In Conversation

Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods, to the podcast where we still believe that another world is possible and that if we all pull together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I’m Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility. And as we head into the solstice, that moment when the sun stands still, whether you’re in the northern hemisphere where we have the longest day, or the southern where it’s the longest night, this solstice feels like a moment of transformation. The world is turning over, turning a page. The older system is visibly, palpably breaking apart. A new system is going to arise from the ashes, because there is always going to be some kind of a system. The question for now is what does it look like? What does it work like? What does it feel like? We are a pro-social, communitarian species, but in the West we in the WEIRD (Western educated, industrial rich and at least until recently, notionally democratic) culture, has shattered from our knowing of our place as integral to the all that is. Our ancestors and those still living in indigenous cultures know that separability is not a thing, that we are not separate, that we never have been, and that we never can be. And those cultures also, and I think this would be a natural evolution of that lack of separability had very well honed social technologies to make sure that the dark triad of psychopathy, narcissism and sadism never gained control.

It wasn’t that people didn’t arise who might want to crush everybody else and lead, it’s that they were not given the opportunity to do so. In our culture, those very traits are what promote people to the top. So it’s possible we could yet end up with a system predicated on hatred underpinned by fear, where a small number of incredibly frightened individuals let their traumatised parts run a scorched earth policy in an effort to hold everything back of which they are most afraid. However, I am increasingly hopeful that what we are seeing around the world is the extinction burst of the old system, its death throes, and they are not pretty and a lot of people are suffering greatly as a result. I am not intending to minimise this. And yet, as I record this, there has been a record turnout for the No Kings rallies in the US. Numbers I’ve seen ranged from 5 million to 12 million, and I am guessing that each of these numbers hangs at the opposite end of a curve, and somewhere in the middle is true. But whatever it is, it’s an astonishing number. It’s within shouting distance of the 3.5% of the total population that was considered a tipping point in previous social movements in our recent history. So the abolition of slavery in the UK, the civil rights movement in the US, gay marriage in too many nations to count, and in the states this is spread out across all 50 states.

In certain states that number will definitely have been higher than the 3.5%. And that percentage is based on reasonable social science, but it’s predicated on the pre-internet age. We genuinely have no idea what happens when people can see the images on their phones in real time. When people realise how many of the people around them share the common values of decency, compassion, integrity, generosity of spirit. So if this is potentially a turning point in the making in the US, how do we move it so that it’s bigger, grander, more of a global movement? We know we need total systemic change, but how do we make it happen? How do we create lasting change in our ways of organising everything from food to water to shelter to education, to the ways that we create governance? How do we sort out the mess of our politics, so that we can find those with the greatest wisdom and give them as much power as they need, and no more at all levels of our culture. If you’ve listened to many previous episodes of this podcast, you’ll know that I think the answer lies in our narratives. That when new ideas become common currency, then we begin to build them into our visions of how the world is and has been and could be. If we, each of us, can become bold evolutionary imagineers and craft stories of a different way of organising, loving, relating, caring, then we can live it into being.

Our brains don’t know the difference between things we have imagined and things that have actually happened. And this is one of the huge gifts of being human. Too often we use it to imagine disasters and to crush our spirits. The time is coming now when I think we have to consciously choose to do the opposite, which means we need to know in the marrow of our bones what this feels like. Imagination begins in our perception of the possible, and part of the horror of the trauma culture is the systematic stifling of possibility, the crushing of our creativity. From our books to our movies, to our TV to our TikTok videos. So much is predicated on trauma, culture, narratives of scarcity, separation and powerlessness. We are told this is the way the world is. We are told that it is human nature to lack all morality and engage in zero sum strategies that belittle, disempower, and crush everyone around us. And this is not true. This is how the trauma culture works, it is not how humanity has to work. It isn’t who we have to be. Nonetheless, predatory capitalism is designed to keep us from imagining how we might do things differently. If we’re stressed about earning enough to survive, while at the same time being hooked on things we absolutely have to have to feel better, and are being steadily more sedated by the incessant dopamine drips of social media, then we literally cannot step out into other ways of being. Our brains are too focussed, we’re too deep into stress and sympathetic overload when we want to be in the parasympathetic rest and digest phase, if we’re going to be creative.

So this is our task now for each of us to wean ourselves off the stuff we neither need nor really want; off the dopamine drips and onto things that make our hearts sing. So we can build new stories predicated on connection, agency, and sufficiency. Stories where we are self-conscious nodes in the web of life and it’s our job to ask, what do you want of me? Listen to the answers and then carry them out to the best of our ability. That’s it. And yes, we will be told this is unrealistic. Realism of the sort we are talking about is the nature of the trauma culture. And if we carry on with that trauma culture to its obvious conclusion, we are a toast, people. Predatory capitalism devours itself. It is in the process of devouring itself. We have to step off this track. And yes, this is easier to say and harder to do. Ursula Le Guin said: ‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable’. And she was right. And leaving aside what she said about any human power being resisted and changed by human beings, the question is, how do we actually do this? And so I would say we can boil this down to nine basic concepts: three values, three baselines in the outer world that need to be non-negotiable, and three inner healings, re weavings of connection.

The three values that I would go with and I am wide open to other ideas are: integrity, compassion and generosity of spirit. If you are a part of our membership, you know that I think the three pillars of the heart mind are gratitude, compassion, and joyful curiosity. And for me, these hook in completely. For me, integrity and gratitude are very closely linked. Compassion is what it says and does on the tin. And generosity of spirit arises from the awe and wonder that comes if we really let ourselves steep in joyful curiosity. So that’s one part of the work. What are our values? What are your values? What would you give almost everything to defend? And if almost everything were stripped away, whatever you do, what are you left with as the values that you will not give up? I think each of us needs to ask ourselves these questions now. And if you come up with other answers than me, that’s great, but at least have answers.

Then I think we need our baseline asks, our non-negotiables in the outer world. And for me, again, it’s really clear: clean air, clean water, clean soil. Just that. If every single one of us committed to those being non-negotiable tomorrow morning, predatory capitalism and everything that it hinges on would be gone by tomorrow evening. We’ll come back to that later.

And then the work that we need to do on the inside: we need to build clean, clear, courageous, compassionate connections between all parts of ourselves. So we have to do the inner work between ourselves and each other; so we have to figure out how to build a community that works in the 21st century, and then between ourselves and the web of life. So we have to do the spiritual work of reconnecting and we need to do all three of these at the same time. And I am not suggesting this is easy either. But I ask myself the question of what happens if every single thing we do or think or say or dream is based on these three sets of three, these nine points of our own moral compass. How would our days change? And it isn’t going to happen overnight. It isn’t a thing to beat ourselves up about, because we can’t do it in a moment. But we can make the commitment to begin to live by these, here, now, this moment. Changing behaviour is not easy, but we have baselines to work from and if it’s easier, we can take one at a time. What happens if clean water becomes our priority? How does it change how we live? How does it change how we use water, how we push things out into the water around us? How we perceive the rains and the rivers and the oceans, the blood and the sweat and the tears of our own bodies.

What happens if we want umbilical blood flowing into a foetus to be clean of chemicals? What happens if we want maternal breast milk in humans and all milk in all mammals to be clean and clear of chemicals? What happens if we want our oceans not to have dead zones, and we want our rivers to be clear and fresh and bright and fit to swim in? How does that change our behaviour, and how does it change the stories that we tell about what matters to us? That begins in the outer world. What happens in the inner world if we make integrity the heart and soul of every interaction through our days, beginning with integrity to and amongst the different parts of ourselves? Or, still on the inside, what does it feel to commit to re weaving clean, clear, courageous, compassionate connections between all parts of ourselves, ourselves and each other, ourselves and the more than human world? Because I am who I am, I think the inner work is the foundation of everything, but I am completely aware that this is not the case for everyone. If you work better in the outer world, if you would rather go out and advocate for clean water, clean air, clean soil, 1 or 2 or all three, then please go for it.

And bring the values in. Can you speak for water with integrity? Can you speak for clean soil with compassion for all of the confusion and misinformation and outright lies that we are told. Can you find actual, real data in amongst the blur of bad science that is hurled at us every day, so that you can find out how we can nourish the soil, the earth in which everything that grows on the land is rooted. Where all of the ecosystems of the land begin. We need to have living soil, and living soil is clean soil. So if that’s your thing, please go for it. We are past the point where we can pretend that things are normal and where our old priorities can stay. We need new priorities. Work out what yours are and how you get there. If the inner work speaks more to you, then I think we need to accept that we in the West are looking at healing 10 to 12,000 years of trauma culture in half a decade. It’s not that long for everybody, but for some of us, particularly in the Western educated, industrial rich, blah, all the rest of it, it does go back. It is that long since our ancestors ancestors were severed from that deep, marrow deep, bone deep, tendon, deep soul, deep knowing of our connectedness to the web of life. We evolved as self-conscious nodes in the web, and we have lost that. And we didn’t make that happen, we who are alive now. But we have to heal it or we are toast. This is the work of the spiritual warrior.

It’s going to take astonishing levels of courage and commitment. Nobody is pretending this is easy, but it is absolutely non-negotiable and essential that we do it now. I think we are incredibly lucky that we are alive at a time when a lot of the tools to do this are becoming obvious, evident and widely available. And because this is the water that I swim in pretty much all the time, I would like to share with you the basics of how I think we get there, and this will evolve. This is upgrading and updating daily. But at the moment we have to start with grounding. We have to have a clear sense of our physical presence in the world; the flesh and the bones and the teeth of who we are. With sensing the solid earth beneath us as support and containment, as holding, as the reality of who and what we are. When our feet are flat on the earth, there is nowhere left to fall. When we have a sense of roots going down into the heart of the earth, we have connection again, and holding and an open path from the heart of the earth to our heart. And if we connect that on up to the heart mind of the universe, then we have the three hearts in alignment:.

Heart mind of the earth through our heart to the heart mind of the universe. Heart of the sky through our heart to the heart of the earth. Just doing this on a regular basis, through the days, through the nights, is huge. And please take that on board; this is not a one hit thing. Grounding is forever. It’s 24/7. And while we’re here talking about physical things, I apologise for the cat snoring in the background; I am not going to wake him up and send him away. So we are living in our bodies and that too is huge. We are carrying the trauma of generations, and one of the things that does is flip us out of our bodies so we are not really fully embodied. When we become that, we can begin to recognise the places where the trauma sits, the frozen places. Thomas Huebl says that trauma is a part frozen in time, and most of that trauma is likely ours, and some of it is ancestral and some of it is collective, and we need to heal all of it. So we need to begin to identify the frozen places, the stuck places, the parts of ourselves that leap to our own defence and are brilliant and wonderful and creative, and who are probably defending against threats that occurred decades ago, if not lifetimes ago. And it matters that we own what’s ours. Yes, there is generational, ancestral and civilizational trauma, and we do need to heal it.

And I do need to say most of our trauma is ours, and passing it off is no better than spiritual bypassing. We need to heal what’s ours to heal, and that’s what we can feel in our bodies. The really good news is that there is so much help out there. Genuinely, just as we need it, we are really beginning to get to grips with how therapy actually works, instead of being basically smoke and mirrors. And how healing can actually happen. And clearly 1 to 1 work is good if you have the means, the time and the money. But many of us don’t, and we cannot afford to wait until everybody has the time and the money for the healing to happen. We’re going to have to do it on our own if that’s what it takes. And again, there’s a lot of help out there. Thomas Huebl’s Point of Relation podcast, Tara Brach, Michael Meade, our own Accidental Gods membership. There are so many people offering courses that are often, usually, pay as you can, even if they’re not advertised as that. If you contact the organisers and say you really want to do the work, in almost every case, people are going to bend over backwards to make it happen. We are all still swimming in predatory capitalism, but we have to help each other get out. And if you’re doing any of this kind of work, we know now that this is the urgency of the moment.

Manda: There are no courses on a dead planet, and it’s going to take a critical mass of us to reach a tipping point whereby this becomes what people do. So every one of us who can become the still point in the whirling world, helps others to slow down. Every one of us who can model healed action helps others to heal. If we can model what it is to be grounded and connected, what it is to stand in our own skin, then other people realise it’s possible, in whatever context we’re in, and they can see the pathways to get there. We have no idea what the critical mass is or where the tipping points are, but every single one of us that commits to this work is a step closer to whatever that tipping point is. And while we’re doing all of this, we work out how to build communities of place, purpose and passion that work in the 21st century. We are a pro-social species, but we have forgotten how to make real tribes work. And we’re not forager hunters anymore, living in small bands, it’s not going to work the way that it used to. The good news is that the more of us doing the inner work of healing all parts of ourselves, then building community with other people doing the same work becomes more plausible. It’s a lot easier to meet self to self with someone who understands that if they bring their parts into play, it’s probably not going to go very well. And someone who can recognise the parts in themselves without projecting onto the person they’re talking to.

 If we can get to groups of 20, 40, 80, 100, where we have that many people gathered, able to have full self to self conversations, then I think we’re on the way to genuine communities of trust. Which is what we’re going to need. So let’s work on that, and at the same time, we start remembering our place as self-conscious nodes in the web of life. This is our birthright. We just need to recover it. And again, there are places you can learn this. This is what the Accidental Gods membership is absolutely designed to do. It’s what we do in the Dreaming Awake shamanic courses on a 1 to 1 level. And there are people across the world who are beginning to open up doorways, not to step back into some fantasy of an Elysian past, but to step forward into who we are as fully grounded, fully connected human beings in the 21st century. We are building something entirely new, but we are pre-dicating it on the scaffolding of who we have been, that allows us to see who we could be when we let go of the trauma culture and move into an initiation culture for the 21st century. So there we go. I reckon we have till the end of the decade, really, to do this. Nothing else matters now.

I don’t know how I can say that more clearly, more consistently or often enough. I know that every single time a podcast goes out, somebody is listening to it new. So if that’s you, welcome. I hope this landed well and made sense. In all the previous several hundred podcasts there are un pickings to a lot of what we’ve done here, but I’ve also put a bunch of links into the show notes of podcasts and books and blogs that have really helped me in the last few months. I’ll just give them a bit of a shout out here.

First to the podcast is Step Outside, Stand Still, which is an absolutely gorgeous short daily meditation prose poem by the amazing Pauline Leitch. And full disclosure, I grew up two doors away from Pauline Leitch in a tiny village south of Glasgow. And Pauline kept the accent and I lost it, and I could listen to her reading telephone directories and it would be enchanting. But Step Outside and Stand Still is just such a beautiful evocation of our connection to a world that we can all recognise. So definitely go for that. Point of Relation by Thomas Huebl I’ve already mentioned, I think that’s a must listen. And Future Learning Design with Tim Logan also is one of my absolute have-to-listen-to-every-episode-when-it-comes-out.

In books, I have been reading No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg, because obviously I’m going to read anything that she’s written after recent events in Gaza. I’m reading Clearing the Air by Tim Smedley, which came before his book on Water, which we discussed a couple of podcasts ago. Definitely worth a look. I am reading Outshining Trauma by Ralph Dela Rosa, that brings internal family systems therapy together with Buddhism in a way that I’m finding really interesting. And then at the day of recording How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins has just come out. I read a brief version of that, and I will definitely be reading it several times. Again, Rob is an amazing writer and he is absolutely at the cutting edge of thrutopian thinking. So go for that.

In terms of blogs, I have been reading Rebecca Solnit Meditations in an emergency, which she has on a platform called Ghost, which she says is better than Substack. And if she says it, I believe her. Katharine Hayhoe I have been reading on Substack; she’s a climate scientist. I’ve posted a link to the one that says Are we really doomed? And her answer is no. We will be if we decide that we’re doomed, but if we don’t, there is still time, which you will recognise from the head of the podcast. And then Heather Cox Richardson; I’ve put her Patreon up there. She is an absolutely sharp political thinker and probably if we’d all read more of HCR our world would be a different place.

And then finally I put up a YouTube that came across my desk recently with Lyla June, who’s part of the Dine nation, and she’s done a TedTalk called 3000 Year old Solutions to Modern Problems. And it’s absolutely glorious. So there are a whole bunch of links. And because it’s the solstice, I am about to record a solstice meditation. So if you want to ground, connect the three hearts, open to the sun at its point of stillness and begin to connect to the rest of the more than human world, give it a go. Please make sure you’re not driving, operating heavy machinery, doing any of those things that require your attention. Get yourself somewhere quiet where you can be alone for a little while and go for it. And that’s it for now.

Thank you to Caro C for the music at the Head and Foot, Lou Mayor for the video, Anne Thomas for the transcript, Faith Tilleray for the website and all of the work behind the scenes that keeps us moving forward and the conversations that help us grow. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. We really appreciate you being there. And if you know of anybody else who just wants a precis of who we are and what we do and why we’re doing it, and how we might get around to shifting the trajectory of our culture to changing the narratives by which we live, then please do send them this link. And that’s it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.

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