] W w what role does this coming up for me? Like, what role does kind of motivation, um, play in all of this, because I know that they can be kind of an understanding from an intellectual level of what's going on without there being a strong felt sense and that kind of numbness, I guess, of the heart can be, uh, I know like just, I I've experienced that myself at times where it's like, you know, I'd love to be more open, but I'm just not, I'm just not there in this moment.
[00:26:21] And
[00:26:21] Guest: I guess I'm not talking about being open. It can involve being open, but that's not what I'm really talking about. It's a, it's a sensory experience, like smell or lightened vision or hearing, and. You can do a lot of things with it. Like you can, with vision, you can focus it down to a little tiny thing or expand it out to a more broad view.
[00:26:45] Um, so, but for me, it always started with, it started with one question, which is how do I feel? You know? And, but I, but I changed that because it was too easy to get confused. Like, oh, I feel sad, you know, which is not really what I, where I meant to go with it. So I would say, how does it feel? How does this room feel?
[00:27:09] You know? And, and you know, when I'm in this room, am I happy? You know? And do I like it, you know? And so it began to be orienting myself because I noticed when I was around the certain, uh, kind of, if there was a high level of aesthetic to where I was, I felt that. I breathe better. I was happier. So that was kind of the golden thread that I began to follow.
[00:27:44] There's something in this thing that feels a certain way to that sensing part of me that feels good. And there's certain things and these other things that it doesn't feel good. There's some, there's an absence of this quality that, um, I'm seeking. And so in the beginning it was very rudimentary. I mean, I was, you know, I've told him at 16, I didn't know anything except for, I, you know, I didn't want to end up like my parents.
[00:28:16] So it was like, yeah. Okay. So I just started following that thing. So you might say, and probably back then I was using vibe or energy or this thing has good energy and I would follow that thing and try to get more of it. But I didn't have that part of me had not been trained in, uh, to ability to discriminate with great sensitivity yet.
[00:28:40] I was sort of reclaiming, uh, uh, capacity that had become atrophied. Um, and that certain people that are in certain artistic, different fields, whether it's music or painting or writing or whatever have reclaimed that sense. Uh, but certainly not all of them. And, uh, So it was following that thing. Um, and the decision to not end up in a kind of a wooden life like my parents.
[00:29:12] Yeah.
[00:29:13] And I feel like that's what I was, that was, that was kind of what I was pointing to with the idea of openness. Was this, was this kind of, maybe it was more of a willingness or maybe it wasn't any choice at all. And it was just kind of the natural progression that float on from your kind of, you know, your experience at the time.
[00:29:30] But it was like, there seems to be a, there seems to be maybe possibly at a choice point there of, you know, I'm going to follow this feeling. I'm going to kind of see where this leads, because it it's quite often quite a scary thing to do because it doesn't make sense to that. The function that you've been using to make sense for most of your
[00:29:51] Guest: life.
[00:29:52] That's correct. And also most people wouldn't understand what your. Yeah. And so it's you, you know, I refer to it as leaving the house that rationality built and opening the door and walking out on the porch and then heading off cross country. And it's very much like our ancestors moving to, you know, north America or Australia, you know, 200 years ago or whenever.
[00:30:23] And just, you know, when people came here and the 15 hundreds, there were no roads or, or paths or anything, they just said, oh, I'll just set off, you know, and what an amazing kind of idea that is. And, uh, this is like doing that in a similar way, but the, uh, the landscape is, uh, more invisible. You might.
[00:30:48] And is there more of the training process that you've discovered rather than just taking that leap over and over again and kind of, you know, um, moving into it, um, more and more over time.
[00:30:58] Is there, is there, is there anything else that, that you could point to in terms of this training that you mentioned?
[00:31:05] Guest: Well, it's training the discriminatory sense, like, okay. I like this clay pot, but I don't like that clay pot. Why, why do I have that feeling toward this one? Matt? When have you, have you started the recording yet?
[00:31:21] Uh, yeah, it's been recording from the beginning, but I can cut out anything you don't
[00:31:25] Guest: want to talk about.
[00:31:31] I still don't know what's going on, you know, but you did so anyway. Um, okay. So let me tell you this story. Okay. So there's these three guys and I've written it out. And a huge amount of detail in one of the books I'm working on now, but there's these three guys up in Canada and they decided just because they were young and they had the time that they were going to build a canoe and the old way, you know, the way indigenous people did in Canada, long before them.
[00:32:02] And so they did, they spent a long time building a Birch bark canoe, and, you know, using pine tar to seal the joints. And then they carved all of the struts and everything and made the paddles by hand. And then it was a pretty big canoes, three of them. And they're gonna, they're gonna sail all the way.
[00:32:21] They're gonna we'll paddle all the way across Canada and it's going to take them a whole year. So anyway, they spend months making the canoe. And then, then when spring comes, they start on the east coast. And I, again, I have traced out the whole pathway, which I don't remember, and they. Um, you know, so then they set off and then they make it about halfway and they have to step the winner there.
[00:32:53] And then they have all kinds of adventures, like falling in and getting sick because you know, one of the guys made the soup. Actually one of the guys made the coffee in the pot. They'd had fish heads do it in the wash. It very well, you know? So all these different kinds of adventures and they, they go across the whole thing and all these amazing adventures happen to them.
[00:33:16] And then they get to the other side of Canada may actually go up north and they come out into this, the sea, you know, and they, they were so close, they just kept going. And so they come up and it's dark and there's no lights anywhere. Cause they're very far from any kind of cities or anything. And they come out in the.
[00:33:42] No, the Northern lights are just filling the heavens with all of the colors that only the Northern lights. No. And then the Milky way is this huge spread across the sky. And the sea is just as clear as glass. It's just a silent unmoving. And so all of the heavens are reflected in the sea and the men are deepened reflection to these young men.
[00:34:07] And so they, they were telling, they told this story to a, uh, teacher that I went to here talk with. So she tells her story and then she says, so I asked them, what was it like? And the guy says, wow, man, it was totally intense. And then she looks at us and she goes, one of the great experiences of humankind.
[00:34:31] Lost from an inability to articulate.
[00:34:35] Yeah. Yeah. I was just, yeah, it's interesting that you kind of, you're pointing to that. It's like, even, even when we try to it kind of diminishes, cause I noticed this when I've been traveling, like I've set out on these, these kinds of journeys in different ways. And I come back and on my initial trips, I've wanted to kind of share all these kinds of cool and funny stories with friends.
[00:34:57] Cause I remember thinking, you know, it might help me sound cool or they might be able to get an idea of, you know, all the crazy things I did. And I got back and you know, said all these things to people and they just blank faces. Like it was nothing like the experience. And then I gradually began to realize that, you know, I'm not going to share the stories.
[00:35:15] Like I got back from my last trip, which was the longest one I've ever had. And I just didn't even say a word to anyone, you know? Cause it S things maintained I think. And I think almost. Um, now that I'm thinking or feeling into it, absorbed into my being that I can maybe share in, in, uh, in, in the way that I walked through the earth, rather than through transforming it into language, if that makes sense.
[00:35:40] Guest: It does. for me though, the real point of that, because when I, you know, when I left home and, uh, uh, from Dallas, Texas, a horrible place to be seen in 68 and I hitchhiked to Berkeley, California, and it was the sixties were going strong and I happened to end up in, uh, sharing a flat with a bunch of interesting, weird people.
[00:36:04] One of the guy that had just finished his master's degree, doing studies on LSD, when, of course he, and all of his friends in the program took a lot of it themselves, you know? And so, but he was, uh, really into this whole idea of becoming articles. And, um, it sorta just was something that stuck in my head, you know?
[00:36:31] And then I began to realize this. I went on later and I tried to describe things to people that they just weren't getting it. And that's when I really started focusing more as time went on, on language and the ability to capture these invisibles that had this, these very strong feelings to capture them in language.
[00:36:58] So you feel this kind of Trish and almost on your skin when, you know, you, you hear the story or that you're moved by it, you know, and, and, and most of my books, I try to have some stories like that in there, you know, and then my book on language. Um, how to really talk about how to capture invisibles in languages in soling language is the name of the book.
[00:37:27] You know, there's a number of those stories in there about that were just these sort of amazing ordinary days. I mean, they're just a regular day, but these sort of amazing things happen seemingly out of the blue and it takes a certain amount of pacing and a certain amount of pauses silences are important, but more than anything, it's talking about these kind of experiences that they're really common to people, but that we never really talked much about them.
[00:38:08] Like. Um, you know, the basic place I always start is because this is an experience and pretty much everybody's had, doesn't matter where in the world they're from, but you know, a friend says, Hey, let's go. We heard about that new restaurant. Let's go and eat. There you go. Okay. And so you go out for lunch or dinner or whatever, and you walk in the door and then both of you kind of stop and go, oh, this place feels funny.
[00:38:38] Let's go someplace else. Okay. But that, that's the feeling, since that I'm talking about work extremely, we have a very ancient, very potent evolutionarily developed, um, capacity to perceive the meaning of saying, uh, you know, and it's that felt, we feel it, that. Yeah, I'm sure most people have had the experience of seeing a car drive down their street.
[00:39:09] And then something feels a little scary about it. I don't know about the people in that car, you know, or our window, a little puppy walks into the room, but hasn't seen you yet. And you're looking at the puppy and you're just sort of caught up in that puppy penis they're so involved and so cute and just their nose is just so focused on the carpet or whatever.
[00:39:31] And then you go here, boy, and the puppy looks up and you just feel this sort of exchange of energy that goes back and forth between you and the puppy bounds over and you pick it up and you're both so happy to be, but see that moment of exchange. Everybody knows about that. You have it with people you love with your girlfriend or your boyfriend.
[00:39:49] You have it with your pets and you can even have it with a great tree or great stone formation when you're walking in the woods and you come unexpectedly on. You know, but we don't have a word for that, no language, or we don't have a word for this sort of ability to feel the mood of things. Um, the feeling tone that all, everything around us possess.
[00:40:15] And so that, you know, it took me. So I've been hunting words for decades and decades, and it was when I read James Hillman's the soul's code that I came across. You know the word thesis, which was an ancient Athenian term for like that moment of exchange with the puppy where some soul essence leaves by body and goes to the puppy and some soul essence leaves the puppy and it comes over to me and we both breathe it in, there's always this moment of like inspiration and the Athenians all said that inspiration comes from the environment, not from inside ourselves.
[00:40:56] And there's that exchange where you breathe it in. And then something in the puppy goes inside me. Something for me, goes inside the puppy and there's a special kind of intimacy that occurs. And that can happen with any thing really in the world around us. But that's one that almost everybody has had an experience of.
[00:41:21] So I point I could point these things out and people go, oh yeah. So it doesn't have to be. No kind of a grandiose thing or a, you know, or you'd needing archaic or strange language even, you know, or some sort of technical language that people with PhDs makeup. It's just these common things that we do that.
[00:41:45] But that's since seeing that we have is we don't, we don't talk about it. And it's that, that thing where I think it was a good, good sign that said those things that we do not have language for repass over in silence. And we spend a lot of our time having depth and richness of. Experience that we never developed because we don't have a way to talk about it.
[00:42:11] Yeah.
[00:42:12] This is, this is really exciting me. Cause I, I guess I'm kind of at around. Um, but I feel really connected to that point that you mentioned when you started kind of exploring this kind of poetic vibe and the reason for it. And, and that's, that's almost exactly what I'm where I'm at in this moment.
[00:42:27] And it's only kind of a new space of exploration for me. And, um, I've got this wondering around, um, you know, once that exploration began, was there a change in the kind of frequency or potency of these, of these moments or, or, or in the way that you were present seeing them? Um, yeah. And what did that, what was the texture of that changes is my curiosity.
[00:42:51] Guest: Well, it's interesting. So, um, you know, you have to understand that even if it's not conscious, there's a reason why the aesthetic. Sensibility and people has been atrophied. Okay. So because, so just think about school. I didn't, I didn't sit in school really well. I had kind of like on the Asperger spectrum somewhere, you know, I'm moderately functional, but it took me a long time.
[00:43:26] Do you know a lot of social cues? I just don't get, I had to learn about a lot of them and some of them still don't make any sense to me. I have this horrible habit of saying things out loud to everybody. It's like, you know, we don't talk like that here. So, but anyway, the thing is, you know, sitting in school, the rooms don't have any aesthetic dementia.
[00:43:51] They're just a square box. And the chairs don't really have an aesthetic dimension and there's nothing really rich about them. And they're all like to thrill practical kind of corporate thing, you know, and you know, the I've started to extend the word brutalism and a lot of directions that it's probably not meant to go, but there is this architectural style that started coming in after world war two in the fifties and sixties called brutalism.
[00:44:22] And then, you know, the big cement buildings that they make, you know, there's no, not even any plaster on them, you know, they're different brutal, and it was sort of Soviet architecture, but a lot of the Americans got into it and it's just become sort of a national style. And then a lot of the houses, which in the thirties, even, and even in the forties, there was a lot of aesthetic detail to them here.
[00:44:48] They just started becoming more square boxes because you get more. Uh, room area, and it doesn't cost as much money and everything's just, you know, nice and square and Y walls and everything. And there's, so we start being sort of surrounded by this particular, um, mindset, you know, it's got the house has its own climate of mind.
[00:45:13] I'm sure that's another thing that people know, but, you know, and they might mention it. But if you walk into a house that feels really rich and warm, like a home and really love it, you can tell as soon as you walk in and if you walk in one that feels kind of cold and distant, you feel that too. So then, then the question is, okay, what's the difference?
[00:45:33] And so I went through this long period of time where I began to replace everything that I owned with something that had more of that aesthetic feeling to it, so that when I looked at it, I would have. Since of like a richness or depth or like a home that felt loving, you know, whatever my, that was drawing me to those things.
[00:46:02] And so I began to surround myself more and more with only those things. And it took a long time, but the more I did that, the more that quality of perception and my ability to distinguish was developed. So then I could start to maybe articulate more about why and a huge element of it is the amount of love that people put that the artisans put into the thing they made.
[00:46:38] Because they're talking to the material all the time, they're loving the material, they're shaping it. It says just as if they're being spending time with their beloved, this person that they love and the two things together, sort of the material that's being loved and the person something more than the sum of the parts comes into being.
[00:47:02] So, um, I'm sure pretty much everybody's been in buildings that seem to have a really massive aesthetic depth to them. And like, there are certain Zen temples I've been into that were, they were built by a Japanese artists into the old way. And those things are alive from the moment that they're finished because they're spending all of this time talking to the wood, loving the wood, hiding a certain form.
[00:47:34] And the woodgrain itself and urging that line to come more into prominence because there's this whole communication dynamic that occurs. And I've spent much of my life working with wood in that way. Some of my first teachers were, um, men who looked really rough to the eye, but had this deep poetic sensibility about the shaping of wood and, um, the things that they would create while they did that.
[00:48:04] And, um, so they sort of initiated me into that sort of way of being and, um, and that concept of putting arrows or love into the work that we do. It's very much in disfavor now because it takes long. And it takes a kind of focus of heart and mind that people aren't aware as possible or even wanted or needed or, or anything anymore.
[00:48:38] They're not, it's not requested of most people, usually it's artists want to do it. And they, they insist on it. You know, much of their families dismayed quite often, but like even in music, see music, musical notes or each musical note is filled with it has a meaning in it. Right. We maybe can't say what it is, but when we feel a musical note, there's definitely some sort of a feeling tone, emotional tone that we pick up.
[00:49:07] And then when the notes are, are put all together, when it's composed, if there's a communication that occurs in one, um, classical composer, I heard talk about it goes, look, if, if we could say it, in words, we'd use words. But there's the states of experience and the feeling of being that human beings have that, that can't be captured in words, only music could do it, but it can also be captured.
[00:49:38] You see, in the way a great Potter throws a pot,
[00:49:44] you mean through remain, throw is in
[00:49:46] Guest: smashes for making the pipe. Yeah. So, and that's in, when Craig craftsman work with woods to shape these things, you feel this, something you're encountering something alive. Yeah, as soon as you do when you experience great music.
[00:50:07] So that's the thing you see that I've been following ever since I was young, that living thing to understand it, nature, to throne myself by it, to learn how to do it myself. And in the process of that, I became more alive, you know, um, Robert Bly had this great image. He was one of my great mentors, said, you know, when we're born, we're 360 degree personalities radiating out energy in all directions.
[00:50:41] And. As we start to be civilized and domesticated, you know, we start cutting off parts of ourselves, you know, you know, our mother says, oh, it's not nice to try and kill your brother. So yeah, we put the part of us that was five in this long bag of shadows, 30 behind that's where they say, oh, don't be ugly.
[00:51:00] So we put a part of ourselves, we think is ugly in there. And you know, pretty soon we're down to just this one little sliver of self that slab. And you know, that I noticed that in my parents and a lot of the adults that I knew when I was young, they looked like somebody just beat the hell out of them, you know?
[00:51:19] And I thought, you know, I really want to learn what ever they learned. It doesn't look like it's any fun. I think I want to do something else. And so, you know, even though I didn't think about it that way, I was figuring out how to reclaim that 360 degree personality to have that sort of. Um, aesthetic depth, um, be alive inside me.
[00:51:47] And the more I focused on the doubts there, the more I tried to do it in language or with would, are with when I would teach, it was more of a performance art to me rather than just a talk. Then the more I did that, the more it seemed to come alive in me, the surface of my body became much more aesthetically attuned and the quality of my thoughts shifted.
[00:52:17] And, um, then it just started becoming this quite amazing adventure all the time.
[00:52:24] Yeah. I what's coming up for me. Is this kind of this continual, um, I would say opportunity to practice or challenge in some way of that meeting. Uh, The way, you know, that the way in which you've been brought up, that the, you know, the tension point between, um, the reopening and, um, the way the habitual energy has been formed and the kind of continual kind of having to step into that space and, and the difficulty of that and the, and the, and the, yeah, how scary that can be, because, and then also the unexpected, um, the lights and gifts, or surprises that arise from continuing to show up and trusting into that space.
[00:53:16] Uh, um, I don't know. That's just something that's
[00:53:19] Guest: chief. Like as soon as we start school, we start being trained out of that. Right. So by the time we get to the point, you know, we haven't redoing really have a vote unless. I decided to be really a pain in the ass when we were six or seven and some people do, but I didn't, I just became this kind of wooden.
[00:53:41] Yeah, sure. Whatever kind of guy and, uh, shut down and very unaware. But, you know, and then I, my head was filled with all this junk. I mean, uh, they pretty much spent, you know, the first 16 years of my life teaching me all this nonsense that I've been spending the rest of my life, trying to get rid of most of it, because it's not accurate to the real world, you know?
[00:54:05] And so. Like one of the main things that happens for instance is little kids will sit in their yard and talk to plants and trees or ants. They're pretty the children or animals know from the beginning. They also don't like wearing clothes and very much, you know, they have to be really trained, you know, to wear clothes, you know, and after a while they sort of get the concept of like, oh, there's something wrong with my naked body.
[00:54:34] I better call, you know, cover it up, you know? And that kind of goes no place to go the only time. But you know, then the other thing that happens is, you know, they start talking about how the trees are alive and have feelings or the flowers in there pretty much told pretty insistently that no, they don't, that's just stuff, you know, it's not alive, like we're alive.
[00:54:56] And so things begin to constrict down considerably, but artisans, no. Anyone that works in the deep way I'm talking about, they know that what they're working with is alive, that it exerts pressure and that it, it would see would if you're working with wood in that way, the wood wants to be something and it doesn't want you to make it something it's not, it'll have a certain direction that it urges you to move into, go as you're shaping it into form.
[00:55:35] And the same with language, almost all writers that are decent writer, real writers, rather than typist of which are too many. They will tell you that they'll start writing a book and the book will say, Take over and begin to go where it needs to go, because it's like it's as if story lives some place else when it's not being told there's some, you know, world or dimension or place that stories live when they're resting.
[00:56:06] And when, as a writer, you began to reach for story and you began writing it, it, it starts to insist after a while about how it's going to be written. Now, this thing sounds odd to a lot of people, some writers type actually are you about that? They don't, they don't agree with that, but the majority of writers actually do.
[00:56:30] So what they're getting to hear is there's some sort of a force other than the human being that helps shape these things. And for me, it comes from the material itself. You know, the, the wood that I'm working with, you know, it, it will capture my attention in a certain way. There'll be a certain kind of, not our line of grain that will suggest a certain direction and the shape for whatever it is I'm beginning to make.
[00:57:06] And the same thing happens with when I'm writing. I, you know, maybe I will get all build up a lot of energy and then I go and I sit down and I start writing and a lot of it's just typing, but there might be, um, one line in there that just really is luminous, you know, and that there's something more about it.
[00:57:30] And so I go back to that one because it seems to resonate more. It seems more alive. I feel almost a kind of a mild to simply kind of a feeling. And then I start to develop. So, and then. Begins to take me on some sort of a, a journey. It's what the poet William Stafford referred to as golden threads that this thing touches us.
[00:57:56] And it's got this quality to it. And if you have spent a long time training yourself to deepen your aesthetic sense, and then you follow that thing, then you know, it's a good thing. It's some kind of a golden thing. I think
[00:58:15] there's something to be said about the, the sense of it. And then there's something else to be said about the following of it.
[00:58:22] Cause I think they seem like they're separate and, and yeah, there seems
[00:58:27] Guest: to be like, and William Stafford made the point. He says, you know, the thing is you can't pull on the thread too hard, otherwise you'll break it and you'll lose your way. You have to go away.
[00:58:42] And
[00:58:42] Guest: so. Another way to look at that because he was primarily a poet.
[00:58:48] So he wasn't caught in a, um, uh, you know, a scientific discipline or a, an academic discipline that he couldn't go out of the city. Um, people that are, have degrees, they're stuck in sort of a, a silo. Um, and they're not supposed to go out of that. You know, if you're a chemist, you're not really supposed to spend time in archeology or anthropology, you know, so they just sort of, they can't really see what's the wall, but the interesting thing about golden threads, if you're not stuck in a silo like that, is that they connect apparently disparate thing.
[00:59:27] You know, things that don't appear to have any connections with each other. Aren't in that. And that's why some of the, um, the poets can do these amazing things because they're finding associations in language that has been lost, you know? And, um, you're, you're just kind of reading along and all of a sudden you end up someplace else that you didn't really expect, you know, like, uh, um, here's one of my short pumps I got in Machado did MP Antonio Machado did a lot of really short poems and I got into that for awhile.
[01:00:13] And one of mine is, uh, because you know, my whole life people have been talking about how they needed to find a place to belong and they just felt they didn't belong anywhere. Yeah. Some people want to go to have, if you want to go to a company and, you know, people have all different kinds of ideas, but they're basically, they don't feel at home.
[01:00:34] And I thought about this for, you know, years and years, and probably wrote this poem that goes like, this is very short, there's one place and all the universe it's been made, especially for you. And it's inside your own feet,
[01:00:58] sending a loving breeze of gratitude in your direction. Thank you so much for sharing space with us here and now.
[01:01:07] And if you want some more information about our guests, you can head over to today, dream.com and check it, check out the episode section on the page. Um, also if you're someone that's interested in deepening your practice of presence, if you want. Work together with someone to structure a spiritual practice, whether it's an existing one or a new one.
[01:01:31] And if you're looking to build consistency is define your ambition and recalibrate your trajectory in a way that's more in line with wholeness and in a way that contributes and participates more fully in the emergent world story. And it's blossoming and feel free to get in touch because I'm taking on a small handful of one-on-one clients, spiritual friends.
[01:01:56] Um, and I'd love to speak to you if you did enjoy this episode and you felt like you got something out of it, feel free to share it with your community. And if you feel like there's anyone in particular that could benefit from the space shed today, uh, I would really appreciate if you'd pass it on to them and I'm sure they would too.
[01:02:15] And yeah, I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you again, my friend and.
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Stephen Buhner 2
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[00:00:00] Host: Hey, welcome to today's room of podcast. If it's your first time here today, dreamer is all about creating a space where we can cultivate with one another, the practice of presence in our lives, and really explore what, you know, a deeper participation into the emergent world story looks like for us. How can we more deeply participate and contribute and maybe this kind of collective journey, sorry.
[00:00:34] Today is part two of a conversation I had with Steven Buna. If you haven't had a chance yet, I would definitely listen into and feel into part one, uh, before kind of jumping into this one. Um, but yeah, let's get into it and I hope you love the show.
[00:00:54] Guest: There's one place and all the units. It's been made, especially for you and it's inside your own feet.
[00:01:11] Nobody expects the poem to go there, but there's a certain grounding dynamic that happens when you suddenly realize that there's this special place that's been made exactly for you. And it's different than every other place. But most people aren't really grounded in their bodies like that. So it's kind of a shock for them.
[00:01:35] And there's sort of this shifting of orientation when that last line is heard.
[00:01:43] Host: Yeah, I feel like it's kind of pointing to. It's interesting. You said that because what you were kind of, um, kind of describing just prior, it seems what came to me was this idea of walking and then the path will reveal itself and, um, the walk itself, uh, it's like a reminder of that, that kind of, you gave me a really beautiful reminder and I'm sure everyone listening will feel the same as is that, that idea of just kind of, um, moving into that or trusting and moving into and, you know, cause sometimes I feel like what can happen is I realized that in it and then I forget it.
[00:02:24] And when I forget it, it's like, it's like, I imagine how things are going to play out and it never fits. Right. And it stops me from it kind of stunts my movement. And when I remember and I move it kind of almost. Takes care of itself, as long as there's, there's a kind of, um, presence involved and, and, and, uh, uh, like a subtle noticing the subtlety of the experience, just to kind of gently pull on that thread.
[00:02:52] And when you kind of shared that poem, just now, it's beautiful that you brought it back into this kind of embodied feeling and back into the feet, which kind of, for me, reminds me of the walking,
[00:03:04] Guest: right? And so there's, you know, Gandhi had this scrape thing, he would say, he said, you know, the, the step and the destination are the same thing, they're meant to be the same thing.
[00:03:19] So that, I mean, what he's talking about is that there's a quality that has to be in the step and every step you take. And if that quality is in the step that you take, then the destination is always assured. It doesn't mean that things are going to turn out. Well, it doesn't mean I'm not going to get old or be sick or suffer hardships.
[00:03:43] But, you know, in Stafford said that, he said, the thing is, all those things are still going to happen, but you never let go of the threat. People ask what you're doing. And you tell them that you're following the thread. They don't really understand what you mean, you know, but it's like, you have a hold of this thing.
[00:04:00] That's invisible. Another way he put it was he called it actually writing the Australian crawl. He said, which is a kind of a swimming stroke. He said, people that stand on the bank, watch us move our hands and bodies through an invisible medium. And we go from here to there, but they can't see how we do it because the thread is can only be, felt it can't be.
[00:04:27] And so it just takes time to develop. The acuity of sensitivity that you need and to continue to follow the thread. And that basically means you make a zillion mistakes. You know, a friend of mine, the writer, John Denny's and mystery writer, who said, when I was starting out, I said, you know, every, writer's got a million words of bullshit in them.
[00:04:50] And the only way to get it out is to write it out. And so over time, then what happens is there's less and less bullshit that you ride. So it gets closer and closer to a final form because you've gotten used to what the right words feel like because they're laid down in the line, but it's the same way moving through life that you, um, and all of these kinds of serendipities tend to occur when you're following that feeling sense like that through the world.
[00:05:27] And you might say. Somebody gives their love to that aesthetic sensibility. And that's what they decided to follow in life. But it quite often happens that you can't talk about it with very many people, because most people don't do that. Most people are doing other things. And yet at the same time, you can't really take your eye off of the need to make a living for, to have food, to eat, have, you know, people that you love and that love you.
[00:05:56] And you know, all of those kinds of things that we need in that sense. And my goal a long time ago was to figure a way to get paid for, for following my aesthetic sense. So to get paid for writing or to get paid for the performance art that people fought, I was a bit, it was a lecture, you know, uh, The woodworking that I did when I did that for a long time, but, uh, it always entailed lifting a lot of heavy things and breathing.
[00:06:32] Where does, so, you know, I much prefer writing and talking.
[00:06:38] Host: Yeah. So, interesting questions come up. Um, yeah. And so many things I really want to ask you about, um, just about kind of the parallels between our journeys, because it seems like there's quite a lot of them, but what's coming up for me is this real curiosity around synchronicities and the link between the synchronicities or the, or the, those serendipitous moments and the sensors.
[00:07:02] Uh I'm just, and, and maybe, I don't know, like the frequency of them or, um, how, how they, how they've maybe shown up on along your journey and what your relationship to those moments is now. Um, I've just got a curiosity around that. Lincoln, if there's anything that comes up for you in that space,
[00:07:22] Guest: No, this brings up this concept called gambler's ruin because we really live a life is non-linear and it's not rational or irrational. It's non rational because the universe is a non rational place. And rationality can only get you so far. Right. And if you stick with rationality, then you know, it becomes kind of the desert that you're in.
[00:07:45] But in any event, for me, there's always a life-threatening event that happens at every stage of life when I was being born at adolescents middle-age and now the transition into old age. And so sort of goes like this. So, because at each stage I'm becoming a different person. There's qualities of self that begin to emerge.
[00:08:11] Now people can see that most easily. And the transition from childhood to young adulthood in passing through that adolescent stage, all of a sudden people become sexual beings or that, that was a person that wasn't wasn't there like five years ago, you know? And, um, these other qualities of self, I mean, everybody recognizes the, the surly teenager, you know, when they see it and there's these kinds of qualities, so a different sort of personality that's encoded in our biological organism, even though nobody can find exactly where it's located, it sort of comes into being.
[00:08:51] And then, you know, there's a number of different ones. There's a lot of ones that happen very quickly in childhood. You know, the nine months old is real different than the two year old. Different than the four year old, the three-year-olds different. So you've got these sort of developmental stages, but each one has sort of a different personality to it and different capacities, different ways of interacting.
[00:09:16] You know, the two year old has this very strong will, you know, that's important in life, but then you've got these 60 year old men and middle-aged, they talk about this middle-aged shift. And there's a lot of jokes made about it, um, towards both men and women, but different kinda personality comes into play there too.
[00:09:37] And another one at, um, when you go into old days. So the way it works for me is, you know, the transition periods are rough. I always get really sick. Things are really messy. And then they, things begin to kind of settle out and I began to, um, find my way and get my balance with it. And since I'm doing. From this sort of aesthetic orientation then, because these other qualities or personalities come into being, I have to get to know them and sort of integrate better.
[00:10:16] I'm not the way I was, you know, five years ago or anything. And so I do, and then I started to find my balance with it. So I'm moving through the world and following this, these aesthetic census through the world, um, whether it's, you know, I have an idea for a book and I start seeking out. For instance, I started sort of orienting my thinking and my feeling around this new book that I'm working on.
[00:10:49] And oddly enough, as time goes on, there's this weird synchronicity that starts to occur, that I go to a friend's house and I sit down and there is the exact book I need as sitting on their table. I pick it up and read it and I go, huh? That's exactly. This is exactly what I needed is a resource. Are I find one on a park bench are, you know, I'm talking to somebody and they go, oh, have you read such?
[00:11:16] And so, right. And so then maybe I'll do the doing research on the internet, finding, trying to find, you know, something that I'm looking for. And all of a sudden this it's almost like a little door open. So I just find this rich trove of stuff. And then people start to call me to have me teach. And it becomes these really magical moments.
[00:11:44] And it just like, eventually it seems as if I could do no wrong. I mean, literally everything I do is like perfect, you know? And I love those moments. I love those periods of time and that'll go on for a long time. And it's sort of when. Uh, they occur when I'm most sort of present and balanced in this particular thread that I happen to be following at that time.
[00:12:10] Well,
[00:12:10] Host: sorry. What do you mean by that? Most present and balanced. What do you mean by, um, with the,
[00:12:16] Guest: okay, so, so when the writer's writing a book, if they're really serious writer and they've done it for a while, they know how the territory goes. Pretty soon, everything is about the book. Literally the book becomes real and the rest of life becomes almost dreamlike.
[00:12:40] Okay. And all of life becomes a metaphor for the book itself. And so what happens is it's it's as if the story that's emerging from you in the book begins to almost pull you towards. Certain events are those events towards you so that, you know, tobacco I'll back up a little bit. When writers write, when a writer sits down to write, they enter a dream world, they enter a kind of a specific kind of dream stay.
[00:13:17] They began dreaming and the story comes through them and flows onto the page. And then when later we buy the book and read it, we enter the dream that the writer dream
[00:13:28] Host: that's beautiful.
[00:13:31] Guest: And so, but as a writer, immerses themself more and more in a particular book, they literally are in this dreaming state all the time.
[00:13:45] And so I've, I've done that where I've been in the middle of it. I go to the post office, I'm in line and there's a guy in front of me, but I know quite well. I've known him for like 20 years and he goes, hi, how are you doing? I look at him. I go, who are you? You know, it's like, and he goes, it's me, Michael.
[00:14:01] And then all of a sudden I click it and I go, oh yeah, sorry. I'm in the middle of writing. And time has no meaning either. So I'm so immersed in that, that, you know, I might be focused on some, um, aspect of the book, for instance. Uh, um, I mean, I can't even think of an example right now, and I'm like struggling to solve some problem of the story that I'm telling.
[00:14:32] And I just, some sort of inmates spot. And for whatever reason, both my, my deep unconscious, my dreams, the things I encounter in life, they all sort of converge together to bring that solution forward. Uh, whether I find it in a book on a friend's table, RLC, I, you know, a lot of times if I stop and I, you know, vacuum the floor or something, or wash the windows or do something like that and change my focus, all of a sudden it's like the deep unconscious keeps working on it.
[00:15:08] And all of a sudden the whole thing just burst right into awareness of its own accord, all writers talk about that sort of thing. And when I was doing woodworking and creating one of a kind pieces, the same, I was searching for the form that would happen then too. So it gets to be this sort of dance where it says, I am.
[00:15:36] The outside world collaborate together to create this thing.
[00:15:40] Host: Do you feel like that's happening on, if you zoom out a little bit in terms of the guy in hot and mind in, and kind of these, these little inspirations and, um, I guess vibes that, that have felt kind of, and these different kind of waves that move through the collective in terms of, um, kind of common points of, I think
[00:16:03] Guest: about it.
[00:16:04] I think about it in a very non reductive mechanical rationalist, non sort of monotheistic frame to me everything's alive. I live in an animist universe and to me I'm just that capacity that I had as a child is pretty much completely reclaimed to me. Everything has a personality. And everything is communicated with me all the time.
[00:16:34] It's so I'm embedded in this field of interaction. I'm not like this isolated intelligence on a ball of resources going around the sun, you know, and there is this sort of connectivity, uh, uh, an emotional, but it kind of a feeling connectivity between me and everything else. So, and that's really actually an accurate ecological statement because we emerge out of earth itself into an ecological matrix, uh, a living, um, It's just living field of meaning that the earth has been generating for four and a half billion years.
[00:17:25] And it generates all of these different forms and every form that is done. So for an ecological reason, it's not happenstance that whole, it happens by accident stuff is what, you know, weird rationalist make up, but that's not the way it works. So could
[00:17:42] Host: you maybe just talk about, I don't know if you're open to the idea and even through poetry might be interesting, but the stages that you went through of moving from this kind of narcissistic, um, place where tendencies in that area might be coming up to becoming more of this kind of, uh, speaking on behalf of itself in your life.
[00:18:03] Guest: Yeah. Well, the problem becomes with this is that you're leaving the house that rationality is built for you and people can. Now, some people find it intriguing and they want to spend time and find out more about it. And other people become very offended. And so, um, the thing that I didn't realize when I began is that I was becoming other, you see, because living this kind of life, it's a different than what the Western cultures doing.
[00:18:43] It's more akin to what indigenous cultures that haven't had a lot of contact with the outside world. Do they live in an animal world where everything is alive and communicating with them and there's a. Uh, conversations that occur in sharing, so that occur. So for me to reclaim that sense, you know, it's like, I call it the journey back to wild water because when I was very young, I spent a lot of time with my great-grandfather on a farm in Indiana, and we would fish and lay on this pond and, and just be with each other.
[00:19:22] And he loved me so much. I could feel that sort of feel the love surrounding me. And I kind of took it in me, you know, this kind of soul lesson from the 19th century of this man. And, um, one day he leaned over and cupped his hand under the water and said, have you ever tasted this water? It's really good.
[00:19:45] And it's the first time I ever remember tasting wild water. So you see, of course my mother caught me drinking wild water, not long after and told me it would kill me. And so I began to be afraid of wildlife. So the journey back to wild water is a long one because there's this we're trained to be afraid of what's out there.
[00:20:11] Um, I don't really know why there's lots of fantasies about that. But so when I started following this thread, eventually I had two worrying realities inside me, one, this animus world and the other, the sort of rational mechanical world that said, oh, we're just chemical interactions and consciousness is an illusion.
[00:20:35] And
[00:20:38] exactly, and there's really literally sort of as a golf that you ended up having to cross. And one time when I was really beginning to really leave that whole rationalist mechanical world behind experience, Julie, there was this woman, a mentor I went to. And then this man to grow and she's, you know, and I was very upset and I talked and talked to talk to her one time and then she just looked at me and she said, oh, oh, I see you're you're you've been being a bridge.
[00:21:11] Haven't you? Well, that's nice. But the only problem with being a branch is that you yourself never get to cross over. I've read that
[00:21:20] Host: in your book. I don't know. I just, I need more information in that space. This is, I feel like I'm almost you and you're almost her, and you're saying this through her in a way it's a me, but I don't, I don't, I'm not quite
[00:21:33] Guest: like yeah.
[00:21:37] Between these two worlds. Yeah. Spending more time learning about that other world and sort of exploring it. Um, but I was still staying pretty much in the rational world. I was explaining to everybody, we'll look through this, see that great landscape over there, and we can do all these things and isn't it wonderful.
[00:21:56] But really what was true is I was afraid to cross over because I instinctively knew that some, um, differences would occur if I did. And then when I realized that it was more a cowardice on my part, rather than, you know, that I was actually being, you know, humanitarian and helping everybody understand that we lie to ourselves.
[00:22:24] So cleverly. And so finally I just thought, well, what would happen if I just totally immersed myself in that other world?
[00:22:32] Host: How though? Like, is that just, that's just, that's coming back to what we were saying about just letting go into the feeling.
[00:22:40] Guest: Trying to justify it. Can you tell me more about justifying it?
[00:22:45] Sure. I just said, this is what I'm doing now. I'm following that and feeling wherever it goes. Yeah.
[00:22:55] Host: Like fully, completely, not just kind of half, half and half. Yeah.
[00:22:59] Guest: Yeah. Completely. That it became my way of living and being, and speaking and thinking and eating and everything. And so when I began to write everything that I was writing had to.
[00:23:13] I have that in it. I wasn't very good of a writer when I began, I was extremely bad actually. And it took me a long time to figure out, um, what writing really was and how to make it
[00:23:28] Host: come alive. Was there a fear of, because you were so bad, like did that kind of play into this cowardice sense?
[00:23:35] Guest: Like the fear, the fear was, uh, of saying out loud what I was experiencing and doing, because I was basically saying, um, that, um, plants communicate with human being.
[00:23:52] Now, if you tell most people that they're going to think, it's really weird gardeners, a lot of gardeners whirlwind, a lot of farmers won't but it depends what kind of farmer gardener they are. But most people don't really think, they think plants are kind of this insentient background. They can't, you know, they don't have any narrow, very intelligent, you know, and they can't really do anything, but actually plants are probably one of the most intelligent species on the planet after bacteria.
[00:24:24] So here we're already in a weird territory, aren't we, you know, because I'm going well, you know, plants are a lot more intelligent than human beings. People go. Yeah. That's, that's probably not true. I mean, how much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a carrot anyway? Well, actually the thing is that plant plant roots, you know, people talk about our brain, but really the brain is irrelevant.
[00:24:52] What's relevant is the neural network that's housed in the brain. The brain is just the. So we have this neural net where people see pictures of it, it's in everything. And it looks like this sort of, you know, uh, you know, these thin lines. So, you know, with these nodes and junctions and everything, well, the thing is plant roots are their brain and they look exactly like the neural network and our praying, and they use the same neurochemicals.
[00:25:21] We do. They have memories, they future plan. They are the best chemists on the planet. Um, a lot of bills and a fun guy, the fungal maps, the mycelium networks underneath the soil. They're the two best chemists on the planet. And mostly combining the molecules in these unique ways, in response to environmental perturbations and human chemists.
[00:25:51] For the most part, just kind of study plants and then take their molecules and tweak them a little so they can get a patent and then make a drugs or whatever out of them were, um, copiers, not originator. And, but we've been taught that plants aren't alive. That they're really stupid, you know? And so that becomes a kind of a default dynamic for us.
[00:26:21] Um, but when I was studying first, really involving myself quite deeply in the study of medicinal plants and I began looking at, um, indigenous traditions all around the world. The interesting thing is every one of them, every single one that was asked, where did you learn the use of your plant medicine?
[00:26:46] Every one of them said. It came in a dream, it came into vision or the plants told me, okay. So what you have is you have these cultures all around the world that are geographically and temporarily distinct from each other, all saying the same thing. Now, a real scientists would go, that's fascinating and they would want to study it.
[00:27:13] But in fact, looking at the original texts of the ethnobotanists and anthropologists who, um, interviewed these people, the very next thing they always said was, isn't it sad that these there's just so like children they're unchristian, you know, they just make up these things and everybody would say that, and you know, Christianity was very untypical.
[00:27:41] They were very adversarial. Indigenous ways of thought in language. And they spent along with governments a lot of time, absolutely destroying that cosmology that they had encountered because they didn't understand. But then when you look at the uses that indigenous groups, um, the medicinal uses of yarrow, um, they all used it similarly.
[00:28:12] And then so scientists study it and they actually find out after all these years and millions of dollars, but yarrow does exactly what the tribal group said it did. So basically what comes up for me then is that there's this other way to gather information about the universe, then dissecting it. And you know, I'm curious about that.
[00:28:39] How did they do that? And it's rooted in sort of anatomist perspective. And what really happens is the more you immerse yourself in this sort of living field of meaning that you're interacting with everything with that aesthetic sense, fully developed, what happens is the field itself begins to share its nature with you.
[00:29:06] I mean, this is not, not news to the Chinese poet, you know, or that the Chinese mountain poets are in ancient civilization, you know, and I don't want to sell them a short, it's always a bad idea, but you know, a bashful, I think it was that said, if you want to understand bamboo, go to the bamboo, if you want to understand the pine, go to the pine and they would sit in contemplation with them for a long time, until it shared its nature with family, just use a different kind of language.
[00:29:37] It's exactly what. Shaping a pot, a pot that comes alive with that aesthetic sense has a quality to it where it communicates that to the perceptive observer and really it all, all of it starts with just a feeling like in that restaurant,
[00:29:59] Host: it's like an intention to feel as well. Like,
[00:30:02] Guest: well, yeah, because it's sort of like, look, it's like a drug, okay.
[00:30:06] It's like, you just shot up the best heroin on the planet or something. You know, you start feeling this, um, this feeling thing, this, uh, aesthetic sensibility and it feels warm and it feels rich and it feels beautiful. And, um, uh, Uh, sensory. And then as you immerse yourself in it, your sensory field becomes much richer.
[00:30:34] The colors are much more vivid sounds, become more exquisite. Uh, the surface of the body comes more alive and it's like you basically, John feed the great Australian rainforest activist refers to that as reinhabiting our inner being with the world, you know,
[00:30:55] Host: You know, highways, um, through language continually ran over words and they, they seem to lose their potency, but love comes up for me. And like, like almost like the core, like some kind of central core of, and, and it just also brings up this thought of, you know, the idea of cooking with love and, and people taste that, that love, and also that what you shared around the skunk cabbage, which I found so beautiful and so interesting.
[00:31:24] Um, and then, you know, the process of sourcing the plant and then making a tincture with intention and love and speaking to it and, you know, and then having that kind of cycle go back into itself as you kind of became one with. So yeah, it's just
[00:31:42] Guest: because if you're right, it's lovely and it feels good. And if you feel that good life settle for second, best or third best, you know, so it becomes this sort of.
[00:31:55] Um, way of being that feels so much better than the other and life itself begins to take on that richness and depth, you know, so, and you know, I mean, when you mentioned the food, everybody I'm sure has eaten the meal prepared by someone who's angry. And when they do that, some of the anger just gets inside you.
[00:32:17] It's just the way that it is a friend of mine referred to the food, she cooked as love chicken. She says, oh no, I've got one more ingredient that I always put in. It's love chicken. I don't pay. It's really good to see, you know, and it did. So, um, there is, there's something to that when, when we allow ourselves to care in that kind of a deep way and interact with the materials is if.
[00:32:43] Alive and present with us. They, some other quality is evoked from them. I mean, I remember this story, this, um, I was at what tribe was, uh, Seminole. I think, um, this seminal medicine guy told his son, he said, before you go to pick your medicine, you have to pray to them and tell them what you want them to do.
[00:33:11] And then when you go to be with them, you must treat them like a human being. And then once more, tell them what you need them to do and ask them to come with you. And so that when you bring your medicines back, they will put forth their best efforts on your behalf. And you will not be embarrassed in your medicine.
[00:33:36] And I just thought that was the greatest thing. And, um, you know, and then of course the scientists get into it and they start studying and plant communication and things like that. But they, you know, one of the things they've found is that if a member of a plant community is ill, the plants around them will start making the compounds.
[00:33:57] The other plants need to be healthy and they send it through the mycelium networks that connect all of the plants in that eco stage. But they, the plants also produce the compounds that any living organism in that ecosystem needs to be well and all animals and insects know how to use and harvest medicinal plants.
[00:34:28] This is just the way that it is, you know? So chimpanzees, friends stuff. There's these chimpanzees. So for instance, they, this chimpanzee has a parasite infection and it's bowels and it's like little worms and the worms have these like kind of mouse with teeth and they grab onto the bowel wall. And they're sort of like sucking nutrients out to have these going hug.
[00:34:51] God, I feel like crap, you guys go ahead. I'm going to go off and do something. So the chimpanzee starts wandering through the forest until it comes to a particular plant. Right now, this particular plant has sort of like little hooks on the leaves. It looks kind of like Velcro, you know, so the chimpanzee will sit down and quite often they will sit by a plant and hold a leaf in the mouth for a while.
[00:35:19] And then they might move on to another one and they might choose that leaf. And what they're doing is their, um, their saliva sort of, um, takes in some of the compounds and their body registers actually how strong the compounds are in that leaf. So let's say it's the proper one. So what they do is they pick the leaf and they fold it exactly like an accordion.
[00:35:44] If they chew it up, it won't work. If they swallow it whole and won't work, they fold it up like an accordion. Okay. And then, so it's like a little kind of capsule almost, you know, and then they swallow it. So it goes down, it goes into their stomach and then it drops down and through the duodenum and it starts going through the whole GI tract.
[00:36:03] And as it goes through the GI tract, it unfolds. So it's got, you know, like those sharp lines that accordions have, you know, plus it's got this Velcro stuff now, Um, the bile acids and everything in the stomach acids and bile acids, they extract the medicinal compounds from the leaf and those compounds put all of the parasites on the bell wall and to kind of Acoma, doesn't kill him, but it pretty much docks him out pretty seriously.
[00:36:36] And then as the leaf goes through the bow, it scrapes them all off so that they poop it out, but it will only work if it's folded exactly that way. See, now, how did the chimpanzees learn to do that? This is the thing that really screws up rationalist. They can't explain it. And so, but when you start looking into the animal kingdom, the knowledge of the use of plant medicines and how to prepare them, because extremely well-established.
[00:37:09] And so it's not so surprising that we should do that too. So this ties back into how, somehow as you immerse yourself more deeply into the field of meaning that we live in which you know, we do all the time, we're surrounded by meanings. All of the time a chair is not just a chair, a chair has, um, qualities to it.
[00:37:33] All chairs are a little different. And if you look at a chair like you did that restaurant, you go to the chair and you look at it and you go, how does it feel? Now some chairs are going to feel great and some chairs are not going to feel great. Right? If you look at architects that designed chairs, most of them don't look or they don't feel great.
[00:37:48] They look good. There's a difference. So there's a sort of, um, an understanding that occurs that you knowledge seems to emerge of its own accord. And so you see we're really into a non rational frame of reference here. Now I've spent a lot of time over the last 50 years, figuring out how to communicate this stuff.
[00:38:18] So it doesn't sound, um, hopefully threatening to people that are expecting the rationalist frame, you know, are they only believe in science or whatever. And so that's why in some of my books about this I'll have 50 or a hundred pages of bibliographical references in the back because I can even within the scientific frame, this stuff is not that, um, it's not strain in the scientific world, but the thing is most researchers work does not end up, um, percolating down to people because.
[00:39:04] It to get stopped at the sort of by the gatekeepers of the rationalist redactive paradigm. That's why there's a whole new group of people called plant neurobiologists that study the plant brain. And they really they're really pissed off because the research has been showing for over a century now about how intelligent plants are and that they move from place to place their seeds move in ways that statistics can't explain that they do all of this amazing stuff and they can't do anything to sort of shift the paradigm that looks at them as sentient organisms.
[00:39:43] That's been
[00:39:43] Host: one of my kind of major kind of concerns in, in kind of gathering. Gathering different sources for this book that I, that I've been called to ride is, is like the way in which I write it and how to kind of take care of that, that point that you just made of like, you know, uh, the, the way in which it's communicated so that it can be received.
[00:40:08] And, and that's kind of, in some sense, it kind of takes away. I feel, um, because you, you need to be like worrying about how it's going to be received.
[00:40:19] Guest: Well, it's both, it's like, that's the real challenge. Yeah. How can you do both simultaneously? That's what it took me a long time to learn. And if you start with my first book, like sacred plant medicine, then, then you go through them getting up to the last one, which is now earth grief.
[00:40:40] Um, you can see the transition, the, uh, the stages of development, how I got more and more facility with. As time went on and, um, it it's a particular skill base and we're kind of like the way, you know, any kind of minority was in the past, like, you know, women or blacks or whatever, where, you know, being oriented as an animus to the livingness of nature, we're considered to be, uh, suffering from inferior intellect and inability to reason.
[00:41:23] And so there's a huge demand placed on us to be, to actually do it better than the rational ones do it. I mean, we have to be able to think of their frame at least as well as they do, but also. Be able to think in our frame, which actually encompasses their frame, but there's cannot encompass ours. And part of the problem when you get into sort of the pagan world or the animus world, is that, um, the intellectual development is extremely poor.
[00:41:54] And that's really one of our challenges and our time, because we're caught between two massive paradigms. The one that has failed, which is that dissect the world into all of its parts and make all these chemicals that we want and control nature, which if we look around ourselves, we cannot, I mean, the climate problems where suffering is a direct outcome of that belief system and its um, engagement with the world as a thin and this other way that is, um, understands holistic systems and nonlinearities.
[00:42:35] And, um, that everything is alive and aware and communicating, even if it communicates in a way strange to us. So that transition is going to be difficult because all of the corporate systems and governments are embedded in that initial frame. And the problem is the whole thing is failing. It's not working and everybody feels it.
[00:43:00] There's a kind of generalized climate anxiety and ecological sense of ecological wrong. And it's really, and that it seems out of control and nobody really knows what to do. You know, the scientists don't know what to do. The government doesn't really know what to do, you know, and, and the media has fairly simplistic stories about what's going on, but really it's far worse than it's ever been reported.
[00:43:26] You know, it's really, truly grim. And the, we seem unable to correct course. And that's why Gretta fund bird was such a wonderful emergence because you know, her Asperger's is extreme and she can't see any reason to not say stuff the way it really is. And so which, you know, she became famous. So they all had to sort of like, you know, act like they liked her, but, you know, they don't really well, I think that's
[00:43:56] Host: sorry to interrupt.
[00:43:57] I think this, this idea of, um, your, your latest work on grief and this kind of active exploration that I've had with grief lately, just, you know, um, through, through mother, um, or through mum, there's a sense of like, that, that kind of feels now just tying that back into this, even, you know, the idea of the loving, the food, um, and like it's, it's, it seems like there's some point there.
[00:44:26] And, um, I don't know. And even the idea of having to do something in that sense, Seems to be. Yeah. I don't know something that's worth
[00:44:37] Guest: exploring. When, why, how did we get to the place where we had to make a case that level was important in our work and in our community. So, I mean, where did, where did we go so wrong that we had, we had to say like, well, you know, this is important.
[00:44:56] And if you look at it, it's all of our most important human qualities, better than ones that are not talked about. Like everything is economically framed now, like in terms of efficiency, like, oh, well, you know, and if you start realizing that every article you read is going to have some economic reference in that somewhere like, you know, sick days costs the American economy over $4 trillion a year or something like that.
[00:45:26] I'm like, yeah, but they're sick. We have a, that happens to people and we haven't, we have, uh, a community structure in this country that only looks at sickness in terms of how much money is lost. What about taking care of people when they're sick? Isn't that what we want to do for our neighbors, our community.
[00:45:49] What about when we get sick that we want people to care about us too, you know? Or like, you know, when you see, um, just so many things that there's so little caring put into them, because they're being done from this sort of efficiency, economic, and, and it just doesn't, you know, we're ready. How do we end up there?
[00:46:16] That's not why we're here. No, we're here because when we're alive, we're companioning each other on the chair. And that's what we do. That's what the common good is about. That's what conviviality of community is. And so how did we get into a place where you have to justify those things? There's something wrong about that?
[00:46:47] So, yeah. Love is a huge part of all of this. Um, you know, not really in kind of a, you know, a, like a goofy kind of way, but really just this, this genuine, um, caring for the wellbeing of other things. Not just people, but everything around us. And if. Extend that Karen to our homes, to our farms, to our gardens, to the houses that we build to the cities that we build to being able to walk places or the stores or everything else, just imagine what that's like.
[00:47:28] People feel better than, you know, when people go into therapy. Cause I worked as a psychotherapist for a long time. When people go to therapy, then they they've almost never come in and say, I want to think better. They'll say I want to feel better. And that's why James Hillman, the great union, um, psychotherapist said, you know, the healing environment is actually the actual environment.
[00:47:59] You know, it's the outdoors healthy ecosystem. If somebody goes into a healthy forest, they feel better. Always. Yeah automatically. And so now everybody's like, you know, prescribing forest bathing, they got it from the Japanese. Like, why did we need a bunch of studies to tell us that a walk in the forest would help us feel better?
[00:48:28] I mean, that doesn't make any sense to me either. So we, we gave it up and then the scientists and the researchers tell us it's okay. But you know, we have to get a note from our doctor.
[00:48:41] But, you know, you've got great, the risk to great environmentalist who wrote about this stuff from Australia. And both of them have died in recent years. One of them was Deborah Bird rose, and the other one was Val Plumwood and I've gotten all their materials that I could possibly find. And their whole focus was on exactly these things we've been talking about and they helped extend some of my thinking and some quite wonderful direction.
[00:49:10] So I highly recommend, I wish their work was better now. And they're just, they're just marvelous people.
[00:49:17] Host: Yeah. I'll definitely, definitely have a look at, look at their work. Um, yeah, it seems like. We've kind of gone through quite a bit in this chat. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the foundation for guidance studies and, um, what that is all about and what the vibe of, of, of that project is?
[00:49:38] Well,
[00:49:38] Guest: we put together, um, there was just, um, um, two of us that got together, oh Lord. Um, probably 35 years ago maybe now, and, uh, realize this is what we were doing and focusing on. And the concept of Gaia was hit, had been around, but you know, there's a lot of problems with that too, because the word guy is, uh, is an animist phrase, really animist word, and it upset a lot of, uh, scientists.
[00:50:16] And, uh, but nevertheless, that concept of the earth is a living. Intelligent organism was who came from the Greeks. Of course, in a lot of good things did come from the Athenians. And so since my focus was really on the earth in this sort of animus way of being, and the whole Gaya concept was stimulating interest in whole system science rather than separate disciplines that, and we wanted a 5 0 1 C3 or a nonprofit sort of status.
[00:50:54] We created that all those years ago to sort of hold the, um, to be the umbrella under which we worked. And, uh, so that's, that's sort of what that is. And, um, so, and if people want to see my work or that work, they can go to, uh, Stephen Harrod buhner.com and that's also got links to the foundation and sort of.
[00:51:23] Host: Yeah. Great. All right. Yeah, I've been kind of feeling into this and I'm not really sure how to express it, but, um, I know that when you were kind of in your late twenties, you spent some time. Kind of around Robert Bly and just kind of asking questions. And I think I even heard you mentioned that some of the ideas didn't really, um, begin to blossom for another 12 or so years at certain points,
[00:51:50] Guest: the guy was really irritating.
[00:51:53] I mean, he was had a, um, a photographic memory and he was so he would talk for several hours with no, no, I can't do that. I wonder off on all kinds of side roads, you know, but, uh, he'd know, 40 or 50 poems by heart that he would use and talk. And so when I first went to see him in 79, um, I was 27 Ben and, uh, so he had been working a long time with the poems of Kabir and, you know, put together the QPR book, which is one of his bestselling books of these translated around 40 poems, I guess.
[00:52:37] And, uh, so he was working with this one poem and he said, uh, said, um, this, this, this one, couple of lines that goes, uh, he's given this long talk and you see it in the poem is an example. And then the poem says, this one part, it says, uh, the truth is you turned away and went into the dark alone. And that's why everything that you do have some strange failure in it, you know?
[00:53:02] And then he just stops and I'm like, yeah, God, I know, I know what that feels like, kind of feels familiar. And then he pauses as the whole line drops into the room. And then he says, now you want to really be able to understand this until you're at least 40. And I was like really mad. Yeah, of course I can understand.
[00:53:23] I can understand anytime I want. I'm really smart. I'm really, you know, dedicated and I'll understand this, you know, and then, so irritatingly enough, about 15 years later, It dawned on me, everything you've been talking about. I put a Dick. No, but there's a certain thing to be said for, um, maturity. You know, that, um, you know, he was always trying to talk about this mentoring dynamic without getting into sort of a hierarchal thing.
[00:53:56] And he would talk about it in terms of verticality after a while. But that the young men, he was the kind of elder I'd been looking for all of my life. So, and young men need male elders because there's this transmission that goes from the elder to the younger man, it's sort of this relay race of soul that's been going on as long as people have been.
[00:54:22] And there's some substance that comes off of the surface of the man's body. That the young man takes in and it helps them to orient themselves and to understand, um, what it means to be an older male, you know, and that's, you know, what I got from him and I studied his work for, oh, I still study his work.
[00:54:49] Um, I have a massive collection of a lot of his more obscure pieces. And, um, but he's somebody that sorta helped me orient myself and he was doing it with poetry. The things we were talking about here, he was focused on doing it with poetry starting in the late fifties, because he thought most poetry was really terrible and which it still is.
[00:55:17] And, um, but my focus is doing it with, um, something else, really with our, the way we live. Yeah, and create and, um, and inhabit ourselves and the earth itself, you know? Yeah. What
[00:55:37] Host: comes up for me is coming back into like, I've, I've started doing this chanting, um, experimentation recently and it's sometimes I chat and sing and all that kind of stuff.
[00:55:48] And then other times it's really connected back into what we were speaking towards earlier with the real feeling. And then, yeah, I feel like no matter what, it sounds like that literal vibration goes into people. And, um, there is something that happens in that process. And there's also this idea of kind of, I guess, looking at the time ahead of us and, uh, Do you know, the whole thing about time's quite interesting as well, but almost like presencing ourselves for that kind of, um, for what's what's kind of emerging, I guess, and to, to have some kind of a, um, connection with that, that whole process.
[00:56:34] Um,
[00:56:35] Guest: yeah. Well, we're in a difficult time. It's not, we're not going to get out of this very easily. And a lot of things are going to have to change because the virtual world that our civilization has created on top of the real world, the earth itself, there isn't enough of a, of a, of a congruent relationship between the virtual world and the real world itself.
[00:57:02] And the real world is. Is the ecosystems of the entire planet are starting to do stabilize because too many of the parts have been removed. Plus, um, the synthetic chemicals that have been released, you know, there's a 90 or a hundred thousand of them, um, that are constant pretty much everywhere now. And those all have, um, biological activity.
[00:57:36] So releasing all of those things, um, into the environment, they're affecting all biological organisms and they're affecting us exactly the same, you know, when pharmaceuticals, when we take pharmaceuticals, um, and most people do. You take them, let's say three times a day or two times a day or whatever, but you have to keep taking them that's because your body doesn't, it's not like a food that it can use.
[00:58:05] The pharmaceuticals. In most instances, force the body into a certain range of behavior that, um, medical researchers have determined is healthy. So if your blood pressure's high forces, it lower for instance or whatever. And so, but the body goes out what's suicidal. No, and it excretes it out and you post it in, poop it out.
[00:58:28] Right. And then you have to take more. But that stuff that goes into the waste stream, it's not biodegradable except under really limited circumstances. And because our physiology is similar to the physiology of every other life form on this planet, those substances, when they go out into the world, they affect every other living organisms.
[00:58:53] So you've got this mind only agricultural chemicals are, um, industrial chemicals, but you've got pharmaceutical chemicals, all of which are affecting physiology of every life form on the planet. And these are pervasive. They'd been produced in the trillions of times and they don't go away and no water treatment plants filter them out.
[00:59:15] They don't even test for most of them. And so we've got this sort of uncontrolled experiment going on, which we're all sort of Guinea pigs in it. And, you know, it's the stabilizing, everything, not just the cutting of trees or mining or whatever that's going on, or even the CO2 that's increasing. Um, at a certain temperature.
[00:59:44] So we've got this whole dynamic where Earth's ecosystems are de-stabilizing, everybody can feel it. We know something's wrong. We want the government, the leaders in charge to do something sensible, which they won't for all the reasons we know. And so, um, everybody's kinda scared, you know, and I think a lot of the politicians are scared too.
[01:00:08] They don't really know what to do either. And so everybody's sort of seizing on whatever thing they think will keep them safe, you know, um, you know, If we keep out, immigrants will be safe. You know, one of my jokes is that, you know, the conservatives really hate immigrant people, but the liberals really hate immigrant plants.
[01:00:28] You know, the Hayden basic species one way or another has got a chief, all Valium to valid here, you know, but it's like this sort of, we see us on stuff or we, you know, if only everybody does this or if only everybody believes that, or
[01:00:45] Host: it's almost like everything's exponentially speeding up and playing that game of speeding up to try to combat it.
[01:00:52] It's almost like, it seems like the opposite approach of what might be beneficial is like the idea of maybe slowing down and coming back into that love space. Um, you
[01:01:03] Guest: basically have to look at what the problem is and then decide to do something different and corporate entity. They exist because of what's being done.
[01:01:16] They don't want to do anything different. The very rich they make their money that way they don't want to do anything different. So there's a lot of forces in play, you know, it's kinda like, uh, like Macbeth, everybody told him what to do, but his, um, his particular character that he had did not allow him to do what was sensible kind of a part of the human tragedy, really.
[01:01:44] So people feel all this stuff and they don't know what to do. And so everybody's a bit hysterical and, and running around and, you know, there's a chance for a war, certainly because people are afraid and they don't know what to do. And, um, systems are crashing and. You know, I mean, the horrible wildfires that Australia had, those were just some of the most horrendous stories I've ever read.
[01:02:13] And we're having them in the Western United States here too. So we're in difficult times. And the real question is how do we make our way through this period of time? And, you know, one of the things I talk about in the book or grief is, uh, Jacques Cousteau because I years and years, like 30 years ago, at least I saw him being interviewed in a television program.
[01:02:43] And he was talking about the Cousteau society and all of the work he'd done with the oceans and everything. And there was a young woman interviewing him in this boat and she said, well, do you think that. And he got this weirdest look on his face as if she was suddenly speaking, you know, some strange language he didn't understand.
[01:03:04] And then finally he went one, doesn't do it because one thinks one will win. One does it because one month and he said it in a simple way, just like, oh, I'm going to have hamburger for dinner. You know, it was like, there was no grandiosity. No, he wasn't caught up in the pain of what was happening to the ocean to Scott.
[01:03:24] Oh, this is the way they are. And this is what I'm doing now. Right. And he figured out on his own what to do. He didn't get permission from anybody. Did they have somebody tell him what it was? It was his own individual genius that led him to figure out what he could do. And that's the way ecosystems work actually, when the earth is experiencing a destabilization or an ecosystem is an impulse is sent into the ecosystem, which is sort of a gestalt of the problem.
[01:04:03] And all of the organisms in that eco system begin to respond to the plants, begin to make a different chemical structures and, um, groupings and things begin to shift as they begin to solve the problem. It's never a top down process it's always bottom up. And so, you know, you see all of these people that are coming up with amazing solutions to things and all of them are outside the system because the system is not going to accept widely divergent solution.
[01:04:40] So people are creating new kinds of farming. New kinds of medicine, new cow could all different kinds of things. And that's, what's really fascinating about it because if she's got, you know, a hundred million people coming up with these massively innovative things, that's a lot better than having 12 guys, you know, in their computer lab coming up with it, you know, like, you know, I think they were trying to figure out what was it, uh, it was aids researchers or something.
[01:05:11] They were trying to figure out how this certain protein was folded in so that they could, um, work with it in the lab and they couldn't figure it out. So they put it out on the gamer network, which had about 300,000 people on it. They solved it in like 10 days, but these guys have been working on for like years.
[01:05:33] So I have a lot of faith in people like you and credit Wittenberg, and just all of the people that feed. Something's awry and they're letting some other kind of awareness and intelligence burst forth of them because we're not that different than the elephants, you know, or anything else. When, you know, elephants feel a tsunami coming, they all started heading for higher ground while most of the people are standing around going, what, what, you know, because that part of them has been atrophied.
[01:06:07] They don't pay attention, but the, those of us who are feeling these things and deciding to listen to it,
[01:06:17] we're kind of the elephant sitting for higher ground in response to what's coming. And so that's why it's, you know, we're ecological beings on an ecological planet that doesn't change. We've got. Millions of years of evolutionary wisdom in our body. And really when you get into it, our bodies are composed of very sophisticated forms of bacteria, really?
[01:06:44] And that goes all the way back four and a half billion years to the origins of life on this planet. There's a lot of wisdom and each one of us. And so it makes a lot of sense to trust that and see where it can go rather than completely relying on a science, a reductive science. It's only really a couple of hundred years old.
[01:07:06] I mean, if a, you know, if a bristlecone pine that lives 5,000 years, if it only does this important ecological thing, once every thousand years, science will never see it. There's an Aspen Grove. That's over a hundred thousand years old. It covers over a hundred acres. It's one of the most intelligent neural networks on the planet.
[01:07:35] If it does something only every 10,000 years, scientists will never see it. And bacteria cover the entire earth and the membrane. They act pretty much as if they're one functioning unit. They're actually the largest neural network on the planet. And if they do something only every million years, scientists will never see it.
[01:07:58] There's a lot going on here that that approach can never find, but people can. So I, Barbara McClintock who won the Nobel prize for her work on corn trans saw, she said, I went no place that the corn did not first tell me to go. He said, you know, I can, I get down with them. They're individuals, you know, they're just like my chill.
[01:08:24] And they'll tell me all kinds of things. And I can actually, when I look, I can actually see their genome rearranging itself. And so she started talking about this, how DNA was a, how the genome was a flexible organ of the cell in the fifties. And at that time, everybody believed it was static. It was like a program of some sort, and she was ostracized.
[01:08:53] She wasn't allowed to publicly speak again for over 20 years, nobody would talk to her. They all thought she was crazy. They'd say, well, you know, I appreciate a research, but I don't like her mysticism. She said, it's not mysticism. This is real science. And so she kept at it and then she wins the Nobel prize.
[01:09:19] Work with corn transposons and that's when everybody started. Yeah. You know, I liked her all the hallways. Yeah. We hung out. I knew her from way back, you know, but the thing is she was doing a very specific form of holistic science, which could perceive connections and behaviors that reductive science can't and indigenous cultures, they all develop that kind of science themselves to various degrees, like the Polynesians who settled all of the Pacific island, they would sail to islands a thousand miles away that they'd never been to before.
[01:10:04] And they had a very well-established, um, way of, um, navigating that didn't use anything that the Western world. And their navigational orientation. It was very different, but it worked for them. And they've been reclaiming that they were forced to quit using it, um, by missionaries and the governments that took over their islands.
[01:10:33] But they're reclaiming it now and it's, uh, it's rather astonishing stuff. So I think there's, you know, part of the real hope I have, which is not optimism, there's hope is a kind of faith in life itself really is that there's this capacity within the human species to adapt and the, in the most important way possible to change our own climate of mind, our own orientation so that we can, once again, become perfect self that we inhabit our inner being.
[01:11:14] And there's this other kind of way of doing science. And thinking that still retains our most human qualities and that as you do it love is enhanced. Ethics is enhanced moral behaviors enhanced because they're naturally a part of that way of being in relationship to the world. All indigenous cultures were aware of that Polynesian navigators are.
[01:11:43] And so, um, that's what I have faith in this capacity that we have. And that of so many people that are feeling the need to return there and are doing amazing things.
[01:11:59] Host: Yeah. I guess I wanted to kind of ask, I've got this, I've been kind of longing for a mentor myself. And I feel as though this has been almost tied in with a lot of things with my past, but also the point that I'm at.
[01:12:16] Yeah, I just, I realized that you're kind of in this space where, like you mentioned, you're kind of moving into this process of the end of life. And I was, I was wondering if there's any chance at all in some small way that we could stay connected and, um, cause this is really what the kind of work that I'm called to do.
[01:12:37] And I found it really kind of synchronistic that it perfectly aligns with the words that you've written in a different way. Um, so I was just, sure,
[01:12:46] Guest: sure. You can, you can write and we'll talk that now. See if, you know, as, as I have the energy, because I am, um, um, in the ending time I don't live in forward times so much anymore.
[01:13:00] Like everybody does, um, you know, I'm coming to the end of my time here and, um, that's sort of where I'm oriented, but also this work has been what I do and I will do it as long as I can.
[01:13:16] Host: Yeah, thank you. I wanted to share yeah. Deep appreciation for everything that you've shared today and just to kind of send some reverence to, you know, the countless amount of space that you've provided for this.
[01:13:32] And, um, yeah.
[01:13:35] Guest: Yeah. So thank you for having me on and for doing this podcast. And, um, I look forward to that when you post
[01:13:45] Host: it. Okay. Good. All right. Well, um, I guess I'll let you get on with your day and, and yeah, I think that's probably a good place to close things
[01:13:55] Guest: down. All right. Be well,
[01:14:15] Host: Sending a loving breeze of gratitude in your direction. Thank you so much for sharing space with us here and now. And if you want some more information about our guests, you can head over to today, dream.com and check it. Check out the episode section on the page. Um, also if you're someone that's interested in deepening your practice of presence, if you want to work together with someone to structure a spiritual practice, whether it's an existing one or a new one.
[01:14:48] And if you're looking to build consistency, define your ambition and recalibrate your trajectory in a way that's more in line with wholeness and in a way that contributes and participates more fully. In the emergent world story and it's blossoming and feel free to get in touch because I'm taking on a small handful of one-on-one clients, spiritual friends.
[01:15:13] Um, and I'd love to speak to you if you did enjoy this episode and you felt like you got something out of it, feel free to share it with your community. And if you feel like there's anyone in particular that could benefit from the space shared today, uh, I would really appreciate if you'd pass it on to them and I'm sure they would too.
[01:15:32] And yeah, I'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you again, my friend and
[01:15:39] be well.