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Ep.113 Meeting the Gaze of a Wild Being with Eleanor O'Hanlon
86 Plays26 days ago
What happens when a wild animal truly sees you? In this episode, I sit down with Eleanor O’Hanlon—writer, conservationist, and lover of wild places—to explore that exact moment. Our conversation weaves through her soul-awakening encounters with whales, wolves, and ancient forests, revealing how true recognition between species cracks open a deeper truth: we are beings of nature, not separate from it.
This episode is about returning to a more ancient, embodied way of knowing.
If you’ve ever felt unseen in a world built for conformity, this conversation invites you to remember your place in the wild and welcome the magic of mutual recognition with other kin.
Topics Covered about Wild Animal Communication
➡️ True connection begins with allowing yourself to be seen—fully and energetically—by other kin.
➡️ Eleanor shares profound stories of traveling in walrus-skin boats and meeting the gaze of whales and wolves.
➡️ Trees remember, communicate, and respond when we bring them our lived experiences.
➡️ Being a bridge species means holding space for relationship across time, space, and species.
Chapters
00:00 Opening – What it means to “meet the gaze”
08:15 Animals as teachers of attention
16:30 Re-wilding the human mind
25:00 The silent language of presence
29:24 Learn with Gaia (Ad)
33:45 Face-to-face with gray whales
42:00 Inner wildness & personal healing
50:30 Practices to meet the gaze yourself
Resources Mentioned
🌱 Eyes of the Wild by Eleanor O’Hanlon
🌱 Plant Wisdom Book Club
🌱 Spirit Wild Plant Quiz
🌱 Personalized mentorship with me and the Plants
Expanded Show Notes
☝🏽ReConnect with Plant Wisdom podcast Ancient and modern knowledge from biology to spirituality about the wondrous ways plants help you lead a Naturally Conscious life.
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Opening and Closing music by @Cyberinga and Poinsettia.
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Transcript
Introduction to Reconnect with Plant Wisdom
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Reconnect with Plant Wisdom. It's me, Tigria Gardenia. I am so looking forward to having you hear this conversation.
00:00:15
Speaker
So complete one of those So inexplicable synchronicities led me to Eleanor O'Hanlon, who is a writer, a conservationist.
00:00:27
Speaker
She is a human being with a deep passion ah for the natural world, for that sort of inner and spiritual dimension of the relationship with wild animals and wild plants and basically conservation.
00:00:42
Speaker
wild nature within yourself as well as outside of herself. You know, she has so much to share about that connection that happens when you truly see other kin as, i don't even know the right words because it's one of those experience that doesn't have words. The best I can do is say, listen to the episode because this is ah amazing journey that she's had.
Eleanor O'Hanlon's Nature Journey
00:01:06
Speaker
of close encounters with whales, with wolves, with polar bears, with brown bears, with wild horses, with so many beings. And nothing I could say will ever explain what she so beautifully shares with you through her energy and her words.
00:01:24
Speaker
So you're in for a real treat. This is episode 113, Meeting the Gaze of a Wild Being. Welcome to Reconnect with Plant Wisdom.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm your host Tigria Gardenia, nature-inspired mentor, certified life coach, and the founder of the Naturally Conscious Community. For over a decade, I've been known as a world ambassador for plant advocacy, working closely with plants to share their practical wisdom to help you consciously embody the elements of life that nourish your evolution.
00:01:55
Speaker
In this podcast, I delve into ancient and modern knowledge from biology to spirituality about the wondrous ways of plants. Together, we'll explore how ecosystem thinking helps you overcome limiting beliefs, understand the true nature of relationships, and live an authentic, impactful life.
00:02:16
Speaker
Eleanor, you have been pure discovery because the truth of the matter is that I actually like met you through your husband who I'm taking a class with, which I'm loving completely kind reconnecting to my Kabbalistic roots in my, you know, this, the, in the Hebrew letters in a completely different way.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I discover after i have already done what, like eight classes with him yeah had, That it's like, yeah, but wait, it's my wife that is the person that is connected to nature. And I was like, excuse me?
00:02:48
Speaker
So please, before we start getting into a conversation that I know is going to be beautiful and deep and wide and so moving, tell everybody who is Eleanor O'Hanlon.
Reconnecting with Nature and Wisdom
00:03:00
Speaker
oh Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that my entire life, I have been a lover of the natural world and, um, And that's something that goes right back to childhood, you know, back to being a child in the West of Ireland, growing up on a farm, growing up with animals in the presence of some, ah some you know, beautiful awareness of the presence in nature.
00:03:26
Speaker
I just, I was born into that. and and um And I think there's a part of you in childhood that is actually carrying that light. And then you spend as an adult, you know, you spend so much time trying to find a way to be that light in the world that we inhabit.
00:03:47
Speaker
and And that's not an easy an easy task, you know. um So a lover of nature, and I would say especially wild nature, In other words, the free living self determining aspect of the natural world, um that embodiment of the coherent intelligence of all life.
00:04:08
Speaker
And they, I go to the wild animals, the wild plants, the wild places to learn, you know, to be taught and to be reawakened to that vast intelligence.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah. i
00:04:28
Speaker
I love the peacefulness that you exude as you say that. Like, and I feel like that lately I've been having these conversations with people and we' we're talking about everything from Times of Atlantis and Lemuria.
00:04:44
Speaker
And we've been talking also in class with, you know, your husband and you about, you know, how the letters sort of touch us and in in and enter into who we are to help us really see the world around us.
00:04:58
Speaker
And I feel like that piece that humanity keeps sharing missing that is is the fact that the more we separate out from kin the more we separate out from the natural world the more we stop identifying ourselves as beings of nature the more chaotic and hectic and depressive and frenetic our world becomes and so i i find this all over the place with all the people that really not are not connecting with their mind, but are just like, have re remembered and reawakened to the fact that they're beings of nature, I find that there's this peace, it could still come with lots of enthusiasm, like mine comes, but it's still peace, like there's this trust in the world.
00:05:47
Speaker
and And I'd love to hear more about kind of, because you've done some pretty amazing things as
Arctic Adventures and Ocean Insights
00:05:54
Speaker
this. I mean, you've you've worked, if I remember, with Greenpeace. Like you've done, you've used this.
00:05:59
Speaker
You've, let me follow, let me say it a better way. You followed your connection into many different paths. Talk to us about one. Like, should. Give me just one of them.
00:06:11
Speaker
Just one. Gosh, you know, it' part of my soul lives in the North, right? In the high North, in the Arctic. and And I go back even to childhood again. You know, i had we had dogs at home. and And I had, as an eight, nine-year-old child, I had this, like, feeling, but, you know, they should pulling things, right?
00:06:28
Speaker
They're supposed to be, and I even tried to make, you know, traces, you know, the actual leather harness and to make them pull something. Because in my mind, i was fascinated by the North.
00:06:41
Speaker
And so the first time, and it was in Russia, I was working in Russia and the ah for about 10 years actually. ah started going in the early 90s. And then um up until, yeah, about 15 years actually, up until about 2004, I went there regularly.
00:06:56
Speaker
um Because I was ah connected with a whole network of of really quite extraordinary Russian biologists. So the first time that I saw the tundra, I felt this sense of joy that I couldn't understand.
00:07:11
Speaker
You know, why do I feel this spaciousness and expansiveness of being that is bringing me so much joy? And that journey, which became an expedition, two expeditions actually, around the northeastern corner of um Arctic Siberia on the Bering Strait. So if you can imagine, you have Alaska and you have the siberian Arctic Siberian coast, and they're almost meeting.
00:07:44
Speaker
I mean, they are fundamentally a single ecosystem um divided by political lines. And so this high Arctic ecosystem, I traveled there um in a skin boat for some of the time.
00:07:58
Speaker
So the traditional craft of the Yupik people of Siberia, that part of Siberia, they actually live on both sides of Bering Strait. So i was in a skin boat, a walrus skin boat.
00:08:09
Speaker
In other words, you're enfolded in the consciousness of the animal being who has given his or her you know life to carry you across the ocean. And we were surrounded by gray whales because that's where they feed.
00:08:24
Speaker
They come on this huge journey and it takes them from the um coast of Mexico right up into Arctic waters. It's journey they make twice a year for summer feeding and then back south.
00:08:37
Speaker
and And the gray whales were feeding you know, in these shallow waters, and then they would come up to breathe. Because we were in a skin boat, they came up right alongside us.
00:08:49
Speaker
and And it was the first time that I had realized that through the whales, the sea is breathing. The ocean is breathing through the whales. And we also know the ocean is singing through the whales.
00:09:02
Speaker
And the ocean is also being regenerated through the whales. But in that moment of hearing that pulse of breath, It took me, it was like over a barrier in myself and into that living, the living world.
00:09:22
Speaker
The one that is not an abstraction or a concept or a theory of ecology, much as I love ecology, by the way. But a breathing aliveness that is conscious in its own extraordinary way.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I've said ever since my life changed, the moment I heard the breathing of the whale and felt it, you also feel it inside because it actually resonates inside you. And my life changed and I couldn't go back to the way I was before.
00:09:55
Speaker
i mean, I'd always seen, you know, for several years, I've been working in quite hard areas of conservation, you know, like the wildlife trade and learning too much about probably the negativity.
00:10:10
Speaker
And that was that shift that I wasn't going to stay in the problem anymore. it It was a shift into working with life and for life, you know, beyond these dualities of human and animal and domestic and wild. And um yeah. i I absolutely love...
00:10:33
Speaker
that sentence, the idea of like shifting into life. And I empathize with that so much. And, and I think people, for you, it came in the tundra, right? And I think people mistaken the idea that that has to come in some X, like extreme type of situation. I feel that I felt that the first time after my plan of reawakening, the first time I, I took a long walk in you know, just a local wooded area.
00:11:03
Speaker
i was and I remember feeling that and then bringing that feeling into a city. i remember the first time I was walking around. think I was in Miami Beach or something.
00:11:15
Speaker
And I was doing this project called the orienting of the trees that we do here in Zamanhur, which is a sort of mutual reawakening to the connection between us and the plant world. And I remember I was doing it in a busy city But I was walking around these trees in front of these businesses and I was thinking to myself, these trees are holding the energy for everything that's happening in these businesses.
00:11:40
Speaker
These trees and all the little tiny plants like the dandelions and little purslanes and all the little weeds that are growing on the ground, these wild plants are are holding space for the madness of disconnection that's happening for so many.
00:11:56
Speaker
And like you said, it sort of shifts you out of, it shifts you into compassion. It shifts you into generosity. It shit shifts you into a holding of a space in a very different way. That doesn't mean you don't get pissed off when you see certain things, but it's still different.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I can imagine that being there in that natural setting, but also with natural conditions. You weren't on a like giant ah freighter boat of some sort, you know, like you said, you were you were in the being that had given their life for you to be able to do this. and You were recognizing that.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I could just imagine how different that small shift which is really gigantic shift, must be. How did you bring that back into your life? Like, what did you find that changed for you once you were kind of out of that environment and back into this quote unquote normal world?
00:12:50
Speaker
ah It's so true what you've just said. No matter where you you are, no matter where you are You know, the plants are, the whole, you know, green world is always present, and which means the birds are present and the insects are present and the underground mycelial networks are present. and But in this particular, you know, from this personal story, I was a month, you know, on this journey.
00:13:14
Speaker
journey, you know, sleeping on the tundra and tents and very exposed, obviously, and sometimes dangerously exposed in a way, although. um And so I came back and I came back to the middle of London.
00:13:28
Speaker
Right. it was a bit of a shock at first. What you've just described. So I was walking up just to do the shopping and I saw this tree and this was autumn, right?
00:13:41
Speaker
When the trees are showing, you know, the fire within the green, right? And I looked at this tree and I sat down, you know, and in London, you have these walls outside some of the houses.
00:13:51
Speaker
I sat down and I looked at this tree and I went, I'm not, this is no exaggeration. ah went into a state of rapture. Mm-hmm. Because the energy was, of course, there are changes in quality, but there wasn't a difference. The tree was showing me, was was actually resonating back, that what you have experienced with that at at that level of intensity is here right now in the tree, that you know the being of the tree.
00:14:21
Speaker
and And it was very amazing because I didn't see the... I didn't see a tree as thing. I saw it as a leaping flame, right? a flame of that was always, you know, you know exactly what I mean. I know exactly what you mean.
00:14:38
Speaker
It's like rooted and leaping this flame. And that was just, yeah. Yeah. And it's it's interesting that that you just said that because um you know I do a lot of activities with people. I try to take them kind of out of their traditional sort of verbal headspace and really bring them into their inner plantness.
00:14:59
Speaker
And one of the ways is to help them recognize that any being they're seeing, whether that's the house cat or you know the the dog from down the street or whether it's a house plant,
00:15:12
Speaker
all have their own way of expressing themselves. They could be very small, very big, you know, they could be fiery, kin can canin could be anything. And kind of stepping out of our human world is about letting that that sort of definition and label sort of drop in order to be able to see this. And I see this especially, it's it's I find it so fascinating when, like you said, you give yourself that moment to stop in a big city and you recognize that the tree that's been sitting in front of the church or in this park or even just kind of in the middle of a square with children playing around and covered up to, you know, the roots all covered in concrete.
00:15:54
Speaker
And yet that that tree still has that spirit and is waiting for that recognition. Like the moment you sit in that rapture, you don't just admire like a, I don't know, rock star sitting on a stage with 20,000 people in the um audience, but more of a that you can immediately feel when the plant knows and the animal also, but the plant knows they're being seen and it's like, oh, welcome.
00:16:19
Speaker
Like, and you're, you're here, you're present, you've entered into this plantness connection, you know, my essence to your essence. And let me let me let you in.
00:16:31
Speaker
Come, come, come have a chat with me. And it's this beautiful, ah you've said it as i'm i'm quoting you because it's, it's so perfect. Meeting the gaze of a wild being in mutual recognition.
00:16:47
Speaker
Oh, poetry. Tell me more. Tell me more. I'd love to. I
Urban Nature Connection
00:16:54
Speaker
love to. This is just, I mean, this is my passion and I feel so blessed in this, right?
00:17:00
Speaker
Because, and you know, I work mostly with animals, right? But which doesn't mean that I don't have a, you know, very, very great love for the, for the plant, you you know, commute, the plant, the kingdom of plant life.
00:17:13
Speaker
um So before I go on to that gaze with a free, a wild free living animal where there's this mutual flow of understanding. um just wanted one story. Can I tell you one story about trees? Please, please. Yeah. We love stories.
00:17:31
Speaker
I love stories. Stories are how stories are how truth kind of sparkles, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. It's a perfect way of saying it. Where truth sparkles. I love it.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yeah. So i was um I was working on a project in a region in the Caucasus in Georgia, right? So you have these Caucasus Mountains that, and then Georgia is like the country that goes from the Black Sea right up to the peaks of the Caucasus Mountains.
00:18:00
Speaker
So was working on this project there and um it involved going up to, through a very ancient beech forest. And then so these trees were, you know, four, five, 600 years old.
00:18:14
Speaker
And in the side of the mountain, there were many waterfalls just flowing down and filling pools. And it was springtime. it was around now. and And there was such a vivid, vibrant, you know, green awakening.
00:18:30
Speaker
and um And then this was and the flow of wild water with the trees. So the trees and the water were in this beautiful resonance together. and And as you can imagine, and that was really, it was just, yeah, I was enchanted.
00:18:46
Speaker
and so I came back to London, right? Middle of the city. having been with these ancient trees in the Caucasus, and I and i used to go for a walk on Hampstead Heath, which is a beautiful, very large park at the north of the city.
00:19:01
Speaker
And in Hampstead Heath, there is an alley of beech trees. And I knew these trees. I you know i used to go walking there. And so after I came back from being with this incredible community of ancient beech trees, I was approaching this alley of beech trees, and I felt the...
00:19:18
Speaker
I felt this change, right, in the energetic atmosphere. And I walked in among the trees, and then I realized that they were sensing were where I'd been, right?
00:19:38
Speaker
And they really wanted to commune with their fellow trees through what I'd experienced. In other words, that I could, within my consciousness, I could open my consciousness and be a bridge between the world of the trees on Hampstead Heath, who are always with humans in that beautiful way that they have, and those trees on the for you know on the slopes of...
00:20:11
Speaker
you know um you know, this area called Lagodeji, which is like so high up in the mountains. And so there was this meeting and it wasn't really, it was unmistakable. And you you know what I mean? You know when something is unmistakable because your being changes, right?
00:20:30
Speaker
And you're no longer caught up in any thoughts. you You're just feeling this. beautiful, amazing presence that is so sensitive.
00:20:43
Speaker
And you realize then how sensitive they are to to the humans. Yeah, and this is well as each other absolutely and this is the thing about being a bridge species, right? We yeah as human beings are bridge species as are whale, as are many other species.
00:21:00
Speaker
And we can when we really bring that in, we hold that within us, yeah right? And we can help mediate. Trees can can also be mediators of certain things, and we can be mediators.
Humanity's Disconnection and Control
00:21:11
Speaker
i think, again, going back to that that part of recognizing that we are beings of nature.
00:21:16
Speaker
And that connection happens at so many different levels. And that when that connection sort of marks us, it marks our soul, it marks our subtle body as our subtle bodies interact and tap and touch, you know, these other species, the other species could then feel that like, oh, you've been with my kin.
00:21:35
Speaker
Like, I love that. Yeah. yeah and And especially beaches, because I really like to be amongst beaches. I mean, anybody who knows and has spent any time with beaches knows that if you have a forest and a beach tree starts to grow, pretty soon all of them are going to be beach trees. They're all going be there, yes.
00:21:51
Speaker
Beach trees sort of like, eh, get out of my way. I need space. And I have a cousin and the, you know, friend of a friend's. And like this one over here who's also, yeah, we're going to call them cousin too. And oh and a brother and a sister and an uncle and a queen, you know, like,
00:22:06
Speaker
They're amazing in that way of just taking up space. They, if they just want to be with beech trees. so fuck I can completely see how, you know, that, you know, having beech tree recognize like, Oh, you, you've been touched by my kind. Come, come, come share your stories. Sit down with us. We want to know.
00:22:28
Speaker
We want to know more. What did it feel like? Well, um You mean they have all this water and it's cascading down the sides of the mountain? Yeah, and that's that's exactly how it is. And and it's such a, I mean, it's so much even better for us. i You know, as you're saying all these, as you're telling these stories, which as you said, they're those sparkles of truth.
00:22:49
Speaker
I think we... we forget how magical this world is. Like we get so caught up in, in the, so the things that are happening. mean, one of the reasons I was attracted to, for example, your husband's work was because I have, you know, I've studied Kabbalah for so many years. And then I came here to Dom and her and, and have been able to enter. Cause for me, Kabbalah is the way everything relating to Kabbalistic world view is passed a long time ago from being mental. And it really just,
00:23:18
Speaker
immersed itself in my body. So it's been actually a long time since I've studied, quote unquote, because I just acquire pieces and they they continue into my integration. But one of the things that I've been trying to do with all my practices, whether my work with plants, because it's naturally happening with plants, is to move into this more kind of mystical, ah experiential piece. I'm kind of, a colleague of mine said it to me the other day, which was, she says, you know, with all of the AI world with everything that we have with the internet, the need for raw knowledge is whenever I need it, I can easily find it.
00:23:52
Speaker
So instead, what I need to do is how do I integrate that knowledge? That's going to be the evolution of humanity is we no longer need to memorize, you know, book texts because the books are ask a question and Google will give you not just a series of websites, but also now an AI generated response, right? So I can get the knowledge from anywhere. The real,
00:24:16
Speaker
power and not power, but the real kind of evolutive step we need to take is the use of that knowledge and the integration. And for me, I've reached the point and which is what I love to do with my students and my clients is how do you embody it?
00:24:31
Speaker
How does it become a part of your life? Because for me, the plants did that. The plants opened that door for me in a way that I could have never even expected. and And that was the reason why, you know, I'm looking for more mystical answers. and when I want to sit with what I have in me and I want to move my body and feel it coming into my body.
00:24:50
Speaker
And I feel like a lot of what you're talking about also is a recognition that comes from one, allowing myself to gaze, which we don't always give ourselves time to are like eye to eye. And when I say eye to eye, I don't just mean physical eye, but like I as in opened viewing, which can happen, you know, eye to eye in a physical way with an animal, but it can also happen in a much more open-minded mystical way with any being of any physiology.
00:25:20
Speaker
And so I feel like there's that that gazing that says, I give myself space to be in your presence, to see you fully. If you are will allow me, can you please show yourself to me?
00:25:34
Speaker
like Tell me who you show me who you really are. Let me feel the full impact of your full aura or or subtle body or physical body or whatever you want to show me. It's like it's it's very much the the kind of journey through dots where you pass through and you see yourself in your true essence. But in order to see myself, I need to be able to see others, too.
00:25:57
Speaker
it's It's a two way street. I can't see myself if I don't allow myself to see others as well. Beautiful. That's so true. That's so true. You know, that the, you know, I use that phrase because one of the most mean, I'm thinking of as you're speaking, other
00:26:19
Speaker
um other experiences are also coming into my mind of through the body. you know, I've been a horse rider most of my life. And i grew up with horses.
00:26:32
Speaker
And then I had a beautiful horse friend, companion, soul guide, right, as an adult. One of the things about about horses is that, you know, they bear the they bear the the pain of our obsession with control.
00:26:54
Speaker
Breaking a horse talk about a phrase I hate.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah. So they're carrying the unconscious load of the human on their backs. And they're still trying to bring us into that beautiful, buoyant, fluid state of communication that where every movement is graceful and alive and vibrant. And what my horse taught me, I could be here all day saying what my horse taught me.
00:27:25
Speaker
It was like spiritual teacher. right? He was chestnut with a lot of fire and an incredible heart. and But when I first got him, you know, i was quite young and and he was only five years old and he had so much energy and I was scared, right?
00:27:43
Speaker
um And so he got into this habit of ah bolting with me. And if you've ever ridden a horse or anybody who's listening to this who's ever had that experience where there's nothing you can do, you know, you're out he's taken over and he would just bolt.
00:27:57
Speaker
And the usual um solution, of course, is to exercise more control, right? And I tried that for a while and neither of us were very happy and I could feel he wasn't very happy.
00:28:10
Speaker
And then I had this extraordinary moment where I knew he was just about to bolt. I could feel it. I could feel it was traveling through my body from his body. You know, and i it was it's instantaneous. I mean, you know, in words draw it out, but it was an in in instant knowledge.
00:28:27
Speaker
And somehow my body knew better than my training or my conditioning or my mind. And my body just relaxed completely. And I didn't tighten the reins and I didn't you know contract up.
00:28:42
Speaker
It was like I just went into this completely relaxed state. And he went, oh. And he liked just relaxed too and he'd never bolted again after that because what he'd been seeking from me was not control, but he'd been seeking communion, connection.
00:29:04
Speaker
And the moment he felt me give him that, Our whole relationship shifted. And it was, it was, a it was again, one of those pivotal moments when life is teaching you directly. Right.
00:29:17
Speaker
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00:30:47
Speaker
Right? Absolutely. And I find that that's actually, you know, that connection is the core of so many, so many elements. I often say that, you know, in my work, I don't try to teach, you know, communication or any, I teach relationship.
00:31:05
Speaker
How do we enter into relationship? And yeah. yeah I have been accused of being sometimes too nice because I give people a lot of space because most people have not had a lot of space, just like a lot of animals and a lot of plants. Everything has been about control. Our human society, our our homo sapien tendency is that it's control and control comes from fear.
00:31:29
Speaker
And so once you, as you said, kind of, recognize that that has all been fear based teachings that have taught us that in a moment of fear, what do you do?
00:31:39
Speaker
Hold on, like, make find a way to control the space control every aspect. If you're afraid that something's going to happen, then you have to triple check it and double check in and And so therefore, one, we disconnect from our body completely, because our body has a whole series of alarm systems and understandings that are way beyond the way the mind thinks.
00:31:59
Speaker
and And also we break the connection with everyone else, whether that's human or other. Other kin can alert us, right? Plants have defense mechanisms, animals have defense mechanisms, and there's pheromones in the air and chemical signatures and all kinds of things that we as humans have stopped receiving. That's why I was saying earlier that that whole idea of let me see your fullness, let me see you completely. Isn't it in like Greek mythology, talking about stories that have those sparkles of truth, right? Greek mythology is many different ah Greek gods where they accidentally killed their human companions because the human companion said, show me your full your your true essence.
00:32:43
Speaker
And as human beings, they weren't ready for that true essence. And I think that that's the case for many of us. Like we are not always... like prepared because our control to see the true essence of another being and allow that essence to kind of mix with mine and tell me, okay, how is this dance? How am I supposed to interact with you?
00:33:07
Speaker
Is it words? Is it movement? Is it, you know, relaxation? Am I supposed to control things? Cause sometimes control has its place, but we, we default to it because we're so afraid of like,
00:33:21
Speaker
truly being seen and therefore truly seeing others.
00:33:28
Speaker
You know, when you're seen by a wild animal, right? And I mean, seen, right. And that's, again, as you said, that, you know, we think of seen as purely being of the eyes, but of course it's not, it's your, it's your entire energetic field that is being directly perceived.
Connection Beyond Control and Superficiality
00:33:43
Speaker
and And that's the power for me of through these direct experiences with, um, all the beings of nature. you know um and when I speak from my experience, it does tend to be you know the animals.
00:33:59
Speaker
They're the ones that have come to me um But you're seen and you're known. You're known directly. So that surface that we have, you know which we need in everyday life, that persona, personality,
00:34:15
Speaker
That's wiped away. And then the it's, it's eye to eye and then it's heart to heart. And then the, that moment, and you know, sometimes, you know, when I think of creativity and I think of the immense creativity of nature, i think, how do you bring something truly new into the world?
00:34:37
Speaker
And what is truly new comes about through authentic meeting.
00:34:45
Speaker
And then there's, you know, that flash that comes back and forth. And then something new is emerging into this field of earth, you know, the, and I had that, I've had that experience a number of times.
00:35:00
Speaker
And And I think it's something that we as humans inhabited much more fully than we do now. I think it's there in our in our interior knowing and we've had to suppress it.
00:35:17
Speaker
And we've been really trained out of that ability to enter into the space of meeting, which is a sacred space of meeting. i'm go to ask I'm going to put you on the spot for a second.
00:35:31
Speaker
Sorry. But I'm just, I'm always so curious of this when I when i meet people like you with this this connection that has been thankfully, you know, kind of reactivated.
00:35:45
Speaker
Why do you think, I have a theory, i have my own theory, but why do you think we lost it? Oh, gosh. That's such a great, I mean, it's a heartbreaking question. It Yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
It's a really heartbreaking question. And because in losing it, we also lost our ability to truly relate to each other. Agreed. Completely agree. It's not just about, note I mean, and we you know, we speak about nature as ah somehow a separate dimension when it isn't. It's the very, you know, it's the very essence and expression of who we are. You know, we express ourselves through, um you know, through our embodied nature and then we meet the others. So how did we lose it?
00:36:30
Speaker
It's really a good question.
00:36:34
Speaker
It's really an incredible question. You know, there's a very old story that from, you know, I told you that I was up in this northeastern Arctic corner of Russia among the Yupik, they're Eskimo, they're one of the Eskimo language groups, the Yupik people.
00:36:54
Speaker
And they had a very beautiful story. um they they They hunt um walruses and seals. They live from the ocean, as well as fishing, obviously.
00:37:05
Speaker
um But in this story, which is a creation story, that there was ah there was a young woman who loved to sing. And she had such a beautiful, beautiful voice. And she loved to walk in the tundra and sing to the plants.
00:37:18
Speaker
And so all these little dwarf willows and all the berries and the amazing lichens and all this like magically colored land that she walked on, she sang to everything.
00:37:32
Speaker
And the plants loved to hear her voice and even the stones would string to vibrate when she sang. And she was walking along the shore one day and she was singing and a great whale swimming far out to sea heard her voice because it came to him on the wind and it came resonating through the ocean And the whale had never heard anything as beautiful as this song before.
00:37:56
Speaker
And so he came closer and closer and closer to the shore until he could stand up on his tail as whales do and look and he saw her. And he heard her and he saw her.
00:38:09
Speaker
And he was filled with so much love and wonder for this being that he actually cast himself onto the shore where he was magically transformed.
00:38:20
Speaker
into the shape of a very beautiful young man. And so this couple, of course, loved each other very, very deeply. And they lived together. And they had children.
00:38:32
Speaker
And sometimes their children were in human form. And sometimes their children came as tiny little whales that grew inside the legumes that indented all this shoreline.
00:38:43
Speaker
And over many, many years, their children had other children. And the people spread along the shore. And they had enormous wisdom of the sea from their father and wisdom of the tundra from their mother.
00:38:58
Speaker
And they knew that there was one thing they must never do, and that was to kill the whales that they could see, because the whales were truly their brothers and their sisters. And as long as they obeyed that, they lived in harmony.
00:39:13
Speaker
But there was one hunter who thought that he was stronger and cleverer and quicker than anybody else. And he wanted to show how powerful he was. And so he went out with his harpoon and with the lance and he killed one of the whales that were breathing and singing and brought the body, drew it back, back onto the shore.
00:39:39
Speaker
And then he went and he said, look, it's only bone and flesh, nothing else. and his ancestor, the the singer of the tundra, who you know lived and merged in love with the spirit of the whale, you know came to him and she said, one day you'll remember, you'll know.
00:40:03
Speaker
So it was vanity of being separate and special and more powerful. And that story, you know which is an amazing story to come from a hunting culture, is really about how we lose that when we think of ourselves as as having... we want to make ourselves bigger bigger.
00:40:32
Speaker
more we want to yeah we want to be the ones who have the dominance and i think another piece of that story that sometimes we you know many many cultures have very similar stories think there's two elements and there's one in particular that i think we forget about and maybe maybe i don't know maybe it it sort of in the end distorts our way of looking at stories like that which is you know, there's the part of the kind of, we call it sort of the enemy within here in Damanhur, right? That aspect of me that always wants to be special.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, not special in the I'm special for myself, and you're special in your way, and you're all special in your own way. But in the I want to be more special than everybody else. And exactly. And we call we we think of that as like kind of the anti-evolution.
00:41:24
Speaker
It's the one that says, i want everybody behind me. Therefore, I have to stop your evolution in order for me to be at the top of that pyramid. And so I don't want anybody else or anything else to evolve, to grow, to continue to move forward, because the only thing that could be in the forward is me.
00:41:42
Speaker
And so it's kind of like this anti, we call it the anti-life principle. It's the one that doesn't want life to continue to unfold. Yeah. And I think in stories like this, we see that part usually really clear, right? That's the moral, that whatever.
00:41:54
Speaker
The part that we forget in it is, for example, and and is the fact that there's this circle of life and there is this circle of life that we continuously sacrifice ourselves for one another.
00:42:09
Speaker
Not in the, I'm going to throw myself against, you know, a harpoon for you. That's one way. But I mean more in the Some animals and some plants know that they are food. Some know that that might happen to them.
00:42:24
Speaker
And there's this whole mechanism of, play of roughhousing of getting myself ready of also giving of myself and I think that sometimes we we tell the stories of like here's the person that went out of control which I think is still important because we see examples of it all over the place so we haven't learned that lesson but I think we've also forgotten the lesson of Being part of a collective, being part of a whole also means sacrificing parts of yourself.
00:42:54
Speaker
And that doesn't mean that makes me any less. It's instead, like we know from like the teferit principle, right? It's the most beautiful thing you could do. I find absolute beauty in the balance of everything, which means...
00:43:09
Speaker
looking and finding the parts of myself that excel, but also allowing myself to sort of smooth my rough edges, sacrifice little pieces of myself to complete a greater picture of a whole.
00:43:22
Speaker
And that's what makes beauty. Right. And, and I find that that piece of the natural story sometimes gets lost where it's,
00:43:32
Speaker
You know, in the the argument, I was I actually was arguing with a vegan on on ah on a social network the other day, and I didn't really want to. But I'm just tired also of people giving me absolute answers.
00:43:44
Speaker
yeah The world doesn't work on absolute answers, unfortunately. It just doesn't. And we need to find the places where I'm sharing. you know Here and in Dhammenhurst, for example, I often tell people when I go to other countries and I teach about being a community and they're like, what are some of the things that are the gotchas of being in a community? And and like, the biggest gotcha is the fact that I have to sacrifice things.
00:44:08
Speaker
And, but when I do it, I feel so empowered and I feel happy. Like if you invite me to a super cool concert on a day that it's my turn to cook dinner for my house and there's nobody else who can do it because I can't find a change, I'm going cook dinner.
00:44:24
Speaker
The other night I was supposed to teach, somebody invited me to teach in a super cool class It was my day to take the instruments of our, what we call our Nial, we who are the the people in charge of the social side of Damanhur.
00:44:38
Speaker
It was the instruments, which are the magical instruments. And as a knight, once every three months, I have to take them to the oracle. And it was like, it's my turn. And the person was like, well, just find a change. I'm like, no, like it's my turn. Like it's my responsibility. And I take it very, like it's strong. It's important. It's part of what,
00:44:57
Speaker
creates the fabric, the magical fabric of my community. Like, no, I'm not just going to find a change. Like, it's not worth it to me because me being, you know, there in support of those instruments, in support of, you know, this process, this whole mean ritual for me brings a level of completeness to the overall project that I'm in, in the, in my community and there, and therefore I'm not going to give that up. And that's the same way of like, I even said to this person, this vegan that I was having a discussion with where I said, you know, to her, I'm like, I only wish it was more legal.
00:45:31
Speaker
Like it was legal where I live to just take my body and throw it into a hole at the end of my life and let me nourish, you know, soil and insects and all the other animals in the woods. Like I wish that they could just tear me apart at the very end and eat me and get total nourishment from me.
00:45:48
Speaker
Like, I would gladly do that and be a part of it if that means, you know, nourishing a whole cycle of life. And I feel like that's I think we need to find more of that mythology, more of that story where it's I happily I didn't, you know, give away something of myself and get lost, but more of.
00:46:10
Speaker
i This is what i have what what everybody is putting in in order for us to have our completeness. And I think that that's what you see when you really see another ah an other kin, like a more than human being.
00:46:25
Speaker
You see that because they know that they're equally food, they're equally shelter, they're equally nourishment, they're equally you know being nourished, they're equally giving, they're equally taking. like It's all happening.
00:46:38
Speaker
at the same time and we've thrown ourselves out of that balance and you just look and you're like wow and you do it all without being totally stressed out like <unk> been touch absolutely I mean you there there is no landscape no true landscape with I don't even hate the word predator because it's loaded with negativity. Exactly.
00:47:04
Speaker
Prey. How pathetic is that? Have you ever seen an elk like dance? Exactly. i am. and And proclaim their vigor. You know, they're not prey.
00:47:19
Speaker
They are participants in the dance that you've just described. Right. With the mountain lion and with the wolf.
Deep Bonds with Animals
00:47:27
Speaker
And through that dance, they they assert who they are.
00:47:32
Speaker
So I don't have another word for predator and prey, but it's really, ah it's what you've just said. It's fundamentally misunderstanding. Absolutely. yeah We call it the missing archetypes.
00:47:44
Speaker
They're the archetypes of relationship that we have either mislabeled to the point where we've lost them. And predator and prey are two fundamental ones. Like the idea that we all have predator tendencies and they're not always bad.
00:47:58
Speaker
We all have parasitic tendencies and they're not all bad. They have to be used in the right context, in the right amount, at the right moment. Yeah. Yeah, ah yeah, absolutely. That's no, the judgments that we place are, um yeah, you know, there's no relationship, no true relationship where you're projecting your narrow understanding of who that being is.
00:48:27
Speaker
And I had a wonderful friend, i mean, just magical friend and I worked with in Georgia. And he was and is, um you know, a highly qualified scientist and a lover of wolves.
00:48:44
Speaker
And this man, his relationship with wolves was so extraordinary um that he'd actually shared his life with a wolf pack for a certain time. He had become integrated into the life of this wolf pack.
00:48:58
Speaker
As he told me, said, I was young at the time. I was very strong. So he went in. This is what he did. he went and he he, you know, over a period of months, he became part of their life.
00:49:11
Speaker
And one of the things he said to me is our whole relationship changed when i started helping them to hunt. He said I closed off an escape route for the deer that they were chasing.
00:49:24
Speaker
And he said they were so excited because they understood not only what I'd done, but why I'd done it.
00:49:31
Speaker
And so he was working with them. And I think this is very ancient in humans. I think we have this very ancient bond with wolves where we understand each other and we understand each other within that flow of life that, you know, you've just described.
00:49:44
Speaker
And so he said, after that, our relationship became very close.
00:49:51
Speaker
You know, and I mean, it's I've written about it in my book, actually, because i spent time with him and um i saw him with wolves. and He was somebody that had, it was like this energy in his body.
00:50:07
Speaker
You know, sometimes when he would describe the wolves, it was like the wolf spirit actually entered his body. And what he was, and it's very interesting, you know, how we learn through somebody who has very deeply integrated knowledge into themselves, because it passes to you directly and not through the conceptual mind.
00:50:28
Speaker
And so he would speak to me about wolves and his experience and wolf behavior. And the wolf was present, right? You know what I mean? I totally know what you mean. I completely know what you mean. It was two human beings talking to each other.
00:50:46
Speaker
The wolf became present between us. within us. And so we were able to actually, and it is, um it's a magic when that happens, when you're, you're this communication that we've been speaking about really all through this conversation, the magic of communication that is not mediated by the narrow kind concepts of the mind.
00:51:10
Speaker
I love that. And I love when you reach that point. I am a but as you can tell, i love deep conversations. That's yeah probably one of the most beautiful things of having a podcast is that you can, you know, put together these, you have excuses for it, but I am the kind that like, you know, my girlfriends and I leave each other 15 minute, you know, voice messages that are super deep, like going into our emotions or going into whatever is happening. And and i do ah and and And it's such a beautiful thing when that mind piece clicks off and all of a sudden there's an embodiment that's talking to you.
00:51:48
Speaker
And it could still come out in words, but you're almost not even hearing the words because you're feeling the impact. And this happens even, again, across multiple... I mean, for us, for voice messages or whatever, but I remember the first time i saw it in a completely different context that was like somebody with music who, you know, you see this when you see a a musician that gets lost in and all of a sudden the the the music is communicating almost as an entity in and of itself.
00:52:17
Speaker
The person has moved out and you see it, as you said, when there's like a deep communication with a person who has embodied the spirit of other kin, of ah of an animal, of a plant. like And to me, that is again, that beautiful place of communion. That is what we're all striving for is I want to feel those parts of myself. I want to feel my inner and my inner animalness, my inner plantness.
00:52:45
Speaker
I want to feel my divineness. I want to feel my connection to the vibrations of the world, to the music of the spheres. Like I want, that's that whole mystical thing that we, you know, as I was talking about is when we step out and we go into the mysticism of embodiment that goes beyond. And sometimes it still passes through words, but oftentimes it doesn't. And even the words are coming out. That's, that's not what you're really receiving.
00:53:14
Speaker
I, that's, that's my favorite space in the world. it's my favorite, absolutely favorite space in the world. yeah I'd love like as we're getting up to our kind of like wrap up here, even though I know as usual, we could go for hours.
00:53:27
Speaker
I'd love to hear a little bit more about your book. Tell everybody about your book. Oh, yeah, with
Eyes of the Wild and Transformation
00:53:32
Speaker
pleasure. um So I, mean you know, I realized that, you know, i've been traveling and meeting quite extraordinary, i mean, extraordinary people and in connection with the animals.
00:53:45
Speaker
And that wonderful man I've just described, you know, his name Jason Badritsa, Georgian Russian. um It was something that I was, it was like ah it was like a hidden stream in human,
00:54:04
Speaker
um awareness, this ability to have the direct connection with wild animals. And I was learning about it, you know, from, from these highly, highly experienced, but highly qualified scientists who are working outside of the mainstream Western model of thinking, right?
00:54:21
Speaker
They weren't just watching animals and noting down, you know, um different, you know, observe varieties of behavior. They were, they were engaging with them directly.
00:54:33
Speaker
right They were being, one scientist told me when he walked among polar bears without a weapon and without fear, because he was an animal among other animals and he was communicating with them directly and he never had a problem with the bears, except once when it was his own fault.
00:54:53
Speaker
And that was on a remote high Arctic island where the polar bears come come into land during the summer melt season. So I was meeting these people and they were telling me something about our original human ability to communicate with the natural world.
00:55:09
Speaker
And so I started writing about it and then it became... um It took me into that deep level within myself that was really calling out to express what you've just said, that we call it mystical because it's taking you further out of your narrow you know confinement within the mind and the thought forms and the beliefs into this expansiveness.
00:55:43
Speaker
um So it's called Eyes of the Wild because it's fundamentally about that deep gaze of recognition of eye to eye, heart to heart, you know, with the whale, with the wolf, with bears, with horses, wild horses as well. I've ridden among wild horses.
00:56:03
Speaker
and And it's been the greatest joy of my life, really. How did we get the book? Oh, well, that's it's available on different, you know, certainly on Amazon.
00:56:15
Speaker
And I'll give you the link. and i Yeah, we will put it into the show notes along with, of course, your, you know, your website and how people can contact you and find out more about the amazing things that you're doing.
00:56:29
Speaker
i would be very, very pleased. Yeah. Yeah. We're also modest. She's like, the book is this, the book is that. Yes, but where do we get it? That's what we want to know.
00:56:40
Speaker
we We want to know how we put it in our hands and we can have that experience ourselves. but Yeah. And the book, sorry, of but this the book is also about how this... I mean, i I say it changes you, but actually, no, it takes you back to who you really are. These encounters.
00:56:54
Speaker
That's it. That's why we use, it's funny, when I came to Dhammenhur, so we've had to, you know, we translate a lot of words. And one of the words we've always talked about in Dhammenhur is, you know, our job is el risveglio de la humanità.
Invitation to Join the Naturally Conscious Community
00:57:07
Speaker
which in reality translates literally to awakening. And I was one of the first people that was like translating things into, not the first, but one of the first people that was translating things into English on a massive scale for Dominant. And I was like, we're not awakening, we're reawakening. Like we were awake, we know this. And part of our path is to reawaken to the fact that, because that's where the familiarness comes from. If we were never awake, then we wouldn't almost know When we get there, and in order for us to complete a cycle that we're on, it's a reawakening. We've been there before. We've entered into it.
00:57:45
Speaker
We'll do it at a new level. We'll be even more evolved, more advanced. There's be so many different things, but it's a reawakening. Like we were there once, folks. You've all been there. Like tap deep inside of yourself because the memory of that stuff is all in there.
00:58:03
Speaker
And this is where all the fun things are. All the joy and the good things live. Exactly. So you just got to kind of like connect into that. And sometimes you're going to do it with the help of others. Actually, you're always going to do it with the help of others. The help help of others is is a fundamental piece of it.
00:58:20
Speaker
Eleanor, i i cannot thank you enough for this conversation. i am just... in awe and humbled by your experiences, but also it's, it makes me so happy every time I have these conversations to see like we are there, we're getting there, like we're seeing it, you know, we feel it and how important it is for us to get it out so that others can feel it, that others can, can,
00:58:47
Speaker
move in these directions and can really have these types of experiences. So thank you so much for this conversation. i am just like I said, was he played yeah. And for those of you that are listening, everything about Eleanor's work and who she is and how to find her and how to buy her book are all going to be in the show notes.
00:59:08
Speaker
And of course, if you want to continue these types of conversations, the naturally conscious community is your place for human plant relationships and really relationships between humans and other kin in general for all the reasons that we just talked about today. Cause that is pretty much every event that happens in there from the book club to the Sprouts writing and community, I mean, and creativity group, the mini voyage with plants, everything that's in there. And especially our plants inspired masterclass discussions, which are pretty deep dives into these types of things are all to help support you evolve and
00:59:43
Speaker
reawaken. And if you are looking for one-on-one support to get there, then I'm always here for you. All you have to do is reach out. So with that, thank you so much for being here and remember to resist the urge to hold back your evolving green brilliance. by ah Bye.
01:00:02
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom to continue these conversations. Join us in the naturally conscious community. your premier online ecosystem for plant reawakening and accelerated evolution and co-creation with other kin.
01:00:17
Speaker
Here, you'll find expansive discussions, interactive courses, live events, and supportive group programs like the Plant Wisdom Book Club and the Sprouts Writing and Creativity Group. Connect with like-minded individuals collaborating with plants to integrate these insights into life. Intro and outro music by Steve Shuley and Poinsettia from the singing Life of Plants.
01:00:37
Speaker
That's it for me, Tigria Gardenia, and my plant collaborators. Until next time, remember, resist the urge to hold back your emerging green brilliance. I'm out. Bye.