Welcome And Why This Series Exists

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Malcolm Stern, and in conjunction with my friends John and Sandra Wilson from Online Events, we're creating a series of podcasts called Stay Your Dragons with Compassion. My book of the same name was conceived and inspired by the suicide of my daughter Melissa and the journey that took me on, and the internal resources that I found. All of my guests will have a story to tell around overcoming and ultimately thriving through adversity. Special thanks to the band Stairway, Jim McCarty, and Louis Chenamo for the use of theme music from their album Medicine Dance and my engineer Owen Santiago. I hope you enjoy this series, and thanks for listening. So, welcome to my podcast, Slow Your Dragons with Compassion, which I do in conjunction with Online Events and John and Sandra Wilson. And we've had a number of different guests, all of whom are exploring the place where adversity has shaped their lives and changed it. And today I'm interviewing Joanna Long, and Joanna is a mentor for both men and women and looks at places where people are having spiritual awakening. So let's start with what is spiritual awakening in your in your perception, then, Joanna?

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Great question. For me, it's really like when the unconscious starts to reveal itself, you know, like the unconscious becomes awake and you become conscious of the unconscious. So things that would normally be hidden or that you wouldn't normally notice start to become more apparent. For me, it really feels like just simply as if we're radios and we're choosing uh tuning into different frequencies. And it happens very organically. I feel like our soul calls us forward into these more expanded identities. And as we go through that, we have to look at all the things that are hidden in order to integrate parts of ourselves back back in.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Great. Now that's you you probably weren't born going, um, well, I'm

What Spiritual Awakening Really Means

SPEAKER_01 1:58

gonna be a sort of an explorer of spiritual consciousness. Something will have taken you to that, um, to that exploration. So perhaps you could you could show us how you got to where you are.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Well, I was always intuitive. I always had this kind of uh easy access, I would say, to like a sixth sense or the sixth sense. Although I think actually now I have the sense that we have many more senses beyond that. But it's um yeah, it was always kind of I always had strong life force. I could uh see my grandmother after passing, I would have premonitions. And so there was always that kind of part of me that always felt very alive, actually, even from a child. Um and then when I was in my 30s, I'd been living abroad and I was called to go and live in Bali. And as soon as I lived there, I felt the earth activating me. Uh,

Bali Triggered A Radical Unravelling

SPEAKER_00 2:51

it was so strong. It was like almost there was a cauldron underneath the earth, and it was actually really confronting to begin with. Um, I went through I was only there for a few weeks and I was immediately in a motorbike accident, and it just seemed to start to bring up stuff. It was like going all of these things that you thought you'd worked through or you had sorted. It was all it was almost like everything I thought I knew became undone, and it was like it felt like a stripping. So this was really the beginning for me. Uh yeah, it was it was really like this extra sensory capacity was expanding without me doing anything just by being on this particular part of the earth. And and then it sort of culminated towards the end of being in Bali uh after about two years, where I had this huge uh earthquake kundalini activation. I think we all have these different stories of awakening and how and how we start to awaken. Um, but for me it felt quite dramatic.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

And uh I've been around the sort of the so-called new age movement, it was called in the days when I was sort of first in it, um, for a long time. And um, what I've seen is that there is a lot of spiritual bypasses. There are people who sort of take refuge in spirituality, and then there are people who actually inhabit their spirituality. Yeah. Now, the reason I've asked you on the programme today is because I believe you do inhabit your spirituality. And um, and so I wonder if you could um uh open that up a little bit for us as well of what that means, the you know, to really be in touch with those those realms, but not to be deluding yourself or others.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, yeah, I think it's really our mission to bring spirit down. I think often transcendence is thought about something that's like up or going out of the body. I hear lots of talk about uh astral projection and leaving your body and

Shadow Work Over Spiritual Escape

SPEAKER_00 4:46

people actually feeling quite uncomfortable in the density of their body. And I realized after probably to begin with, it was for me all lights and runway. I thought this is easy. It was easy for me to drop into pure awareness. That's the easy part because it's all lights and runway. But then you realize as you're going through your life experience that there actually is no possibility to bypass because your nervous system is imprinted and you're sending out a signal from your unconscious, and this is the place out of which we're manifesting. So I literally was like, you can't do anything other than go into your shadow. And actually, I don't believe shadow is uh just negative, we have positive shadow as well. So we're being asked to like bring up all of the soul parts of ourselves that have been repressed to express it, but we're also having to look at all the lower vibrational things because otherwise they're just held in our body. So I just received the guidance really quite early on, probably about eight years ago, like go into all of your fears, start looking at all of the things that you don't want to look at, anything that you would instinctively want to avoid, like really start to examine it, like from this place of just almost like observer. You know, once we take out this narrative of the shame around certain emotions or certain insecurities, and we start to drop into this space of vulnerability, we're all human, you know, the work really is to embrace our humanity as much as it is to acknowledge our eternal soul nature, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah. Let's let's take a look at vulnerability because I think that's actually a very key word in a lot of what I'm working with. Yeah. And um often people avoid vulnerability because that that feels like it's not weakness. We you know that, and I know that.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Um, but there is something about vulnerability that's naked, that isn't defended. Yes. And often life will bring us vulnerability, it will give us lessons that will that will whack us over the head somewhere. And I'm wondering what what life has brought you. I hear the most about Mike Adison. Often this comes with within relationships or comes within um life circumstances that that are unexpected, and we get a curved ball somewhere.

Vulnerability Through Grief And Loss

SPEAKER_01 6:58

What's happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

I think everything's a curved ball, honestly. You know, like were you ever expecting anything? I think when we're in this undefended state, actually, um, that's when life can kind of access us, really. You know, when we're shielding in in this kind of ego structure, like we're protecting off against. And I think there's a natural place for it as well. I think we have to feel strong to be vulnerable, strangely. It's the big paradox. Um, I mean, there are so many things that I could talk about, but I think so. Starting off in my twenties, I lost my father to lung cancer. So this was really a big place for me to start actually opening into my heart. It was really like this close confrontation with death and the loss of something that had always been such a firmament and a ground in my life. And I think it taught me vulnerability, but it also um, I'll share a bit about how it made me guarded because when we experience loss, it can make us close our hearts because we're fear, fearing that great abandonment pain, and it's so intense. So um for me, I feel like actually vulnerability is pure protection. Um, but I also acknowledge there have been moments in my life where I've been totally shielded because when my father died, I then lost my husband and my cat. It was all kind of through the male line of my family. And because of this sense of like, oh, when I'm grieving, I get lost, I get I get left. I started to shield and I thought that I was only lovable if I was strong, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

That's interesting. It reminds me of the the the um uh Course in Miracles where one of the lessons says, sorry, excuse me, in my defenselessness, my safety lies.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yes, yeah. And I think that's our I think that's our job as humans to really uh inhabit this uh our humanity, which is full feeling. And to be vulnerable isn't a weakness, it's to be exposed in your full range and spectrum of what it means to be human, which includes grief and shame and sadness and and all of those things that we were taught to kind of brush under the carpet and maybe become stoic against. Actually, this is where our great opening lies because when we can allow it to feel all of the things and like really create this capacity to be strong, to be soft, I think this is our defenselessness. It's it's so beautiful, and it's really trust-inducing when you feel somebody's really embodied and not just in their spiritual nature but in their humanity as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So I'm I wonder if we can just go back to your dad dying. And um, and presumably it was a slowish death with lung cancer, or maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

It was, yeah, it was over about 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And and you were around for that.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, I was working full-time and I was kind of nursing him. I was about three hours away from him, and I would nurse him every weekend, more or less, because I just had that instinctive kind of maternal feminine part of me. But actually, I ended up through that process kind of negating what I needed.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah, that's often the way it happens, isn't it? So um and often what happens is when we are in the face of another's pain, and it's also our own pain because it's linked, we want to keep it at a distance.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

And I'm wondering how what how how you manage that conundrum.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

I never had a self-preservation mechanism, actually. I always was so fascinated with how we can fully feel life, and I've always been such a big lover, sometimes to my own detriment, right? Because I've just been overgiving and under-resourcing in moments of my life. And it that was certainly the case in my father's process. I was a teacher, I was a wife, and I was a carer for my father and a daughter, but I kind of lost my I lost my own sense of what I needed to stay um stay nourished in that process. So I have never kept pain at a distance, interestingly. I've always known that it's a part of love. And actually that when we go through grief and pain, I feel like my heart opens so wide. And it is that greatest paradox because I wouldn't choose to go through that experience again, but it also opened me up wider to life.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Because when we look at um at sort of some of the the monsters of of history, yeah, what we often see in those is is no vulnerability. What we often see in that is that they've shut to their own feelings, and you know, people couldn't commit horrendous crimes with their hearts wide open. So it's it's it's a call, I believe it's a call for our evolution as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yeah, and and and you also said you lost your your husband. Well, come to your cat, but we you lost your husband as well. What what happened? Did he die or you got divorced? Or what happened?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

No, we separated because he found it hard to be. We were very young, actually. We married very early. So we were like I did 25 when we got together. And um, yeah, so it was more like he found it difficult to be joyful in the grief process. So I'd kind of held it all together for about 18 months, and then when my father passed, that was when the grieving started, and he found that difficult uh in his youth. And yeah, so so we just got to the point where I actually called the relationship to an end, but it had reached its end. Um and because of that, yeah, like I was saying, I felt like I couldn't be loved and grieved, that I always had to be this kind of joyful, strong, the one that holds it all together.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Well, it's interesting because when grief comes, um, we tend to grieve differently. So one of the statistics around um parents of who've lost their children is that the marriages rarely last for more than another five years, they normally disintegrate, and that's because we grieve differently. So some of us will really give vent to it, the others will become stoic and shut it down. And and if you're if you're genuinely grieving and in the presence of someone who's finding that hard, you'll have to dilute yourself or they'll sort of like they'll they'll resent you for for your feelings.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yeah. Yeah, and when you're somebody that's really I feel things really intensely, and I've kind of always allowed that, and not just the beautiful feelings, but all of it. Uh, and when you're with somebody that doesn't, yeah, there's definitely a conflict and a tension. And there's probably also an invitation there, you know, if like one's like open enough or conscious enough, like you could actually explore that together. Uh, we weren't able to, neither of us, I don't think, at that time were conscious enough to be able to do that. But um, yeah, it can be very opening. But like you say, if you're in different rhythms, it's really hard to yeah, to maintain that connection.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

And as you said, you were very young. And I think there's one of the benefits I feel of aging, which um I haven't gone, yeah, I'm aging, but it's like I can tell it's for some of the benefits as I get older. But actually, I there's genuinely wisdom that's born of experience.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And so we can have wisdom that's born from the intuition, which clearly you have, and then and also from experience. But yeah, everything we go through, when I look back at what I would see as the tragedies in my life, specifically the loss of my daughter, which which is that prompted the writing of my book, Saying Your Dragons with Compassion. I I can see that in that we get moulded, our heart gets broken open.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And I think that's part of the process of of becoming what I would see as the the evolutionary human, what George Trevelyan called homo noeticus.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Oh, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Noeticus has its roots in what?

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Um well it's Latin, it's the new new man, effectively.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

The new man, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yes, yeah. George Trevelyan, I you probably don't know him, but he was called the father of the new age. He was a sort of this this um this sort of elder statesman in in the 60s who um was was sort of like working with with spirituality and consciousness, uh, but had come from a very aristocratic family, so had all of that that with him as well. And uh he was definitely sort of like a sage, and I was lucky to sort of put him on at alternatives, which is the lecture series I ran. Yeah, and and realized I was in the presence of someone who was very wise, and often we are in the presence of someone who's wise, but I I find it difficult. We're often in the presence of someone who's who's faux wise, who pretends to be wise, and and I think we have to uh find our way through that, even pretending to ourselves that we're wise. So I'm wondering how you've dealt with your own exploration towards wisdom, for example.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

It's such a beautiful question, and it's something I'm deeply with actually almost every day, because for me it's like in my heart, it's the Sophia way. It's always been why I feel like incarnated, actually, to really be this advocate. Um, and I say that and goosebumps like enter my whole system. Um, what I call unlearned sageliness, and it is this wisdom that's born of not needing to know. Like one of the most beautiful messages that ever came to me was you really know when you stop needing to know anything. And so much of my process is just like actually, we don't need to like relive trauma, we don't need to understand it through the mind. We kind of need to de-intellectualize ourselves

Knowing Truth Through The Body

SPEAKER_00 16:26

so that we just feel it without the narrative, without the mind trying to try and do something because we don't heal through the mind. Sure, we need it and we don't want to negate the intellect or the rational mind. It's it serves as purpose. But I think we can really marry this intuitional aspect of us, like really clear our bodies, like really discern what comes into our space so that we start to be able to connect our intuition, which I believe comes from our soul. This is like the radiance with our experience through being human. And I think that meeting place in the middle is so beautiful. And so many of the women I speak to feel like they don't have uh the credentials to be able to speak direct truth through this very Gnostic way of knowing, which is like full feeling through the channel, you know, from the field, just opening up into this right brain, intuitive, creative feminine place, and not having to justify that. I think it's really a deep healing of the feminine to trust in the way that we know in different ways beyond being taught or learning it.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Yeah, that's very good. Yes. And I I I know I was just reminding when I when I used to used to run quite a lot of groups in the corporate world, um, and and I was not never very interested in helping someone make a better business, but I was interested in the humanity of the people I was working with. But I knew that I had to win them over intellectually in order to be able to explore some of the realms that I was interested in. Yeah. So I think we've got this blend, but it but if we get caught in the intellect, and we've we've all seen this so many times, if we get caught in the intellect, then we become it's almost like our minds will go around in circles and create a reality for us, but we won't be in touch with it. And I think what what you're looking at, what I'm hearing from you, is that you are in touch with most of what you're saying, you're in touch with it. It's not a concept, it's it's it's a lived experience.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah, and when you were speaking earlier, I was thinking, you know, you were talking about how we know truth, or there are so many kind of masquerading truths, or or people that have not fully embodied by experience. And and I always live by this kind of internal mantra of like we know truth by how it feels in our body. We can feel when we're close to the truth, if we really let our body guide us, you know, beyond reviews, beyond testimonials, you know, we just feel people.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yes. And I noticed that when I've, you know, I was very, I think I I had a very nice initiation that because I put on hundreds over the years, hundreds of top speakers at St. James's Piccadilly, where I ran the lecture series Alternatives, um, I was able to sort of like to glean what made truth. Now, this isn't an absolute, but I for example, we had um Eva Schloss, um, who was um um Anne Frank's stepsister and survived Auschwitz, and she spoke, she was 90 years old when she spoke, and she was crystal clear because she had lived through something enormous and suffered enormously, and her words resonated. And I remember just being in awe of the of what she was able to bring through, and then we'd have other people who were sort of like who had a little song and dance routine that which was very attractive and entertaining, but it didn't go to the to the depths that we're we're looking at here.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

The root, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, the root, yes. So so well, as when we look at this, what what do you see as as our potential future as humanity? What what do you see uh us evolving into? What do you see yourself evolving into, but what do you see the the humanity evolving into?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

I feel like the biggest thing in me is that I really want to see our humanity evolve into this place where we're beyond separation, like we're really acknowledging and integrating all parts of our experience. And we're not, or rather, we're seeing that the outside is a part of our inside as well. So I see us developing as a species that are really directly intuitional, that we're very feeling, and that we're able to liberate through this feeling nature of our

A Future Beyond Separation

SPEAKER_00 20:42

system, which is really our guidance system, I think. Like if we're like disconnected from our feeling, then we're disconnected, I feel, from uh potentiality to expand.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

So yeah, for me, really like accepting accepting things as they are, which I think feels really difficult. I see a lot of fighting in the world, like fighting against uh what people perceive to be wrong or immoral, and there's clearly so much rupture and despair at the moment. But I feel like the only way we're going to move through that and transition beyond it is to almost accept it and start to all individually work from the inside to resolve the inner tension, and then we'll see that as a people uh diminish on the outside, but we can't do it from a place of rejecting any part of our reality. We're going to have to not tolerate it, but stand for the complete opposite.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yes. So the great mystics have said there is no me and there's no you. We are one. And in the understanding of that, then we can't um commit atrocities against ourselves when we're attacking. This is this is the craziness. I remember Carl Sagan, who was the great um cosmologist, saying that um uh we are far more alike than we're different, and yet we we go to war over perceived differences. But actually, if we can become how you know I know this is quite quite sort of like highfaluting, but it also feels like we've got to dream what humanity could be like in order to be able to actualize that both in ourselves and around us as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, and we need to embody it. We need to embody the new reality before it's the reality, just like we do in any manifestation process. If we it's really about identity, so we're gonna have to embrace the wow, it's really noisy outside. Um, we're really gonna have to embrace the new humanity and really vibrate it before we actually see it happen, which is kind of like a really difficult paradox, a big paradox to hold. Because so long as we're like conflicting against it, we're resisting and we're pushing against it, we're gonna inflate the tension. So we're gonna have to come to this place of acceptance, kind of visualize and feel the future humanity timeline, each of us individually in our own channels, because you know, whilst we are all connected, we also have a very individuated channel-specific tapestry to our being, and we're all here for very different reasons. So we do have to get clear in our individual sense of being, as well as knowing that we're in a unified field.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yes, that's that's that's interesting because you're putting me in in touch with some of my own sort of perceptions from from my youth. No, and I remember um um when I was um I went to public school and then I would then I became an accountant, and then I thought I'd taken a major leap to become an estate agent. And I remember my when I dropped out of all that and was you know on a on a different quest. Yeah, my father saying to me, Where's your ambition gone, son? And and actually, um we often have ambitions to achieve something in the world, but I think that I think the ambition now is to find consciousness in ourselves to help be a part of the evolutionary process which is happening all around us, whether we like it or not, anyway.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yes. Yes, and I think it's for me, you know, we have these old concepts of what it means to work. Um, and what we're being invited into, I believe, is the shift into being, our being, our authentic nature, when we integrate all these parts of us and allow this expression that we've repressed to come out, just to be allowing of the creative force to literally speak and move through us, is going to be our greatest liberation. Um yeah, I think it's about reframing, it's about being now. Our purpose is being, which feels effortless, but we've been taught struggle. So we really have to kind of reprogram. A lot of people say to me, Oh, your vibe is kind of the ease vibe. And it is really because we don't have to force, like I come through a Taoist among different lineages, but one of my lineages is the Taoist lineage, lots of ancient Chinese wisdom in my soul through experience, and it's really about forcelessness. Like I really think that we're building uh this intentionally gentle way of being, where we're not like struggling, we're not like earning in the conventional sense, and we're really opening to this support of the universe and all of the energy through our relationships as well, to know that we're provided for and that it's safe to live in that authentic being.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And of course, that's that sort of takes us to the place where we can see that actually life is about service. We're we're not here to aggrandise our individuality, yeah, we're here to serve life. And and um I know when I've got in touch with that, because I don't want to get too much into the concept of it, but when I've got in touch with it, I found that there's a it's well, Rabindranath Tagore said, I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I woke and found that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. And I really feel that when I'm doing my work, when I'm running groups, which is my main work, I feel uh absolute bliss around that, far more than if I was you know partying at a very expensive whatever and traveling all over the world. I feel that bliss of service, and I can hear that you occupy

Service, Acceptance And Joanna’s Dragon

SPEAKER_01 26:06

something of the same dimension as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah, I absolutely feel it. It's when I feel the most fulfillment, when I'm in togetherness, uh, when we're finding this power in collectivity, and also I realize in the group work that I do, when we're descending out of the mind, so like when we're in the mind, it's very yang energy, it's very um uh sort of it's just very beta brain. It's just very action-y, and it's like seeking uh outcome or agenda or trying to find solutions, and then we descend into the heart and we start to slow everything down, whether it's through sound or through movement or through guidance or whatever, or just being together. And in that heart space, there is no judgment, there's only compassion, there's pure presence, we're never in the past, even though I mean there isn't a past, but you know, it feels like behind. We're just purely where we are, we're not worried. The heart never worries, it can hold so much all at the same time. So I suppose going back to the humanity question, like if we can come into this heart space more and more, then we're going to find ourselves open to this flow of love, which I believe, like you say, comes through serving.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah. And it is a slow process, you know, when we, you know, it's quite easy to sort of like um to live in a place like Ton S. And I know you live near here as well, but I it's quite easy to live here and sort of see this sort of like the bubble of of sort of people who who are sort of exploring consciousness and there is a kindness in the general environment. But I when I look at the news and see some of the terrible things that are happening, I realize we're a long way. Well, it's an interesting concept of long way or long time or whatever else. But but but there is a disparateness between the reality that we know is possible and that we would both endorse and the the the sort of the terrible barbarism that still exists on our planet.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

I know. Yeah, and how do we come to this place? I mean, I think it's I I feel like I always want to come back to this acceptance piece because I feel like people think that if they accept something as it is, it means they're agreeing with it. You know, like we obviously don't want, you know, the people that are endorsing love and in this in service of truth. We don't want, we're not endorsing, we're not agreeing with the destruction that's happening of innocent lives at all. It's horrific, it's so much rupture and uh emotional uh turbulence. And it's I I think collectively it's bringing a great grief, actually, especially to people that are very sensitive. But how do we come to this place where we accept it as it is and we start to embody the new way before it exists without rejecting what already is in our experience? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 29:02

Yes, I do. I do, and it's you know, I think that's the great the challenge that that faces us as well of actually being able to get out of the way. Yeah. And actually to um, and it's I'm just saying, reminded Bob Dylan's song when he's if you can't do you know, um the the times are changing. If you can't get out of the way, I can't remember the exact words, but get out of the, you know, get out of the way if you can't accept what we're what we're going through. And I think we are being educated by our experience, by life, uh, by being on planet Earth for a temporal period of time. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah, and as you were saying that, I was thinking about how, you know, even at the micro level in our relationships, we were talking a little bit earlier, weren't we, about fixing, fixing feelings. You know, if something happens and we're considering it to be bad, we try and fix it and get rid of it, which just seems to make it worse and establish itself deeper. So, how do we come to this place where we're allowing life to move through us and not trying to fix it, but trusting that a natural order is wanting to come through and also sending all of our attention and energy towards standing and expressing and sharing and exhibiting this love frequency that's going to dismantle, I believe, all the fear in the field.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah, it's funny because I, you know, in my many decades of being a therapist, um, I I have found that initially I was very drawn to fixing, very drawn to sort of how can I help that person heal that wound or deal with this? And what I've learned is what I'm interested in now is being, being with whatever it is. So we're coming towards the end of our um very interesting dialogue. So thank you so much, Joanna. And I just want to check in with you. Um the the question I always ask at the end of these podcasts, which is what is the particular dragon you've had to slay? And I know we've talked about what outside of here, um, slaying the dragons, but what's the particular hurdle you've had to overcome in order to be who you are or to become who you are wanting to be?

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Well, yeah, we spoke about the abandonment thing. That's been the biggest theme of my life and really healing through that and regulating through that and really um allowing, yeah, allowing rupture and repair and knowing that it's safe to feel again and to allow things to stay closed. Like, you know, what I ended up believing was like what I love uh leaves. So I had to like restructure that into what I love is allowed to stay. So, so that, but also I think it's not so often talked about like the dying of the identity of something that you've been for like a big part of your life. You know, for me, I was in education teaching in a very non-spiritual um whatever uh matrix kind of system. I mean, I think it's just one big matrix, but you know what I mean, that kind of still dysfunctional system rooted in patriarchal rigidity. And so, like really dyeing to that and realizing that it's a deep grief process, you know, like the ego wants to attach on to something that feels secure and steady. But when we're dying into this new human template, we're having to let go of all of those branches that the psyche held onto. So I think really acknowledging the process and the layers and the non-linearity of identity death, because we have to inhabit this new identity fully. You know, I feel like our reality reflection is all to do with identity at a personal level and at a macro global humanity level as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Yeah, that's lovely. And I'm reminded of um the band Kansas song All We Are Is Dust in the Wind. At one level we are the cosmos, at another level we are nothingness. And uh we're we're in that exploration together. And and uh I really appreciate you coming on here and uh and actually being able to have this dialogue, which I found really juicy and interesting as well. Yeah, thank you so much, Joanna, for uh coming along here and um we'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yeah, it's lovely to talk to you. Thank you, Malcolm.