[00:00:00] Hello, dear friends. Jeanette Sealy here. And I'm so thrilled to welcome you back to the Nourish collective podcast. I'm your host for this new season. And as we step into this next chapter together, I want to take a moment to honor how far we've come.
Some of, you know, That I started this journey with my wonderful cohost sunshine, Kate. And together we created a space to explore nourishment and its many forms, mind, body, and soul.
While Kate has moved on to pursue new adventures, her spirit and energy remain woven into the fabric of this podcast.
And I'm deeply grateful. For the foundation we built together. This new season brings exciting changes. We're diving even deeper into conversations that inspire awakening, transformation and freedom from suffering. We'll be exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom [00:01:00] and modern science. Highlighting voices that guide us back to connection. Within ourselves with each other. And with the natural world. Expect soulful dialogues, actionable insights, and a lot of heart. Together we'll celebrate the sacred and the mundane. Find joy and embodiment and explore the visionary pathways that lead us to a more whole. Soulful and nourishing life. Thank you for joining me in this next evolution of the Nourish collective podcast.
I am so honored. And excited to share with you the recording from my beautiful conversation with Gabriela Guiterrez.
Born in Spain to a wealth smother and Spanish father. Gabriela had an unusual childhood raised in movement. She's a polyglot speaking, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, basic [00:02:00] Arabic Farsi, and Serbian. Gabriela studied the middle east with a focus on anthropology, Islamic, mysticism, and Sufi poetry. And so as university London, From 2009 to 2012, she worked as a human rights defender in Ghana, Palestine, Bolivia. And with Tibetan X political prisoners in the Himalayas. In 2012, she lived and studied with renunciant Jane nuns in the Rajhastani desert. She then trained extensively with shamans and Bolivia, Peru and the UK. Before completing a master's degree with a first-class thesis in the poetics of imagination with pathologists, Dr.
Martin Shaw. And poet Alice Oswald. Her work focuses on the revival of ancient wisdom in Europe and the middle east. Following a decade of rigorous spiritual trainings with shamans and renunciates Gabriela developed her own healing, modality, and teaching that she shares in both online and [00:03:00] in-person settings. Much of her research and writing can be found on her sub stack publication under a fig tree. Which we will. Share in the show notes. And her online classes and lectures provide a regular gathering space for wisdom seekers worldwide. I've had the privilege of studying and working with Gabriela since 2018. And I'm continually amazed at the beauty the space. And. The magical world that she's able to cultivate. Within herself and in the containers that she holds.
So without further ado, here's the conversation. I hope you enjoy.
[00:03:41] Audio Only - All Participants: Hi! I feel like I haven't seen you in like three or four lifetimes. It feels that way, doesn't it? I feel like we're living in a different world as well as a different internal landscape.
I've been really immersed in a very [00:04:00] internal place. I've been writing a book and turns out you need a lot of solitude to do that. Like immense amounts of solitude consistently and, , and attention.
, And so I think between that, and then between moving to Australia, about a year and a half ago now, and, , just lots of personal life changes, I've just gone inward, , and developing this quality of listening to the world. and to the more than human world that I was always inclined towards but never quite gave the attention and the time to, like I have now in the last year.
So One of the things that are really alive, just when you say, , what do you want to talk about, and I'm like, well, I don't really know, because I haven't really spoken on a podcast in a long time, and have been quite internal. One of the things that are just sort of obvious, and perhaps, [00:05:00] Helpful for all of us is this quality of listening to the more than human world in a time when there is such political and ecological and social and psychic uncertainty and instability.
And how important and nourishing it can be for the soul to spend and to offer ourselves time of prolonged solitude and silence. with the natural world so that we can hearken to something older than all of the chaos that we're experiencing at the moment. So much noise. And I think that the quality of listening can be a really curious one for people to be, to even begin just where do you start?
Yeah, exactly. And just I think also because information is so available to us now. Like, knowledge has almost become a [00:06:00] product. Like, we now live in a world where knowledge is sold, , and it's sold in very glamorous ways through social media, , and through, these sort of popularity channels, like, through movies, through, , fiction, through, it's like we're constantly bombarded with information in glamorous ways and there's very little substance.
It's like my body is like, I just, I'm like longing for substance. , And I find that at the moment, one of the most obvious places to find it is in the natural world, and in the time we spend in silence, because that's when we can start to listen to those old wisdoms that live in our bones, and in our blood, and in our wombs, and in our hearts, and in our ancestral knowledge, and in our relationship with our families, and our loved ones, and our pets, and, that it's like a real return to something [00:07:00] simple, you know?
And, , and seemingly basic. It's like a principle. It's like the beginning principle. It's like, who are you? Can you be with your aloneness? Can you listen to the silence and be with it for prolonged periods of time and treat it as prayer? And can that be enough right now? Like, can we? Can we cultivate the courage to do that as a collective?
Okay, we've gone a bit deep, haven't we? I love how you call it courage! Where else can we go? But deep. Yeah, true. I love how you call it courage. It's so courageous to sit in silence. So much comes up. So much is there to be visited that we avoid in our busyness and the noise of the world, so I love that.
It's quite courageous and vulnerable. Yeah, [00:08:00] vulnerable, that's right. I think it, it requires a a sitting with fear, you know, because when you're on your own, you can't not hear the things that we're constantly trying to outrun. And you know, and all the addictions come up, like, oh, I think I'll just go and have a glass of wine, or I'll go and bake a cake, or I'll go and have a cigarette, or whatever it is that we sort of turn to.
And instead keep having to come back and go, no, just, just two more minutes. You know, just two more minutes here with nothing but me and this tree. And, you know, I've actually, I've brought a stack of poetry books. I was like, Hmm, I wonder if we'll want to read any poems. And so I just sort of choose them kind of not I don't consciously, I'm not there and I'm not, not like, okay, Jeanette, which ones could she like?
It's just sort of, you're just pulled to them a bit like form of bibliomancy. And so of course, you know, Mary Oliver is top of the list and we're talking about, you know, periods of sitting in silence with the more than [00:09:00] human world, and she's, you know, the expert on that, like, she Yeah, so, should we begin with a poem?
I would love that. I think that's very apropos. Yeah, I agree. So maybe what we can do is just bibliomancy it again, so I'll just flick through the pages randomly and see what opens up, and then that can be the poem for us and anyone listening to this. Oh,
this is a long one. Let's see. Yeah, I guess we need a long poem.
It's a couple of pages, but I'm not actually familiar with this one. Okay. Do you know this one? It's called, Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches? [00:10:00] I mean, just that title. We can just sort of leave it with that title. I wonder if this is the one where she speaks of the blue branches and lime and appetite and oceanic fluids of the body.
Oh, I hope so. I'm not even sure whether this is it or not. All right. Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives? Try to imagine what the crisp fringes full of honey hanging from the branches of the young locust tree in early summer feel like. Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy to let you in. Never to lie down on the grass as though you were the grass. Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart. No wonder we hear, in [00:11:00] your mournful voice, the complaint that something is missing from your life.
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles, who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone? Well, there is time left.
Fields everywhere invite you into them. And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away, from wherever you are, to look for your soul? Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk, To put one's foot into the door of the grass, Which is the mystery, which is death as well as life, And not be afraid.
To set one's foot in the door of death, And be overcome with amazement. To sit [00:12:00] down in front of the weeds, And imagine God the ten fingered, Sailing out of his house of straw, Nodding this way and that way To the flowers of the present hour. To the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth, to the tiplets of the honeysuckle that have opened in the night, to sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind, listen.
Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep. Only last week I went out among the thorns and said to the wild roses, Deny me not, but suffer my devotion. Then, all afternoon, I sat among them.
Maybe I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red, hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies. [00:13:00] For how will you continue to listen to those dark shouters? Caution and prudence. Fall in, fall in. A woman standing in the weeds. A small boat flounders in the deep waves. And what's coming next is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things, upon the immutable, what more could one ask? And I would touch the faces of the daisies, and I would bow down to think about it. That was then, which hasn't ended yet. Now, the sun begins to swing down, under the peach light, I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack, I float. I ramble my way.[00:14:00]
Mary. Honey and roses.
The journey home. That was magical. And that's what this quality of listening feels like. It's, it's like a return home. It's like that rare experience of homecoming, where you don't have this longing for something past and gone, or this anxiety for something not yet come. You're just sort of there, with the daisies and the foxes and the rivers, and I think, you know, it's a hard perception to sustain.
I don't know anyone who's able to just kind of hold it consistently. But I do feel like the more time we consciously carve out each day, you know, like [00:15:00] I said earlier, even if it's just a couple of minutes a day, just go, no, just sit here two more minutes with no phone, no book, no conversation, just you and a tree or a river or a particular stone and see what, see what arrives.
It's a sort of experiment on the imagination that I feel like I started really working towards about three years ago now, when I first started writing a dissertation for my master's degree, and I was studying with some of the greats in the world of, the contemporary greats in the world of the mythopoetic so Martin Shaw and Alice Oswald and Tracy Warr, and one of the things that Alice had me do for my study, because I was writing about bees.
and bees in mythology and bee priestesses called Melusai. And one of the things she had me do, which she called an experiment on the imagination, is to sit with a hive for 30 [00:16:00] days for 15 minutes a day and just listen. And what started as just listening, a month turned into two months and three months and the whole three months of writing my dissertation I was sitting with a hive and I was listening every day and they wrote my work for me.
You know, it's, it was a speaking on behalf of something that I've never done to that degree before and that I can't now undo. You know, so any kind of creative endeavor comes from the bees, or comes from a willow tree, or comes from a particular turn in the riverbed. And that I find is my I suppose the language of soul that feels most resonant with the language I think we're all sort of in some manner looking for.
to speak with God. I mean,
I [00:17:00] read, like, I knew you spoke many languages. I've been somewhat aware of your linguistic proficiency, but to just see this idea of language, and the language of nature, and the language of the soul, and English, Spanish, French, Some Arabic, Farsi, Serbian, Portuguese. Some of the languages you speak, is that right?
Yeah, well, it's only because of the, just the nature of my life. Just, you know, I grew up in movement. And so we lived in many countries and so just at schools, we'd learn those languages. And then I think I've just. I think I'm just really interested in soul and people and, you know, it's language as the transmission of knowledge.
And if I serve at any temple, well, it's that. It's Athena and it's Al Hakim and it's, you know, the [00:18:00] goddesses of knowledge. And One of my primary research methods is this direct participation with whatever it is or whoever it is that I'm studying. It's being able to converse and speak directly to people as opposed to just read the texts or just observe from the outside, but to be able to, to talk, you know, from soul from human to human.
And that's where I learned the most on my field. It's those simple conversations that, you know, at grocers or a coffee shop or waiting for a bus. And they're usually quite basic. And if I don't know the language, it'll be basic English. But it's, it's those conversations that really inform my imagination to then be able to speak on behalf of a people or a culture, as I would do.
For a tree or a riverbed. Or a hive.
[00:19:00] The big cult in Greek myth in Greek mythology is such a powerful part of your work. And when I've had the opportunity to work with you in the Womb Shamanism practice, the, these always played such a central and pivotal role and. You know, I would wonder if you would elaborate somehow on their significance and how their practices can inform us in that discovery of listening.
Yeah I think for me, bees, or perhaps to go back a little more I think that there are elements of the natural world that have spoken to specific cultures more than others. So, for example the, the jaguar has spoken to the Mayans and the Toltecs and the bear has spoken to the Greeks, you know, the mother bear and the cult of Artemis and the hummingbird and the wolf and, you know, there's these cultural totems.
And so the bee, I [00:20:00] found, was one of the cultural totems of pre Columbian times. patriarchal and pre institutionalized European culture. And so what I find is really interesting there is that when we hearken to a particular totem, our imagination starts to tune to something that is animate and alive, to a knowledge that is still living and that is accessible to us all through the mythopoetic.
So When you work with the bee specifically, you start to get, it's almost like, a key or a door opening into an old world that is the Western world's inheritance. That is particularly the Eleusinian mysteries of Celtic Greece, of ancient Greece. And it's also further back into the Minoan world.
Or the Bronze Age, and possibly [00:21:00] even Neolithic Minoan, Crete. Sorry, Neolithic Crete and Minoan Crete. So, 3500 BC. And so what's really interesting there is that because my work is really interested in ancient knowledge, I search for these sort of song lines within all the great traditions and within institutionalized traditions as well, like the Abrahamic religions and the Eastern religions but also in folk cultures and folk traditions.
And what I found, and this is something that P. L. Travis, the writer who wrote Mary Poppins talks about, is that there is this, she calls it a fund of ancient knowledge in our bloodstream, in our very bloodstream, and in the megalithic stones, and that Everything that has ever been known to humankind and accessible to the human psyche or the imagination is always [00:22:00] available to us and has been impregnated in our inner worlds and in our outer landscapes.
like the megalithic stones and like our blood. And so there are certain keys that can help us recover this ancient knowledge that has been suppressed over the past 5, 000 years in the modernization of the world and the turn towards a predominant male sky god. And the preference over the transcendental, over the embodied and somatic.
And so, what's interesting about the bee is that she can bring us back into this old consciousness and this fund of ancient knowledge simply through the art of observation, simply through the art, as we began with, of listening. So we begin to hearken to something older and [00:23:00] mythic and soulful. And so my work specifically with the bees has been to observe her behavior as a model for religious experience of women who existed in the ancient world and were known as Melissae.
And I think this is important because this because women's religious experience has not been given its rightful place within historical scholarship. We know very little about the religious experience of women. throughout these past, well, really throughout history, actually, I would argue from the beginning, from the dawn of human consciousness.
Like, we've just, you know, the historical, the historians of religion have focused on male religious experience and women were tending the household. And so you've got these greats like Masaya Eliyad who did these incredible studies on shamanic tradition and experience in Africa and [00:24:00] Asia and the Americas and so on.
But He really sidelines women's religious experience because he saw them as always tending the home. And what I think he overlooked, and what I argue in my dissertation and in this upcoming book I'm writing, is that actually there was no separation between the secular and the divine in the way that there is now, that that's very much a modern construct.
and that the home was the hearth, it was the temple, and that's why ancestors were buried underground, and the home was passed down through generations. It was a living temple that honored the dead, where life was brought in that had, that faced certain directions, just like the monolithic stones. That had certain constellations given more import than others that that favored the equinoxes and the solstice.
You know, it, it's just incredible when you start to listen to the ancient mind [00:25:00] without imposing our own kind of desires and also conditions on them. So, so, you know, all this knowledge starts to come forth and. The bee as a model for religious experience is my kind of what I'm honing in on like how can she teach us about the Religious experience of these women who were called bee priestesses for some reason either They called themselves that or later historians called them that that's unclear But what is clear is that they were related to bees for some reason that something about the bee world was reminiscent of the religious tasks of these women So that's kind of where I began and then I have just been sort of Brewing in for the past couple of years and you know fermenting and turning it into mead
And probably not for the first lifetime [00:26:00] Well, yeah, it feels like a very familiar place and I think that's what a lot of women feel Like women who, you know, are all, there's, there's this massive movement of women who are hearing the bee, you know, and wanting a language for it. And it's almost like, it's like there's an opening of a feminine quality.
that has nothing to do with gender. It's, it's a principle that exists in all things. And I think that the more that that's opening now, the more we're turning towards elements of the natural world that can help us find a language for it. And the bee is one of them, and the serpent is another. You know, so many women, you know, you see the serpent tattoo on the arm everywhere now.
It's like that she's just here, you know, she's just like, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. It's just the return, right? And do you think that this is indicative of some kind [00:27:00] of balance coming to be between like the sacred masculine and feminine beyond gender, but back to the idea of roles and pre patriarchal ways of being?
I hope so. I hope that's what this is.
That would be really nice, wouldn't it? It would be so lovely. The tip of the scales. Yeah, and that we get to live that in our lifetimes. I imagine that the bees have always spoken, there's just been varying qualities of listening, like varying qualities of attention. And so when bees, for example, for the longest time, like one of the questions I ask in my research is, why is it that the bee has survived in our, in the, in the European psyche?
Whereas, say, the serpent was banned and shunned and turned into, you know, Lilith and the devil [00:28:00] and the bringer of eternal sin and so on. But the bee, the bee survived. She's, she's present in the Vatican in the in the clothing of the, of the priests. And she's synonymous with the fleur de lis, the what's it called in English?
The lily. Sorry, the lily. Yeah, so one of her symbols, one of the symbols of the bee that was used interchangeably in Minoan Crete was the lily, the lily and the bee. And the lily is still used to this day along with the bee in the Vatican as a symbol. And so one of the things I think happened is that for the longest time people thought that the Queen Bee was a dude.
So people thought that the mother, the queen mother was a king, so they were like, great, you know, here's a symbol for the perfect society and for the clergy and for royalty and you know, and then and then I think it was in the 1600s or so that it [00:29:00] got a bit awkward because Suddenly the botanical gardens start to be built and people start to take more of a homeopathic interest in the natural world.
So instead of looking out at the stars, they start to look in at what's here. And so they create the botanical gardens and they start to study plants and they start to study bees. And what do you know, they find that the queen is not, she's not a king, she's a queen. And then it gets really awkward for a couple of hundred years where they're kind of like trying to keep it hush hush like, okay, we can't really deny it, but maybe let's just not make a big thing out of it because this has been the symbol of the perfect society that we've used for the last God knows how many hundreds of years.
And turns out she's a lady. So yeah, it got a bit awkward and then eventually they couldn't not hide it anymore. And then it kind of just stopped being a symbol for perfect society. And the bee became a symbol of virginity and chastity. And that's why it could [00:30:00] remain in the church, because it was a symbol of purity, of, you know, the woman who was chaste and, and virginal and martyr like, you know, like the Virgin Mary.
So it worked to maintain the mythos of the Abrahamic and particularly the Catholic Church. But then what we found is that actually bees are far from virginal. Bees have a really interesting sex life. Bees, they, they're able to reproduce asexually as well. which is really interesting. If the, if the queen bee or if the mother bee isn't able to lay eggs, another of the bees will stay in her stead and will replace her.
And without being fertilized, she's able to lay asexual, asexually through this process of parthenogenesis that appears throughout the myths. of the world. So it's really interesting what, yeah, what we, what sort of [00:31:00] opens up in the psyche when we give the bees a bit more of our attention and what they can tell us about both the religious experience of women in the past, but also what happened to knowledge and its suppression.
You know, sacred knowledge in the Western world and how we've gotten to where we are now. I think we need to know what happened in order to find power actually in where we are now so that we can move with more life force, like with more and more grace as well and, and, and with knowledge.
That's so beautiful. The fascination with the bees. It's really interesting when you talk about the Abrahamic religions, because if you look at Hinduism, the bee plays a very strong role, as does the serpent, and the yoga tradition, and the Vedic [00:32:00] traditions, and even Brahmari Pranayama, the bumblebee breath, was fascinating because they say in the ancient texts the Siva Samhita is one, but that it's the sound of the female honeybee.
And I was teaching this and my nephew said to me, well, how do they know what she sounds like? And of course, we went online at this point in the world and found out there are distinct differences in the frequency of the sounds, but these ancient, you know, ascetic practitioners were listening so deeply that they could discern the difference between the male.
The female and the drone, which a lot of drones are female too, right? Yeah, well, that's incredible. Oh, yes. Yeah, and just how it tells us again of the sophistication of the ancient mind, something that again, we've kind of, or the sort of modern contemporary emphasis on science [00:33:00] and the logical mind and, you know, to believe what you see and only what you see kind of thing.
We've sort of shut down the sophistication and the. detailed perception and ability to engage with the more than human world of our ancestors throughout the world. You know, I think from, from where I'm sort of sitting in the silence of my research at the moment, what I feel to be most true is that there was once a universal worldview That can be traced to the very beginning of human consciousness, to the first examples of religious experience in the prehistoric caves, in the ochre scriptures, that I believe were religious icons.
I don't think they were just depicting hunting scenes, I think they were [00:34:00] religious experience and visionary experience transcribed onto these sacred temples that were the caves, the first temples that were Wumik and that were believed to be the entry to the other world. That there were these membranous places in the natural world, these more liminal places and that one of them were, were caves.
And so that's why we have evidence for so many religious ceremonies taking place in caves from, you know, 60, 000 years ago, of some of the oldest ones. I mean, it's, you know, so from those first icons, religious icons, that were transcribed through direct religious experience and so that's why we have evidence.
right, whoever was transcribing them and there's ample evidence that they were women, predominantly. Yeah, I talk about that a lot in my lectures on when women were the [00:35:00] shamans. That's a series of lectures suggesting that women were the first shamans, that the religious roles were actually once the terrain of women, and that then that started to change.
But so from those first icons through into the Neolithic and all the images we have of the goddess figures. You know, that are sort of, again, sidelined as Venuses, as fertility objects, or even, they've even been dismissed as being sexual toys for men, like fantasy related. And yeah, I think that those are just other ways of shutting down the truth about our religious inheritance, you know, the history of religious experience.
which is that it began in the caves, it was animistic, it was predominantly looked over by women, because women have wombs. So anyone who has a womb, or who identifies with a womb, I should add as [00:36:00] well, these weren't just gender based women, these are anyone who believes that they have this, this ability.
Energetic entry point between them, their body and the natural world that is woic. So from tho those times through into the Neolithic and then the Bronze Age, where you also see goddesses like Inana in Mesopotamia and Ishita and, and a Sheda in Kaan, modern day Palestine. And then all the way to Hathor in ancient Egypt, you know, the cow goddess, who's the mother cow, who is also seen in her form of Pasiphae in Minoan Crete, the cow goddess, who courts the bull, and you've got this sacred marriage between the sacred bull and the sacred cow.
Interestingly, the cows, they're both solar. where the feminine is associated with the sun, and the masculine is associated with the moon. The bulls are lunar so that's really interesting too. And [00:37:00] then you start moving into the suppression, and you start having these these invasions in stages into modern day Europe from the Caspian steppe.
By essentially male god worshipping tribes, warrior tribes and slowly you start to see the traditions change and the goddesses form change to from an earth and nature based goddess to a sky related, often thunder Poseidonesque, Zeus Apollo like god species. And, and then the cosmologies start to change and women stop to have such a significant role within the religious sphere.
And they continue to still be sort of secondary to hold secondary positions in, through in, into ancient Greece. But then you have the destruction of the pagan temples at the hands of the Roman [00:38:00] emperor, emperor, sorry, Theodosius. And so then there's a shutdown of Paganism, and then you go into the Middle Ages, and you've got the Inquisition.
And slowly, slowly, there's these really strategic methods of suppressing the Traditions of the feminine, of the earthen, of the life affirming, of the cyclical of the ability for direct experience as opposed to an intermediary figure like a priest or a guru. And then you come to the world as we know it today and suddenly the bees are speaking again and so many people can hear them and it's really exciting and I don't know what it means.
But, but, but, but what I do feel is hope because I feel like there's an opening of the mythopoetic capacity again. You know, we're not just looking for a humanoid, [00:39:00] anthropomorphic figure. We're starting to see import and substance and, and, and something of, you know, godliness, something of holiness in the natural world again.
And that I find really hopeful. Godliness in the natural world. It is so hopeful. It takes that. You have to love something to protect it. You have to revere something to honor it. And so, you know, I know that your training has been so in depth in the, not just the world of academia, but the world of shamanism.
And I read that you were stayed with renunciate Jane Nuns in the Rajasthani desert. And Training with shamans, right, in Bolivia and Peru and beyond. I know you're still doing things. You just came out of Bali. Yes. So with all of this work and [00:40:00] discovering these earth based practices and ancient traditions, it must be really rewarding to see that it's spreading as it is.
How is the work that you're doing, you know, over the course of all the mentoring that you've done and your online courses and now your book? How do you feel like that's evolving as you evolve? I feel like it's that's such a good question and I feel like I could feel that's where you were going with it And I was like and I started my knees started to shake and I was like God Do I have a redemptive image?
do I have something that's like and and I I I don't feel like I do because I feel like the more that I expose myself to the worlds and the minds of peoples other than my own and other than my own culture, the the more I'm brought into a place of real simplicity and unglamorous existence. [00:41:00] You know, it, it, like, I was on the plane on my way to Bali six weeks ago.
I just got back a couple of days ago. And on the plane, there were, I was sitting next to this lovely old man who was on his way to a Zen sorry, not a Zen, an Ayurvedic retreat in Bali. And he practices Zen and Zen Buddhism, I believe, and so we were talking about praying and meditation and he was telling me how he meditates and, you know, he was telling me about his postures and, and the, the time frames and, and all this.
And then he asked me how I meditate and my knees did a similar shake. I was like, oh hmm. How do I meditate? And and then it just kind of came out of me and, and I said, you know, meditate with my eyes open, but he didn't get it. It was like, it didn't, what he responded was like, Oh, but you know, there's so much going on all the time.
We've got so many thoughts. We're always so overstimulated. You know, you really should close your eyes and go inside yourself and try that. [00:42:00] And what I meant was, you know, Mary esque. It was. It was, I want to see the world around me, and I want to feel myself a part of her, wholly. You know, and of course, I can close my eyes and meditate, but there's something else entirely happens when I'm either traveling to a traditional culture and sitting at the foot of a wise woman or man, or when I'm sitting under the foot of a tree.
It's the same quality of perception that, is what we were talking about at the beginning, right? This ability to see, to truly see. It's like a poetic vision and a mythic imagination. And that, that is what I'm feeling tethered to now. And because I haven't [00:43:00] done any teaching work for a few months now, because I've just been really kind of honing in this vision and this book and, and.
I moved into the, I live in a very remote area of the Australian bush with my partner and our, our pup. And so it does mean that, you know, for a long time my car wasn't working and so I really was just stranded in the bush.
I was so hard to start with right again when like everything in you just like just wants to run I just want to go to a cafe But I couldn't and so I was just in the bush and you know There's the snakes and there's the mosquitoes and there's the The Poisonous Spiders, and you know, there's all this that rekindled my relationship with the wild as well.
That the wild is more than just ecstatic dancing on a Friday night in a Five Rhythms class. Like, no offense to that, like, there's magic and power there, of course. I just mean that my relationship with the [00:44:00] wild before coming here was that. It's like, that's what opening The Wild Woman is. But actually, there's this other layer, this, you know, that's like, opening the wild woman is being able to walk through the bush knowing that there's King Browns and red bellied black snakes and you just have to walk.
And I'm not very good at it, like, I'm really not very good at it, I rarely do it, it takes a lot of like, you know,
talk beforehand. My partner would confirm this. But, but yeah, so, you know, in part this being in the wilderness and being in this silence and not teaching and saying actually this is a listening time now. And I feel like we all need that at times, right? Like you said, there's so much noise. So to give ourselves that listening time, that grace, to see what's here now and who we are now, knowing that we're constantly undergoing periods [00:45:00] of transformation and renovation and renewal, you know?
So to give ourselves that kindness, to just take time out a moment from all that and, and see what's here. And so I think that what I'm sitting with now is, is that, it's guarding over that. Like Rilke would say, you know, that the highest task between lovers is to guard over the aloneness of your beloved.
So I feel like it's the same individually, like to guard over the aloneness of my inner beloved, you know, that there is no higher task. It's easy to go to the cafe and to get on the phone with a girlfriend, but to guard over that aloneness in times of transformation and change, inner and outer, I think is ultimately the highest task.[00:46:00]
Thank you. So
as we are Very soon moving into the solstice, different ones, so fascinating here in the northern hemisphere it is really a time when a lot of us take that opportunity to go inward and then it's so different where you are now too because it's a blossoming and blooming and coming back out. But would you be open to leading a little practice for how to embrace the solstice?
And I'll, I'll try to get this out by the 21st. Oh, I love that you asked that because winter solstice is my favorite. I always offer a practice on my newsletter. Yes, I'm happy to share it. Yeah. Winter solstice As far as ancient peoples in the Near Eastern and European worlds were concerned was a time of renewal and it had [00:47:00] a New Year esque quality.
So it was the death of a cycle and the not promise of a new cycle because we've got to show our loyalty to it first, but the potential for new life and for freshness and for goodness. And so one of the rituals that I do every winter solstice, and I still do it here because my heart and soul is still Europe, you know, it's that land.
So the ritual is a three day procedure. And so from three days before the rising of the of the sun after the, sorry, after the solstice. So I'm not sure what dates they are this year. Actually, I need to look them up. But do you know, is it the 21st? I think so, but I can double check real quick. Yeah, because then we can be exact.
But 21st a. m. Ah, [00:48:00] amazing. Okay, great. So then on, perfect. So then on the night of the solstice, the ritual begins and it ends on the morning of the 21st, so on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve morning. So Every night before going to bed, in complete darkness we write on a sheet of paper our prayers, our anything that we wish to seed into the Wumik dark.
Because what happens over the three, this, these, this three day period between 24th, which Christianity then adopted as the birth of Christianity, the Christ is that there was a belief that the sun stood still. So solstice comes from the Latin sol, sun, and stis, to stand still. And so for three days, it was [00:49:00] believed that we entered into a liminal time, similar to Samhain, similar to ancestor time.
You know, there was a liminality, a dreaming available to us, where All the things that we most long for, that our hearts most call for, can come closer, can come into fruition. And so for those three days is, is a, is the potential for dreaming a new life and a new world into being. both for ourselves and again for the outer world as well.
So, so the ritual is very simple. Over three nights, from the 21st up until the night of the 24th, sorry, night of the 23rd to write down all the prayers, rituals, intentions, and to speak them into somewhere of significance. So for me at the moment, I do it in my garden. [00:50:00] I go to my garden and my partner and I will speak our prayers into the dark soil of our garden.
And we'll do that. And the prayers will be different each night as you deepen into the practice. You know, so you might find the first night you're doing it, you're really focused on your career and your work life. And then the next night you're going into your family and your health and your community.
And then the third night is like your deepest, most secret longings. reveal themselves and you speak them either with someone or on your own but in witness of all the, of the more than human world. So you're seeding your prayers through, you've either written them and you're, and you're reading them or you're speaking them out loud into the darkness and you're doing this for three nights and then you're asking for your dreams to seed those intentions and those prayers into the darkness.
So dreaming them into into root. Then, on the [00:51:00] morning of the 24th, if you've written your prayers, you want to burn them on the sunrise. So you wake up at dawn on the 24th, and as the sun moves again, after being still those three days, you offer your prayers as as an offering. And, and, and there's often three ways to do this.
One is through fire, one is through water, and one is through earth, through burial. So it can be in the form of a paper that you've written them on, or it can be often I work with seeds, like I'll hold a seed as I'm speaking my prayers those three nights, then I take it to my bed, put it under my pillow, and then the next day I speak and I've got the seed and to get, you know, so I'm building a relationship with this seed, and then on the dawn of the solstice I'll plant the seed into the garden.
So it could be something like that, it could be a bone, it could be a shell, it could be an image, something that you've made, but the idea is that you're giving something. [00:52:00] in return for what you're asking for, for the year ahead. Giving and receiving with the natural world. Yeah, exactly. It's really powerful.
Exactly. It's this age old, again, simple ritual, you know, and I think the cave art was a form of giving back what was being given. So instead of receiving visionary experience or vision from the gods and keeping it for oneself, it was given back. You know, so the art of creating art was a form of prayer and it was a religious act.
It was an offering, a libation. So that's the way I relate with ritual now. It's when you give your, your in relationality with something other than yourself. The small self, and that in itself is religious. Because it takes us [00:53:00] out of our ego and our arrogance and our huby, and it brings us into something that is part of the tapestry again, of all life.
It takes great humility to be open to listening to the tapestry of all of life, to be listening to a tree or bee or seed, and I think that's where a lot of the magic is. And I love that you weave that into the world in such an incredible and remarkable way. Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that Jeanette, that's really kind.
And knowing all the studies you've done as well and all the teachings that sit behind you and all the work that you're doing in the world at the moment and this centre that you're opening and you know I just see a little bit on on your Instagram but it's just amazing and so needed so thank you as well for your work you know the temples need to be [00:54:00] reopened.
So thank you for doing your part as well. Thank you. It's been magical to study with you. Yes, I can't wait till you start teaching again. But please do tell us how people, what's the best way to find you. I'll definitely link to everything that you've shared, but I really want people to be able to keep up with your work and keep up with what you're doing, especially if they feel called to this somatic connection with the natural world that is steeped in ritual and mystery and reverence, because I feel like that's just what we need in this time.
This connection with each other and with the earth and the way that you share brings that about in others. I've seen it both personally in myself and in the groups and containers I've been a part of with you as the guide. So, yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, at the moment, yeah, like I said, I'm not teaching, [00:55:00] but I'll probably start again in the new year at some point with the monthly ceremonies, the hold online monthly ceremonies.
So that can all be found on my website once it's up and running which is GabriellaMayaGutierrez. net. Which is probably easier to find in writing, I have a complicated name, it's Welsh and Spanish. And, but the easiest, the thing I am doing at the moment is writing a sub stack. So I'm writing every, usually every Sunday, sometimes every other Sunday pieces on there for, all to do with the mythopoetic ancient religion.
Women's Mysteries. So anytime I'm going on field work or doing research projects, I'll write about it on my sub stack. So that's called Under a Fig Tree. That one's quite easy to find. And I think that's it at the moment. I might be doing something with the Psychedelic Society again, but if, if folks just sign up to my newsletter, I'll send that all out in the new year.
Perfect. So I will link to [00:56:00] that. And I've very much been reading Under a Fig Tree. It's wonderful. I really see, you know, this kind of deep and often vulnerable way that you share about your field work and the experiences that you're going through and that you're exploring. And I just wanted to offer one more peek into your work.
And this is something we haven't spoken about yet. Right. Feel free to share as much or as little as you feel called to, but around your activism. I know that you've worked in Palestine and Ghana and other places really in the realm of improving the human condition and our understanding of what goes on.
Do you have anything you'd like to share with us or, yeah. Gosh, that's a, I feel like that's such an, an interwoven part of my life that I don't see it as like a separate. I think because I'm not a political activist anymore or a social activist, like I don't get [00:57:00] out on the streets or run campaigns like I used to but the way that I am hoping to affect change when it comes specifically at the moment to the Palestinian genocide is through Re humanizing Palestinians by telling their story again, the, to speak on behalf of a people and that is a huge responsibility, of course, and not one I take lightly but I feel like I am able to do so to a degree because I studied the Middle East in, as part of my undergraduate degree.
and studied Arabic and spent time in Palestine and know a lot of Palestinians and have kept in touch with everyone I met at the refugee camps. And I have a relationship with a people and their story, both the story of their suppression since 1948, but also [00:58:00] the story of their their history and their myths And this really interesting possibility that we have taken a mythic principle.
And made it literal by thinking that Israel is a geographical place. And I realize that's gonna ruffle some feathers, so you can either include that in this or not, but I'm comfortable saying it, and I will say it, you know, because I can back it up. I'm comfortable ruffling feathers because you need to know.
Yeah, yeah, it's, I wrote this piece is free on my Substack, it's called A Manifesto for My Western Friends and it's about the history of Palestine and the, what I think is a fact that Israel was a mythic country. place. It was a biblical place referred to as a mythic location not as a physical geographical [00:59:00] place for a chosen people.
It is a, it is like the paradise of the Christians or the the Eden, the Eden esque stories of creation. It is not a physical place. And yes, there are Israelite people, But the Israel, the state of Israel as we know it now was created with a political agenda predominantly spearheaded by the UK. But also it was created as a, we were led to believe that it was created to be the homeland of the Jews after the Holocaust.
But actually the draft that planned for the creation of a state of Israel was written before the Second World War. It's called the Balfour Declaration and it was drafted for the first time by Balfour himself before the Second World War began, so before the, the [01:00:00] Holocaust. You know, this could be a whole podcast in itself.
There's so much to say here, but I think just as a, if I can summarize it to the best of my ability, Israel was a mythic place. The state of Israel, we were led to believe that it was created as a homeland for survivors of the Holocaust, but actually it was planned before the beginning of World War II. And the, there is such a thing as Arab Jews.
Jews who existed in the Middle East, who still exist and in North Africa throughout that part of the world, who are Arabs and they are Jews, and they live alongside Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs and Zoroastrians and so on. That our view of that part of the world in the West is very limited. So we could do really well in educating ourselves more about the [01:01:00] history and the peoples and the, the social reality of the people who live there, of Arabs and Jews living together.
With conflict, of course, but when has there not been human conflict in human history? You know, so it, but, We, and when I say we, I say, I mean the European powers and America have gone in there thinking that we have thinking that we know best, but actually it's in our interest because there's oil there, because we want to have a foot in the Middle East, because it's a barrier between us and Iran, because it's where the, there's a strait that's one of the, the most, um, lucrative oil.
Uh, what's it called? Sorry, my brain. To go from the mythic to the political. It's fun. Sources of oil in, in, in the Western world which makes [01:02:00] us, which makes Gaza specific, because it goes into Gaza, which makes Gaza specifically strategic, politically and financially for the West. So there's so much more going on there than the protection of Israeli hostages and the dignity of the Israeli people.
Many Israelis have been protesting in the thousands to stop and calling for a ceasefire. They can see what's happening because it's been happening for, you know, 70 plus years. So Yeah, and as far as my work is concerned, it's in the retelling of the Palestinian story based on the privilege I had of spending time with Palestinian people and spending time on that land in my early 20s.
So 15 years ago now, and really having it enter my bones. You know, yeah, it's a, it's a part of the world that has been demonized for far too long and that we need to [01:03:00] re humanize as a, you know, with ferocity and non negotiably. Absolutely, yes, and I really, I do believe that this work that you're doing, this work of reconnecting with the earth brings us into spaces where we can reconnect with each other.
We've been fed a lot of fear and a lot of lies, but when we're listening, you know, again, that noise can drop away and we can really understand what truth is as it may come to us through a tree or through the stars or through the connection with something beyond ourselves. And yeah. These practices are so important now more than ever, these practices of connecting with the body and the womb and the world that is the natural world, so.
Thank you for saying that. Yeah, that, that's a lovely, that feels like a redemptive image you just [01:04:00] offered. I think that's absolutely right, that that's what's going to bring us back into a sense of humanity again I wrote recently a piece about being, how I think being human is a right, is a rank to be earned.
It's not a given. Like, we're all people, we're all biologically people, but to be human isn't a given. And we can see that in the conduct of so many hundreds of thousands of people, and the brutality that they're operating under, the violence. But so to earn the rank of being human, some of the scholars and the philosophers of the ages would talk about this angel up ahead.
And they, or the angel out ahead that, that, that was just a step in front of us, like the Sufi mystics talk about this being a bit, I would say it's similar to the higher self or the true self. That exists just [01:05:00] ahead, that's always lighting the way, just a step. That's all we need to know, just the next step.
But that if we hearken to this truth, you know, this brightness of who we are and we give ourselves the conditions to hear it and to see it which is the silence that we've been talking about and the exposure to the natural world, then we can begin to operate from that place that earns us a human rank.
And how do we listen? If we, if you have one piece of wisdom in a way to leave us with around, around that or anything else that you choose. Or someone maybe even new to this who perhaps doesn't yet have a strong meditation practice or listening practice. I think in one word, poetry. I think [01:06:00] poetry is the thing that can undo the literalisms of our mind.
You know, and free us from this, the quickness that isn't our natural rhythm, you know, it slows us right down and it brings us back into the imaginative and the childlike freedom and, and awe and wonder. So poetry, you know, and starting with Mary Oliver's devotions is a great one. I also brought Hafez's The Gift today.
That's another beauty. Any of the Sufi mystics and poets and for just a couple more contemporary ones David White his book Consolations is phenomenal, a balm for the soul, and then of course Robert Bly he is one of the elders of the mythopoetic world and News of the Universe is just a collection of his poems.
that are worth having by the bedside table. So, you know, a poem a [01:07:00] day. A poem a day, and if I can add one other thing, walks. Morning walks, ideally, but any time of day, morning or dusk, dawn or dusk, ideally, because those are the dimpsy times, you know, the times when we're not quite here and not quite there and neither is anything else, so there's more possibility for magic.
But daily walks, just even 10 15 minutes, even if you're in an urban area, you know, just walking around your neighborhood. And just see what, what comes, putting the phone down putting all the to do lists away and just one step ahead, you know, the angel out ahead, just following one foot in front of the other and see what happens.
So simple and so profound. Yeah, the simple things, because I think it's them that then slowly lead us to being able to sit. in for prolonged periods of silence in nature without going [01:08:00] for our phones or you know tricking ourselves into like oh I had to put the washing on or I forgot I had that appointment or I should send that email now and actually to just You know, be able to just be in the silence and so maybe trying that as well for just putting a timer on for five minutes and just sitting, you know, but I would start with poetry if that feels like too much for the nervous system.
I would start with a good book of poems and for it to be like a Bible by the bed. You know, that informs your, your dreaming in your waking and in your sleep.
Immeasurable gratitude for you and for this time that we got to share together. And for our listeners, I, I know that you'll be so enriched by this conversation and all the wisdom that Gabriella just had to share. Thank you. so much. Thank [01:09:00] you. Thank you. It's, it's always a delight to talk to you because I feel like you're, you're there, you know, you just, you speak that language and, and then you synthesize it and you transmit it back in a different way, which is the point, right?
Because if it's just me, just me, then, you know, but, but you have this ability to take what I say and then go, yeah, so it's, and in three words. You've said it.
It's a good team effort to talk about things that, you know, to talk about the numinous and the historical and the mythic. It's really hard to do it in words. So thank you. It's It's a pleasure to talk to you about it as well because you just, it's in you and you know how to transmit it with such beauty.
Oh, thank you. I feel like I would love to talk to you forever.
I'm very much looking forward to your classes beginning again and to your book that I can read and to your next fig [01:10:00] tree substack. And if you ever do come back this way, please come host something here. Yes, God, yeah, yeah. I can do a retreat style now, so. Oh, yes, ah, yes. Some locations in the area for, for like, really beautiful stay overs, and then there's tons of space here, and my goal, my vision is to do immersive things, so.
Wow. Year work. I'm studying cultural anthropology right now in college for the first time, just an elective. And I think of you all the time. That's amazing! I really do. It's part of the mandatory elective for healthcare studies, which is interesting. And I love it. Wow! Oh, congratulations for going back to school as well!
I've got a degree, so, back at it from the beginning. I have goosebumps. That's so strong. [01:11:00] Wow. Congratulations. That's exciting. That takes courage. I bet yours takes courage too, my love. I'm so impressed. And as I said, if you prefer, like I'm going to give all the links in the show notes, but if you want to send me a little bio or just let me know, I can take the one from your website.
Whatever you Okay, I'll have a read over it again. I haven't seen it in ages, so I'll, yeah, I'll send you an email. I think so. And yeah, yeah, it's just magical. What you said about poetry, I heard Michael Mead say that the other day. Really? Yes. I've been listening to his podcast a lot while driving and he's, it was right after the election and he said like, how do we find a balm for our souls in this time?
Poetry. Oh, oh, yay! So sweet. Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, I'm so glad. Thank you. That's really affirming. I mean. [01:12:00] He's, he's, yeah. Yeah, he's another one of the greats. He was alongside Robert Blythe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, have you heard the podcast? Yes, I have. Oh, and he's got an episode about bees. If you haven't heard it, have you heard it?
I just found it like The other day, a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, how did I not know about this podcast? Ah, amazing. Well, I hadn't listened to the one you sent me, so I look forward to listening to that one. I think I sent you about fire, but oh, he's just an article. Yes, yes. Yes. And that's it as well.
There's so many more things popping up, you know, around like the mythopoetic and the historical and the spiritual and, and, you know, so. Yeah, it's good. It's just, I think it's just this like, discernment, isn't it? Between like, the things of substance and the things that are more just like products, like selling knowledge as a product.
That's what I'm struggling with. Exactly. Like, how do [01:13:00] you make it accessible, but also be able to make a living and, you know, And how do you, yeah, like what's the, what's the most sincere and integrous way of doing that work? Like maybe it's doing something else and actually all of that's free, you know, but then you have less time to do that.
So maybe it's like arts grants, like you get grants from, institutions, but then you're tied to what you can and can't say. So it's really tricky. It's really complex right now. I think of like going back to old times in some ways where people have, they're not called sponsors, but you know what I mean? Oh yeah, like, yeah.
They sponsor your work, or they sponsor the art that you're creating, and it's sort of like, those angel investing funds and things like that might be a great place, but even the act of grant writing to get these things is so complicated, it takes you [01:14:00] away from the actual work, so. Exactly, yes, yes. Yeah, but I think it gets revealed.
I don't, you know, I feel like it is always held even when it feels like it isn't. It's, there's always a, those ancestors and those that council I feel like of, of elders behind us who just kind of, just kind of have our back. Yeah, that idea again of discernment around those. the spirit helpers that we have at Invite In and the way that we're listening to the guidance and all of it is comes back to what you shared at the very beginning like the most powerful thing we can do right now is learn to listen and listen with discernment.
Yeah, and hands in the ground, like hands in the earth, you know, like planting something or just like the simple, easy, like, [01:15:00] natural, yeah, exactly, exactly, and wash the bloody dishes.
Exactly.
Oh, yes. Never better said. Oh, well, it's been a joy to see you and reconnect. Yes, and to you. I'm honored that you said yes to this. I really am so excited to edit it, put it together. I'll send it to you. first for, you can have a listen. You can take a look at the transcript and then if you want anything changed, feel free to let me know.
It's not hard. I use the program. It makes it really simple. So, okay. Don't worry. I'm sure everything we've said I'm comfortable sharing. So don't worry. I, yeah, whatever you deem fit. The Palestine stuff, I, I speak about it publicly. So I, I've been, yeah, yeah, yeah. At some point get, I know I started at [01:16:00] the very beginning and then life took over, but like, You and my friend Levi and my friend Abigail, all have a very similar Oh, thread of how you're being an activist in this arena.
And so I just felt called back then to connect you, but I might call them in for a podcast and then put something together with the three of you speaking about that particular topic. Yeah, yeah. What we just shared and then them, so, yeah. But I have, I'm gonna get this out for the solstice, so there's a little bit of time between now and then and yeah.
Yeah. So important for voices to be heard. Yeah, I think that would be lovely to get them on board as well, because then it's Just the power in numbers as well and Exactly. And Levi's, Jewish and, oh, wow. You've been there. He studied genocide studies in college. I mean, oh wow. Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of skill too.
It's not just, you know, opinions. It's like skillfulness and weaving together, that deep connection with the heritage and the stories of the [01:17:00] people, and. Oh, wonderful. Oh, if you did that, it would be so wonderful. Yeah, I'm sure lots of people would benefit from hearing that. Yeah, those beautiful voices with great discernment and like, unbiased presentation of the situation.
This is the fact. This is the what is. Kind of, we need that. There's so many opinions. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing about it. Oh, thank you. Yeah, and for making the space for it as well, because not everyone does, and it's hard to talk about things that are relevant without talking about the genocide, because it's, it's like, One of the greatest human rights abuses happening in our time, in our century, and, you know, it's, it's here and we're witnessing it, like, you know, live, for the first time ever, like, we don't know what to do with, you know, it's, it's really confronting and I think a [01:18:00] lot of people are struggling with it, and I think one of the responses is to check out, You know, and to disassociate, which is understandable but not helpful if we're doing it for more than just a little while, because then how are we socially responsible, you know, and morally responsible humans?
How do we how do we hold that rank of being human if we're just checked out? I remember that when you brought that up, it made me think of the story of the first time we knew that there was civilization was when they found a dead body with a broken femur. Who had died of old age, and it was like someone, you know, was human enough to be a caretender to this person.
We can all just come back to that simplicity, I think. this caretaking of each other. Yeah. And the mindset. Yeah, exactly. And the mindset that Margaret Mead had that, [01:19:00] you know, she perceives that as civilization. So it says something about her own poetic vision, you know, that she's not looking for evidence of warfare or of elitism.
You know, she's looking at what humans do for each other as indicative of the highest expression of civilization or humanity. And that's another really hopeful thing as well, to keep developing that thinking and that type of perception. I can't wait to go read some poetry. Oh, yay! I do a lot of bibliography, and so now I have some You shared two books that I don't have, so I'm excited.
I'll get one for my daughter for Christmas, because she's a big poet too, so. Is she? Oh, did you have the, did you have the Hafez one? I have Hafez. I didn't have the, I thought so. The elder in mythology, I forget his name already, but I have a recording of his obviously. The other two I don't have. Yes, oh great.[01:20:00]
Yeah, these guys. Mm hmm, those guys, yes. Yeah, these are really good. Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you for everything. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. It was so perfect for what we were talking about. As Bibliomancy tends to be. Yeah, yeah. And also I just feel like there's a general tiredness around at the moment, like, you know, I think we're all feeling it.
And so just anything that can, I was thinking today, like, how can I, What could be nourishing today? And so, of course, I was like, poems! So I just went and got the poems and like, so many books.
All the books. Yeah, all the books.
Have a lovely rest of your evening. You too, so happy to see you. And so happy to see you so happy. You've always been [01:21:00] that, but this is, this is new, a little bit. For you, the love in this way, it seems. Thank you. And this time and days when you're meeting your, like, soul partner. Really thrilled. Yeah. Thank you.
It is new in this way. Yeah. Thank you for seeing that. Yeah. It's exciting and scary, but. Yeah. Yeah. And like, mildly terrifying. But yeah. Not as scary as the walk through the bush though, so. True. Yeah. That puts everything else into perspective. I can only imagine. That's like real fear. That's not even made up fear.
That's like, That's like real, yeah. We did it yesterday. We went to swim in the water hole. And it's only like, I don't know how far, it's like four minutes down the track, but I just don't do it. Because I just, I just don't. On my own, never. And yesterday, Leon talked me into it. I was like, okay, I'm going to be different.
Now I've come back from Bali, I need to [01:22:00] be different. And, you know, something has had to change and transform for the better. And I did it, but it felt alright. But it is just that thought that any minute, I just And it takes away the, yeah, it takes away the romanticism as well of like being snake whisperers.
Like, yes, snakes are symbolic of feminine power, but they could also kill you. And they're not, you know, like, was it Bruce Lee that said like, what do you say about his like, Oh god, I can't remember. Something about vegetarians thinking that if they're, do you know this one? That if they go to the woods or, what was it?
If a vegetarian goes to the jungle and thinks that a tiger won't eat them because they don't eat other animals, they're delusional. Something like that. I've totally butchered it, but something like that. You know, I was like, oh god, yeah, I feel the same about snakes. Like, I know their stories and their history.
And You know, whenever I've posted about them, [01:23:00] people write to me like, oh, they're just here to teach you transformation and to get back into your feminine. And all I'm thinking is this snake had no interest in me whatsoever. It's living its life. I'm not that important. It didn't stop everything to come onto the path so that I could see it.
You know, it's just living its life. And it just so happens that I came upon it at that time. And and they're venomous, you know, they're like, some of the deadliest in the world. So there's a real like reshaping and rethinking of the wild and our relationship with it and how it isn't just like we're all just snake whisperers and we can all live happily together.
Like, right, no, the mystical and then the 3D reality. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You can live in both worlds. So I mean, I guess we need to live in both worlds. Yeah, otherwise it's, it's almost like it borders on psychosis, [01:24:00] it's like everything is here for us and for our own like benefit and the natural world is just here to teach us.
I think it's much less personal. I think, I don't think that the snake is thinking about me. I really don't. It might be for a second when it sees me and is like, who's this buffoon? But other than that, like, it's not. He's losing sleep over me.
Such a reality checker. it's a meditation. Yeah, like, it's not. Yeah, but it is, it's so medieval. If you think, it's this whole idea of like, the world, the sun's spinning around us. You know, like, God spins around us, and the natural world spins around us, and it's all about me, and the bird flies this way because of me, and this and that, and it's like.
No, I think reweaving ourselves back into the natural world isn't about seeing what [01:25:00] it's there to teach us, but rather seeing what we can give back to it by causing less violence, you know, so less noise, less imposition, less you mean this and you mean that, but giving them The mythopoetic, metaphoric dream language again, like not giving it to them, just learning how to listen for it.
Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I could go on about that. I like that you said that so much because I do tend to like look for meaning and things, but it really is so much better if you listen in rather than look up what's the totem of the eagle that just crossed my path. Right, yeah. Although that's super tempting.
Yeah, like I. I still do that. My animal spirit cards, all of that is across the place and yet the listening gives us the true wisdom of the natural world. The ability to be in spaces that allow us to have that, or to cultivate spaces, is [01:26:00] so epic. Yeah, and being in the animal body as well, not just the soul, but like the animal in us as well, and being with the animal in them, like, yes they have soul, and yes they're teachers because everything is, and yes they have meaning, but they also don't because everything has meaning and has no meaning, right?
there's this paradox we have to live with. But when it comes to like the animal form and our animal form to go, okay, how does the animal in me respond to the animal of a red belly black snake? It wants to run in the fucking opposite direction. It doesn't want to sit there and meditate. Yeah. It's like my animal body is like, I am out of here.
It's not sitting there going, I'm going to sit and listen for what you tell my chakras. You know, like, it's instinctual and that I'm really interested in as well, like, oh, I'm learning so much about my animal body that has actually been [01:27:00] quite dormant in my time living in cities and towns and, you know, comfortable, idyllic, benign villages in England.
Like, none of this has been activated. for me, whereas in the U. S., like, exactly, it's primal and it's available in the U. S. too, right, because of bears and rattlesnakes and, you know, I mean, in New Jersey, we didn't have that, but it was like, but still, like, you know, it's, there's ways to develop that, but I do think there's something about listening with the animal body as well, not just the soul, like, how does the animal of my body feel sitting next to the animal of that body?
You know, like a hornet, you know, or an owl, or an ant, like here we get bull ants who are like the most aggressive little buggers I've ever encountered in my life, like they will fight you, it's like they've got little boxing gloves on, like I go out to have [01:28:00] my idyllic breakfast with my bees and I'm like sitting with the hive and there's my flowers, it's all so lovely, and then suddenly this little bugger will come and he'll like start hitting against my big toe.
And I've done nothing! I'm just sitting there having breakfast and he's like head butting my toe. Oh my goodness. Does it sting or anything? I don't know, it's just, Well, if I fight back, then he'll bite me, but it's like he's just like showing me who's boss. Yeah, if I like, fight back, then I'll get bitten, but otherwise he's just like, just remember who's boss, missy.
I'm just like Yeah, so the wild is like in all its glorious shapes and it's, you know, like surprising ones and it's terrifying ones and it's annoying ones and, you know, I think that's all a part of this listening quality. Yes, yes, I love it. Listening [01:29:00] to the feeling too, we're so, I mean even as we talk about listening my entire process of listening remains kind of here up, you know, although, like naturally, but then as a practice of listening deep in the womb or deep in the root or in the movement of the ear.
And that cultivation too, that somatic practice in, in the idea of rewilding. Yeah, that's such a good point. Like belly listening, or like yonic listening, like vulva listening. Like what does that, how is that different? How does that differ to like up here listening or like jaw listening? That's really interesting.
I might have to take that on. Thank you Well, you taught me. I remember you First immersions I did with you. We were invited to [01:30:00] wake up every morning and And ask how can we allow our day to be more womb driven, more spiritless, and that was an opening right there, so. Oh, good. Oh, well it all goes right back round.
I'd forgotten.
Yeah. Oh, awesome. All right. So much love to you, beautiful one. And to you. Thank you again. You too. I hope to see you sometime in person again soon. Yes, yes. Sounds lovely. And have a, have a beautiful solstice as well. You too. I hope it's fruitful. for the practice. I love that. Of course. My pleasure. I'll talk to you soon.
Bye for now. All right. Bye.
