Transcript
Speaker: Hi, I'm Kyle Gois, and welcome to the Inwards and Onwards podcast.
Speaker: For the longest time, I've been fascinated to understand more about showing up authentically, vulnerably, and presently in life.
Speaker: As such, I started to understand that my external world was a reflection of my inner one.
Speaker: And when I've had moments of hitting rock bottom or needing to pivot in my life, I've had to go inwards to move onwards.
Speaker: So come join me as I explore other people's journeys, from entrepreneurs to coaches, spiritual teachers, friends, and beyond.
Speaker: as we learn their innermost thoughts and peel back the layers to share the moments where they've had to go inwards to move onwards.
Speaker: Let's jump in.
Speaker: Brace yourself for a beautiful and inspiring story of one man's journey from grief to growth.
Speaker: In today's episode, we have the honor of sitting down with John Hutchinson, a remarkable individual whose personal journey through loss and despair led him on a profound journey of self-discovery and healing.
Speaker: From a young age, John felt a deep connection to the earth and the interconnectedness of all beings.
Speaker: However, as life unfolded, much like the rest of us, he found himself consumed by the demands of a disconnected culture, leaving him feeling lost and devoid of purpose.
Speaker: But life, as a way of stopping us in our tracks,
Speaker: And for John, it came in the form of a devastating loss.
Speaker: A partner who departed too soon.
Speaker: Plunged into the depths of grief, depression, and loneliness, a glimmer of hope emerged.
Speaker: a profound inner calling to embark on a journey back to himself, shedding the layers of conditioning, healing past traumas, and transcending inherited beliefs.
Speaker: Today, John stands before us as an open book, eager to share his extraordinary passage through grief and the transformative lessons he has learned along the way.
Speaker: Through his story, we discover the power of community and the immense strength that lies within vulnerability and shared healing.
Speaker: Join us as we explore John's remarkable journey from the depths of grief to the boundless opportunities and possibilities of growth.
Speaker: Through his resilience and unwavering spirit, he reminds us that even in our darkest moments, the potential for transformation and personal evolution awaits us all.
Speaker: Get ready to be inspired, challenged, and uplifted.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, John.
Speaker: Thank you so much for jumping on the podcast again, because we had technical difficulties the first time around.
Speaker: Thanks for having me, man.
Speaker: Just to recap, obviously, John, I am very pleased that you are actually able to jump on the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, I had a buddy of mine who actually sat into one of your breath, sound and storytelling journeys or sessions.
Speaker: He absolutely loved this.
Speaker: And then he was like, look, John has this incredible story.
Speaker: I think you should get him onto the podcast and let him share his beautiful wisdom stories and the healing journeys he's been on to get to where he's in now.
Speaker: And I was like, this whole journey is inwards and onwards.
Speaker: what better person to have on than yourself.
Speaker: So thank you, mate, for jumping on.
Speaker: No worries, man.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pleasure.
Speaker: So I thought you could maybe take us back a little on before you are this person, you know, this version of yourself that is doing this amazing healing work for others.
Speaker: What was your healing journey that you kind of started off with and go as far back as you want to?
Speaker: But yeah, take us on this journey with you, mate.
Speaker: Alrighty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I will.
Speaker: I'll go back to the beginning.
Speaker: So, yeah, I grew up on the south coast of New South Wales in Wollongong, which is, yeah, a medium-sized sort of town.
Speaker: But, yeah, really nice spot there, not far from the ocean at all.
Speaker: So that was beautiful.
Speaker: And, yeah, I had, yeah, fortunate enough to have a really nourishing upbringing.
Speaker: Both my parents were super loving and they were also really heavily involved with the Salvation Army growing up.
Speaker: which meant they were really committed to the mission of the Salvation Army as well, which was sort of working with those that are less fortunate.
Speaker: And our house, yeah, it wasn't uncommon for us to have homeless men or women come and stay at our place.
Speaker: Yeah, mum always had an open-door policy and cooking for the family
Speaker: for the street and the community sometimes.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Even a lot of our mates growing up.
Speaker: Yeah, so I think that was just a really beautiful thing for me to encounter at a young age in regards to, yeah, that each of us and each of our stories are equally important and that we all matter.
Speaker: And also that we're earth brothers and sisters.
Speaker: We're all part of the same big family.
Speaker: So it's something that I've been fortunate enough to be able to take into my life and into the work that I do now.
Speaker: So I'm really witnessing people as family.
Speaker: Yeah, and honestly, to be exposed to that at such a young age is, yeah.
Speaker: Like I'm just so interested on the impact that as you go through your story, that that would have had because, you know, people don't often get that kind of exposure.
Speaker: especially one thing of like that connectedness at such a young age.
Speaker: Yeah, me and my wife had this one conversation beforehand where we were talking about like, you know, the world, right?
Speaker: Everything you talk about countries and this, that, the other, it's just a dotted line that someone else has drawn, you know, rich, poor, this, that.
Speaker: It's like, again, it's like dotted lines, you know, in a metaphorical sense that people have just drawn to go, you are rich, you are poor, or you're from this, you're this religion, you're that religion, you're this from this country, that country.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: all of that deadline drawing just creates more separateness.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And it's all about, yeah, I like that your upbringing was bringing it all together.
Speaker: It's all oneness.
Speaker: Yes, I've carried that feeling of oneness, yeah, throughout my life and it played a big role in my journey actually, yeah, which I'll share a bit about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Please go, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the other thing as well, like as a kid, yeah, I was super connected to, I guess, nature and to the land.
Speaker: Like I remember just loving the ocean, the
Speaker: The smell of it, the feeling of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And always climbing trees, always hanging out on the earth, getting dirty.
Speaker: A few broken bones as well.
Speaker: Always pretty adventurous.
Speaker: But I remember, yeah, when I was about eight or nine years old, mum and dad, all mum's family was from Melbourne.
Speaker: So, yeah, they fell to pool to move us to the suburbs of Melbourne and
Speaker: And I just do remember, even though, yeah, not having the cognition at that age, that, yeah, I felt really grieved by that decision and sad that I was leaving my home, but it felt like something a little bit deeper.
Speaker: And, yeah, moving to the city, a big city, w as a big change.
Speaker: But I guess as a kid, yeah, you just start to, yeah, adapt, make friends, do what you need to do.
Speaker: But then as I started growing up, yeah, I felt sort of, yeah, I didn't really love school, didn't feel that connected in that way, but always loved my mates.
Speaker: So we played a lot of sport growing up.
Speaker: But then eventually as I got older,
Speaker: got caught up in, yeah, sort of the typical male Aussie story a bit, I guess, into the drinking culture that goes with sport and that sort of rolling into the drug-taking culture and, yeah, led me just sort of getting caught in these loops of addictive patterns.
Speaker: And I guess...
Speaker: not knowing why, but I didn't really even feel that I needed to be aware of why either, you know, sort of just being carried by life, I guess, without really knowing what I was sort of doing and then found myself leaving school at 15 and did the same thing, sort of following some of the norms, just going and get an apprenticeship, which I did as an electrician and had no interest in being an electrician and never a real passion of mine.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Again, now I was in a loop of sort of filling my days, obviously earning some money, which is good at that age, and having some responsibility, I guess, but not really happy in what I was doing and sort of just funding my weekends, I guess, to get written off with the boys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As you do, I feel like when you're young and experiencing everything and just trying to take it all in, was there, and I know you kind of mentioned you just were rolling with life.
Speaker: Was there anything that kind of triggered you to want to
Speaker: that kind of pushed you down this path?
Speaker: And I'm only saying this because I was like, wait, coming from a kid who loved playing outdoors on trees and everything like that, was there something missing that you felt that that's what led you to go down the party life, the drinking, drugs, alcohol, that kind of scene?
Speaker: Yeah, I think for me and sort of witnessing it in others that as we tend to move through the world, there's a lot of, I guess, social norms, expectations, belief systems, I guess what success looks like.
Speaker: You need to get a high-paying job, you know, house, boat, car, wife, kids, sort of blueprint that we all get given and –
Speaker: Yeah, as I was sort of moving through the education system and into employment that I really didn't enjoy, I guess that I was just sort of following what I was meant to do and losing, I guess, a real sense of myself and what I really wanted or what I really needed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: and not really even asking myself those questions, just being caught up in the loop of life, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, a bit of a victim to the roller coaster, I suppose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, like I feel like, yeah, myself included.
Speaker: So I understand exactly what you mean.
Speaker: I was always just curious on like,
Speaker: why why do we do this like a why it is a good you know it's and like you said when you said you you know you kind of get full into the roller coaster of things it's like i think it's just a bit of hypnotization as well when you're growing up you don't know any better you don't have any any filters any kind of um way to decode uh what is good what is not good um i remember i i love this analogy that
Speaker: got told to me when I was younger.
Speaker: If you look at yourself as like a computer, right?
Speaker: You get all the previous codings, downloads, bugs as well from your parents, your grandparents, their grandparents, your family, your environment, your friends, all of that.
Speaker: And in these kind of early formative years, you know, that two to eight or two to nine years old where we're more of a blank state, all of this information comes to us and we're kind of like hypnotized and soak up everything from our environment.
Speaker: But when we're doing this and we're soaking up all this information from our environment, we are not yet at that level where we have any antivirus protection on.
Speaker: So there's no way of us discerning what is aligned to us, what's not aligned to us, what's good from what's potentially bad and harmful for us.
Speaker: So then we go on into our adult years and we've carried the same coding with obviously other downloads, coding and all added onto this.
Speaker: And it's only later on that we start going like, oh, we need to clean up shop.
Speaker: I need to clean this hard drive now because it's got all these bugs, all these viruses, all this shit from, you know, from previously, which I just was unconscious to or unaware to, unaware of.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, a real product of my environment, you know, and like you're saying, yeah, not even really being aware because it's just what's normal, you know, so just the done thing.
Speaker: So yeah, definitely didn't know any better.
Speaker: So when was the pivoting moment?
Speaker: Where did you start switching and you're going like, I need to go inwards for this.
Speaker: I need to switch gears.
Speaker: This is not saving me.
Speaker: This is not healthy.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I'll just share something before I go there just to sort of give you a little bit more context as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I eventually quit being an electrician.
Speaker: There was actually a day I was under some dude's house and, you know, some rich dude in Doncaster.
Speaker: I'm just like...
Speaker: covered in dirt at 6.30 in the morning just going, I just don't want to be here.
Speaker: I don't want to do this, you know.
Speaker: So, yeah, made the decision to quit that day and was able to, through some contacts, be able to get some work working in social work and youth work and working with some kids.
Speaker: And my first sort of role, obviously, playing a lot of sport was just basically creating a bit of an adventure program and
Speaker: gym program and that type of thing for kids, which has really started me in pretty much a 20-year journey working in social work and community services.
Speaker: So working in homelessness, addiction, mental health, all that type of stuff, which is obviously something that I carried through from childhood.
Speaker: And I felt much more in...
Speaker: Yeah, I really love that work.
Speaker: I really love sharing stories with people and uncovering what's going on for them and what's real for them, but also what's real for me as well.
Speaker: But then I think where it had a bit of a negative impact on me as well is that I became great at helping everyone else and being there for everyone else in their journey.
Speaker: But again, really neglecting this need that I wasn't quite aware of yet.
Speaker: There was turbulence and still caught in some of my addictive patterning and those types of things.
Speaker: I mean, again, caught even around what you eat, all these types of things, even looking after yourself in any way, really.
Speaker: Like none of this was anything that I'd learned or been taught before.
Speaker: So I was very, yeah, I was excellent at being there for everyone else and their problems, but really, again, maybe even neglecting myself even more in my journey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And which I feel is normal.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: It's easier to look out of the window than to look into the mirror, right?
Speaker: Yes, definitely.
Speaker: And still not even really being aware that I needed to look in.
Speaker: You know, I think that...
Speaker: Yeah, still at that stage where you're just sort of in the wheel of life still.
Speaker: Definitely was enjoying what I was doing and loved doing that.
Speaker: But then, yeah, I guess not even being aware of the way I needed to look within or I needed to tend to my own needs and nourish my body and all those types of things, you know, so that I'm a bit more aware of now.
Speaker: But, yeah, in 2010, it all changed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I lost my intimate partner really suddenly.
Speaker: And yeah, that sent me into a spiral that I definitely wasn't prepared for.
Speaker: I was feeling into a pain that I didn't even know was possible as a human being.
Speaker: And obviously, being really empathic in the work that I was doing as well, I was really sensitive sometimes, I guess, to other people's trauma and pain, but then never really having to encounter it in that way myself.
Speaker: And I guess was really suicidal there for a while.
Speaker: Yeah, just really not even being able to function in the world, actually, like one foot in front of the other, even...
Speaker: um each minute i was witnessing it pass almost by the second like that's how much it stopped me stopped me in my tracks and i couldn't be alone sometimes i needed to wake people up just so they'd sit with me uh early days um and really really confused about it all um but there was one really important moment that i think that set me off on my journey i remember leaving the hospital with my mum
Speaker: And it's what we've sort of been talking about.
Speaker: I remember it was an early morning and I'd just lost her and had to witness her past as well, which was a super traumatic experience.
Speaker: And yeah, there were cars everywhere, bipping their horns at each other, people on their phones, people running to get on the train.
Speaker: We'd covered over the natural world.
Speaker: There was asphalt and buildings everywhere.
Speaker: And I had this real, I'd never seen the world so clearly before.
Speaker: And I'm just like, oh, my God, what have we done to this place?
Speaker: What are we actually doing here?
Speaker: And so there was this, yeah, you talk about that internal, there was something in me sort of going, this is not right, you know, perhaps.
Speaker: I really needed to know after that what all this was about.
Speaker: What was this for?
Speaker: What am I doing here?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So, yeah, I guess it led me.
Speaker: It was the first step in my journey of sort of wanting to uncover what reality is, you know, and what my purpose of being here is, you know, so and potentially that I'd never had my own thoughts or ideas in my entire life, you know, and
Speaker: it became really difficult in a sense that not only was I felt like I wasn't just grieving Steph, her name was, who had passed.
Speaker: I was also grieving all these emotions that I hadn't processed my entire life, you know.
Speaker: I'd moved into a world where I needed to be okay all the time, you know, especially as a young man.
Speaker: It's always like suck it up, you know, harden up, you know, just get on with it.
Speaker: You know, you'll be right type thing.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's what led to me being in this crippling sadness.
Speaker: Like I was – now I didn't have a choice.
Speaker: I was accessing all of this grief that I had suppressed my entire life to that point.
Speaker: And also, yeah, in the depths of really missing her and not understanding –
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And being foreign in the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not knowing if I could continue in this place anymore.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And that's the that's so thank you so much for sharing that.
Speaker: That is like, yeah, I'm trying to process the story, let alone, you know, trying to relate or imagine the feeling that you had when you were going through something like this, because
Speaker: even when you talk about that level of grief, the intensity of such a big emotion, that is not just from that, like the incident may have triggered it, like that may have been the trigger point for it.
Speaker: But the fact that you're saying this is like, you know, for years that you had just not processed these different levels of griefs that you may have had, which I would also be curious to explore, like what, like you had a nourishing childhood, then you went to the, you know, kind of got pulled into the mix of the world, you know, the machine, so to speak, like another cog in the way everything was processing.
Speaker: Where was all this other hidden grief from?
Speaker: What do you think it was actually from your upbringing?
Speaker: Was it, do you think it was generational at all?
Speaker: Like, I'm just curious on like where that all came from.
Speaker: I don't think we fully know, but I don't think we even recognize what I've come to know is even the grief we accumulate on a daily basis.
Speaker: All those moments where we're not allowed to be ourselves, whether it's feeling, yeah, I guess the sickness, you know, sort of energetically around our planet.
Speaker: You know, our planet's a bit sick at the moment and not really...
Speaker: in its most nourished form.
Speaker: You know, we've taken a lot from her, you know, and also I guess when we encounter the people we're surrounded by and feeling into their traumas and potentially taking on some of that, whether it's what we're absorbing on social media, it's driving past a dead kangaroo.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: Whatever it may be, even witnessing our friends or family going through grief, we're taking all that stuff on in some way.
Speaker: And I guess, yeah, I feel like for me definitely and I guess for a lot of people is that the more I sort of moved into the idea of who I was meant to be, I was really deeply grieving the person I needed to be and I wasn't allowed to be, you know, so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What helped you not tip over the edge?
Speaker: Because like when you say that and what you're sharing is so powerful,
Speaker: Because you get so many people are going through this.
Speaker: And I love the connection you've kind of done with, it's not just your own, it's the environment, the frequency or the energy of other people around you, they're going to impact your own energy.
Speaker: And you take on little bits and pieces of that.
Speaker: How do you, like, yeah, if someone else was going through this and you were to help or guide them, how do you make them not go over the tipping edge?
Speaker: You know, being like self-harm or something like that is what I'm referring to, just to be clear.
Speaker: In my own, yeah, experience, yeah, there was one particular day where I was in that feeling on and off, you know, came in waves that I, you know, didn't want to be here.
Speaker: But there was a particular day where I had a bit of a plan in place to actually, okay, I just can't be here anymore.
Speaker: And then I sort of went trudging through the forest by myself.
Speaker: And then I started having a realisation that,
Speaker: the pain that I was in would potentially, if I'd left, I'd be putting so many people in that, in that similar pain.
Speaker: And that was, um, almost confirmed when I, um, my whole, I found out my whole family was looking for me that day.
Speaker: Um, and they, they'd driven everywhere and, um, they'd,
Speaker: even went to the cemetery where Steph was buried, although they just, they just, and became, I got a real sense of their panic and their, you know, how that would emotionally affect all of them and how excited they were to find me, I guess.
Speaker: And that really, yeah, it was important, you know, cause then it was just like, okay, this isn't just about me either, you know?
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, even though it's still being with what's present and the grief that I was in, but also, yeah, there was something that made me sort of clicked and sort of said, well, no, yeah, that's not the answer.
Speaker: It's more I'm going to have to continue to move through it and continue to feel into some answers and just take a moment at a time.
Speaker: And the grief comes in waves too, you know.
Speaker: So there's moments where I was...
Speaker: As I started moving through it, I started being okay.
Speaker: But then, yeah, there were moments where you're on your hands and knees and you're holding on for dear life.
Speaker: So it's just, yeah, there were some beautiful things.
Speaker: Was there one big emotion?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was there one big emotion that kind of helped
Speaker: helped pull you keep pulling you out like you know because like you said it's it's that wave and i'm saying this because i've i've spoken to so many different friends who go through this like who have gone no not this sorry this is your own your own story but i mean like this feeling of like when they they get through that mode and it's so low on that roller coaster ride
Speaker: What emotions help pull you out to get back up to that?
Speaker: And it's always going to go peak and trough.
Speaker: Is it that feeling of love from your community and your family?
Speaker: I think it was so important.
Speaker: I had a couple of moments where there was one night I was at my sister's house and I was in the spare room and I was really feeling like I didn't know how I'd get through the night.
Speaker: I was just so emotional.
Speaker: And she just came out of nowhere.
Speaker: She didn't say anything because it's impossible for anyone to take the grief away from you or fix it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And that's not the role either.
Speaker: She just came into the bedroom and laid next to me and I felt an overwhelming comfort just by that unfolding.
Speaker: And like I said, she couldn't fix it or save it, but I just felt nourished by having another being in my presence.
Speaker: So just presence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And that's all, I believe that's all we can do when we're supporting people just to let them know that they're not alone.
Speaker: I'm not here to try and tell you how you're feeling or I know what you're going through or some of those things.
Speaker: And people are just trying to say the right things, but it really is just saying, yeah, I'm here.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: You know, that's...
Speaker: That's the only thing that we can sort of do.
Speaker: And some of those moments, there were a whole bunch of them that really, yeah, saved me in those moments.
Speaker: So, yeah, there is a – yeah, I'll begin you on –
Speaker: some of my journey by telling you that this short story, it's just really important to sort of let you know where I'm headed.
Speaker: So I remember being, it was about two or three weeks, maybe three weeks after she'd passed.
Speaker: And again, like I was really trying to sort of find it hard to function.
Speaker: And I started walking down the street just to sort of get outside and do something and
Speaker: And I remember standing on the corner just overwhelmed in grief.
Speaker: And then this white butterfly just started flying around me.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And I had the feeling, I can't remember the last time I saw a butterfly, you know, and it was a really beautiful experience.
Speaker: And as it continued to hover around me, I started feeling this sense of, yeah, this channel of love coming into my body.
Speaker: And I just hadn't felt any love whatsoever since she'd passed.
Speaker: And as I started to move and walk back to the house I was staying at, this butterfly started following me.
Speaker: And then I started talking to her.
Speaker: I'm going, oh, is that you?
Speaker: Because I didn't know where this love was coming from, this feeling was coming from, and this butterfly was, yeah, really intimately following my journey home, you know.
Speaker: And then I'll just take you back quickly before she passed.
Speaker: She passed away two days before her birthday.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was at my mum and dad's house and mum was really excited.
Speaker: She goes, oh, I want to give Steph her birthday present.
Speaker: She's a quilter and she'd made this beautiful quilt for her.
Speaker: And she said, yeah, I want to give it to her.
Speaker: And I said, oh, listen, just wait till her birthday.
Speaker: You don't have to give it to her now.
Speaker: But she was so persistent and had to give it to her for whatever reason.
Speaker: And so I'm like, okay.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So she gave it to her and it was this beautiful quilt with all these colours and Steph loved it.
Speaker: She had it on her every day on the couch, took it to bed, all that type of stuff.
Speaker: She had a lovely connection with mum and I eventually drove her to the hospital in it.
Speaker: And ever since she'd passed, every day I'd had that quilt on.
Speaker: on my bed.
Speaker: Just made me feel like she was around and feeling that comfort of her, I guess, in some way.
Speaker: But then, yeah, after this butterfly experience, I was actually back at my mum and dad's and I was spraying some of her perfume on it just to sort of, yeah, have that familiar scent.
Speaker: And I never knew because like a lot of quilts, one side's really colourful with all the patterns, the other side's fairly boring.
Speaker: And then as I turned the quilt over, the whole thing was covered in white butterflies and I'd never witnessed it until that moment.
Speaker: And then this same channel of love started moving through my entire being and I started becoming familiar.
Speaker: And so this changed everything.
Speaker: So then I started encountering butterflies all the time.
Speaker: Like I was seeing them on kids' shoelaces, T-shirts.
Speaker: Like I'd drive down the street and then wouldn't look in a shop window and suddenly wouldn't there be a butterfly there.
Speaker: She started – yeah, I started having dreams about her where I was actually awake in my dream and I was encountering her, which I'd never really had before.
Speaker: There were songs coming on.
Speaker: And it was just like she was just –
Speaker: trying to contact me and it was just becoming so overwhelming, which worked in two ways.
Speaker: It became so comforting, but then also it's just like it almost made me want to go even more.
Speaker: Like I just want to come and be with you, you know.
Speaker: I don't want to have to be here on my own, you know.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It had the other, yeah, the opposite.
Speaker: It did both.
Speaker: I think it definitely nourished me in ways and obviously gave me that sense of love.
Speaker: I'd been to church as a kid and stuff, but I hadn't really had any ideas on, okay, what God meant.
Speaker: I was pretty...
Speaker: Yeah, I guess sort of closed and open at the same time, you know.
Speaker: So I didn't have any real beliefs or connection to a spirit or God, but I didn't, I wasn't closed off from it either, you know.
Speaker: So I think I did recognize that we're on this incredible planet, you know, potentially there is something, you know.
Speaker: But then, yeah, she eventually led me to this
Speaker: um medium um and when i went to see her um yeah when i first got there you know like i was super nervous and um obviously i was having all these encounters but still you know and we're so built into our ideas and belief systems like i it's almost like i still need proof even though i knew what i was encountering it's just like i guess i just still needed proof of some kind and um
Speaker: I sat down and she started feeling into things and then she started going through my mum and I don't necessarily look like, especially in 2010, that I lost my partner, you know, because I'm like, yeah, I really need her to tell me that if this is real, I'm not going to give anything away, I guess, you know, I need proof that this is real.
Speaker: And then she started feeling into my mum's energy and she goes, oh, your mum is really so sad at the moment.
Speaker: She's going, oh, there's a grief there.
Speaker: And she's like, oh, the grieving's around you.
Speaker: She's grieving for you.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm interested.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then she said –
Speaker: oh you've lost someone haven't you yeah oh you've lost your partner and i'm just like oh yeah yeah this is i have and and she's like oh she's she's here you know do you mind if i bring her through and then first she just described her to to let me know like and got everything the eye color hair color everything um wow
Speaker: But then, yeah, as we sat down and as she started to bring her through, yeah, there was all this stuff she started to talk to, you know.
Speaker: Like I think after she passed, one of the hardest things I had to do was clean up our room.
Speaker: We lived together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And for whatever reason, people asked if they could do it for me.
Speaker: But again, I think it was something I tapped into this kind of deep intuition because I was starting to have these inner experiences that I needed to go through that process on my own.
Speaker: Like for whatever reason, I needed to grieve, which I'm so glad that I had those experiences.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Yeah, but it was so difficult.
Speaker: I had to pick up all these little messages that she wrote to me, like little cards.
Speaker: She had all the way she tended to the room, all her clothes.
Speaker: And these were some of the things, like first of all, I couldn't throw any of her clothes away.
Speaker: I'm just like, I can't do that.
Speaker: And the medium was saying, or Steph was saying, Steph saying that she knows you can't throw any of her clothes away.
Speaker: She's saying, just pick your favourites.
Speaker: And then you can throw the rest away.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: I swapped over to her side of the bed and Steph's telling me that you're swapped over to her side of the bed.
Speaker: There was a rose that I had that I'd left on the pillow and she knew that I'd left.
Speaker: Steph's telling me about the rose on the pillow.
Speaker: And then one of the other real specific ones, and I didn't really know, like we lived with another couple at the time.
Speaker: And she gave me this crystal and she said, oh, Steph loved this crystal.
Speaker: And I'm like, I didn't even know she loved crystals and stuff, which was great.
Speaker: And I said, so, yeah, I want you to have this one.
Speaker: And it was this purple amethyst that I sat on the bedside table.
Speaker: And, yeah, that was the final one.
Speaker: I was just like, yeah, Steph's telling me about the purple amethyst that's sitting on the bedside table.
Speaker: And I'm just like, oh.
Speaker: bawling tears.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'm getting like, literally, my whole arms are covered in goosebumps hearing you say this.
Speaker: Because, yeah.
Speaker: Look, I'm a believer of nothing...
Speaker: fully ever leaves, it kind of always transforms into different things, right?
Speaker: And I just look at it from that perspective of like we are energetic beings.
Speaker: Everything around us is energy.
Speaker: It's frequencies.
Speaker: The beauty about this is that you have certain healers such as like this medium you spoke to who I think certain people start unlocking this ability to see different frequencies.
Speaker: And if you talk about everything just being energy, it's like, you know, for lack of a better comparison, a dog can see X amount of colors compared to what a human can see compared to like their certain tribes actually who, and I was watching this documentary, certain tribes can see lesser, not lesser, more detailed amounts of green than the human, like than normal, you know, societal, Western society humans can see purely for the fact that that's what they've been exposed to.
Speaker: So why I'm saying all this is that coming even back to this work and some like healers that you meet,
Speaker: healers, they start unlocking this level.
Speaker: And I don't know if you want to call it your third eye or whatever.
Speaker: It doesn't, for me, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: It's just that they just start going, like peeling back these
Speaker: kind of it's like this awakening they kind of get into where they start seeing these different energies and these different frequencies and when you were sharing the butterfly story already I was like the butterfly is a symbol of transformation like that's like you know from a spirit animal guide kind of style is it's a symbol for transformation whether that's your own transformation which is a pivotal moment in your life that was a huge transformation piece right through to your partner transforming and that being an energetic representation of her
Speaker: you know, or some sort of soul fragment of hers in that sort of way.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry, mate.
Speaker: Like literally goosebumps.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, I can, yeah, thank you for speaking so openly and vulnerably on this.
Speaker: No, no worries.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been really important.
Speaker: Again, that was something, again, I think with the grief around it all as well, like I was always pretty good at,
Speaker: at talking to her.
Speaker: It's like I really needed to, like I really needed to speak to it.
Speaker: I needed to listen to the songs that reminded me of her, even though a lot of it was painful.
Speaker: It was like my body knew that I needed to grieve.
Speaker: You know, I think that's, so it was such an important message.
Speaker: Even when it came to speaking at the funeral, I had a lot of people, you know, say, I'll speak on your behalf and that type of thing.
Speaker: And I'm like, as hard as it's going to be, there's no one, I just knew there's no one that's going to,
Speaker: yeah, sort of take that away from me.
Speaker: It's something that I need to stand up and share from my heart and allow myself to express how I felt about this, you know, incredible human being, you know.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, but then after leaving the medium, they were like, I was just filled with light and obviously I was having all these encounters.
Speaker: But then, yeah, like it was a real battle sort of functioning in the real world and then functioning in this other world, you know, and trying to find
Speaker: the balance in all of that, you know.
Speaker: And then, yeah, I think it was nearly a year had gone by and I guess I was catching up with people and friends and things and just sort of still feeling that there was so much more for me to uncover, you know.
Speaker: I remember because she sort of became, that was the beautiful thing too.
Speaker: It was almost like I started having a direct channel to her as well.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah, she became like my spirit guide, really.
Speaker: And I never really knew what love actually was, you know.
Speaker: I think, yeah, I hadn't really encountered love before until she passed, you know.
Speaker: So this is where I actually started to uncover what love meant and what falling in love actually meant, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because there was definitely parts of me that I began to fall in love with in myself that I'd never felt before.
Speaker: Because I was, yeah, it was like she, and she was like in my guide in so many ways.
Speaker: She started introducing me again to the rhythms in nature, to the land, and that we can call on her as a medicine and that we're not separate from it.
Speaker: So all these things that I was encountering as a kid, yeah, I became childlike again in regards to my relationship to the forest, to the ocean, yeah, to the natural world, you know.
Speaker: Do you find that...
Speaker: Do you find that deepening your own sense of love is what actually allows you to connect with love with others?
Speaker: Or is it the opposite?
Speaker: You found that from loving outside of others, it allows you to love yourself more.
Speaker: I think, yeah, maybe it goes both ways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, there was a lot.
Speaker: I was starting to get an access to some of my inner workings, you know.
Speaker: I guess my inner soul, my inner journey, and that there was, yeah, some real intuitive wisdom.
Speaker: Even though I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, like even around some of the
Speaker: things I knew I had to do around my grieving process like that was there was a deep wisdom there um in what I needed to do you know um and as I look back on it more now I'm like wow you know there was just this I was being guided by an inner wisdom yeah
Speaker: to do what I needed to do, to take the right steps, to encounter and be listening in the right moments, to be really witnessing that first butterfly.
Speaker: Because I think that was the thing too.
Speaker: And I think that's the power in grief as well.
Speaker: You get no choice but to be present.
Speaker: There's such an aliveness to grief.
Speaker: I guess, yeah, for so much of my life, living in the tomorrows and yesterdays,
Speaker: I think it just gave me no choice but to start listening and start being really present in my journey.
Speaker: And that was why I was able to encounter her in this way and encounter the messages from the butterflies, the dreams, all of those things because I was just so present.
Speaker: I wasn't caught up in...
Speaker: um where i needed to be or the expectations of work or any of this stuff you know or um this was my only yeah this was my only lived experience for quite a while you know it was just like there nothing else really mattered you know even when people were talking to me about you know the possibility of going back to work and some of these things like it couldn't have been further from my from my mind even though you've eventually got a
Speaker: I was lucky having a good family and parents that I was able to have a bit of time off to sort of just tend to these spaces, but how important it was not to think about any of that stuff and to be really listening to the wisdom that was being shared through this experience, you know.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're beautiful, mate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As I was saying, but then, yeah, I think it was a year gone by and I was in that sort of conflicting state.
Speaker: I'm just like, I just want to be exploring this.
Speaker: I just want to be in presence with her.
Speaker: I just want to be living in this inner world.
Speaker: But, you know, we need to obviously...
Speaker: Yeah, live in this reality.
Speaker: We don't catch our own food anymore, so we have to work and we have to earn a living and those types of things.
Speaker: So I did start getting back into youth work and I felt really nourished in that space as well.
Speaker: It took me a while to actually be able to be fully functional in it, but I was...
Speaker: Yeah, starting to find my rhythm there, but I was still just really, yeah, finding it hard to witness what we'd done to the planet.
Speaker: Like I was really taking on a lot of the planet's grief in regards to the way we've disconnected from the land and almost, like I said before, paved over the top of the natural world, you know, with this sort of alternate reality.
Speaker: And I guess that just really annoyed me for a while.
Speaker: I was just really sad about it.
Speaker: And it almost like I didn't have patience for just the mundane conversations either.
Speaker: So I found myself being really isolated because even catching up with some of my old mates and stuff, you know, I love them to death.
Speaker: But, you know, if we're talking about replacing the roof or the missus has pissed me off this week or whatever it may be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just like I needed a depth now into the conversations I was having and who I was encountering.
Speaker: And, yeah, so I did come to a breaking point where I just need to get the hell out of here because before that I'll just have to quickly mention that I had a friend of mine who –
Speaker: who I'd met, he was a street artist, you know, just an amazing dude and someone I could talk to a bit more about some of this stuff.
Speaker: He had mentioned that he'd had...
Speaker: an ayahuasca experience like a plant medicine experience um and talked about yeah talked about accessing um yeah other realms of reality and and and feeling into things that he'd never felt before and immediately i knew nothing about it and it wasn't as commonly sort of talked about um back then either um
Speaker: But immediately I knew that I needed to explore this.
Speaker: You know, there was something in me.
Speaker: Again, it was listening to that inner wisdom.
Speaker: I'm like, I need to follow whatever you're talking about.
Speaker: So then I went and did the research and started looking it up.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: sort of conflicting things.
Speaker: There were some people having beautiful experiences, but some people having extremely traumatic experiences and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker: And it was just like, well, yeah, this is a medicine and an experience that needs to be respected.
Speaker: And, yeah.
Speaker: But I said to him that day, I said, look, if – because I knew there were –
Speaker: some shamans that were sort of working sort of secretly, I guess, in Australia, just doing their thing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I just said, look, if you hear about another one of these sort of sacred circles that I'd love to be a part of it, if you find out, there's an invitation for one without even really, yeah, just knowing that I needed to explore it.
Speaker: Just trusting the inner wisdom.
Speaker: Totally, yeah.
Speaker: And then the time came where he gave me
Speaker: a call and said, yeah, there's a spot if you want one.
Speaker: And I remember that week, you know, there's a very strict diet and all those types of things.
Speaker: And so it's sort of removing any type of processed foods and making sure the body is really cleansed and really clean for this type of experience, for the medicine to fully be able to work through you.
Speaker: But then, yeah, there was this lot of fear coming up in regards to this.
Speaker: And even on the journey there, like it was a really, you know, I remember a really windy and rainy day and it was –
Speaker: I'm like, oh, this isn't a good sign.
Speaker: And yeah, feeling really scared for my life almost.
Speaker: But then, yeah, rocked up at this little space that they had, this little retreat space that they had.
Speaker: And even speaking to someone when I first got there, he'd done ayahuasca before and
Speaker: And he was telling me, yeah, it started getting intense and then it became even more intense and like it was a really scary experience for him.
Speaker: And this was the first person I'd spoken to and it just more and more fear started pumping through the veins, you know.
Speaker: It's raining outside.
Speaker: It's windy as hell.
Speaker: You already scared shitless.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Let's add on.
Speaker: Let's add on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then, like just as before I was about to walk through the hall, like the sun and the sunset started beaming through the clouds and I was having that sense of familiarity with the love that Steph was able to sort of bring into my being and sort of – and it was this feeling that, oh, things are going to be okay.
Speaker: You know, I'm here.
Speaker: I'm going to be here with you.
Speaker: And as I sort of walk through –
Speaker: Yeah, into the sort of ceremony space.
Speaker: I was sort of feeling into where I was going to sit.
Speaker: And as I sat down, the woman next to me had butterflies all over her yoga mat.
Speaker: Get out.
Speaker: Okay, this is... All right, that's the way I'm meant to be.
Speaker: the comfort and the love and the, yeah.
Speaker: And just the, the trust in like, this is where I need to be in my journey, you know, right now in this moment, um, again, really just listening to what's, what's unfolding here.
Speaker: And, um, yeah, I remember also the shaman talking to the process and that we all drink our cup and, um,
Speaker: even that the breath is our steering wheel, if it's becoming a bit intense or, um, we're a bit out of body, it's important to try and connect with the breath to try and come back to the body.
Speaker: And I remember, um, yeah, we all had a, had a serving and,
Speaker: I was just sort of waiting for things to unfold.
Speaker: And I just had this sort of just beautiful feeling like there was this energy moving through me and just sort of healing things, like sort of really tending to some of the sadness and the grief.
Speaker: Because I was still very much caught in my grief around where to now for me in this particular world, you know.
Speaker: Like I was feeling that beautiful connection with Steph, but I was just like, you know,
Speaker: what am I going to do in this world?
Speaker: I was feeling really isolated in that.
Speaker: So still really.
Speaker: And this is only a year after you were saying, right?
Speaker: A year after.
Speaker: So that's like, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're still right.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it was her connection that I guess that was really keeping me, yeah, getting fueled with enough love, I guess.
Speaker: And then, so as I was, um,
Speaker: yeah, I started having this sense that I was feeling all this beautiful healing taking place, but I wasn't necessarily entering other worlds or experiences like that I'd heard about or read about that people were talking to.
Speaker: And so I was feeling into whether I have another cup and I'm just like, well,
Speaker: I don't know anything about it.
Speaker: I don't know if it gets more crazy or so.
Speaker: I was really sitting with that for a bit and then, yeah, something telling me.
Speaker: It was almost like Steph was telling me to have another cup.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I crawled over to the shaman and,
Speaker: I drank another cup and within five minutes, like I was just, everything became so intense, you know, like my heart was racing.
Speaker: I was having all of these colors and shapes sort of coming at me, but it was all coming at me way too fast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they sort of said, if you need help, put your hand up and we'll come and tend to you.
Speaker: And I'm like, do I ask for help?
Speaker: You know, do I need an ambulance?
Speaker: Like I started all my sort of human thoughts started coming in because it just became so intense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: then i remember reading this passage just before and what to expect potentially on your first experience and it was just like trust in the medicine trust in the process that it's here here to heal you and it's here to hold you um but you need to have faith and it was like those words got handed to me you know like a like a tool you know out of the tool belt and um in that moment where i just trusted and had faith in the journey
Speaker: It shot me out into this completely other reality, like a reality that was so intricate, so beautiful, something that I'd never witnessed before and didn't even know was possible to witness, so beautifully orchestrated.
Speaker: And again, like I'm not in my human form.
Speaker: I'm just witnessing this as like consciousness or as an energy, you know.
Speaker: When you completely step out as the observer and you're just seeing it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like a movie.
Speaker: Your life is playing like a movie in front of you.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm just a part of this experience and just in wonder and in awe of what's happening, you know.
Speaker: But then as I was moving through this experience, just caught up in just so much, yeah, just so much.
Speaker: And you're feeling it in your body too, feeling it in your heart, just like accessing this love that you've never felt before, you know.
Speaker: And then as I was moving through this sort of reality, this spiral started coming towards me.
Speaker: And as I moved towards it, there was a figure and it started walking towards me and it was Steph.
Speaker: And she was there standing right in front of me like I'm sitting here in front of you.
Speaker: And she couldn't believe that I could see her.
Speaker: So she was laughing that I was able to see her fully.
Speaker: And as she was laughing, and I guess this is why we sit in community and we're all interwoven as humanity and our energies,
Speaker: the woman, as she was laughing, the woman on the butterfly was, on the butterfly mat was verbally laughing.
Speaker: So I was able to hear, Steph was almost channeling this woman so that I could hear the laughter as well.
Speaker: Like it became just so out of control.
Speaker: And when,
Speaker: When we got to embrace, yeah, I guess it was just everything that had happened, all my grief, all my sadness was leaving me.
Speaker: Yeah, I was just going to imagine like shedding, just falling away, falling off.
Speaker: Everything was shedding.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, it was just like – and then, yeah, she became – yeah, she started showing me different parts of reality and I started feeling the way that plants grow, that how interwoven we are with the world, you know.
Speaker: I was able to share my breath at the most, you know, intimate level, share my breath with the ocean's breath and like it was just –
Speaker: yeah this profound sort of night where i was able to really uncover my true essence and feel it i guess in its all of its glory i guess like yeah and be healed in it all you know um and be cleansed in it all you know so it was just yeah just magical yeah it's it's that yeah
Speaker: It's so hard to explain because I've never done ayahuasca or anything from that, but I am a big believer with plant medicine and respecting the medicine and how you can go through that.
Speaker: I look at the medicine as a tool, as any other tool that allows you to kind of penetrate beyond the
Speaker: what you are consciously aware of.
Speaker: And that's where I see it can be really powerful, but it's respecting it in the way of understanding that, but then understanding how you can use it later.
Speaker: Cause you know, some people can get caught up in the habit of just doing it for the sake of like that high, you know, that you might get from the medicine rather than actually realizing that you need time afterwards for integration.
Speaker: And that integration piece starts becoming important, which is where I wanted to see what your integration experience after this, because now this is such a freaking deeply transformational experience.
Speaker: And again, I still love that her symbol was the butterfly, because it's just when we talk about transformation and the butterfly being symbolic of transformation.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What was the integration afterwards for you after this?
Speaker: And yeah, like you're saying, I think the integration is the most important part.
Speaker: I mean, because you're going to have to go back into the world.
Speaker: Again, like it was a bit of a balancing for me because now like I almost saw even more holes in the way we live.
Speaker: And some of the things that we concern ourselves with, you know, that I'd entered this place where, oh, my God, like some of the ideas and beliefs and perceptions that I'd inherited and taken on, I guess, through my journey were just so like this world and this experience and the power we have and the intuition and wisdom that each of us hold is so far beyond us.
Speaker: um, the 3d, I guess, experience that I'd come to know, you know, like, and so, yeah, there was, uh,
Speaker: early days it was even more difficult in ways, I guess, to like, wow, like I don't even know if I can, yeah, go back, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But even speaking, I just want you to speak, maybe go a little deeper on this because like when people are on these journeys of figuring out themselves, and this like yours has been obviously using the plant medicine with this as well, but even if we didn't have the plant medicine, it's that once you start
Speaker: changing your inner workings and really going deep and peeling back the layers of yourself to understand who you are and then the connectedness of everything it is so hard like i i've found that like can be sometimes the most challenging thing that it's like even we mentioned this beforehand with friends and i was like i got you like like you said it briefly but i was like that's such a big topic on its own you could talk about right because it's like yeah say with the friends it's like i love my friends i really do care deeply about them but
Speaker: when you started changing you start realizing like what brings you energizes you what feels nourishing what feels healing what feels like this is like this is where i want to be heading and the the kind of um level i can't think of a better word but the energetic level of the conversations i want to be having you know whereas like yeah talking about just the same old same old oh how's this oh life's okay life's good oh yeah and i did this this is like man you you want more expansive conversations and
Speaker: You want more things that you're like, yeah, this is because when you have these conversations, it starts vibrating and changing the frequency, the energy around you starts pulling in all the different things that you need for you.
Speaker: And it's like all of a sudden conversations, energy, the people you're around starts shifting as you start shifting.
Speaker: And that's the biggest thing I learned from my own InWords journey with multiple things is that as my shift internally had a massive change in the outward world.
Speaker: And especially that gaps you see, it's probably one of the hardest things
Speaker: to cope with because you're like, well, I still need to make money.
Speaker: I still need to provide.
Speaker: I still need shelter.
Speaker: And it's not to say that these things are the gaps I'm talking about more.
Speaker: I don't want to be living this kind of way or helping or changing the world in this kind of way.
Speaker: I see a different purpose for myself.
Speaker: How do you transition into that?
Speaker: And how do you deal with the gaps?
Speaker: Yeah, well, the beautiful thing, like, and yeah, we talk to it all the time.
Speaker: I was so blessed to, the dude I was working with at the time in a youth service that I was working at, we ended up becoming, yeah, incredible friends.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We first met through our love for Metallica, which was a beautiful way to meet.
Speaker: And yeah, as we uncovered each other's journey a bit, he had really followed some of the Tibetan Buddhist path, you know, in his journey and had been really excited about some of that and felt a real connection to Buddhism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that was great for me because that was stuff that really complemented some of the questions I've been asking and sort of hearing his, he was a beautiful writer, wrote these beautiful poems and stuff.
Speaker: And he was, I guess he was just really, and because I'd come from a world of obviously hanging out with, you know, dudes, footy dudes my whole life and had never really had anyone that was so emotionally connected to themselves, I guess.
Speaker: And we were both good for each other in that sense because he needed, there was this beautiful exchange.
Speaker: He needed some of me and the way, some I guess the masculine ways that I did things and I really needed some of the feminine qualities that he was so in tune with, you know.
Speaker: And so it was this exchange.
Speaker: It was just, yeah, and it's been like the perfect love story still to today, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was the guy that I was able to continually, and again, even when I was in my moments of grief, he'd ring me and I'd just say, oh, bro, I need you.
Speaker: And we'd go and drive down to the coast.
Speaker: We'd just sit at the beach and just listen to the waves, listen to the birds.
Speaker: And we wouldn't say a thing for hours, you know, and that's all I needed, you know.
Speaker: And so when I came back from this experience, he was just so intrigued and he was the perfect dude that I had.
Speaker: I was just so fortunate that we'd met each other.
Speaker: We always talk about it all the time.
Speaker: We do a lot of work together now.
Speaker: He...
Speaker: Yeah, just having his reflection because that's the thing.
Speaker: When we're going through some of these things, it can feel so isolating.
Speaker: But also we don't even know what's happening internally until we have it reflected back to us as well.
Speaker: It's like we need someone who can really listen to what we say but also trigger us with the right questions as well.
Speaker: So then it allows us just that reflection and there's someone being curious about, you know,
Speaker: my intimate workings and my intimate journey that I was able to bring that stuff out and we were able to, I guess I was able to evolve so much more through our relationship if I had to do it on my own
Speaker: I 100% wouldn't be where I am now and have an awareness now.
Speaker: And I still need him daily.
Speaker: We don't go many days without talking and sometimes we laugh about it or we're on the phone for three hours.
Speaker: It's way crazier than any relationship I've been in, any intimate one anyway.
Speaker: there's a power in that kind of level of community and depth and relationship.
Speaker: Like I have a weekly call with a body of mine where we do like a weekly men's check-in call.
Speaker: And I say the power in that because it's like very similar, funnily enough to what you're saying.
Speaker: Like he's, he would, I would say like a bit more, he's a masculine energy, but he definitely has a lot more of those feminine qualities as well of the softness that like, you know, that presence that he can give through that.
Speaker: And when we have these conversations, it's, it always peels back like,
Speaker: deeper understandings of ourselves, you know, and it also makes you, it allows you to kind of feel safe.
Speaker: Like that's, as men, we're always thought to be as like, you know, the providers, the containers, like, you know, the masculine energy is the container, right?
Speaker: We give structure, we give firmness, the feminine energy being that fluid, the water, so to speak, right?
Speaker: So,
Speaker: We have our job is to kind of understand ourselves on such a level that we can actually create or build up this container for someone, for our partners or for feminine energy to flow naturally and without judgment with like with all the mystery and the chaos and everything like that, because that's the beauty in there.
Speaker: There's the beauty in the feminine with the chaos as well and the mystery.
Speaker: And the masculine, there's also the beauty in the structure, although it can be rigid and all that.
Speaker: There's that beauty in that.
Speaker: So when we're always in our masculine, we never actually get that space held for us.
Speaker: And sometimes when you get that, even sometimes you just get a little glimpse of that and someone holds space for you.
Speaker: you can surrender into your feminine.
Speaker: And I say, because masculine and feminine are just energies within us.
Speaker: They're not a man is masculine, a female is feminine.
Speaker: It's not everyone has masculine, feminine energies within us.
Speaker: And it's that constant balance of those energies.
Speaker: If you're constantly in your masculine, I don't think it's healthy.
Speaker: If you're constantly in your feminine, I don't think it's healthy.
Speaker: I think there's a duality and balance that you'll flow and you'll find your natural rhythm of it.
Speaker: But that's like, that's where we still need to be held from that opposite energy at different times as well.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was just so beautiful.
Speaker: And it was like we were able to go on the journey together.
Speaker: So we became, it's almost like we, even though we have our own reality and our own way of feeling things, we had
Speaker: We were able to open up into a shared reality that I'd never been able to experience before.
Speaker: And, yeah, we'd just continue exploring, have these adventures.
Speaker: Like, you know, sometimes when we have conversations, we can talk over each other and it's always like everything's always welcome, you know, because we just get so excited, you know.
Speaker: And then I'm able to completely be myself.
Speaker: I'm able to talk to things that –
Speaker: I'm really loving about my journey and expressing and him knowing that it's not a place of ego or anything.
Speaker: It's just me being really excited about it and him holding that.
Speaker: And when I'm feeling grief, you know, grief in some way, I've encountered different, obviously been on the journey since, moving through different experiences and having him there to be able to reflect on that all the time and him just know
Speaker: uh i guess he just he sees me and knows me completely and it's just so important for someone yeah um and you know so many people don't have that that um this yeah this being just knows every single thing about me you know um and able to reflect it and and and share with me in it and know that sometimes we don't even need to say anything we just need to catch up and
Speaker: hang out together and not a word is said, you know.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, but then that led me, like you were saying, that integration was still really hard.
Speaker: I knew more work needed to be done.
Speaker: Um, and I was getting that call and I really felt the call to, um, go and sit with some of the shamans in the Amazon.
Speaker: Um, and that was something that was really, um, yeah, just, just staying with me.
Speaker: And, um, yeah, there was a moment, like I was saying, I was sort of caught up in, in some of the mundane stuff, um, that I made a decision that I just had to, had to leave, uh, that day.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: I knew, realized I just booked a flight to Peru.
Speaker: I was still, yeah, I was still meant to show up to work.
Speaker: I had to, I had to write a really, I was actually managing a youth service at that time and I had to really write a heartfelt letter to sort of say it's just, yeah, there's a, there's a path that I need to take right now.
Speaker: And, and that just goes beyond anything.
Speaker: And I think people that know me as well, like I, I,
Speaker: there was a sense of abandoning the work I was doing and some of the young people that I was working with.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's also acknowledging that I'm not going to be good for them in the long run unless I go and tend to these parts of myself that I needed to continue to explore.
Speaker: So really trusting that, that I needed to go and do it and, um,
Speaker: So I just took off basically.
Speaker: I just knew I wanted to go and meet a shaman and that's all I knew.
Speaker: This is after you've done your first journey.
Speaker: Yeah, this was.
Speaker: You started stepping back into this work of like the social work, helping kids and all that through this.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And then you decided to still take another leap of faith.
Speaker: Probably another year later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that was... I know, because that's intense, because like, you've already done one massive thing.
Speaker: That's for a question.
Speaker: And then it's like, you're like, okay, you know what, I'm going to, especially when you have like, that's, yeah, when you have responsibilities,
Speaker: it makes it harder.
Speaker: Like it feels like the barriers of entry are like just raised.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was like, yeah, it was just this inner wisdom that allowed you to go like, no, I need to do this.
Speaker: I can't like, cause like, how do you push past all the bullshit Western Roblox?
Speaker: You know, I say Western Roblox as in like, you know, your responsibilities, your family going like, no, no, no, this, they may be like, wait, wait, why are you doing this all of a sudden again?
Speaker: Or, you know, uh, your own questioning of yourself going like, is this the right thing I need to do?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How'd you find the answer?
Speaker: Yeah, that's literally what it was.
Speaker: It was like some of that intuition around things that I needed to grieve and my process around that or whether it was the way I encountered Steph or following that direction to go and see this medium.
Speaker: It was just like, it's like I didn't have a choice.
Speaker: It was like my, yeah, that inner listening.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like I didn't even question it.
Speaker: It was just like, yep, this is something that was sort of coming up, you know, a bit.
Speaker: But then there was this day where it just arrived on me and it's just like, you've got to go today.
Speaker: And so, yeah, there's a lot actually to organize before you go to Peru.
Speaker: So I quickly booked a flight in like a week and then I realized I had to, yeah, there was quite a bit of preparation.
Speaker: before I had to go.
Speaker: But yeah, and obviously he sent a really heartfelt email to the bosses that sort of, my boss and those types of things and saying how sorry I was, but I just, yeah, I just needed to go.
Speaker: Yeah, a lot of people are not understanding, but at least the team that I was working with directly, they understood and they knew that I wouldn't leave unless I had to.
Speaker: you know so which was it was lovely to feel that type of support as well um yeah no that's just such a yeah no thank you for sharing that because i'm like it scares it scares me like you know there are times like even for my own personal self like that where i'm going through things and it's like you know like i'm like oh i know i need to change it up like say you know um one thing that i'm feeling through recently is just this like do i want to stay here do i want to move to like i want to go closer to the water and to the like to like like the water always feels like it calls me
Speaker: But then I'm like, oh, wait, what about we have a mortgage we're paying for, we have this we're paying for, we have all these other things that come up and it's so easy to get pulled away from that.
Speaker: It's so easy for me to just double guess myself and go like, second guess myself, sorry.
Speaker: And
Speaker: decide not to do it, you know?
Speaker: So you having that deep inner trust in yourself, I think that's something that's so true, but it's something that's not easy to cultivate at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I never would have made these decisions, you know, in pre, I guess, Steph leaving, you know, it was, um,
Speaker: Yeah, there was a different kind of, yeah, I was accessing a different, I was accessing myself for the first time actually, yeah.
Speaker: My true self and my true needs and something that was way bigger than me, you know, the idea of me anyway, you know.
Speaker: It was just like there is this movement that's carrying you now and you just need to keep listening to it because that's going to carry you, you know, all the way where you need to go, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: and then i remember i remember taking off and um landing in um
Speaker: in Peru and in Lima in the major city, not really where I was doing.
Speaker: I hadn't tracked down any retreat or any shamans or anything like that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Wow, I just virtually went.
Speaker: And so I was in sort of, yeah, spending a few days in Lima and, again, that's a big city.
Speaker: So I was just like, oh, jeez.
Speaker: And obviously I didn't speak very much Spanish at all.
Speaker: So that was – that had its own challenges.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so just sort of wondering what I was going to be doing and feeling like, you know, the questions come in, am I doing the right thing?
Speaker: Like, what are you doing here?
Speaker: You know, all that type of stuff.
Speaker: But then I was about a week in and then I get a phone call from Andy, my brother, the one that I've been talking about.
Speaker: And he said, bro, I've been talking to Zoya, which was his partner at the time.
Speaker: I'm coming.
Speaker: Oh, no way.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then literally he jumped on the next flight to come and see me.
Speaker: And he'd done the work behind the scenes.
Speaker: He'd found a place, a retreat that we could go that was not far from Makitos and, yeah, had pretty much planned out the whole sort of journey.
Speaker: I just had to wait for him to get here and then we'd, yeah, take a flight.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: How did that all came together?
Speaker: Crazy, yeah.
Speaker: Which was beautiful for him to trust as well, you know, to just trust in this energy and the movement behind it, you know, because he was just such a seeker at the time and he was there through the whole Steph experience too and it was something that he needed to encounter as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: in his own process, but then also the way that I was sort of moving and feeling into things.
Speaker: And our relationship, every time he shared something, he was just so excited about it, you know, which was so good.
Speaker: Like he was never coming from a place of –
Speaker: Yeah, that wasn't just authentic in wanting to know more and just because the love between us is just, yeah, just such a deep thing, you know.
Speaker: So we're all just – both of us are just so, yeah, committed and intrigued in each other's journeys, you know, which is great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, yeah, we ended up in this retreat and staying in this beautiful, like these beautiful double-story jungle huts, you know, deep into the Amazon.
Speaker: And I remember even when we jumped on the boat, like we'd get to Akitos and then we had to take this boat like two hours into the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker: And I'm just like, not one person alive would know where I am right now.
Speaker: Or if anything happened to me, no one would know.
Speaker: And I'm just like, I kind of loved that, you know.
Speaker: I'm just like, there was such a freedom in that that I hadn't really felt before.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But the same thing, it was we were getting ready for our first ceremony and I was just sort of, you know, knowing what I encountered last time, how prepared I needed to get for it.
Speaker: And then all the nerves coming back in and sort of just, I guess,
Speaker: oh, am I going to encounter her again?
Speaker: Having no idea whether that's going to happen again or what might unfold out there.
Speaker: And same thing, just sort of entering the space and having Andy next to me was an incredible sense of nourishment and safety, having a brother, you know, laying next to you, about to go on his own journey as well.
Speaker: And so we journeyed together as well and, you know,
Speaker: Things, again, were like super turbulent and difficult in the beginning and asked everything of me.
Speaker: Like I was just, yeah, wanting to abort mission and all that stuff comes in.
Speaker: This is through your journey you're talking about.
Speaker: Yeah, this is in the beginning of the first ayahuasca, sitting in the Amazon, you know, like, yeah, again, just becoming so intense that, you know, I'm just like, I don't know if I want to be here.
Speaker: But again, there's something just, yeah, finding that faith and trust in what's about to happen.
Speaker: And it opened up into even more incredible worlds this time.
Speaker: And it was like,
Speaker: It was funny because as I was still seeing the medium on a regular basis and as I was encountering her, I was encountering Steph each time and she was like evolving while she, you know, so whatever her role is, yeah, wherever she is, she was continually evolving into a being and she used to laugh at the fact that I was just trying to figure life out and I was stuck here just stumbling over myself and she was continually evolving on the
Speaker: this just incredible...
Speaker: level you know um and that was something you mentioned she was like she became your spirit guide and people won't know can you can you explain what a spirit guide is just like in your simplest terms because i was like yeah i can only yeah say it in yeah yeah how it feels for me i guess other people encounter um spirit guides in their own way um but for me uh she i was able to feel her um and almost almost hear her like even though it wasn't like an audible it's almost like um
Speaker: telepathy in the way that I was able to encounter her.
Speaker: Like I just knew when she was there.
Speaker: But then also she was just giving me these deep messages.
Speaker: There was some, yeah, there's a whole bunch of other stories I can go into that were sort of really profound around that.
Speaker: you know um we haven't got enough time but where i was encountering her like you know there was moments where i'd had her sitting next to me on the couch and um she was actually showing me what to see it was actually the first we went and saw avatar the first time um at the cinemas together and then it was the first time i'd ever watched it since she'd passed away and i didn't i loved it the first time but i didn't really understand it and i
Speaker: And then there was a time I was watching it and she was like sitting next to me and then I was able, she was in, and I could feel her sitting next to me and I'm talking to her and she's, she's showing me how to, what to see in, in, in the movie.
Speaker: And then you think of that first movie, it's exactly what it was about.
Speaker: It was this woman.
Speaker: you know, this man that was sort of confused, but then like sort of becoming more and more connected to himself, connected to the forest.
Speaker: And she was his guide on how to, how to communicate with the forest.
Speaker: So this was the story she was showing me.
Speaker: She's going, this is our story.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: So she was showing me how to listen, how to watch it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I'm just profoundly downloading this stuff as like, this is, this is our story.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: If you ever get the chance to listen to the song that comes on afterward in the closing credits.
Speaker: So I've had this incredible experience.
Speaker: Had her sitting next to me on the couch feeling into this whole story.
Speaker: And then I'm listening.
Speaker: Then this song comes on at the end, which is all about my life was a sacrifice to live through your love, basically.
Speaker: And that has been... I feel like I'm definitely going to go back and listen to that song.
Speaker: You have to listen to that song.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I've had a whole bunch of...
Speaker: And, oh, yeah, so the first experience was I went to the medium and she said, oh, Steph's laughing.
Speaker: I said, oh, why is that?
Speaker: And this was only about three or four weeks after the avatar experience.
Speaker: She's going, oh, she's just letting me know.
Speaker: I don't know if it makes sense, but she's letting me know that she helped direct avatar.
Speaker: And I'm just like, what?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And then I've had a bunch of people sort of talk.
Speaker: You know, I've had a bunch of avatar encounters since then just randomly with people that have sort of
Speaker: mentioned things around Avatar.
Speaker: Yeah, even when I was leaving to get the appropriate sort of shots and stuff to go to Peru, yeah, the woman, she was just really intrigued about why I was going to Peru.
Speaker: So I just briefly told her and she goes, wow, that sounds just like Avatar, you know.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: So I just kept having these encounters which just continued to, yeah, just give me the faith in this connection, in the fact that she is –
Speaker: helping me uncover who I am, the secrets of our world, the secrets of the universe.
Speaker: It's just been this profound, incredible sort of thing, you know.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: so yeah so see no this i love i'm just like even i never ever looked at avatar just through the lens of you saying like she was his guide from someone who's completely disconnected from the land and all that yes his guide to get back connected to the land and i was like yes and the similarities then of what you're saying with you and steph is yeah oh yeah i love the word profound but i was like i was like yeah it's just it was so profound i'm like wow
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you're back with Andy.
Speaker: You're doing this.
Speaker: You're in your journey, you were saying.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: In Peru.
Speaker: And then you were saying it was just more of that hating the turbulence, having a trust and surrender again.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And then entering into this world that was even like...
Speaker: Yeah, they weren't even the same, but it was almost like I had a greater access to just how incredible some of these spaces were and so intricately perfect as well, like in the way that these landscapes were like...
Speaker: multi-dimensional I guess like just yeah even some artists I've seen have been able to even paint something that resembles it somehow so they're getting some access of these worlds as well but something that is just so beyond anything that I'd ever experienced before but you know it as well like that's that's the thing it's just like it's it's so new but then so familiar at the same time it's just like I've been here before like
Speaker: And then, yeah, not only was I able to encounter her again, like I was able to encounter, they talk about ayahuasca in a feminine sense, obviously, being a feminine plant.
Speaker: Grandmother energy.
Speaker: Yeah, and mother ayahuasca.
Speaker: And then I couldn't tell the difference.
Speaker: It was like Steph was there, but then she was also an embodiment of mother ayahuasca.
Speaker: And she began taking me on a journey through this world
Speaker: what felt like an afterlife, you know?
Speaker: Um, so then she was able to, and I was able to be fully like, I guess, conscious in the experience too.
Speaker: So it was be, I was able to weave in and out of it, um, the way I needed to.
Speaker: So, but then she, she took me to my pop who had passed away when I was four.
Speaker: Uh, and I'd always felt him and really wanted to know him.
Speaker: And he, he almost like, he just sat me down and it's hard to explain, but, um,
Speaker: He started talking to me about that I've been here the whole time, that I am here if you need, that he was really proud of the man I was becoming.
Speaker: He had messages for my dad.
Speaker: Yeah, it started getting crazy.
Speaker: And then I started from him, yeah, sort of meeting other relatives and stuff as well that had passed.
Speaker: But then I was able to, yeah, Steph was able to show me how the incredible inseparateness between us, like at one moment she filled my being and I was able to
Speaker: feel and witness the world from her eyes almost and from her energy and so um and then she was also able to play and i've read this in books too but yeah she was almost able to replay our journey in all these snapshots of all these moments we'd actually been together on the earth and so it was like a movie like i was watching these moments take place again
Speaker: And she was sort of showing me how to release things and let go of things energetically.
Speaker: So there was times where I was like feeling so divine, but then these uncomfortable experiences would arise or things that I wasn't proud of in my journey, whatever.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, no, I just want the divine stuff.
Speaker: But she's like, no, no, no, you need to see those things, feel those things, and you need to release those things.
Speaker: So suddenly I was allowing them to be there.
Speaker: But then this overwhelming forgiveness, this gentleness, this softness in regards to you don't need to hold that anymore.
Speaker: You know, it's okay.
Speaker: It wasn't your fault.
Speaker: And I am letting go of all of these things and just feeling my body just –
Speaker: um yeah move through all of this sadness all of these moments and yeah like um there was a moment where i was because we do the ceremonies in the amazon we're outside as well and suddenly like it's just like an orchestra of of sound with all the the insects and the creatures and
Speaker: there was this bird call that was calling me and then I was just listening to this call and it was like actually lifting me up through the top of the tree canopy and then I became the bird flying across the top of the trees.
Speaker: Like it was, yeah, and it was almost in all these moments.
Speaker: So I'd go off on my own journey, but then I'd be like, oh, Steph, where are you?
Speaker: And then I would audibly hear her somehow.
Speaker: She's like, I'm here.
Speaker: I'm always here.
Speaker: And that's one of the things she reminded me of.
Speaker: And it's something that I talk to when I sit with people that have lost someone or are in that type of grief that every time we speak their name, every time we listen to that song, every time that they just come into our consciousness out of nowhere, it is always them.
Speaker: it's always me when that happens you know and that just gave me such a comfort in my journey you know that even talking about her now and sharing this story yeah I can feel her presence just feels the warmth yeah and there was like there's two things I wanted to call out on this right one was
Speaker: just going back, when you said you were like, you went into the normal life, you stopped school, I think you were saying at 15, went into the trading journey, right?
Speaker: Was a spark, you had this realization.
Speaker: It's like you never were just, like you may have had a love for nature, but you weren't always just like,
Speaker: This one is connected to spirit and all that stuff.
Speaker: And it's so beautiful to see the evolution of this.
Speaker: Because sometimes when people would talk about this, I understand where you're coming from.
Speaker: But I also know that some people might listen to this and be like, oh, that's a bit woo-woo.
Speaker: Or, you know, I hate that word woo-woo, but it's like, you know, they'll use that because...
Speaker: when you see like where you're at, like if you were to go to your, you know, your tradie self and tell them about this, they'd be like, what the, like, you know, that's bullshit.
Speaker: Like that's crazy.
Speaker: You know, that just doesn't make sense.
Speaker: That doesn't happen at all.
Speaker: But as that's where I've found for myself, it is a journey.
Speaker: It is that kind of deepening, deepening, deepening, deepening.
Speaker: And it's, I say deepening, but it's like deepening to allow for expansion.
Speaker: The deeper you go in, the more expansive, the more expansive, the more expansive.
Speaker: So it's like this, it's like a paradox, right?
Speaker: You go deep to go expansive, to expand.
Speaker: And yeah, so that's what I was like, that was one thing that I wanted to call out because I was like, yeah, like your journey is so awesome to hear and see.
Speaker: You can actually just walk in and you're like, wow, that's so sick.
Speaker: And then two was this...
Speaker: when you were saying about the letting go of emotions, that's so powerful because when we're normally experiencing, and that's a big part of trauma release, right?
Speaker: Just when people have trauma, whether it's a big T trauma as in a big experience or a small T trauma, small little things like don't cry when I was young as a boy going like, stop crying.
Speaker: And I took that as like, boys don't cry.
Speaker: It's not manly to cry.
Speaker: My mom and I probably did mean that, but
Speaker: That's how I interpreted it when I grew older.
Speaker: And it's only later that I started deconstructing that and giving it different meaning.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: That fear around when that emotion comes up is so common that people, we get into the state of like kind of numbness and freeze where we don't want to experience that because we think that, oh, if we experience that, what benefit is that gonna give us?
Speaker: What is that gonna allow?
Speaker: But it's like that awareness and shining, it's like this is all that shadow work, right?
Speaker: It's like shining the light on that dark area of yourself
Speaker: allows you to one bring awareness to that and you bringing awareness to that situation allows you to then mobilize and allow that feeling to move through so when i say mobilize mobilize being you giving or tapping to that deep forgiveness yeah to the like thank you you know i i forgive you and allowing that energy to move through because that when you don't allow that energy to move through that's where i always like it gets stuck that's where
Speaker: Or your illnesses and where you get sick and all that.
Speaker: It's like we don't allow this emotions and stuff like that.
Speaker: Our body needs to naturally process somatically.
Speaker: We don't allow that to move through us.
Speaker: So I found that beautiful when you were like, yeah, she was like, no, no, this is the medicine is sitting in with this discomfort and then allowing it to move through you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was like, yeah, that, yeah, like the toddler expression, you know, like really needing to, whether it's, whether it's an uncomfortable emotion, whether it's I'm angry right now or I'm sad right now, I need to express that fully.
Speaker: And that's something that we've lost.
Speaker: As a, for me, you know, I'm talking to my journey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sort of lost the way of that.
Speaker: And then just having that, that mentality, like you were saying, you know, no, no, you don't have to cry, you know, I've just got to get on with it.
Speaker: You know, I've got to,
Speaker: And it's like as a culture, that's what we do, you know, it's just like, oh, you know, I've got deadlines to meet.
Speaker: There's, you know, there's expectations, you know, there's, I always need to show up, you know, no matter how I'm feeling, you know, I'll just keep suppressing some of those more emotional, uncomfortable feelings because it's not okay to be myself in the world, you know.
Speaker: And a lot of our work environments, those types of things, you know, it's all about, you know, goals and profit and all those types of things.
Speaker: And we might be going through a complete relationship breakdown if we're at home.
Speaker: And then being asked to, we're falling apart behind closed doors, but we're being asked to show up every day to keep the wheel turning, you know.
Speaker: So we'll suppress all of that and somehow drag ourselves away.
Speaker: through that experience and not tending to those spaces that need to be tended to, you know.
Speaker: It's actually what I'm, yeah, keen to explore a little bit in the work I'm doing now, even trying to cultivate spaces where, you know, workplaces, within our families, where we can openly just sit and talk to one another, you know, without hierarchy, without an agenda, you know,
Speaker: just forming circles for us to just listen to one another, for us to see one another, um, and to really validate each other's journeys.
Speaker: It's so important to feel seen and heard in our experience.
Speaker: Um, because so many people don't, you know, like even I've, um,
Speaker: Yeah, going through this, my own grief journey, I've been able to hold space for a couple of grief circles and stuff and recognizing that some of the people, a lot of the people that were sharing had held on to this grief for 20, 30 years without anyone sitting in front of them and saying, are you okay?
Speaker: I see you.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: And you could feel the relief in just being able to tell someone about it and actually be able to cry about it.
Speaker: you know like um yeah it was a real eye-opener for me just on how long people have held on to some of this stuff because our society and culture sort of has this idea that we need to be okay all the time you know that um and distracting ourselves from the things that are uncomfortable or sad or even death it's a fairly taboo subject you know it's not we don't openly talk about it you know um
Speaker: And in ancient cultures, you know, it was so important to mourn as a community, you know.
Speaker: It would be like the whole community would stop for three or four days and go through a real mourning process because we're all here to grieve together.
Speaker: But so much of us are grieving alone and isolated.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: yeah no no no look yeah it's and it's it's so important of like this story and you sharing that of spreading that idea of being able to hold space for your fellow you know brother or sister in the sense of like
Speaker: listening and seeing them for who they are.
Speaker: Because when we say, oh, I see you, people are like, what does I see you mean?
Speaker: And go back to Avatar, right?
Speaker: Avatar was, I see you.
Speaker: It was like, I see you for your beauty, for your flaws, for your good, your bad, your ugly.
Speaker: And I accept you for that without judgment.
Speaker: That's the biggest thing.
Speaker: Cause I see you as not just like, Oh, I can visually see you.
Speaker: I see, Oh, I'm listening to you.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I'm listening to what you're saying to me.
Speaker: It's like, no, no, you're listening to them from that place of safety, love and, and, uh, non-judgment.
Speaker: You know, like that's, that's what it's been for me where you're like, that's being felt, being sensed, being heard.
Speaker: So when you're being your unapologetic self, um,
Speaker: You're not being, you know, there's no sense of judgment.
Speaker: There's no sense of like regret or fear.
Speaker: You're just being completely present and that being loved for that version of you.
Speaker: So that's what I feel like is so huge when you talk about holding space and being seen, being like, really, I see you in that kind of sense.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And like we sort of touched on, but even just talking to my journey and you, yours, like that's why I try and share with people when I do some of the work that I do now.
Speaker: I want to uncover what reality is like for you because every single moment since you were born, even from the womb potentially, you know, you're feeling into what type of environment, whether it's a positive one, whether it's a traumatic one, whether it's, yeah, emotionally sort of confusing, you know,
Speaker: But as we go through the world, you know, it comes from, yeah, the relationship we have with our parents into the relationship, you know, it's the school teachers that might have believed in you.
Speaker: It's the bullies you had at school.
Speaker: It's the heartbreak you had, your first heartbreak.
Speaker: It's all these moments have made you feel reality in the only unique way that it's ever been felt before.
Speaker: Like no one ever has.
Speaker: No one ever will feel reality the way that you do.
Speaker: So, and this is where we get into a bit of trouble as a culture because we judge from our own reality and
Speaker: and going, why is that person acting that way?
Speaker: Oh, he should be doing better than that.
Speaker: Or this, I can't believe he said that or did that or whatever.
Speaker: But that's not, that's only coming from our sense of reality.
Speaker: Never will we know what it was like, why they're being triggered in that moment.
Speaker: Or we don't, maybe we don't know what's going on at home.
Speaker: Maybe they are going through a relational breakdown.
Speaker: Maybe they are suffering from some sort of depression from, yeah, some childhood stuff that's coming up for them.
Speaker: Yeah, there was a beautiful saying that, um,
Speaker: Don't judge me on this page of the book unless you're prepared to read the entire story.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Always taking that one with me because it is so true.
Speaker: Because however we're triggered in the moment, sitting with, and this is where this beautiful human exchange takes place as well, even though through my work as a social worker, I would be perceived to be the one that's helping.
Speaker: But I don't see it that way.
Speaker: Like, I see it just as this beautiful opportunity for two beings to encounter one another's stories.
Speaker: And when working in homelessness and addiction and all that type of stuff, the stories are so real.
Speaker: You know, these people, they don't.
Speaker: They're not trying to be anyone else because they're in that state of almost desperation and aloneness and they'll be as real as you've ever heard before.
Speaker: So that's why their stories have been so powerful and it's been so important for me to gain that understanding that, yeah, it really is...
Speaker: Yeah, your reality is so different to mine.
Speaker: And I just want to know more about it, you know, and that helps us in our relational spaces.
Speaker: It's just like, okay, that made you upset.
Speaker: That doesn't make me upset.
Speaker: But I want to find out why that makes you upset and vice versa, you know, and then...
Speaker: we begin to soften to one another.
Speaker: And like, yeah, I never knew that about you.
Speaker: Like going forward, like I'll have a whole different understanding about when, you know, because I thought it was me, you know, and that's what we do.
Speaker: We sort of take it on as if someone gets upset at us for some reason, like we can take it on and going, oh, you know, it's something I did or that type of stuff.
Speaker: But, yeah, it's more about just sort of uncovering where that's come from, you know, and just –
Speaker: Yeah, I see you.
Speaker: Like you were saying, I see you in that.
Speaker: Okay, I didn't see that before, but now that you've shared your story with me and some of the origins of that pain and that hurt you were carrying, you know, potentially your whole life, now that I know that, you know, like I can soften my entire approach to you around that particular thing, you know.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think, yeah, in the work that I've been doing in regards to holding space in taking people on breath and sound journeys and story sharing, I've
Speaker: Yeah, I say to them, in no way am I coming in to perform any type of healing.
Speaker: All it is is because I truly believe we're all our own wisdom holder.
Speaker: I mean, your body holds your entire story.
Speaker: So you have all the keys to all the doors.
Speaker: It's like me through my journey just following my intuition, just knowing what was right for me and what was true for me.
Speaker: It had nothing to do with worrying about what society thought or anyone else thought.
Speaker: I needed to...
Speaker: it was about what I thought and why, cause I, yeah, I'm the wisdom holder here.
Speaker: This is my journey.
Speaker: Even though we share a common experience, you know, we're all humans.
Speaker: We deal with some of the same things and, um, we're all living on the same planet, but it is very much your, your own unique path to uncovering where you need to go and who you need to be, you know?
Speaker: So, um, yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: No, no, this is, yeah.
Speaker: I feel like this is another whole thing that we can definitely rip and tease apart more when we're talking about actually that, yeah, that inner knowing, the inner wisdom, the inner you of how you can show up and trust in that ability.
Speaker: And I think that's what's so powerful about the work that you are doing now.
Speaker: So with your journeys or with your sessions that you do, it's...
Speaker: actually allowing that person to tap in their own inner wisdom.
Speaker: And it's the same thing that you've, when you've shared all the different stories that like, you know, within the short amount of time, obviously there's a lot more to John than what's been shared just here.
Speaker: But even with the stories you've shared, it's like you getting more and more sure and trusting more and more and releasing more and more of
Speaker: going deeper into who you are and the more you've gone to who you are is that so was it this the the last kind of um um ceremony the the one that you just spoke about before was that the that was the final thing where you're like this is the work and this is the way i need to change the world or this is the way i'm kind of gonna step into the world yeah well there was a whole yeah i think i said about seven ceremonies while i was over there and oh wow okay okay yeah okay so you went all in for in peru
Speaker: I won't go into them all, but, yeah, there was one that was really confronting and really scary and took me to places that, yeah, I actually sort of just started by sort of energetically moving around the room.
Speaker: And I think it's that sort of empath in me and just wanting to make sure people are okay, you know, like whatever that is, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I remember just sort of energetically moving around and then sort of going through someone else's journey.
Speaker: And then I started moving into all the suffering of the world and started getting really specific for me, like to the widows of 9-11, you know, to some of the child slavery.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: in some of the third world countries and the grief became really specific.
Speaker: And because I'm just in this really sensitive space, it became so overwhelming.
Speaker: I just kept throwing up.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And again, Steph was able to come in and there were times where it was becoming so full on.
Speaker: Like I was just crawling up in a ball just thinking,
Speaker: Even though, yeah, I've sort of moved beyond the body, like thinking that I was never going to come back from this.
Speaker: That's how sort of painful it was.
Speaker: And because now that I'd opened up my own channels of grief and I knew it, I knew the spaces, it was just like, oh, now I had to take on all this planetary grief.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she would hold me and be able to shield me from it.
Speaker: But then it was almost like she's like, this is still stuff you need to feel, you need to listen to.
Speaker: And then she'd allow it to come back and I'd have to deal with it again, you know.
Speaker: And this sort of went on and off.
Speaker: And even after that night, I was just like, I never want to do this ever again.
Speaker: You know, I'm scared now.
Speaker: But then as I sort of came to, I'd never written so much about any of the other ceremonies before.
Speaker: So this is where...
Speaker: there's a real medicine in our grief as well.
Speaker: And it's important when we're ready to really be able to welcome, welcome the grief, welcome the sadness.
Speaker: And even if it puts us, like I said, if it takes us to our hands and knees, that's just where we need to be right now.
Speaker: It's not about distracting ourselves from that experience.
Speaker: It's about no, because life's sad, you know, everything's has its polarity, you know, you know, there's,
Speaker: happy, sadness, hot, cold, up, down, left, right.
Speaker: Everything needs its polarity.
Speaker: So we can't just live in this happy bubble all the time.
Speaker: We actually need to, like you were talking about our shadow work, we need to meet the darkness and we need to be able to embrace and hold our darkness and our grief because, like I said, there's such an aliveness to it.
Speaker: you know and it has a real deep wisdom and medicine for us if if we have the courage to really listen to it you know so yeah um it was so important to go through that even though it was yeah um probably the scariest this yeah the most scared i've ever been in my life um it was just so imperative in my healing journey to
Speaker: to encounter that and begin to shift my relationship to grief.
Speaker: And that's held me in good stead as I've moved through more.
Speaker: Because it's not like you become, yeah, this idea, I don't think, you know, and this is only my experience, an idea that we've become enlightened and that we're, you know.
Speaker: We're okay now.
Speaker: Nothing's going to affect me anymore.
Speaker: I mean, that's not the human experience, I don't believe.
Speaker: Well, it hasn't been mine, you know, and it is very much embracing the human journey because that was part of my path as well.
Speaker: It was like, okay, now I'm able to access everything out there.
Speaker: But again, there was so much work I needed to do in regards to my body and what it was holding and my relationship to it.
Speaker: you know and listening to my my body's needs you know like nourishing it with the right foods nourishing it with the right um i guess conversations affirmations whatever whatever it is you know um yeah um so that's been its own journey in itself i got great at listening out there and feeling really you know my fear of death and all that just disappeared you know like um i i
Speaker: I have so much faith in what's after and in my journey now that's been a real medicine because not everyone has that gift, I guess.
Speaker: And that's what the whole story became.
Speaker: It became like it was the most painful thing losing Steph that I've ever experienced, but it was the greatest thing that ever happened.
Speaker: Like I just wouldn't be able to feel things like this.
Speaker: And it was always meant to be this way.
Speaker: She's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know she's actually doing her thing you know and it was only me and i think it is it's the ones that are stuck here that really have to you know do that work because when people pass it feels like yeah um yeah they're off on a different journey you know um and they're okay so um do you still connect quite often and regular with steph from the spiritual guy perspective it's funny this is still yeah sorry
Speaker: Yeah, it's just became a lot, much more subtle now, but a little bit more till recently because I was able to go on another journey.
Speaker: Obviously, it was a long time down the track.
Speaker: It took me about, yeah, seven or eight years to be even to be open to anything else, to encountering another relationship.
Speaker: But yeah, that's a whole other story.
Speaker: I ended up running into an incredible being, very much a creature of the earth and
Speaker: Yeah, that took me on this another journey of faith really sort of.
Speaker: We'd only just met and I think after six months she fell pregnant and neither of us really wanted kids.
Speaker: It just wasn't part of our path, we didn't think.
Speaker: But again, it was a faith in the journey and sort of listening to her
Speaker: And she'd been, she's got her own, you know, courageous journey like we all do, you know, like a hero's journey.
Speaker: Having to deal with a lot of stuff as, you know, in her childhood to become the powerful woman that she is now.
Speaker: But she had this real faith around having a home birth and having our daughter out on the land.
Speaker: I had some beautiful land out in the Otways and we...
Speaker: I lived in a teepee out there.
Speaker: And so she wanted to just birth her out there on our own.
Speaker: And that was something that I had.
Speaker: Yeah, it was quite confronting.
Speaker: But again, I was just sort of trusting in that inner intelligence, that wisdom, that
Speaker: We weren't able to tell any family about it, obviously, because it would scare the shit out of everyone, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're not used to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But again, that particular day, we had a doula come and support us in the space, but she wasn't actually allowed to, legally allowed to get involved.
Speaker: Because normally you have midwives present, sort of doing the more medical type things.
Speaker: checks and interventions and all that type of stuff.
Speaker: So she could only just, she's just been to birth before and neither of us had ever been to a birth before.
Speaker: So we just felt like we better have someone there that's just at least been to a few births before.
Speaker: And she was great.
Speaker: She allowed us to just go through our own process and hardly said a word.
Speaker: She was just a beautiful presence in the space.
Speaker: And there was just one moment where she just sort of asked Tara to change positions and then she did.
Speaker: And again, like, yeah, I won't go into that whole story.
Speaker: It's a whole medicine story on its own.
Speaker: But I'd never again felt so present and so connected to my inner self and inner knowing that through that experience and to be able to, yeah, I guess, yeah.
Speaker: Tara did all the work.
Speaker: Let's get that straight.
Speaker: But then I was able to, yeah, be the first hand that touched our daughter as she entered the world.
Speaker: And it was full of wind, rain, rainbows, like we were out in the elements.
Speaker: And, yeah, it was the most profound, beautiful thing.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jeez.
Speaker: I feel like we could go on and on and on.
Speaker: There's so many just facets.
Speaker: It's so fascinating.
Speaker: Your story, your journey has actually just been such an incredible one, right?
Speaker: In a wild ride.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But it's like, that's life.
Speaker: That's life.
Speaker: And it's the way you found the beauty in all of it.
Speaker: Yeah, and now, obviously, this is years and years later processing everything.
Speaker: But even the way you said, you found the beauty in the death of Steph.
Speaker: you know like yeah and the transformation that it led and i i guess you know this uh the inwards and onwards journey is an ever-flowing one it's something that is constantly it's a cycle like you keep loving being different version it's an eternal journey 100 i was like anything that you would give advice wise for people on their own journey anything that you found throughout all the different inwards movements you've done that you can give for someone else on that in a journey for themselves
Speaker: Yeah, I think the most simple thing, I think, is following what excites you.
Speaker: If you're feeling energized about something, be curious.
Speaker: And I guess definitely in that sense, I think, because that's really trying to follow that inner guide and not really worrying about whether it's considered normal or whether weird or...
Speaker: It's really trying to come home to your own thoughts, your own intuition, your own wisdom because, like I said, you're your own wisdom carrier of your particular path.
Speaker: There's no one that can give you.
Speaker: People can share things from their own reality, like I was saying, in their own story, and you grab bits of that when you need them and you go, oh, yeah, that resonates with me.
Speaker: I'll take that.
Speaker: But it's really going, no, I'm the gatekeeper.
Speaker: I'm the one...
Speaker: with all the keys here.
Speaker: So the things that energetically excite me, I get curious about them, you know, and like, okay, I'll follow this particular path.
Speaker: And it might lead to a dead end, but that's a dead end you have to go to as well because then –
Speaker: then you evolve into the next, there's a new road opens.
Speaker: But you needed to go that way just to get the lessons from that sort of closing down as well, you know.
Speaker: So it's just having that real faith in the journey but then,
Speaker: Also, yeah, trying to welcome in whatever's really present at the moment.
Speaker: So if there's a sadness, allowing there to be sadness and, yeah, feeling into, sometimes we don't have to name it.
Speaker: Sometimes you can, sometimes there's an intuition around where the sadness comes from and it's going, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, that feels like that.
Speaker: It feels like I need to let that go because that's something specific that I feel that's what that's about.
Speaker: But sometimes it's not.
Speaker: Sometimes we wouldn't even know.
Speaker: Sometimes it could be from past lives.
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: I think the further I've gone in my journey, the more I realize I know absolutely nothing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so the only thing that I know is what's present for me and what's true for me.
Speaker: And that's my work.
Speaker: Like, I remember being connected to music when I was a kid, you know.
Speaker: But I went on this journey through Melbourne, through sport.
Speaker: Like, I didn't even...
Speaker: I still always loved music, but I never played any instruments or anything like that.
Speaker: But since I've been able to open all these channels, all my own needs, my authenticity, I totally believe we all have this beautiful song to sing to the world, however that is, whether in a creative way we've got something to share.
Speaker: That's why we're here.
Speaker: So that's why it's so important for you to be authentic in yourself because the world needs to...
Speaker: figure you know learn from that that experience hear your song the world yeah we all need to hear your song and yeah so all this music i you know write my own songs these days um all the things just have come through from me just letting yeah letting go of all these layers and ideas um and long-held grief and all the obstructions that were getting in the way
Speaker: to allow this true authentic channel to keep shining through.
Speaker: And like you said, it's not like it's just always there.
Speaker: Like new things come up, new challenges.
Speaker: You might become a bit distracted.
Speaker: You might spend too long on YouTube one night or whatever it is.
Speaker: Yeah, we're still human, like you said.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And it's so important that you just be human as well.
Speaker: You know, sometimes you need to just relax.
Speaker: Sometimes you need to switch off, you know, like it's not like you become this enlightened being that's separate from everyone.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: That's not, that's not the journey.
Speaker: It's, you're meant to still fuck things up.
Speaker: You're meant to make mistakes.
Speaker: It's just so important that you do that.
Speaker: Like I said, because there's the medicine in, in, in making those mistakes, you know, and that's how we evolve.
Speaker: That's how we learn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't see the world as there being an absolute truth.
Speaker: There may be somewhere, but we're so far from it, you know.
Speaker: So it's only what's ever true for you.
Speaker: So, so many times in my journey, there's been something that's been true.
Speaker: And then I've been able to reach that truth and go, I don't need that to be true anymore.
Speaker: I'm evolving beyond that truth.
Speaker: So I'll let go of that.
Speaker: So this idea that any of us has the truth, no, it's not.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't believe that's the case.
Speaker: I believe it's whatever's true for you because it's leading you to where you need to go, you know.
Speaker: Yes, and allowing that truth to evolve and do its own thing as well.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, not be permanent.
Speaker: John, thank you so much for your time, mate.
Speaker: This is your wisdom and just this inner knowing and even just the journey you've had with grief.
Speaker: It's just, yeah, such a beautiful, profound one and how you've actually found yourself through all this experience.
Speaker: It's honestly been such a joy just listening to this.
Speaker: So I really appreciate you being able to share such deep inner feelings, thoughts and experiences with us, mate.
Speaker: Thanks so much for having me and listening, bro.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been lovely to hear a bit about your journey too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks, mate.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
Speaker: And if you know someone who needs to hear this on their own journey, share it with them.
Speaker: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker: And remember to go inwards and onwards, my friend.
