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John Milton – a Force for Nature
In this special episode, Aaron William Perry hosts a long and lovely conversation with John Milton and one of his “senior students”(and Y on Earth Community Ambassador) Bud Wilson.
John Milton is a force of nature, an emissary for nature, and a voice for nature. Notable among the planet’s elder leadership, his impact and legacy affect us all. Having fomented strategically and successfully from within the Nixon White House, Milton was instrumental in establishing the foundational environmental protection legislation that the United States relies on to maintain clean air and clean water.
But John’s legacy is about much more than legislation. Although his policy impact is top-tier, his influence as a mentor and nature-based spiritual awakening guide may prove to have an even broader, deeper, and longer-lasting impact in our shared future. As the founder of Way of Nature, John provides guided vision quest and nature-immersion experiences that invite executives, financiers, community leaders, parents, artists, and innovators to connect with the great web of the natural matrix, the authentic intelligence of Mama Gaia, the sacred circle of the Divine Mother Earth that is the living bedrock upon which all of our lives, lifeways, and human constructs are made possible. As John reminds us, echoing the wisdom of the Original Instructions of virtually all indigenous traditions and our ancestors’ world-views, we are all one family. Within this wise context, the “taker mentality” is untenable, and short-term satisfaction cannot last the way sustained quality, stewardship, and care will. John recognizes that the solutions needed now in our world will arise from community, and that our survival (physical, psychological, and spiritual alike) is now wholly dependent on the re-indigenization of modern culture. The veneer of civilization is not so deep, and as we connect in deep, intimate relationship with nature, our hearts, minds, and bodies begin to open to an awesome source of enduring intelligence and power.
About the Way of Nature
Founded by John Milton, The Way of Nature is a Colorado-based non-profit organization that provides publications, videos, podcasts, and programs, including multi-day nature immersion experiences hosted on sacred land near Crestone, Colorado. You’ll find information about the many offerings and programs (including “Natural Renewal,” “Nature Quest,” “Sacred Passage,” Advanced Programs, and Organizational & Leadership Development) on the Way of Nature website. There you’ll also find information about the “Twelve Guiding Principles of Natural Liberation,” which are:
- Know The Fundamental Truth
- Commit Yourself Completely to Liberation in this Lifetime
- Relax
- Be Present
- Cultivate Universal Energy
- Go with the Universal Flow
- Rest in the Radiance of the Open Heart
- Activate Compassion
- Cut Through to Clarity
- Return to Source
- Source Awareness Is… Remain in Recognition
- Serve as a Warrior of the Open Heart, Unconditionally-Loving Heart and Source Awareness for the Liberation of all Beings
- Don’t Take All These 12 Principles too Seriously 😊
About John Milton
John P. Milton is a pioneering ecologist, spiritual teacher, meditation master, vision quest leader and shaman. John’s vision quest and shamanic work began in the mid-1940’s, after experiencing his first vision quest at the age of seven. Since the 1950’s, John has guided thousands of people into the wilderness, sharing with them experiences and practices that cultivate a profound connection with Nature and, ultimately, Source Awareness. Over the years, many have sought his profound transmissions and powerful yet gentle Qigong teachings, T’ai Chi training, meditation practices, internal alchemy training, shamanic processes and Sacred Passage programs. John continues to live, explore and lead wilderness trainings in many of the Earth’s wild and sacred places. Through Way of Nature, he offers Nature Quests, Sacred Passages, Advanced Awareness Trainings, as well as custom programs and retreats, for both individuals and groups.
He was instrumental in preserving 1 million acres of wilderness in Alaska, establishing national parks around the world, establishing the environmental movement of the 1960s as an ecologist in the Nixon administration. He lived and studied with a Lacondon shaman in Chiapas, and studied with H. H. The Dalai Lama, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpocke, and Vasudev. His spiritual practices and knowledge integrate Buddhist, Taoist, Vedic, and Shamanic lineages.
John has pioneered for western civilization a unique, vital way of spiritual cultivation in Nature that ripens in a deep ecological experience of Communion with all species, and with Mother Earth herself. His training is deeply informed by direct teachings from many of the world’s outstanding spiritual teachers and lineages. From this comprehensive background, John has created and essentialized a path of key principles and disciplines that flow from Universal Source. He calls this path the Way of Nature. From this path, John has developed the Twelve Guiding Principles of Natural Liberation, which naturally unfold as one experiences Way of Nature’s foundational quest, Sacred Passage.
Resources & Related Episodes
Ep. 142 – Maria Rodale, Author, Love, Nature, Magic
Ep. 134 – Matthew Fox, Author, Hildegard von Bingen: A Saint for Our Times
Ep. 132 – Hanne Strong, Founder, Manitou Foundation
Ep. 127 – John Perkins, Author, Touching the Jaguar; Director, Pachamama Alliance
Ep. 107 – Elaine Blumenhine, Joyful Journey Hot Springs Spa & Resort
Ep. 103 – Nick Chambers, Founder, Living Arts Systems; Exec. Dir., Valley Roots Food Hub
Ep. 50 – Anita Sanchez, Author, The Four Sacred Gifts; Director, Pachamama Alliance
Ep. 27 – Jennifer Menke, President, Regenerative Earth
Transcript
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry, and today
we’re here in Crestone, Colorado, visiting with a couple of very special friends, John
Milton, the founder of The Way of Nature, and one of our YonEarth Community Ambassadors,
Bud Wilson. John, Bud, welcome.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
Really excited for our conversation today, and to have the opportunity, John, to dive deep into
your career, your work, your impact, and of course so much of that has been in collaboration
with Bud, and we’ve got a lot to talk about today.
John P. Milton is a pioneering ecologist, spiritual teacher, meditation master, vision
quest leader, and shaman. John’s vision quest and shamanic work began in the mid-1940s after
experiencing his first vision quest at the age of seven. Since the 1950s, John has guided
thousands of people into the wilderness, sharing with them experiences and practices that cultivate
a deep connection with nature and, ultimately, source awareness. Over the years, many have
sought his profound transmissions and powerful yet gentle Qigong teachings, Tai Chi training,
meditation practices, internal alchemy training, shamanic processes, and sacred passage programs.
John continues to live, explore, and lead wilderness trainings in many of the earth’s
wild and sacred places. Through way of nature, he offers nature quests, sacred passages,
advanced awareness trainings, as well as custom programs and retreats for both individuals and groups.
We’ve got several books that John’s written and or co-authored that will reference as well,
and, of course, we’ll be listing a lot of that in the show notes. But let me just ask, by first
inquiring, John, given your background and your experience, which, as we’ll talk about a little
later, includes work with the White House, why nature? What’s the big deal? Why does that even
matter? Why does wilderness even matter to us as humans? It was interesting. Thoreau
had a statement from his time in Solitude and Nature at the famous Walton Pond, and he made
the statement once, in Wildness is the preservation of the world. And what he meant by that is that
in that solitude and the depth of connection to all of nature, and to, when we say nature in the
way of nature, we mean outer nature and the whole family of living things, the ecosystems, and the
vertical global environment, and Mother Gaia, the earth, and also inner nature, the whole dance of
emotions, thoughts, the play of sight and sound, and touch and smell, movement and balance, and
the comprehension of energy flowing through us. We call those the nine experiential fields, so that
comprises the dance of how our inner nature begins to display. And then true nature is the source
level of being, the end of being that almost all the great spiritual traditions refer to
as the basis for all experience of life, the dance of life itself. So in order to come into
back, one of the biggest challenges of modern times is coming back into balance in harmony and good
relationship with the big family. We talk a lot about the big family of all living things. The
indigenous peoples always talk about all our relations, same thing. So we encourage coming
back into an experience of direct connection and communion with that big family of all living
things, all beings, and through that receive some of the wisdom of how to behave and function in a
way that is part of, harmony is part of that system. It guides our technology, it guides things
like AI. It can guide many of the facets of modern life that if we do not do that, we fall out of
harmony. We come back into these massive problems like climate change, the sixth extinction, and
the elimination of much of life, many of the catastrophes of environmental pollution, like
the plasticization of the planet, and the birth of all of these, everything from
round up, appearing in much of our food systems, poisoning the soil with these
nicotinamide types of poisons that kill every living thing in the soil.
Complete opposite of the indigenous way of viewing the earth. And the way of nature believes that
the soil and the water are two really fundamental parts of natural systems. So how do we come back
into harmony? Well, to come back into harmony, we have to come back into right relationship.
To come back into right relationship, you have to have good communication between yourself
and the rest of life. How do you accomplish that in life in cities and disconnect in urban
centers? You do that by setting some time aside on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis
to go deep into reconnection and re-immersion in the big family of all living things and drop
human culture for a while. So you’re empty and open and spacious. You can receive endless.
Beautiful. So I have to ask a sort of facetious or tongue-in-cheek question, although
at the heart of this question is something I’d really love to hear you speak to.
When I lived in New York City, that’s where I first went to university,
moving from the Rocky Mountain West, where my pals and I were often backpacking in wilderness and
spending a lot of time in nature. Being smack in the middle of Manhattan for weeks, you know,
a few days at a time is great, but for weeks created in me a palpable visceral experience
of what now professionals are referring to as nature deficit disorder, which I’m grateful for
the experience. But I’m wondering with folks, so many of us are living urban lifestyles and are so
caught up, we could say, in a variety of, we might say distractions, but maybe to be a bit more
generous, a variety of places that we’re focusing our attention, things we’re thinking about, things
we’re concerned about. And a whole lot of that, it seems to me, in the particularly the big urban
settings, is not necessarily very connected to nature. And moreover, often when we’re
suffering from nature deficit disorder, it seems we’re not even necessarily aware that that’s
a condition we might be suffering from. And so I’m curious, when you have the opportunity to speak
with folks who maybe aren’t yet tuned into the fact that there’s this whole other
aspect to the human experience, how do you go about discussing that with them?
Well, one of the first things I often ask people is what brings them joy and happiness in life.
And very often, I lived in my first apartment in New York was in West 11th Street,
across from St. Vincent Hospital in the West Village. And later I was in the upper
West Side in Spanish Harlem, to take my dates to the Apollo. And this was in the kind of in the
mid 60s period. Very cool. Good time to be there. Dylan was playing, you know, and I was at Washington
Square, like 8th and University, got to get to Chick Korea at the Blue Note. That was cool.
Absolutely. Cool. My dad knew Cap A.C. was a friend of his, and we used to go in and visit
Cap A.C. and go to the Blue Note. And he would sometimes be invited to come up and drum with
Cap A.C. So I grew up with a lot of New York in France. And I think the city has a lot to offer.
Yeah. It does have that perspective that the New Yorker and the famous poster,
where there’s Manhattan Islands. And then you can see kind of a landscape out there that’s sort
of flat. And then in the distance on the horizon is a little, a little steeple coming up, which was
the trans-American building, I think, in San Francisco. And that was the New Yorker’s view of
America. There’s something to it. So I ended up in that, my first job brought me to New York,
because we were based in that on, I think it was 40th Street, American Central Station.
And so I had these different apartments to live in, and I had a deep immersion building on what
I experienced as a kid. And what I discovered is that you could live in a little apartment.
And if you had one tree, I had an Alanthus tree in one of my little backyard,
a tree of heaven that’s called from China. And one of the Alanthus trees, which is considered
a weed tree in many places. But you could sit with that weed tree and begin to embrace and connect
to the life force of that tree, to the beauty of that tree. If you listened deeply, it could begin
to hear something with that tree and to offer you. If you could drop into an industry of
inner stillness and silence and space, there’s an openness to listen. And then you could begin
to establish a kind of natural communion with even a so-called weed tree in a tiny backyard
on 11th Street in New York City. And then the butterflies would come in and dance with the tree.
And nature would show up. It may be highly modified and simplified. It’s still there.
Our bodies are nature. We have the same, we have these amazing energy flows through our system.
We have all kinds of capacities to energetically connect. We have these beautiful gifts to be
able to see and hear and to touch. And those are vehicles for connectivity. If we begin to connect
with a tree, maybe go out to Central Park, spend a little time in a quiet part of the park.
And you can always find that quiet space and sort of connect with a beautiful tree or maybe
the elements, the soil, the earth, the water, the sky and the air, the spaciousness that contains
all of these elements of nature. And in the Chinese system, you have the earth element
providing a foundation for the stone element, or the middle element, providing a foundation
for the water element, providing a foundation for the wood element, trees grow out of soil,
and then for any main water, and then the wood element, for instance, the foundation for the
fire element. In the Tibetan and Ayurvedic systems, the fire element continues on to support
the air element, and then you have the air element supporting the opening of the space element.
So if you work with those seven elements to connect more deeply through the body and through the gift
of these nine fields of experience that we all have, then even in the middle of Manhattan,
you can have a deep and profound experience with the fundamental essence of life itself
and the planetary connection that we all have. That resonates for me. I’ve experienced that
directly. I’m also curious though, do you think there’s a qualitatively different
kind of experience we can have while we’re in wilderness?
Yes. In fact, because of my age, I was born in 38, and I was able to actually
run an expedition. I did many expeditions as a young man between 1516 and 30. I would find a
blank spot on that that said Unknown Territory or Tiarin Cognita, no history of modern humans going
into that place. Of course, indigenous peoples had inhabited most of the planet, but in terms of
modern humans, there were still a few places left where modern humans had not been. So I’d find those
places and places like the Brook Range of Northern Alaska or the Mackenzie Mountains of Northern
Canada, and then I’d take quite a few people crazy enough to go in with me. I’d go in for up to
three or four months at a time and just immerse myself in the wildness. The kind of wildness is
there because no human culture other than the early indigenous peoples had made able to be there.
So they were wild because of their remoteness, their difficulty to get there.
And there was a quality in that wildness that you do not find in the rest of
preserved wilderness. Once you draw that boundary to protect it, the quality of that space begins
to shift. And you begin to have these, one of my friends from many years ago, he used to call them
contemporary concentration camps for nature. Oh, interesting. And it’s kind of a weird
thought, but the idea there was that we’d reached a point where human culture was so dominant and
it allowed nature to be itself without human primary influence. We needed to have places where
nature could be free to unfold in its own natural way. We called those wildness places. Now, of
course, wildness means wild dearness. So originally from, especially from places like Ireland and
Scotland, this concept of wild dearness became a concept of wild places where nature could unfold
in an untrammeled fashion. And I’ve been a major proponent of preserving wilderness
in wild places in modern times because it is necessary. There’s a big difference between
going to a national park where you get a ton of people going through and going to a space where
you’re one of the few people maybe that walk through that in that particular given year.
And you’re surrounded by a family of living things that have a little bit of relationship to
humans, but not a lot. You’re living a very free life. There’s something very special that
happens when you enter that kind of system and become a little bit. And you begin to discover
that we are presential to re-wild ourselves and to rediscover the inherent capacity to
re-indigenize ourselves. So we live as part of the natural system in the way the ancient people
did. Part of my ancestral history goes back to the Mohawk people and
some of the other Eastern tribes. Those elements in our bloodlines give us a little bit of the
genetic memory that carries in the DNA that probably a part of the epigenetic system too.
And they reinvigorate us with that knowledge that there’s something very magical and very deep
when you tap into these ancient ways of being with nature. And a certain kind of wisdom can come
forth which we believe in the way of nature provides exactly the kind of wisdom we need
to bring forth a kind of technology and a way of living as humans in modern times that’s in
balance with the planet. So very important to reconnect with that wildness and celebrate it.
I love what you’re speaking to with the the epigenetics and the imprinting. And one of the
things I’ve experienced and explored and written about is that we all have the genetic imprints
of indigenous life ways in us by definition of being human on the planet. And I’m so struck by
the ways in which these imprints on you have allowed you to put your fingerprints on a whole lot of
what we’re experiencing in our world and especially here in the United States with
some of the environmental protection policies that you were instrumental in having under the
Nixon administration and so forth. We’re going to and we’re going to get into that but
you also mentioned something about these experiences you’ve had all around the world and I know
Bud you have been with John on a bunch of these amazing adventures. You’ve shared some
stories with me and I want to take this opportunity to thank you Bud for making this
connection and making this special conversation happen today. And you and I have been having so
much fun with the YonEarth community ambassador network and our work with the Lucille community
throughout the world and our gathering in Barcelona last fall. So yeah just a shout out of
gratitude to you Bud and I was hoping you could share with us from your perspective through your
eyes what some of these experiences and adventures have looked like and felt like and been.
Well let’s see how much time we have. So yes thank you for acknowledging all of that and thank you
for all of your extraordinary efforts with YonEarth and as John often refers to me as his
senior student. So I figured today you know here I’m sitting as exhibit A of John’s commitment
and dedication to really activating within each of us what you were just speaking of you know
whether it goes back to Neanderthal and Cromagnan we all have some of that trace and trace elements
within us and and I think what John’s capacity is to to work with each of us as individuals
to really re wild what we know is within us and yet it’s been covered over by the frantic
pace of our modern culture. So sometimes I like to refer to a teaching that John gave us about
separating from our identity initially as a part of the process and one of the ways that
that happens is by pushing the pause button on the prison of our self-importance and that’s a
phrase that I’ve often used with people because they when I first started I went down to the Baja
where John has had a lot of his work in the Baja Peninsula Mexico and when I got back to where
I was living at the time Sonomas Village in the mountains of Colorado people would say what in
the world did you go down there to hang out with John Milton for and for six nights and seven days
of alone time on the Pacific Ocean and in a solo site with no disruption from any human beings
and I would say well what I can tell you is there is a lot more going on in every nanosecond
than our western rational analytical reductionist conditioning has ever even thought of allowing
us to experience and during that very first sacred passage that I took with John as our teacher and
guide the earth actually literally breathed me instead of the other way around and what I think
one of the most profound teachings and lessons that I’ve come to appreciate from John is
surrendering to the magic and the mystery because it goes so far beyond everything that we are taught
from the time we’re little kids in kindergarten as a separation approach and building up your
identity and so I think then after much of our world travels together where we traveled into
Nepal and Thailand and Indonesia and that was just preparation to come back into the United States
and he asked me to guide some of his senior students in the Baja on my way back before I went up into
the Cochise stronghold of the Desert Mountains of Arizona for a 40-day solo and I was on quite a ride
I can tell you from my background and being conditioned you know so in this western mentality
and it really opened up a pathway of being able to surrender to what is and a couple of the
principles that John really emphasizes early on in the process of learning how to tap into our
deepest true nature is relaxation combined with presence and the present moment and being able to
be free of all of our thoughts of the past projections of the future that usually elevates
a sense of either fear or trepidation or regret and sadness and despair so you can cut through all of
that through the process that John offers through the way nature teaches and as I said I can go on
and on about that sort of value of pushing the pause button on our self-important engagement with
all the you know bells and whistles and bright and shiny objects that are constantly trying to get
our attention and distract us from what really really matters and one of the things that John was
saying when you were saying oh wow you know how do you tell somebody in a major dense human population
city that there’s something that nature has something to offer one of the real keys as well
is John alluded to the taker mentality going to nature what’s it going to give me today
what can I take away with me instead if you go in and just as another part of the core teachings
with an open heart and actually with your intention give back your love and appreciation
and gratitude to all that is yeah nature shows up in a profoundly different manner than what we
were accustomed to by just that level and it’s easily accomplished with conscious mindful awareness
so John often talks about these advanced awareness trainings well it is it’s about
shifting your awareness so that you can become fully present and there are lots of other stories
that we could share and that are you know that open up the pathway to the mystery
which i’m more than happy to share at some point yeah absolutely beautiful thank you bud
yeah it’s reminds me of one of my favorite little takeaways from Nietzsche’s work the gift
giving virtue as we enter into relationship in any manner or capacity to go into it with the spirit
of giving gift opens up so much for us to receive right there’s a reciprocity that emerges out of that
dynamic that’s beautiful and man we could go in so many directions right now i’m gonna
i’m gonna i’m gonna wind my reel a little here let me just add one more part of this
i love you bud because you always have more to ask well john as you know spoke to this trajectory from
thorough yeah right and so each era seems to have had a spokesperson for the core essential need
for human beings to come back into balance in nature and with nature and in army so john
really in this era is carrying on that lineage from thorough to
Muir Rachel Carson and john has chosen to be under the radar to a certain extent because he kind of
merges between walking in the halls of the powerfully elite in Washington D.C. as a as an
activist activist for policymaking and all of that level of our culture and our society
and then he also has gone deeper into being a a sage of wisdom for nature with the the capacity to
really synthesize all of these teachings from the great environmentally oriented
activists and the spiritual components that all of our great
wisdom teachers and wisdom tradition traditions have offered and so he fulfills that role of
synthesizing and bringing all of that into an easily accessible formula that
appeals to modern humans and so he’s carrying on that lineage and it’s so critically important
in the state of our emergence as a species if we want humanity to get through this gauntlet
of all the metacrisis we’re facing. Yeah, beautiful, thank you. And I want to mention for our audience
that there are many ways that each of us can connect in with this work you’re doing, John, and
the variety of resources you’ve made available, including there’s opportunities for folks to
come here to this part of our world in Crestone, Colorado with the Way of Nature Foundations
Sacred Lands, Sanctuary 300 acres of very special and just up the road from where we are
currently to many books and I’ve got one of them right here that I’ve been enjoying
spending some time with Sky Above Earth Below that I’m showing for folks who are tuning into the
video portion of our discussion and then you just gifted me before our taping today this
beautiful collection of leaves, of cards we can take with us into the wilderness cultivating
natural liberation and I noticed going through your body of work you’ve got some really wonderful
ways of organizing how we might approach these opportunities and imperatives we might even
say like the 12 principles of natural liberation and the six empowerment and I would love to
spend some time hearing from you talking us through some of what’s available to us
before getting there I also want to ask you a question that’s kind of burning for me.
How has it been for you to cultivate the balance needed as your bridging worlds one could say
when working in the halls of power in Washington DC for example and I’d love for you to tell us a
bit about the work you did back around the time of the Nixon administration you know there are very
strong forces at work of fear and separation and greed and power dynamics right that in many respects
are the archetypal antithesis to this whole other way of being in peaceful reciprocal
relationship as described in the original instructions and so forth and I’m wondering
would you reflect for us on your time in DC and your experience of how you were navigating that
day in and day out relative to all of this other wisdom and knowledge you have direct experience
with? Well I feel very fortunate that I was brought into DC I actually started in New York
which is part of what got me into the religion the Apollo theater places like that
that was the early 60s then the the head of the foundation was taken over by a man named Russell
Train who was originally from DC and he was a tax court judge originally and we he brought the
conservation foundation that I worked for which later merged with the World Wildlife Fund became
kind of the brain transfer World Wildlife Fund and it became one organization but in those days it
was separate called the Conservation Foundation and we were looking for him cutting-edge ways we
could invest and bring grants into things would help to move the culture into a more balanced
and harmonious way of living with with nature and of course there had been a lot of work done
on natural resources conservation and there were some real pioneers like Fairfield Osborn
these days probably very few people have heard that name he was the head of the Bronx Zoo
and he wrote a book in 19 published I think it was in 1948 called Our Plundered Planet
and that book became kind of a guideline for all those who have set the foundation that we’re
trying to figure out ways to become more skillful in what I mentioned and another hero or heroine
for us was Rachel Carson who brought into our understanding not only was the earth being
plundered but it was being poisoned and she brought in very clearly the effect of all kinds of
what happens when these pesticides and herbicides enter the environment and cycle through the
natural ecosystems of the planet and of course it herms us as humans as part of that system
and it has massively dangerous effects on all life for example in those days the bald eagle
almost went extinct our national bird through the sending of the shells of the bald eagle through
DDT pussy and it almost caused the eagle to become extinct fortunately we got a ban affected on the
use of DDT in such a widespread chaotic fashion and that led to the recovery of the bald eagle
it’s a really wonderful success story we need a few success stories I think that’s what I’m
so anyway but in those days the whole relationship was based on
what I call a taker mentality what can we get from nature that we want so it was not really
there’s no sense of being part of in the partnership relation much less in the family relationship
so what I noticed from my time would be indigenous peoples because I was already studying
and I spent a year with a Mayan shaman in the Lakanon tribe and one of the lessons I got from
that was how naturally and completely the tribe lived in absolute harmony with the rest of the
play of life and yes people got food we used to go out and hunk hunt uh well turkey and even
monkeys there’s nothing quite like seeing a monkey in a in a big bowl with an arm looking
like a baby it’s a bit scary but um the uh what I learned from that time was that these people
lived in such a way that they never took overtook anything from the forest they gathered handed
and gathered from the forest the amount of time they spent and this is true from us indigenous
cultures it takes about what would you say along it takes to to maintain a lifestyle in a indigenous
culture living in the ancient natural way yeah the number I remember hearing is four hours two to
four two three yeah two to three so two to three hours were spent in what you needed to take care
of the garden a bit of gathering in the rainforest do a bit of hunting to get a bit of meat for your
table and the rest of the of the of the day the other 22 hours were devoted to the arts to ceremony
to spiritual practice and cultivation to love making to enjoying the dance of life and displaying
a kind of basic creativity that is part of the great gift of being in these bodies in these lifetimes
and they had the time for it how many hours do you think folks spend today making a living
making a living or making money or what are we talking about here making money to make a living
yeah way too many probably what would you say how many out of the average day how much it’s
devoted to for the old western advanced culture we’re saying I don’t I don’t know what is it
nine ten well it’s probably if you take together the work time and then the time to take care of the
the bookkeeping the taxpaying the the keeping up of the car the house and so on uh which adds in
it easily another average four hours a day at least so you’ve got the eight hour work day
two and from ten hours maybe another four to six hours maybe involved in most all the waiting
on the obligations your kids everything to be a good father or mother yeah it gets up around
probably 16 to 18 hours a day yeah you’re left with how many hours not too many maybe four to six
yeah on the average compared to so they’ve got a system 16 hours a day to kind of keep going in
your modern context versus two hours yeah and everything else was open and available for creative
joyful experience I would say that if you look at from that perspective we’ve kind of devolved
right and we we lost that natural indigenous capacity to live in harmony let nature take care
of everything we shifted from nature taking care of everything which gave us a huge amount of time
to enjoy life to let’s control everything let’s manage everything well you try to manage everything
you would not you do not have the wisdom of the knowledge to be able to do that look at climate
change we only have a tiny understanding what’s happening to the global environment we can see
massive hurricanes appearing massive cyclones huge tornado systems that are unlike anything we’ve
done before historically temperatures in the ocean increasing massively air temperatures
increasing massively moisture moving from the oceans because they’re warm into a warmed atmosphere
which can hold a lot more moisture and then we wonder why these rains are coming that flood
everything out yeah more energy in the atmosphere I was part of a team that wrote a little publication
called in 1963 entitled the global implications of rising carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere
we predicted what we predicted was we didn’t know what the hell we were doing and that we could
predict that we were about to create massive instability in all the natural systems of the
planet that was 1963 just want to put an exclamation point behind that that was now
considered by global climate change people to be one of the early uh bringing of the research
that Roger Revelle and people like that did way going back into the the previous century yeah but
brought it up to date into modern times to get the word out they were headed for crash so all of this
to say human culture shifted from the kind of sustainable joyful life that I was describing
is the one where we get obsessively involved with increasing production increasing population sizes
uh increasing greed and need for maybe need and greed for consumer items
and we began to figure out ways to tap more and more of the earth’s reality to pull in things like
dammy up water create hydroelectric power yeah figure out ways to accumulate
uh uranium so we could create radioactive energies and mass massive amounts of things like
plutonium which should never have been created in this method it does not belong here and using
those new energy sources to feed the increasing consumption of energy and now we have things
like cryptocurrency that are producing massive demands of energy consumption again and so we’re
moving in a direction that continue to move in direction that uh looks on nature as a resource
that’s a basic thing to take from and use as a tool so the indigenous peoples always look on nature
as basically a family relationship you don’t treat your family as a resource to go ahead and take
from you’re part of a natural group of beings they’re working together hopefully in relative
harmony although in my we had a big family when you put the direct kids and the bigger the cousins
like we had cousins brothers and sisters grandparents yeah and the incidentals lived together in
one farm yeah and it was it was a quite a zoo okay i can imagine but it was a great opportunity to
learn how to live in community how do how do we this is to me this thread coming through
you know the recognition that our indigenous lifeways allow us so much more time for
joyful living and very high quality of life how do you approach the conversations with
folks in places like manhattan and inside the beltway do you see who are themselves devoting
14 16 18 hour days of very deliberate and often very stressful work and my experience is most of
the folks working in that kind of context find themselves or believe themselves to be doing
very important work how do you work how do you provide the trailheads and the bridging and
what’s what’s the solution recognizing you know if in fact our modern culture is so out of balance
where where do we go what are the trailheads what is what is the rhetoric of invitation
what are the uh do you have a more challenging difficult question to ask yeah yeah this is
we’re just starting off sorry yeah no i mean because this is to me this is the question right
yeah absolutely so um one of the underlying uh issues there is first of all what makes people
happy it brings true happiness yeah and uh including the beltway inhabitants and manhattan
and habit i’m very fortunate to have lived in the middle of manhattan and the beltway
appreciate that time but both the residents of both of those cities one for political power one for
finance probably the people that make up the that live there they all have one
underlining underlying uh need to live a happy life sure for you suffering as much as possible
yeah what they’ve been given is a life that’s often filled with suffering stress and anxiety and
speed um a kind of life that’s based on more and more consumer goods and consuming more and more
and that that would provide the basic happiness i’m sure you’ve probably all noticed that you
can get that wonderful thing that new car that new whatever new house and you have some happiness
for a short time but then that happiness begins to vaporize as you begin to pay the taxes take the car
let’s get this problem that you inherited with the car and you didn’t know about now you’re
gonna deal with it and um and these things begin to build up and you begin to find more and more
reasons to experience life is as painful and difficult now that reality is is true of all
living things they face that when you live in a in a simpler kind of lifestyle of most indigenous
people’s do is simpler because you’ve turned over the responsibility for the management of
of life itself to nature you surrendered to the inherent wisdom of mother gaya mother earth
and all life and that fundamental wisdom of self arising management takes care of in
everything i mean every ecosystem involved species that have co-evolved through each other
create systems that support the ideal kind of system for that particular climate and geology
and location so these ecosystems if we learn how to listen to what they offer we can go in
through and begin to create ways of relating to in a modern context with modern technology
that are in balance with that natural system this is the way it’s always been done even with
indigenous peoples so what i found was helpful when i lived in both new york and dc was i in
both places i had places to go to dc for example i bought a farm of snow up to 1200 acres with some
friends and i dedicated that farm to be being a place where people could come and drop let all
the cares and concerns of their political lives in dc drop that for a little while and begin to
connect to nature and themselves their own inner nature as well as the outer beautiful environment
there in the it was up on a place called shenandoa mountain it’s right in the middle of the shenandoa
valley i’m sure you’ve heard the beautiful song yeah that’s good so it’s a less cell farm and uh
so i’d bring people out there friends and those that i had known and give them a chance to taste
uh how simple and easy a natural way of living could be yeah i had a little organic farm going
out there and i didn’t say this is the whole answer to the issues of all life but people
could begin to see if then they began to reconnect with nature and natural systems these
uh very important cares begin to fall away and then they’d be replaced by wow what a beautiful
sunset look at the way the water is moving in that stream wow it’s so magical all these spirals
and whirls and bubbles i can spend hours just meditating enjoying the display of how the water
is moving fantastic and all this naturally provided by nature itself and their cares begin
to melt away and they found themselves experienced just a natural joy of existence of being a kind
of natural meditation hunters and fishermen accomplish that many times because they naturally
fall into that kind of relationship if you’re a good fisherman or a good hunter or my dad’s case
he was a very good he was a friend of Jack Cousteau and we used to go out into the ocean
in the earliest scuba equipment and he was also a glider pilot and an airplane pilot so we would
go up in the air and glide or fly and learn how to connect to the currents of the air and appreciate
those like in gliding especially sailplane how you learn to spot the thermals of air moving up
like this and you can move the glider over to that thermal just like an eagle would catch the
thermal and let it carry you up high enough so it begins to vaporize and then you begin to naturally
begin to glide down over the mountains and so you see another thermal in the distance with a big
thundered for starting to form you go for that just like all the eagles and the wheelchairs are
you catch the thermal and you go up again and you spend the whole day moving from thermal to
thermal riding the natural currents of the atmosphere and by doing that you learn to again
appreciate the natural display and dance of life and appreciate how the birds the eagles and the
turquoise has mastered that thousands upon thousands of years earlier and we’re experiencing
kind of a joy of life that you are so anything in nature can provide that sailing is another good
example you can simply by making that natural connection to natural systems you begin to
experience that inherent joy of life and that’s available to any Swedish city as well one other
thing I then began to spend some time I began to become interested in what was it in the indigenous
cultures that brought about that capacity to experience the natural joy of life well one
of the key things was something called the vision quest where you would go out as a teenager and
be alone in nature in a fairly powerful way that would tend to induce vision
and you’d be there for three or four days and nights in cases a bit longer and pray
cry out for a vision of who you were what is this lifetime for what is what is this life
what’s the meaning of life and what is my role in this natural existence a big family of any
things and very often you get the answer you’re given creative insight into what you’re here for
in those tribes that had that maintained virtually no juvenile fluency there was very little and the
cultures created ways of being in nature that were in harmony with nature they had technologies
but the technologies the part of the job of the culture was to find technologies that produced
balance harmony and contributed to a kind of integrity in the system that was because it was
a family relationship you don’t want to mess your family up and yourself so the vision quest
emerged as a very key element in what was being beneficial so i began to because i’ve been doing
vision quest since age seven i would do at least one a year sometimes i do two or three i did my
first month long in the olympic mountains in washington the low divide between the canalton
the queets and their systems probably you know those right in the very center of the olympic
and so and then later on i went on to do longer solos of two or three or four months at a time
and went deep and then i began to study with different masters of cultures that had provided
a way of deep connection to outer nature inner nature and true nature see what were their principles
and practices that allowed them to deep dive into connection and i realized all of them had a way of
connecting first to uh honoring that like they were somewhat disconnected when they
first arrived then they began to learn the skills of how do you fundamentally connect then go deeper
and have experiences of communion where you’re at one with different beings of nature but you’re
also still have a certain kind of individuated self at the same time that’s called communion
with the union then you would deeper in the community experience begin having experiences
of true unity with a tree with an element with a flow of water with a beautiful display of the
sky in the clouds and you begin to have these experiences of being absolutely one with each
being of nature where there was no separation and no need for individuation because the you
and the yet had gone there’s just one amazing happening that was filled with joy bliss and
and wisdom and then from the experience of unity when you do that with many different things
surrounding you you begin to have an experience of a natural mandala or sacred circle rising
and then when you embrace that fully you begin to realize that you’re part of an amazing sacred
fulfillment of a living system like an ecosystem but in a sacred way and then when you go deeper
with that you realize that there’s an opportunity or an invitation to follow the mandala or the
individual connection at the level of unity back into the fundamental pure consciousness pure awareness
pristine level of being to underline the mandala and that whole connection sequence and at that
point the whole experience becomes fully liberating and enlightening as it takes you directly back in
the source so I began to see that as a template for a pathway that may be universal that would allow
people to experience a tremendous connection to nature well at the same time begin a path through
enlightenment and that’s became the way of nature absolutely beautiful yeah pretty simple
pretty simple and speaking of enlightenment and thunder clouds I want to ask you about
lightning but before getting there I want to ask you just to describe for us specifically
just so folks know with the background here the work you were able to accomplish in DC and and
you know obviously
preserve a million acres of wilderness in Alaska you’ve helped to establish 130 million 130 million
yes well that is a lot more than 1 million your work has helped to establish national parks around
the world serve habitat for many species and as I understand it your work in DC helped to create
NEPA the National Environmental Protection Act I don’t know if I remember the accurate exactly
right but this led to Clean Air Act Clean Water Act the creation of the EPA can you just summarize
for us what happened at that time and what you were able to accomplish well I mentioned I was
going back from this farm back of course in DC so to help the shift from I realized from my early
vision quests that we needed to shift from a taker mentality to being part of the family
of all living things so to accomplish that we needed to have a new kind of language and a new
kind of kind of concept of what was going on and I began to search for a word that would bring
this concept of being part of a big family in a neutral way as I mentioned we had those books like
Rachel Carson’s book and that’s spring and then they put by our plunder planet by literally
pioneer yep and Osborne Osborne for field Osborne so I got together with a good friend of mine that
I don’t bring into the conservation foundation his name was Frank Darling he was later with
Osborne became Sir Frank honored by the English Queen anyway we came up with the idea of using
this word environment yeah be a replacement for resource resources taker mentality environment
is a natural system of which we are part totally different concept we did a gathering of big
conference bringing in different individuals to present on how they viewed this environment of
reality and we use North America’s an example in the beginning and basically out of that came a
book of quite a few chapters I think it was probably at least 30 or so and and we explored how
each expert in economics and regional planning and public policy and biology and the various
disciplines that were said to have had the answer to how do we come back into balance
they came in and made their contributions how their system of expertise could do that
and at the end of the gathering we all realized none of those systems could do that alone
they had to work together in the context of a philosophical and experiential framework
that was based on being part of natural systems or part of the environment so the word environment
took on tremendous currency because the leaders of all these different disciplines were there
and they saw that if they didn’t bring them all together into one system there was a life
connected it was kind of a hopeless situation it was going to lead to more separation we’re just
discontinuing more more rape and pillage and no harmony at all with with life so at the end of
that gathering we produced a book called the future environments of North America and that helped
to brand the term environment solidly in 1965 as a foundational word to bring in that whole system
perspective and it kind of grew it goes on and grew and grew many people got involved
that was just one of those and we should really underscore the value of that distinction I mean
that puts John right there with that lineage of thorough you know register crossing to be able to
offer to human beings a whole new perspective about the environment
so either that came uh I mean much to our surprise that word caught on and boom
suddenly there was an environmental movement and uh looking back on it was it was just the
right thing in the right way at the right time pretty simple amazing beautiful yeah
so I think if we had any uh if there was a magic it was because it was exactly the right thing
needed exactly at the right time when the culture was ripe and ready to hear that message were that
good news and uh it’s the right thing in the right way because we gather all the topics for
it’s of the day and so we had the right thing in the right way at the right time and it provided
a catalytic transformer effective birth to movement yeah and then the movement took over
you had earth day and all kinds of stuff coming out of that yeah and uh and then we did some work
for I decided well this is great but we need to have a truly global view here yeah so I
I bought together with a friend of mine who is from Iran his name was Muhammad
Taghi Fafar a true Islamic brilliant man who worked with the
the conservation foundation and group called the center for the biology of natural systems
and uh we basically could put together a series of cases using the there’s a school called
here’s not too bad it’s out in New England
my mom’s side of the family came from Cambridge so okay there’s a double twist here yeah
anyway so uh we used the Harvey case study approach really good science we got 50 different
scientists and we did a four-year project to develop these case studies and Taghi and I
managed the case study development so we were part of the research of each one of those
what turned out to be 200 case studies what humans were doing to the planet
on a global basis and we pulled all those case studies together into one volume
that it published through double day but before the publication of that book we had another big
gathering all those science leaders and we had a big gathering which we focused on okay here’s
classical development for the rest of the planet based upon a taker mentality and a natural resource
based approach is in conventional economics taker mentality of conventional economics
here is the result here are the scientific proofs of what happens to the natural system
and the total disequilibrium that’s caused by things like the s1 dam for example and uh
those 200 case studies were like an explosion in the development community there was a big
development community in the us but creating projects around the world going out and doing
pre-investment surveys to initiate these new projects and then uh moving on so a lot of money
was in the pre-investment survey to locate new places where you could use the taker mentality
skillfully and blend them in with bilateral and multilateral aid programs to the the world bank
well yeah like our friend John Perkins wrote in confessions of an economic hit well this is
the source of all yeah yeah so we went right to the root of all and um the end result was these
200 case studies that proved the taker mentality does not work yeah it leads to especially to local
catastrophe it might feed a particular city or or country in another place who takes those resources
but the imbalance created by that taker mentality was massive it was the instruction of the
planet in a wide variety of ways we documented all this using good hard science and then we took
those case studies and brought them to the uh by that time the environmental movement was beginning
to go level we had produced the EPA as a result of the early work yeah the environmental protection
it’s always part of that we created the original concept for the EPA in an article in the natural
resources uh law journal in uh from New Mexico we published in that the proposal for an EPA
like entity that would be responsible for what happens to the money you invest in a project
using public money and we originally wanted to have an independent agency that would be
responsible to review the impacts we lost on that one the lobbyists won they made the agency
that was doing the project responsible for the impacts that doesn’t work conflict of interest
yeah we’ve seen a lot of a lot of erosion of efficacy so i’m we still need to correct that
having an independent entity that does the review process but anyway i’m ready why why was it in
brief i’m sure this is a very big potentially nuanced conversation but why was nixon politically
motivated to sign that well i think um and of course nixon came in uh he was involved he was
an interesting man a very complex guy capricorn so he liked solid stuff well organized solid
yeah um he uh we used to call him tricky the key right i can’t say i was excited about working
with him i had yeah uh worked in johnson you have to have a handle of gratitude to johnson and kennedy
yeah drawing the foundation so much right yeah so we accomplished a lot in the pre nixon era but
when nixon came into his credit he opened up a fairly decent relationship with china
and he was open to getting some of these fundamental laws passed he did have a feeling for nature
and i think it was authentic um and this other side of him that led to the border gate and all that
crap uh none of us knew about that signs that happened but to his credit he did do some very
positive things for the earth the same day yeah the conservation and conservative were
yeah right like in the tradition of teddy roosevelt in those days um the republican party
and the democratic party were both engaged in trying to help preserve nature there were both
in support of education whites for the human health and supporting a good human health system
and supporting the environmental movement it was not bifurcated into a polarized thing like it is
today and it’s a sad thing when that happened but that’s another story the uh the thing when
you’re going back to the original theme say is that when we went global with this is case studies
and proved that this was creating a global global massive impact
this became the evidentiary basis for something called the united nations conference on the
environment in 1972 which is the first major gathering to address the global issue of global
environmental issues and change and we were able to use this well this case study work has a very
strong part of the evidence for what was happening in global places and then out of that came the
establishment of unip united nations environmental program and the opening up of a environmental
division within the world bank and the inter-american world bank and the alias
and that leads me to maybe i’ll just give a couple quick shoutouts um you know we did a
an interview with hannah strong who lives not far from here managing foundation and
of course she and her husband marisa are very involved in a lot of the un environmental work
for many years and has she’s been very influential right here in this area yeah we all kinds of ways
john’s on her board you’re on her board yeah we basically work together as with a small team of
us that um made all these gifts of land to different spiritual centers yeah but that’s a big
whole other story i work on before i knew hannah i’ve had been working with marisa okay before he
held the conference on the famous snuggle conference that birthed the international
environmental movement yeah beautiful and then he also was tied to run the 20th anniversary of
of the earth summit which was called the earth summit under that umbrella the united nations
conference on environment and development that’s what unsaid was so it’s all tied in yeah and and
the origin was a lot of the work that john was doing so it’s so beautiful i love the
weaving of the web here i want to give a shout out to my good buddy nick chambers we’re right here on
his choke carry farm and he’s been on the podcast of course got to give a shout out to jenny menke
with regenerative earth and she’s she’s been part of this you know jenny’s conversation yeah she
studied with john right jenny’s been seeing the student right there with but yeah i see and
jenny and i’ve co-guided some sacred passage programs and the candy lights together oh cool
i didn’t know that that’s so cool yeah jenny’s great she’s been on the podcast as well we’re
doing a lot of work together at custory come excellent yep you know on the osa probably yep
yep very good and i’ll give a shout out to brad uh callin who’s off camera here but also doing a
lot of work with way of nature and the sacred land sanctuary and as program coordinator and
senior guide and got to also give a shout out to my sweetheart caressa who’s off camera here and
she connected us with elaine blumenheim over at joyful journey on streams we had her on the
podcast that was wonderful and caressa and i enjoyed a nice soak yesterday when we got to the valley
um magic water it’s what magic water and i want to ask you about that i want to take a quick moment
to thank our many uh sponsors and partners who make the work that we’re doing at the
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this and more uh and it’s a great and growing global community of leaders organizational
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so we invite you to be a part of this if you’re so called and if it resonates um and so yeah a
huge thanks to all of our partners and our supporters and i want to ask uh we’re going to
talk about lightning we’re also going to talk about i think for me this might be the most difficult
question of the discussion okay we’ve seen the groundwork laid with the environmental protection
uh legislation and agency uh along with a whole number of other important institutions in our
civic fabric uh continually and and deliberately eroded in the last several decades and you mentioned
the extreme polarity we’re experiencing right now in our culture uh and our society there’s and you
also mentioned energy demand from cryptocurrency which as i understand it has been quickly eclipsed
perhaps by uh energy demand coming from artificial intelligence now in the last few months so it’s
it’s we’ve got a very complex situation it’s been complex for some time and and one might even say
it’s becoming more and more so i’m curious from your perspective recognizing that there are so many
be such that the prevailing trends in society shift?
Well the basic, remember I mentioned how fast the catalytic
shift was, the right thing in the right way at the right time, to create
the environmental movement. I think we’re at the same point right now
where there’s a basis for a major rebirthing of
a new relationship to nature from a spiritual and experiential
foundation. Thank goodness. Yeah.
I have a friend in Baldwin, a wrestler on the Google who came up with an acronym
for Gaia. Oh yeah. It’s beautiful.
It’s global awareness is awakening. Yeah, I love it.
And so from an awakened state of mindfulness and awareness
there is no alternative
than to gather together and what another
one of John’s students and a very capable
woman on her own part make Wheatley likes to say we are now
clearly in collapse of the systems that have been
so destructive and damaging. At the same time they’ve uplifted
the standard of our living profoundly
but we are spiraling down and everybody feels it, we know it, you can
sense it in the energetic field. And so her
recommendation is all solutions will arise from
the community. And the terminology
she’s been using is Islands of Sanity
and from her most recent book. And you know
with John’s cultivating natural liberation
teachings on reconnecting with the three natures
outer nature, inner nature, and our deepest true nature
combined with some of her work and many many many other people you can see
a huge proliferation of people focusing on regenerative
activities, restorative preservation movements
and issues. So
and as Margaret Mead said and John knew Margaret Mead
I met Margaret Mead when I was in my 20s and basically
it only takes a few individuals
to gather together to change the world because and if you look at
they think that’s an absurdly optimistic view that’s not grounded
in reality, look at history. There have been a few
people in just the right time, sometimes they didn’t do
just the right thing, often they did horrible things
but it was only a few people
and then it cycles out into the broader and broader culture
and reaches more and more people through demonstrating a much more
attractive, much more compelling, and much more balanced
and grounded way of being through demonstration. I mean that
was Bucky Fuller’s contribution to all of us.
If you’re not happy with what is happening now
get busy and create something that’s more attractive, more
compelling, and more solution oriented.
It’s all about design.
Love it, love it. This all resonates very much
with our forthcoming book. We actually have a Bucky Fuller quote
along with a couple others at the beginning there speaking about the
Islands of Sanity as well and hopefully we can connect with Meg
and collaborate with her a bit as well and I think
what I’d like to do is
invite a conversation about the
and about the Kogi people
and I know those aren’t necessarily directly and obviously connected
but I’m sure you can weave those threads brilliantly.
Yeah, what was your like to know?
Tell us about your experience of the lightning.
Well, part of the
the next step that I was mentioning earlier
of course is
if you look at the
what has caused true deep transformation
around the planet over time, Meg has done a great job of looking at how cultures
have fallen apart. I’ve taken
and we’ve worked together on some really nice, giant work
where we’re bringing together some of her background with Shambhala training and the work we’ve
developed in way of nature for deep connection to nature
training, or the three natures
but part of her skillfulness was doing a
review of all those cultures that
have fallen apart, most of which have fallen apart, and done a
review of the masters that have gone in
and seen the patterns of how cultures and things fall apart.
I’ve been interested in the other side of the question too.
How do cultures come together to support a movement for
transformation in a positive way? What are the things that have actually
brought about the initiation of a brand new cultural system?
And we’re planning to create a new program called the
Champions Program that is going to be based on this
what are these cultural foundations for positive
transformation? Now I should also mention
these patterns have not always been positive if you look at the history of
cultural formation processes. But
what I can say is that the keys for that have
often boiled down to either religious and spiritual
or in some cases, political, economic causes.
Communism being an example of that in the letter.
But many, I would say maybe the majority of global
transformation and transformative movements have had a spiritual
foundation, be it moment or Christ or
the Buddha and so on. Each of them led to the
creation of unbelievable transformation on the human cultural
level. I think we’re at one of those times.
So what I’ve done is to try to provide a foundation of core principles
for liberation. We have 12 principles of natural
liberation which are part of the key of our process. And then
another part is you mentioned the six natural powers
that are necessary to come together in order to provide
a truly transformative event for an individual
who wants to engage in this kind of transformation and
liberation. So
the root of all that work for myself came
from becoming deeply embedded in several different
traditions and lineages that have benefited and
been part of cultural transformation in powerful ways.
One of the early ones was the Daoist internal alchemy system.
In that system, it was really
the shamanic systems of Tibet brought together, or of China
brought together. And it’s all based on how
the energy patterns are developed and managed and worked with.
For example, our understanding
of the material flow in the body, the channels and the
vessels are all based out of the investigations
of these Daoist masters from long ago. They also
developed ways of working with sound and light
and in the environment, natural systems
to support these kinds of powerful transformation. So I’ve been
lucky to study with those systems going back to the
really to the sixties
and especially focusing on Chikon and Taichi.
So we began to incorporate some of that into
what I was offering, some of the folks that began to engage
in these vision quests like experiences, or a
contemporary type of vision quest. But this was part of the preparatory work
to do that. And then I went deep into
Hindu systems of Tantra.
Not just the sexual Tantra, but the Tantra in the sense of
the investigation of all of consciousness
and all the forms that manifest from that fundamental consciousness
are woven together into a great web, sort of the
images web type of thing. Where all forms arise from this
state are completely interconnected
in a natural matrix, unlike the official
matrix of the movie. This is the natural matrix in which
we are all embedded. And Hindu Tantra was
superb in investigating the natural matrix
of the Divine Mother, especially.
So I went deep into the teachings of Kali, and Durga, and Bhagavan Mukti
and they might say the sacred feminine.
And spent a good, it goes to a decade, going deep into those systems
in the Himalayas with my teachers.
Another one was the fundamental
teachings of Tibet. I worked in
the Himalayas for many years, and began to help many of the refugees
coming out of Tibet to find work. They had no money
and no source of support, so it was harder than doing these
surveys to do national parks in places like Sakamata
and members of the rest of the world, Sakamata
was the original name. And in
Aparna Sanctuary area.
And so on. And you worked directly with
his holiness, the Dalai Lama? Yes, I was in his bodyguard for a while.
Oh my gosh, you’re kidding. How interesting.
He was his bodyguard for a while. He had just won the Nobel prize.
He had a prize, so they were afraid
that he was going to be killed. So he brought me
in as a bodyguard because of my martial respect.
I packed chi. That’s heat.
Yeah, packed chi could be hotter or cold.
Very cold. So it’s almost always
granted. So
I went deep into some of the Tibetan systems. I was lucky enough
to study with some really great masters like Zulu Kensei.
And just for those that don’t know,
Zulu Kensei was the Dalai Lama’s root guru teacher.
Considered to be a fully enlightened master. And John took me there
on our journey to the Ashram Harjahn Hanat with
Zulu Kensei. I mean, it gets deeper and deeper
the more you reveal… It’s hard to get into this always in a short time
but it’s an extraordinary journey that John has been on.
He’s taken me on for 30 years as well, off and on.
And one of the things Jilga was a master of was something called Zogchen
which is basically
the way of deep immersion in source.
Rigpa. Rigpa. Which is
fundamentally the pristine primordial awareness that is the foundational
state of source. It’s not like the Akash.
So in the Hindu system it would be somewhat
into the…
If you think about Shiva and Shakti
and they’re coming together
as that fundamental duality of being Shiva representing pure conscious
Shakti, pure energy. This is like the underlying state
that supports both. It’s prior to
anything in the world before. Be it in a spiritual form
or a physical form. So Zogchen
is one of the master pathways to that.
So I’ve studied deeply in Zogchen for a long time
and we’ve honored that and benefited from
that I would say in the infobend of our common ground approach.
And then of course many Shamanic systems
have been tremendously helpful to me. I told a strange guy called
Carlos Castaneda back in the
he would come to my trainings in Mexico City
but that’s a whole other story. But he’s an example.
We’ll dive into that on the behind the scenes segment for our ambassadors.
Here’s a guy who came in from…
into a contemporary context
for opening up second attention
and beginning to see how he can shift from consensual reality
fixation into an unordinary
reality experience. And those techniques are very helpful. We use them all the time
Brad Knight. His literature I remember
reading as a relatively young man for me was
psychotropic, entheogenic.
It had that effect. Yes. Most of these systems by the way
including Castaneda’s and Dunwan system
are free of the needs that depend upon plant substances.
Most of what we do has no need for any kind of plant.
It’s so powerful it doesn’t need that.
And even in the Castaneda-Dunwan tradition
the plant substances that we use as allies in the very beginning
of the path, if you’re too fixated on consensus
being how things are and you need to get shaken out of that a little bit
then those plant substances, be it Daturo or
Pioti or other systems
were brought in for a short while. So you’d loosen up your attachment
to the fixation on a concentrally reality as real and you begin
to shift into the realization of many other reality formation possibilities.
And then you’re ready to receive the
fundamental teachings that constantly allow you to
access, go back into the fundamental source. Because another
reality formation can be just as much a source of
attachment and aversion as this consensual one we will
participate in for the most part now.
In our culture there’s a dependency issue of thinking, oh we’ve got to have something from the
outside that’s going on. Yeah, fixation on any particular
reality formation processes is going to be
antithetical to freedom and liberation.
So the long story short, through all these years of
being a student of these different systems, I began to see the common
ground that they had. And I was able
to distill those common ground principles and processes
into what is now the way of nature training process.
And the way of nature training process involves first
three or four days in a sacred passage of
deep and becoming embedded in these processes and principles.
Then a period of going out into nature
and dropping all connection to the outside world and other humans
in every protected space. We usually do it
in a very sacred space. So we have the benefits of a sacred place in
nature and the power of solitude, which come into play and support
this. And if you’ve never dropped out of
being in human culture for a week, here’s your chance.
And you’re encouraged to leave behind all the
normal appurtences of being part of your culture and be open
and resting the stillness of the body, the
inherent
quietude of the normally busy mind, and the immense
spaciousness of source as your foundation will see.
And in that stillness and silence
and space, you can open into a
very profoundly deep level of connection to source
and a deep, deep connection to the big family of all living things.
And I’m exhibit A. Brothers exhibit A.
for the truth of what John was speaking.
What John just described
is absolutely a profound experience
that might answer one of your other questions. How do you get into this
transformation? But then, once you’ve been through those
first two steps, then there’s the emergence
into coming back into this consensual world
of the bills, the
media, Facebook, or Twitter.
What does it say?
All the stuff of this modern life. And how do you
integrate what’s happened skillfully so that you
can maintain being able to be in this world and to
be skillful and functional in this world.
So I’ve created a process of reintegration and sharing
or I should say sharing and reintegration. Because we will share
together what’s happened as a group. And then the
process of integration goes where they call temporary.
But it wasn’t around. This is a new thing
that we’ve been doing more recently. And so now a lot of the emphasis
on temporary means, like when you temper a sword
it goes into the fire. It comes out
into the, it may get hammered a little bit to get a good cutting edge.
Then into the water. Then back out
back into the fire. Do that a thousand times.
Then you have an amazing sword. You can cut tissue paper floating
in there. So this is what we do with the temporary
process. We don’t have the time to go into the detail of how we do it.
Let me just say that’s at the heart of our reentry.
So those three stages. First stage
of the training. Then the solitary time. Or the all
one time as we call it. We redefine the loan to all one.
And then the time of integration and tempering
and sharing. So the totality of that
is quite powerful. We probably put
even more stress now on the last stage. Because that’s often the
most challenging part of the whole process. But those three
stages together comprise a way of nature process.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And that can be done in a very short
program we call the Waysharers program. Which
can be as short as an afternoon like in
the Best of Moment Alliance. Remember you went over that
facilitation as a film? It was fun.
Oh yeah, sure. And we have a nice film.
Very essentialized. So we’ve been developing
that stage for a beginner’s program. Super. Just
beginning. Opening the door. And then we have a renewal program
that goes more deeply into actually the actualization
of the process in a one or two day event.
And then a deeper level which is called a nature quest.
Where you might have several days of training.
Maybe three in total. And then
several days of going into solitude and nature and camping.
Whereas the prior one, the renewal program, you don’t have to camp.
You can just do the entire process during the day.
And work out with a normal retreat center or hotel even.
And then the final stage for the normal program process
is a sacred passage where you have three or four days of training at the beginning.
Then a period of deep solitude in the way I described.
And then the integration process is the third stage.
And that became the foundation for a new MIT program
for leadership. That’s called Theory U.
Theory U, the present scene.
Oedershawmer picked up on this really skillfully.
And Brian Arthur helped bring, he did 50 passages.
And distilled the process that I just described into something that could be the foundation
for leadership training. And then
Oedershawmer, Peter Senghi,
and Joseph Jaborsky
brought this together and said, wow, this is pure magic. Pure gold.
He brought that all together in a book called Presence.
And we worked together, We Have Nature
and those three to produce early on this book called Presence
along with Betty Sue Flowers.
It just gives a good documentation of this process
in a way that people can easily understand. Especially there’s a chapter by
Jaborsky on Opening Heart. Was it chapter eight, Brad?
I think it’s chapter eight. Which book is this?
Presence. If you don’t know Jaborsky, you should.
He did an early book called Synchronicity, a second book
which was this book on Presence that he did
collaboratively with Sharmer and Senghi and Betty Sue Flowers.
And then he did a more recent book that we worked together
quite a bit on called Source.
And that came out more recently.
Well, I am so
grateful for this opportunity to visit. Of course, I want to mention this will be in the show notes
as well. Folks can go to wayofnature.com
to find all of the ways of connecting in
and experiencing the immersive experiences
and getting to the books and research that you’re about to say something.
Thanks for mentioning it. I was going to add on at the very end
the lightning aspect. Please.
That was great. That was always great for lightning.
We don’t have enough clouds in the sky quite today yet.
We have to summon them or something. Invite them.
Be careful what you’re asked for.
Our biodynamic friends around the world tend to bring in thunder clouds like
Jim. I probably shouldn’t talk about the starwood
visit that we had.
We’ll save that for the behind the scenes scene.
I’m not sure I remember that.
Behind the scenes. We’re also going to talk
about a giant serpent behind the scenes, I understand.
We’ll save that for a minute.
So as I mentioned, the whole way of nature is a number
of trinities. One of them is outer nature, inner nature, true nature.
True nature, resource nature.
If one is fully
accomplished in that, it’s one thing to have a taste.
It’s another thing to stabilize that a bit. It’s a third thing
to be fully established. No matter what’s going on, it’s
going from there.
by some more alliance remember you went over that that facilitation that has a film
it was fun but yeah and they have a nice film and it’s very essentialized so we’ve been developing
that stage for a beginner’s program super just beginning opening the door and then we have
a renewal program that goes more deeply into actually the actualization of the process in a
one or two day event and then a deeper level which is called a nature quest where you might have
several days of training maybe three in total and then several days of going into solitude
nature and camping whereas the prior one the renewal program you don’t have to camp you just do
the entire process during the day and work out of a normal retreat center or hotel even
and then the final stage for the normal program process is a sacred passage where you have three
or four days of training at the beginning then a period of deep solitude in the way I described
and then the integration process is the third stage and that became the foundation for a
new MIT program for leadership okay that’s called theory you
uh the do you know the presidencies and Otto Scharmer picked up on this really skillfully
and Brian Arthur helped bring he did 50 passages and distilled the process that I just described
into something that could be the foundation for leadership training cool and then uh
uh Otto Scharmer Peter Sangy and um Joseph Chiborsky brought this kid said wow this is pure
magic pure gold and they brought that all together in the book called presence and we
worked together we have nature and in those three to produce early on this book called presence
along with Betty Souflours which just gives a good documentation of this process in a way that
people can easily understand especially there’s a chapter by Jaworsky on opening heart I think
was it chapter eight bread I think it’s chapter eight which book is this presence present school
if you don’t know Jaworsky you should he did it for early book called synchronicity second book
which uh was this book on presence that he did collaboratively with Scharmer and
Sangy and Betty Souflours and then he did a recent more recent book that we work together
quite a bit on called source and that came out more recently how wonderful well I am
so grateful for this opportunity to visit of course I want to mention this will be in the
show notes as well folks can go to wayofnature.com to find all of the ways of connecting in and
experiencing the immersive experiences and getting to the books and research you’re about to say
something oh I was just going to mention I was going to add on at the very end lightning aspect
please but whenever you’re really that was great that was always great for lightning
we don’t have enough clouds in the sky quite today we have to summon them or something right
invite them yeah yeah be careful what you’re asked for the biodynamic friends around the
world tend to bring in thunder clouds like like that with ceremony yeah yeah I probably shouldn’t
talk about the starwood isn’t that we had um we’ll save that from the behind the scenes
okay the uh I’m not sure I remember that what was it behind the scenes behind the scenes
we’re also going to talk about a giant serpent behind the scenes I understand oh yeah so yeah
so as I mentioned the whole way of nature is a number of trinities one of them is outer nature
inner nature true nature yeah right well true nature resource nature always probably that if
one is fully accomplished in that it’s one thing to have a taste it’s another thing to stabilize that
a bit it’s a third thing to be fully established that no matter what’s going on it’s a flowing from
that and um so in order to be able to share well at that level it was pretty important for me to
go through a number of experiences that helped support within the connector connection and for
me one of the biggest ones along with people like do go can see my appreciate it was permanently
established in that and just being around that being the field of source was so omnipresent
that if you had any kind of openness and capacity to relax and listen it was right there and all
you had to do is render into that be open to that and receive the blessing of source itself
it’s the power of transmission very simple very direct only available to those who really listen
and really let go but in the meantime I was helping a guy we had we published it a national
newspaper called the green earth news it was a good news newspaper one issue only I did this with
a couple of friends back east near the swung gunk mountains which is where the kitties from New Jersey
go up into New York state near the Catskills and we published this one issue and I was working on
that paper there’s a couple of articles for it and one of the guys who will support that paper
find it kind of experiment to seed a good news newspaper only in the culture nice idea cool
and I was honored to be asked to be part of the the editorial group to do that
um the this one guy that was a major financial squirer had a thousand acre property a thousand
plus acre property that he felt was very sacred and he felt because of my background that I’d be
perfect to to do a dedication ceremony with this site so in a way that was a seed source for what
we now have here in the sacred land sanctuary which as far as I know is the first major
modern cultural setting aside of land isn’t really sacred right so but this is a very early
precursor to that in 1984 which is a very interesting year if you know anything about the book 1984
anyway so I did the ceremony it was very powerful it felt like it was just the right time for this
and went back home to get a bit of rest and I was preparing for sleep you know I like to
often read and do things before bed so I tend to go to sleep later like 11 or 12 and I was just
getting ready to kind of start my process of going to bed and I mean a little quiet time
before that and suddenly out of a clear blue sky a lightning bolt came through an open window
in the bedroom hit me killed me because I was taken out of the body and I was immediately
catapulted into a tunnel with a big huge like being inside of a tornado think of the wheel of
us and the tornado in the movie there when everything went up it’s kind of like that jet
bike and the sound of thunder like the entire universe was being ripped apart the thunder was
very impressive and then I shot headfirst through the tunnel at the end of the tunnel was a
an exit that it was brilliantly light just absolutely brilliant light so I shot headfirst
through the tunnel with the thunder directly into this light and when I enter the light the body
dissolved everything dissolved both form dissolved although it was a pure clear spacious vastness
openness and absolutely clear light the foundational state and I had noticed more or less what time
it was before I went to bed it was around just before in the midnight and then I came it was
brought back to the tunnel feet first this time and back into a body I assume it was mine I’m not
sure but there was a body on top of the bed in a closely good position in the meditation posture
like a buddha posture and put back into this body and then the walls of the tunnel is up
still looking at the light that I’d come out of and as the walls of the tunnel dissolved I saw
that that was the planet Venus or the morning star and it was six in the morning six hours later
and that’s the blazing star yeah the pent-alpha energy it uh I don’t know if you know anybody
gets a claddle a little bit but yeah it’s a cloud was considered it’s another morning star
and he was kind of a buddha for this semester the connection with the Christ too because Venus
goes away 40 days at a time yeah there’s a whole thing there and the geometry of the Venus and
sun forms is the pent-alpha flower yep exactly a lot of things they’re interesting and the buddha
himself uh was awakened when he had that first sight of the morning star that was what a fabulous
experience that was the moment of the enlightenment premium golly would you have your breakfast the next
day would you have your breakfast after that don’t remember that’s incredible thank you thank you for
sharing with us and didn’t you also hear a question there were only two questions
what did you learn and how well did you love that’s uh was that a later experience that’s a
question that is comes up for many people after they die right and uh like a fundamental question
what was the what were the benefits and the great teachings of this existence you just took out
and uh it’s kind of a common ground two questions yeah in this case it wasn’t about that
it’s pure initiation right yeah okay we have a lot more to talk about and I look forward
to doing so and when I have four pages of notes filled up that’s one cue I get that it’s time to
wrap up and that’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to we’re going to we’re going to wrap up
the the podcast and I want to thank you for taking the time to visit I’m so happy we’re
having this conversation I look forward to what what will come as well and but of course thanks
to you for putting all of this together and for all of your beautiful work and contributions
to the Y unearth community in particular and before we sign off what I’d like to do is
give each of you the floor for any final message you might like to share with our audience and
more more uh high two than epic poem if you catch my drift here and but I’ll I’ll uh
start start with you put you on the spot first and thank you both for this wonderful conversation
yeah sure well I really don’t know that I have anything particularly pithy or poignant to add
because this is the depth of all of this that we’ve been exploring is as good as it gets um and uh
yeah I’m I’m just uh extremely grateful for being a connector seems to be one of the roles
that I play sometimes tees and sand force comes cousin because I end up being surrounded by
extraordinary people and I wonder what am I doing in this picture why why am I showing up here
in this moment um but I think that the journey um is so worth the effort
and and what I’m speaking to in terms of listening there’s such magic in silence
and presence it really is the portal that opens to a an open radiant heart
and a connection with a capacity for tremendous compassion
and it’s not as difficult as we make it seem or is intimidating and yet it does
really require intention and perseverance and commitment so I think that’s another part of
the gift of being a student for these decades now with John and having people like Brad and others
that are totally devoted and dedicated to this kind of immersion in nature and immersion
with a trajectory towards embracing source allowing and accepting source to be our guiding
bright star that um yeah I just encourage people to have the courage to step into that
this kind of journey yeah and there’s so much more still beautiful yeah beautiful thank you bud
sure you’re welcome my question okay what’s what’s next
look into the vast spaciousness of your mind there’s no separation
wonderful yeah my heart I should say yeah yeah yeah well and John oh yeah the floor is yours
well um I think it pretty well laid out but I have to say but I would like to
re-mention that most of the truly transformative aspects that led to a cultural transformation
had a spiritual sometimes economic or political basis and I do feel like this
this process we’ve been sharing about today has many of the seeds of that potential
and it is available at a very beginner’s level super beginner’s level intermediate and much more
advanced depending on where you’re coming from what you where you’re really go and feel honored
that I’m able to be part of that helping this little catalytic seed bring me
brought forth in this time similar to what happened in the in the 60s with planning that seed of
natural systems being the mother the big family we’re part of I think it’s a similar moment but
this time it’s a spiritual foundation it’s common ground based that can be offered to
human culture as a way to come back and bounce and write relationship of all life and mother
beautiful yeah thank you thank you both thank you everybody bye for now
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