Ep 153: Antony Sammeroff Guest Host ~ Unleash the Freedom of your Spirit & Change the World!

Welcoming guest host Antony Sammeroff, who kindly allowed me to reproduce this episode of his excellent podcast 'BeYourselfandLoveit'. 

Antony's agile mind is not afraid to cover an enormous range of topics, and we had a lot of fun dashing hither and thither in this vibrant conversation!  Join us for a rough and tumble journey through corporate change, executive leadership development, humanistic philosophy, and the captivating search for inner freedom and sovereignty.

Counselling and Personal Coaching with Antony:  www.beyourselfandloveit.com

If you like the way that Antony and I talk you can hear his two appearances on the show:

https://truthandtranscendence.buzzsprout.com/.../10616423...

https://truthandtranscendence.buzzsprout.com/.../13721405...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 153. I recently had the absolute pleasure of joining Anthony Samaroff on his podcast Be Yourself and Love it, and Anthony has kindly allowed me to reproduce this conversation on Truth and Transcendence. I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Hello and welcome to episode 106 of the Be Yourself and Love it podcast with me, anthony Samaroff. I've got a real treat for you today the silkiest voice in all of podcast kingdom, my friend Catherine Llewellyn, host of Truth and Transcendence podcast, which I've been on twice and so rudely not had Catherine back as a guest because my podcast was on hiatus for two years. But it's interesting because she was high up on the list of guests and got in there, sneaked in before me and sent me a little message oh, I see you've started your podcast again. Is it time? And it is absolutely certainly time. Thank you so much for coming on be yourself and love it podcast, katherine I am so thrilled.

Speaker 1: 1:33

I've been looking forward to this ever since I first heard you on the tom woods show, I thought number one I want him on my podcast. Number two I want to go on his podcast. That was several years ago so this is a um a bucket list tick for me okay, oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 2: 1:50

well, it's a great honor to have you and, um, I'm I've not scripted the show, but we're going to talk a bit about freedom of spirit because you're doing a workshop on that, or several of them, later on the years. But my audience might not know you and I want them to have the pleasure of knowing you. So let's hear a little bit about yourself. What are you doing with your life? How did you get here? What are your skills and capacities? I know that you're an evolutionary force in the world, but I'd like to unwrap that and hear a bit about how Okay, well, I'll do my best to sort of say something relevant from the more than one decade of my life.

Speaker 1: 2:35

So at the moment I am running workshops. I'm noticing people are really drawn to getting together with other human beings at the moment, which I think is completely natural after the last few years. So I'm currently running Pelua energy technique workshops. I'm about to start running the freedom of spirit workshops in the autumn and I've also been running like half day sessions and day sessions and weekend sessions of conscious dance and meditation. So I've been doing quite a lot of workshop stuff.

Speaker 1: 3:14

I have the podcast Truth and Transcendence, which is just a sheer joy. I mostly do it because of the sheer joy of it and the idea that there are people around the world. Joy, I mostly do it because of the sheer joy of it and the idea that there are people around the world. There are people listening to it in Russia, Israel, all these places. There are people who listen to my podcast and I'm thinking who are these people? I'll never know who they are or why they're listening or what they get out of it. So that's an incredible thing doing that or what they get out of it. So that's an incredible thing doing that, and other than that I just enjoy life.

Speaker 1: 3:49

I live in rural Wales. There's lots of sheep, not very many people, birds, cats. It's a really beautiful place to be very peaceful, and so that's pretty much what I'm doing at the moment, and my whole thrust, I suppose, in my work, and has been all the way through, is this idea that the next stage of evolution for us as human beings is the evolution of our consciousness, and I feel for myself in my life that's something I've always tried to continue to grow and develop, and I get really turned on by helping other people to do the same. So that's kind of where I am now. In terms of my history, I'm working in the public field at the moment, but for a long time I was doing similar work, but for corporate exec type people.

Speaker 2: 4:46

Yeah. I really wanted to hear more about that. Yeah. You know how you came into the corporate world to help facilitate people's development, how that even became a job for you and what you accomplished, like what you saw changing people when you worked with them. That's something I was really interested in myself and hearing more about.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Yeah, thank you. It was actually like a really bizarre path. I had realized that. How can I put it? The mad way I've conducted myself in my adolescence and early twenties was great fun, but it wasn't fulfilled and I was heart lonely. I felt isolated.

Speaker 1: 5:43

I had pain, pain in my heart, as they say in the song and I knew there was more but I didn't know what it was. And then some friends of mine came back from one of these enlightenment-intensive weekends and they'd completely transformed and after a lot of arguing that I didn't need to do it, I finally went off and did it and I met a lot of very interesting people who were really interested in being conscious and responsible for themselves and living life to the full that whole thing that everyone's into now. In those days it was much more new and we were referred to as a cult and we were referred to as a cult and is that the other?

Speaker 1: 6:25

and we were saying, cults are undervalued right, yeah reclaim the term yeah, before long a gang of us got together and said look some of the principles we're trying to live by now. What if we took some of those into the business world? Because there's people going to work. They're hanging up their souls as they those into the business world. Because there's people going to work, they're hanging up their souls as they go into the building and picking them up again on the way out. They're spending more time at work than anywhere else, but for many people it's meaningless. People aren't communicating. It's soul-destroying for a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 7:04

So we thought, well, how do we start to do that? Someone came up with the idea of doing telephone marketing. Right, we thought by doing telephone marketing we could start to spread some of this. And we knew nothing about telephone marketing. But we were very enthusiastic and bright, shiny people, you know so, and young. Because we were young we had the beauty of youth. You know that's in quite good clothes. We had a decent briefcase between us to go and sell the services, etc.

Speaker 1: 7:31

So we started doing this and the clients after a while started saying how is it your people are getting much better results on the phone than our people, when your people only had a half day product training? And our people have been doing it 15, 20 years. Will you train our people? Right, so we started training their phoners then they?

Speaker 2: 7:53

what did you train them? What did you teach them?

Speaker 1: 7:56

we taught them about. Honestly, we'd never get away with these days. I don't know. We taught a lot of voice work, a lot of basic conversation skills and all of that, but also a lot of stuff about dealing with the pain of being said no to rejection on the phone, because, more often than not, that's what happens mutually supporting the team, taking responsibility for your energy, a lot of work around energy responsibility really all about one's personal power, I suppose, and self-expression.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So, of course, when these people went back, they were much more effective, but they were completely uncontrollable.

Speaker 2: 8:43

Oh, right, okay.

Speaker 1: 8:44

So they then said right, guess what? Will you train the team leaders? Then the same thing happened. Will you train the managers? Same thing happened. Then eventually they said right, this is so good, we're going to get rid of all our reps and create a big call center. So we were the first people creating big call centers in the UK. So they then said help us to do that, so we'd help them create a really effective call center. That would be like a transplanted organ into a body. And they said it's not taking because the call center's working, but it doesn't gel with the rest of the culture, which is back in the Stone Age.

Speaker 1: 9:24

So then I ended up training the board on how to incorporate that new culture, then on how to change the culture in the rest of the business, so that transition happened kind of organically and suddenly before. I knew it. I was doing one-to-one coaching with CEOs with a lot of the same thrust to it. But with all that work around, how do you get your arms around the culture, how do you actually sense what's going on with your people and how do you actually look after the goodwill in your business, all of that human stuff?

Speaker 1: 10:05

which is difficult to do when you're sitting on the top of an organization, because you have to stretch your heart to do it and that can hurt Right.

Speaker 2: 10:18

Yes, it's amazing that you had an experience of going into great places and encouraging them to move to Technicolor. But the interesting thing is you almost said, well, you'd never get away with it today, and then you didn't finish the thought. So I'm excited to hear where that was going. What?

Speaker 1: 10:42

are the things that you think, things we used to honestly back in the early 80s. Some of the things we used to say to people on these telephone skills trainings was just outrageous these things. Like you know, you are 100 responsible for everything that's happening in the world right think about that okay right.

Speaker 1: 11:03

Philosophically speaking, that's an incredibly empowering thought form to play with and nowadays people know that. But we were brutal with these 18-year-old telephone receptionists and these young people who just wanted to do a job. And suddenly they're in this building with these nutcases who've been on this seminar right, who are demanding that they embrace these very demanding, stretching ideas.

Speaker 2: 11:33

You know, and sometimes people didn't come back on day two, frankly yeah, it's quite interesting because what you did reminds me of the work of Ricardo Semler, who wrote a good book called Maverick about how he kind of democratized the workplace. And there's another guy I can't remember his name now must try and get him on the show who did a similar thing with teaching these communication skills and Ricardo Semler's workplace. People chose their own salaries but it was open boot so everyone could see. Sometimes they elected their own managers and sometimes a manager would more often than not have a meeting and saying you know, we're looking at your salary. You know, maybe you would consider you might consider putting it up a little bit more more often than they would say you know, we're looking at your salary, you know, maybe you would consider you might consider putting it up a little bit more more often than they would say you know, we had a chat and we kind of think you're taking the piss, but a certain percentage of people would not affect the change of culture when he went into other workplaces and tried to change it and they would just leave and go somewhere else. And I don't know. And the same with the other guy. He did a great YouTube presentation called the new paradigm in business, and this was over 10 years ago. But, um, I don't know if that's just a certain mentality or because you put people through this education system where it's do what you're told when you're told, and people are so habituated to being told what to do that they don't like to participate in the decision making process. Maybe some people are just like that, or maybe it's conditioning and I love speaking to you about this because obviously I've just started this show again after a two-year hiatus and before starting the show, I had to go through a whole existential crisis about you know what I'm doing with my life and things like that.

Speaker 2: 13:41

And what I did was I went back to the beginning to understand why I became a content creator in the first place, about 10, 12, 14 years ago, whatever it was. And it was this stuff, exactly what you said evolving consciousness, the idea that we could go into organizations and evolve the consciousness and spread like a ripple organizations and evolve the consciousness and spread like a ripple. And I, when I decided to redo my show, I decided that's where I was going back to the beginning. Um, to, to, to and in a way, I saw, as you know, whatever the enlightenment was. We had the renaissance. There was this nice story that we had the renaissance and then, like, we had the dark ages and the renaissance and the enlightenment, and the world was just going to continue evolving and evolving.

Speaker 2: 14:27

And I believed that for so long when I came onto YouTube, because there was these amazing people presenting how to change the education system, how to change healthcare, how to solve disputes without the state, how to go into anarchism, and the ideas were so compelling and they seemed so true and I thought I was just in the vanguard of this thing. And then, uh, that these ideas were going to spread. And then 12, 14 later, 12 years later, 10 years later, covid, you know, everyone goes into a bot, the least free, all the social justice, warrior stuff, where you can't say what you think anymore without fear of being attacked, everything driving off an economic cliff. I was like there was a period of disillusionment from this idea that things are just going to get better and better and better over that time and I kind of lost my way.

Speaker 2: 15:21

And this is for people who used to be a listener of the show before hiatus to wonder what happened there. And you're going to start drip feeding this in. So you're bringing me. And, by the way, on that point I was thinking of the people I was listening to back then, 10 to 15 years ago, and thinking, oh, are they still around? I'll need to get them on the show some at some point. This meant going back to the very beginning, so that is… Lovely.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Well, I'd like to say a couple of things.

Speaker 2: 15:48

Yeah, please do.

Speaker 1: 15:50

This business about how you make change happen. I think one of the issues that can happen is that people come up with a fantastic theory about that and then try to enact the theory. And that never, ever works, because an organization is like an organism, and I've argued this many times is it a machine or an organism?

Speaker 1: 16:14

And I say well, it's more like an organism, because it's a whole bundle of relationships and lines of power and influence and love and goodwill and emotion and all of those things. So if you want to bring about change in an organization, you don't just try and black the organization into the change. You actually collaborate with the people who are currently running the organization, because the organization is an expression of those people, but also they are affected by the state of the organization as well and they're the only ones who really know it.

Speaker 3: 16:52

So, through them, metabolizing, where they are in a much deeper way and becoming much more conscious.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Even that on its own starts to create a ripple effect down the throat and I just want to say one other thing before you come back. You asked me about effects of that.

Speaker 1: 17:12

And I just remembered yesterday I was talking to someone. One of my favorite stories was when I was working with a group of four men who, between them, were responsible for a division of a bank which had 9,000 people in it. We were doing this long program together where they'd chosen the theme we were going to work on, having done some very deep self-assessment work with me. One of the themes was a thing called Chi Cascade. They came up with the name and they we'd done work around. We looked at energy and chi and so forth and they'd said to themselves well, we can work on our own energy, so our presence is much more, uh, benevolent and you know, etc. Etc. But how do we do that through 9 000 people? We can't be everywhere, right? So how do we do that actually cascade thing we did?

Speaker 1: 18:06

a lot of work around that over a two-month period. They came back next time around and they said Catherine, because of what we did with you in the last couple of months, we've just saved 2,500 redundancies.

Speaker 2: 18:19

Amazing and I said what?

Speaker 1: 18:21

Because of course, I had no idea what they were going to go and do with the shifts that they'd experienced, but through the shifts they they'd seen a way through to save two and a half thousand jobs. So those people were now not going to be made redundant, which was wonderful for those people and their families and also great for the business, because of the cost of redundancy. Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:47

There are so many stories where someone has and I think it's true for anyone in their own lives, somebody has an experience of inner transformation and then suddenly things in their lives shift, and things in the lives of the people that they love shift as well, and things in the lives of the people that they love shift as well. You know the areas they have influence over shift. So that was something I wanted to say in response to something you said earlier on in the conversation. Oh, perfect.

Speaker 2: 19:16

Yeah, exactly, so it was this. That's exactly what I believe that we change the world by changing ourselves. And then that has a ripple effect and exactly you can't smash people in the face with it. You, you need to court their cooperation.

Speaker 2: 19:34

I know I remember I was once having a dispute with my sister over a period. I was in London she lives in London, I don't so I was staying with her and she'd run the phone to me and say I thought the compromise was some sort of. And I said to her over and over again I said no, I never agreed to compromise with you. I agreed to convince it. I agreed that we could meet consensus. And I kept on saying it over and over again because there were decisions she wanted me to make too early. I said can we? I need another day or two before. But she wanted.

Speaker 2: 20:08

And similarly, I'm sure in hindsight I was being in stubborn in certain ways that I didn't realize as well. But the idea was could we come to consensus? And you have to kind of bring people along. And the interesting thing is my dad I don't always think of him as super deep, you know what I mean, I don't know how to put it. But he told me at some point. You know, I was on the phone to her and I said you know, anthony's he hadn't heard this conversation. He independently said to her you can't use force with anthony, you need to bring him along with you, you need to, you know, talk him along. And that's exactly what I'd wanted. I was.

Speaker 2: 20:50

I wanted her to talk me in to a position not not be so black and white, it's this way or that way, and learning non-violent communication around the age of 25. You know, picking up that book was a great influence on me because, like Carl Rogers, I think I'm sure you're a fan, or if you're not, I'm sure you, yeah, yeah, he's my biggest influence as a psychotherapist. He believed that these were skills not just for counselors and psychotherapists, for parents, for everything, for, for, for every situation where you have the appearance of authority and those um, and that these were tools to change institutions. And when I went back to reading carl rogers again a couple of years ago, it was like so much of what he was expressing was in me myself and embedded in this project to be yourself and love it. So it's really good to have you to speak to, because you're kind of like you're bringing it out of me is what I get again. To set the course on track.

Speaker 2: 21:57

That's the show on track, this idea of evolving consciousness, of bringing presence to other humans, and that itself is transformative of them, and then we can synergize and then we can um, you know, do something. Uh, that's of more value. You know, even in the corporate world the employees are happier. They produce better customer service. The customers are happier. Their families are happier.

Speaker 1: 22:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other element, which is it's very easy to get into, how do I bring my great insights to other people? That thing is something we can sometimes get into Right, Thereby forgetting how can I discover what great insights other people have? Right.

Speaker 1: 22:55

And so that's a big part of the conversation with organizational change, because every single person in an organization, no matter how suppressed or compliant they may be, single person in an organization, no matter how suppressed or compliant they may be, is capable of making their own decisions, because they do make their own decisions in their lives. So it's a question of how do you find that part of that person, how do you invite that part of that person into the dialogue, how do you let that part of that person know that they're welcome in the space? Because a lot of people have that in them but they don't believe anyone wants it yeah, and that's what how I put it.

Speaker 2: 23:30

I say when people ask me like my, or as kyle rogers put it, not, or as I put what kyle rogers saying the therapist is no longer the authority who's there to provide insight, diagnose, analyze the client. Rather sorry, I'd say, the therapist isn't the expert on the client. The client's the expert in themselves and the therapist is there to bring out their expertise. And.

Speaker 2: 24:02

I always tell people if I know something that's useful, don't keep it to myself. You, I'm not a math, a sadist, but I don't see it as my role to provide, um that. I see it as my role to make help the client feel that they are expert the expert in their own life, and they are capable of making good decisions, including receiving the appropriate support to help them make good decisions and use their own genius and expertise to handle their life. They should be feel competent and fit to face the challenges of life yes, absolutely right, and some people are not, sadly.

Speaker 1: 24:42

Some people are not confident enough in themselves to give themselves the gift of asking for the help that would help them. Right right, which is a shame. But we are where we are, aren't we in our lives?

Speaker 2: 24:54

This is absolutely true of me, because when I was growing up as a child, there weren't that many useful adults around. Many useful adults around, you know. Adults, for the main part, seem to want to use the children around them to feel superior. And where did I go for good advice? Or now, as an adult, I had to learn that, oh yeah, I can actually ask people for advice, I can actually go out and help and people will actually help me. But I didn't develop that habit as a child because there weren't many people to get help from, you know. So that in itself is a skill, but having one good, helpful relationship can completely change your relationship to receiving, just receiving in all capacities. Yeah, I agree, and I think, well, I think that's a cultural thing.

Speaker 1: 25:50

You know, the rugged individual, rugged individualism um that scott peck wrote about, um that that's that's really considered to be virtuous in the Western world. The great thing about it is that we will climb the mountain and go down the other side and find the new valley and put up a tent and create a civilization right, which is fantastic. But the downside is what you're saying, I think.

Speaker 2: 26:18

Yeah, and people think that information can replace mentorship and it can. No amount of YouTube videos is going to help you as much as having someone stand beside you and see where you are and whatever it is you're you're, you're willing to learn, see where your particular blind spots are and help you develop in those areas, because they've seen it all before when we've replaced mentorship in this society with a computer screen. Okay, well, that's been a good podcast. See you next time. Go, let's see.

Speaker 2: 26:56

So I'm just so impressed and inspired that you actually managed to get into a corporate environment to teach this stuff and spread the love. Um, um, how did you? How long did this go on for? And oh, wait a second before we do that. You said you got up into all sorts of craziness in your, in the fun in your 20s, but it was not fulfilling. But I feel like that's an essential part of the puzzle, because I think that you also learned some essential things during those periods of fun which informed your work. So what were your 20s like? What was the fun you had and, ultimately, what did you learn from that that you treasure and take forward?

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah. So I'd say it's my teens and my early 20s really, I think the and of course it's all rooted in my childhood anyway. So I'll just say something about that. We were very much brought up with an alternative point of view and an alternative approach to life, quite bohemian nature, cure emphasis all that kind of thing, and so, for me, I was already getting on my bike and cycling off nowhere when I was 12 and thinking nothing about it.

Speaker 1: 28:18

I was very adventurous indeed, and that adventurousness ran all the way through. I was healthy, I was well, and so I had all the usual adolescent feelings running through my body about sex, about sex playfulness, wanting to dance, wanting to be friends with people, have fun, party, all that stuff was there for me, and so part of me just kind of letting rip was just partying and having a lot of fun and smoking weed and later on taking LSD and just generally having a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Um, but the thing with it was there was there was I didn't know enough about um love to actually get my own needs in relationship to love as in. I'm talking about soul love, that very profound soul love. I wasn't really strong enough in myself in terms of my own self-love and my own understanding around my needs in that regard. So what happened then was it was entertaining, it was adventurous, it was colorful, but there was a part of me that wasn't being fed.

Speaker 1: 29:47

And of course, in the culture around me, no one else knew anything about all of that either. We were stunted. I mean I'm talking about in the 60s. We were beginning, things were sort of becoming more liberated, but still there was an awful lot of people who never shared their feelings. There were a lot of people who thought that the only form of intimacy is sex. You know someone vaguely or you're having sex with them, and there's nothing in between, none of the rich field of connection and community and communing and all those multiple, wonderful, wonderful ways we can relate to each other. And when people are unconscious of that, which I was and a lot of I had a yearning in me for that, but I I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 1: 30:42

I had a yearning for, and so it was isolating, and so I reached this. But I was bright, so I could see that what a lot of people were doing in their lives was not working. I could understand a lot of things philosophically, but in my actual experience of myself there was something missing. And here's what I learned from it.

Speaker 1: 31:10

This is one of the things when I was putting together this workshop. The actual theme of the workshop freedom of spirit came from me going back through my life to see what's been a thread that's been there from the beginning, and this freedom of spirit thread. What I mean by that is that kind of flame of spirit that's inside me and, I think, inside everybody. That is always there, no matter what, no matter how oppressed I might feel or trapped or self-hating or whatever. That's always there and because that's always there, there's always the opportunity of reclaiming it, reconnecting with it and feeling utterly, utterly free.

Speaker 1: 31:57

And I think one of the things that really contributed to that was my whole experience around psychedelics, where I had that discovery of I can choose where I put my attention and then immerse myself in something fully, and what I think is real isn't necessarily real. So that's incredibly liberating that the world is so full of possibility and color and that my ego, my rational mind, my ego self, is not in control of any of it. It's not in control, it doesn't know what's going on. And that's actually a good thing because that opens me up to the mystery, the vast mystery of life. So I think I came out of that with a strong appreciation of the mystery of life, the fact that I don't know and that's a wonderful thing and I am free. I'm ultimately a living feeling being who has some needs and it'd be great to understand more about those and try and get some of them met.

Speaker 1: 33:12

So, I was kind of raw and very sensitive, I suppose, when I came into that place, when I then went and did that, that um seminar program it's interesting because you're you.

Speaker 2: 33:33

You were kind of it sounds like you were happy and not in some capacity, yeah, exploring, but it's like you know, you, you had a taste for more. You know, when you were, when you were a kid, you like your idea of um. Classical music is the lullaby by brand when you're a baby um, whatever, um, the well-known song, but then, like later on, there's a catchy pop tune and then at some point you need mozart and then beethoven, and then lord knows wagner or mallor or something like that. Um, just by analogy, like it's not. As, as life goes on, you find you have a need for for something more than what you experienced before, or to go deeper into something.

Speaker 1: 34:26

Going deeper and more of a sense of meaning, and purpose.

Speaker 2: 34:31

Yeah, something more meaningful.

Speaker 1: 34:32

More soul stuff. I was introduced to the whole soul stuff thing even as a child because my parents were mad really. They were introducing us to all sorts of very deep notions as children. But then when I flew off in my adolescence, I was following much more the physical, the emotional drives, but those other things that were already implanted in me were still present.

Speaker 1: 35:02

The voice was still in there saying Catherine, there's something more that you also need and I was like I will come back to that, but right now I'm doing this. You know what I mean. And then it was like coming back to that Because I also think in life, at different times, we actually emphasize different things. You know, you can't learn everything all at once. You have to emphasize an aspect of of of the life for a period and then come back and integrate it, and then it's more holistic again yeah, it's interesting how you can go away from certain strands for a week, months, years even, and when you pick it up, it's like it's just.

Speaker 2: 35:46

It's just like you're obviously picking it up with a greater amount of experience. You can contextualize that in a broader range of experience, but it really is like like riding the bike, like you know. Speaking to you now, it just feels like when I first started doing youtube youtube, um interviews on youtube in 2014, never mind 2024. You know it's like there's a running thread of a theme and then several of these running threads, but sometimes you have to escape them for a while and lose the thread and explore other things before you pick it up again. I feel like some kind of cosmic improvisation, like in the soap operas that people used to love so much before we had YouTube. They would just go on and, on day after day, characters would die, they'd lose their jobs, they'd come out of the show and then, two seasons later, they'd lose their jobs, they'd come out of the show and then, two seasons later, or they'd bring up, they'd bring back a character that they've, that that had left the show a couple of years ago. Surprise everyone, or?

Speaker 2: 36:53

you know, um, it's like there's all these threads. Sometimes I've learned things and I've been like I I got so excited about that. What does that all amount to? I was sure I was going to do something with that, and I never ended up doing anything with it. And then suddenly, five years later, you start learning something else and you see how those two things fit together. It's like there's a bunch of paintbrushes and paint colors there and you never know which one's going to appear in your hand tomorrow once you start painting. I've not touched, I've not done that, I've not touched that one for for years, but now I feel like it's the one I need to make use of right now yeah, I think that's beautifully said.

Speaker 1: 37:38

I think that's one of the wonderful things in life, that constant sort of and I suppose it also is reflected in the body, isn't it? Sometimes we're sleeping, sometimes we're awake, we're breathing in, we're breathing out, we're exercising, we're resting, we're out in the sun or we're in front of the fire in the winter. We have all these cycles, and I think one of the illusions that exists these days is that we're supposed to feel good all the time, we're supposed to feel the same all the time right, be good at everything all the time, but actually that's just not the case yeah, those are dangerous, you know.

Speaker 2: 38:17

But first of all, the belief that you, you need to feel good all the time. Um, the avoidance of unpleasant, like I think carl jung said, um, most neurosis is the product of the avoidance of legitimate suffering. In other words, you don't want to feel those bad feelings, so you become neurotic trying to avoid them. And someone else told me the other day I think it was just yesterday's some quote that most of man's problems come from not being able to sit alone in a dark room, or something which is more or less the same insight yes um, a lot of my healing, a lot of my my main meditation practices.

Speaker 2: 38:58

when I'm feeling unpleasant, it will be to sit and see where that emotion is in my body and try and absolutely accept that unpleasant emotion as much as I can. And it's amazing the breakthroughs I have from practicing that. That's usually when I get some deep insights and I realize where I need to go in my life. I feel like the incomplete emotion is like a package of information or let's say it's some food that you've not been able to metabolize because you're rejecting it.

Speaker 2: 39:33

Your body's rejecting it. What if your digestive system stopped saying I'm not allergic to this? Actually, this is for me. It's got food in it and you need to kind of unpack it to get to the nutrients. Then you go oh wow, okay, there was actually something in there for me.

Speaker 1: 39:49

I'm mixing my metaphors, but um I was actually, I was actually talking to someone on this exact metaphor, the other day I said you know if you eat a piece of steak.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Let's say if you're someone who eats meat. You eat a piece of steak and it goes down into your stomach. Now, digesting a piece of steak is quite hard work for the stomach, but the stomach doesn't go. Oh my God, it's a piece of steak. Okay, I'm going to have to just get some therapy before I can actually digest this piece. And the stomach sometimes goes all right, steak, all right. Then this enzyme, that thing, blah, do it, digest it. It goes through, it gets sorted out.

Speaker 3: 40:26

There's no kind of emotional drama about it, but we make such an emotional drama, we make such drama.

Speaker 1: 40:33

Oh, that person may upset me, you know.

Speaker 2: 40:36

Yeah, what am I going to do?

Speaker 1: 40:38

Okay, I'm really upset. Where is that in my body? What is going on with me? Oh right, Like you're saying, we give ourselves so many problems by doing that. It gets locked in our body and then we get tightness in the body and then we end up having difficulty walking and then we have to have a knee replaced all the drama that happens in our bodies a lot of it, I think, could be just undone by practicing exactly what you're talking about, you know, throughout our lives yeah you're not, obviously in control of all the external circumstances, but what you've just got is data coming in and then there's a reaction oh, I don't like that.

Speaker 2: 41:24

I mean, that's, um, not, you're like. Not liking what happens to you is not your freedom, it's a, it's a, it's slavery. Right, you know your preferences. Oh, I don't like this. So, like, you know they're, they're they're you think that's your freedom, but they're not helpful to you, because what you have to actually do is, like, stuff happens all the time. Right, I'm creating a blockage when I say, you know, when I don't go, okay, exactly what you're saying. Right, how am I going to deal with this? Oh, I don't like it. Why does this always happen to me?

Speaker 2: 41:58

It's so unfair. Even that has to be dealt with. You have to accept those parts of you that are like I'm trying to do something good here, you're meant to be helping me, you being the universe, god, whatever, and like why are you? Why are you making it more difficult? People get, seems, some how, whenever you try and change something major, you should anticipate resistance because it's going to happen. But there were two things you said there. One was, and I've forgotten one of them. One was um, people think we need to feel good all the time.

Speaker 1: 42:33

And there was a second thing there people think they should be good at everything all the time.

Speaker 2: 42:37

Oh, yeah, exactly, and that's obviously dangerous because you won't actually attempt to do things that you you'll stop at the first hurdle. You know you should do things that you're crap at. I realized, unfortunately, in my thirties, I wish I'd. I wish I'd got that earlier, you know, but sorry you had. You had a.

Speaker 1: 42:59

It looked like you had a thread to pull on there yeah, I can't remember now because I've now got swept up in the thing you said in response. The thing is talking to you, anthony, every sentence. There's so many threads that we could follow up on. You know we can't follow up on. That's another thing. We can't follow up on everything all the time.

Speaker 2: 43:16

There you go Right.

Speaker 1: 43:18

And this conversation is an example of that. We can just kind of go with where we're able to go.

Speaker 2: 43:27

Yeah, we're making a chi cascade because the listener will continue to cogitate upon the threads that we've opened and hopefully add something. You know just a few principles there. One, you're not always going to feel good. Two, you're not always going to be good at everything at everything, and that's okay. And three, a big one for me to come to peace with is you're not going to finish everything you start. And just because you don't finish it, just because it doesn't come to fruition, it doesn't mean you didn't learn something of value from pursuing it. And b, you never know when god's going to pick it up again and say okay, you dropped this theme 10 years ago, but I'm bringing back the theme because I'm the master storyteller and I know what to do with themes. So I think, if you look at it, that it's only when you're in scarcity and you think I won't be able to replicate that that you get in that mindset of, oh, I didn't finish that. No, make sure what you're doing right now is fulfilling, and if you want to finish that later, you can finish it. Like.

Speaker 2: 44:34

The apple tree creates so many apples, and how many of those apple seeds actually become apple trees themselves? Still, very few of them. Nature is abundant. It's only people who fail to thrive. We have the like, and that reminds me of that story from Carl Rogers. He said when he was a child there were these sacks of potatoes in the basement and they would never grow because they weren't in the earth. But there was just a small shaft of light coming in through the window in the cellar and some of the potatoes would shoot and they would send the shoots in the direction of where the line was coming into the cellar. So life fails to give up, refuses to give up, even in the most hopeless of conditions. And he saw his patients like that. They were not put in an environment where they could thrive, but they were doing their best. Life would still try and find a way.

Speaker 1: 45:43

And when you were talking about the freedom of spirit, the thing that just doesn't die, that fire that's always there, I was thinking because everything is synchronicity of what Carl Rogers would call the actualizing principle that exists in each human being, and I think you were both knocking on the same door there yeah, I totally agree, and I just want to come back to the thing you said very briefly but which I think is really true, where you said that this business of deciding that we don't like something we're feeling and then letting that kind of restrict us or close down, that is a form of self-enslavement, and I would go further and say that's a form of self-denial. We're not accepting ourselves in that moment, because ourselves in that moment is the experience that we're having. So if we really love ourselves and accept ourselves, that will include loving and accepting whatever it is that we're experiencing, which is not the same as loving and accepting the thing that's external to us, that's having an impact upon us. So the pain is ours. The person smacking us in the face is someone else, metaphorically, but the freedom comes from embracing all of the experiences.

Speaker 1: 47:09

There's a story that someone told me years ago that I love, which is set in a Tibetan monastery. The Chinese soldiers come over the mountain and they come and they take over the monastery. They've got the head of the monastery on his knees in the middle of the courtyard. The leader of the monastery is just looking absolutely calm. The soldier says how can you be so calm? Don't you realize I could run this sword through your head at any moment? The monk looks up at him and says do you realize I could have this sword through your head at any moment? And the monk looks up at him and says do you realize I could have you put that sword through my head at any time? Now I'm not suggesting any of us are capable of reaching that level right.

Speaker 2: 47:59

These stories are aspirational and they pave the way for that Zen acceptance of what will be.

Speaker 1: 48:06

Yeah, and the freedom that comes from that.

Speaker 2: 48:11

So I've got two more questions, then. First of all, when you were going through this process of coaching CEOs I think the sort of so awaken this part of it was awakening this awareness in them, I think, their autonomy, their way of what did the process look like and what transformation did you see in people when you were involved in this work?

Speaker 1: 48:42

Well, in the very first, first of the very first time I would meet one of them. I had a rule, which is no one was allowed to instruct somebody to work with me. So let's say the CEO wanted a member of the board to work with me. I would not accept someone being told they had to work with me. I would say I will only work with them if they call me and ask to meet me. So that was the first element. And that's unusual.

Speaker 1: 49:14

Most people in my line of work did not do that. So first off, the person had actually asked me to meet with them, so that meant they had an intention for something. Then we'd meet and I'd ask about the presenting reason for talking to me. They would tell me what it was and I would say okay, there's two ways we can go with this. We can do a shortish piece of work that addresses that thing that you have spoken about. We can do a shortish piece of work that addresses that thing that you have spoken about. Or we can do a much longer piece of work that allows you to completely transform your life and yourself as a leader in this organization and incorporate everything that really matters to you. Which way. Do you want to go Now? The majority of people would say they want to do the second one the people who said they wanted to do the first one in.

Speaker 1: 50:05

Usually the work didn't happen right because they didn't really want to grow. And someone can't spend much time in a room with me without realizing that if they don't want to grow, I'm not going to be much fun to spend time with right I'm talking about in a work context, you know, because I, because I'm just exuding this thing if there's so much possibility for us, all right so if someone's into that, they're going to want to work with me.

Speaker 1: 50:28

So that's a that whole initial thing. So they're great. So the first thing we're going to do is really get clear about what's true now in your life and we would do like a whole process of what's true now. What's true about me, what's true about my team, my organization, how do I feel? What matters to me right now? What am I achieving? Before even talking about changing anything, we did a really thorough like a personal SWOT analysis. You know strengths weaknesses, opportunity threats.

Speaker 1: 51:05

Now that on its own, for people, was quite often transformative, because the minute you tell the truth about what's true now, you automatically release enthusiasm, motivation, creativity. You know the spirit comes up and goes right. Oh right, right then.

Speaker 1: 51:23

Well, that's awesome, that thing there, I'm going to use it even more. That is no good. You know enough. I'm going to change it. You know that is it only when people are unaware of these things that they are cut off from those? So once they've got that, they then turn around and say, great, I want to transform this. What do we do now? I said, great, we do work on how you'd like things to be in every aspect, which we then did and then we'd make a transition plan to get from one to the other, and from that would come a whole series of themes that we would then work on, and I would use whichever techniques were appropriate to help them in relation to each theme. I mean, it was different for everybody because I'm trained in a whole number of modalities that I can help people with.

Speaker 1: 52:07

Often it just looked like we were talking, that things were being brought into play. Often they were going off and actually doing things in their life to practice things, try things out, explore things, research, investigate, and we would come back and go great, how did that go? What did you learn? What did it feel like? What effect did it have in the business? What effect did it have on the people around you. How are people responding to the fact you're doing this? Or sometimes, no one knew they were doing it. Sometimes that was part of the deal and I'd say, great, are people noticing anything yet? Yeah, people are telling me that this and this are different. They don't understand what's going on. Do they like it? Well, they like this, they don't like that. Okay, let's explore. And.

Speaker 1: 52:54

I'd often work with people for sort of 18 months in that way and they'd come and spend a day with me once a month.

Speaker 1: 53:03

That's when I was doing one-to-one or if I was working with the team. They would spend a day with me, one one-to-one, and then another day or day and a half with the group every couple of months. So it was like long, long, long, gradual work where we're weaving in all the different. A lot of things we've talked about today would be woven in all the way through until by the end of it, they were what we used to call self-directed learners, you know, where they could do their own self-assessment, their own visioning, their own transition planning and they could teach it to other people. So they were then teaching it to their people, developing their own coaching models, which they would then teaching it to their people, developing their own coaching models which they would then show me and go great, fantastic model great run with it, that's yours, Amazing, and that brings us to our current culmination, which is the most up-to-date form of this work you're doing, which are these up-and-coming freedom of spirit workshops.

Speaker 2: 54:04

What kind of things can people expect to learn and how are they going to evolve through this process? And what's this process look like without to the extent that you can share, when it's really a synergy rather than a teaching?

Speaker 1: 54:24

Absolutely, thank you. Well, it's a weekend workshop, the Saturday is a long day and the Sunday is a more civilized day, finished at 5.30. Everything I'm about to say is things that people could go and do on their own or with other teachers. The only thing about this workshop that's unique to this workshop is the way I've sequenced it and the particular style with which I'm going to deliver it. So if somebody's in the US or China or something, they could take these notions and they could create their own program, possibly with some help. So on the first day, we explore three main things. The first is we explore the ways in which we are denying our freedom of spirit to ourselves, the ways in which we're enslaving ourselves right now through the various habits and norms that we've developed in order to fit in and be accepted by the tribe that we're in, because when we're very young children, we don't care about anybody else, right?

Speaker 1: 55:34

But then we discover that we're going to have to pay attention to other people if we're going to be accepted and not just rejected or even put on drugs these days of children. So you've got to do that. But when you're very young you're not very sophisticated about how you do it, so you accidentally trap yourself in a whole number of things which then distances us from our sense of freedom. So we have to examine that to begin with and kind of get a sense of how we've done that and where we are with it. Once we've done that, we can start to reclaim by telling the truth about that and starting to reverse some of those habits and norms, so we can get back to a point where we've actually reclaimed our freedom of spirit. Now, the thing about cutting ourselves off from freedom of spirit it's also very, very disempowering as well as making us feel not free. So first we reclaim the sense of freedom and then we do some work on actually building on that and building power, taking back our power. So by the end of that first day we've done a lot of work to debug the system and start to build ourselves up as a result of doing that. Then, on the second day, which is going to be really good fun.

Speaker 1: 56:56

The whole morning is about, then, embodying freedom of spirit. So we're going to do work around physicality, energy, voice. A lot of people contact me and say, are you doing voice training anymore? And I'm like, not on its own. But actually this is where the whole thing about voice comes in. So in that morning we do a whole load of work around embodying freedom of spirit in multiple ways, and in the afternoon we do a whole piece of work around reintegrating freedom of spirit into ourselves and locking it in, anchoring it in and giving ourselves anchors and activators so that when we go back out into life and giving ourselves anchors and activators so that when we go back out into life, we can, if you like, really stimulate that insight and that experience at will. Because obviously you come out of a workshop and you're buzzing and then you go back into daily life. So I'm equipping people with some tools that they can use to go right. Let's pull myself back to my freedom of spirit. So that's unbelievably.

Speaker 2: 58:03

That's two days it sounds like it's like uh ivy for the soul. You know, when people get high, uh high quality, like a very dense vitamins or minerals, ivy is like uh the, the the equivalent of that, um, uh the, the best quality um compost for your garden with added kelp for iodine and mineral content, or whatever absolutely right and, and I mean, I think, the other thing is it's it's easy to get incredibly serious about these things and think I've got to be really earnest to get in touch with my freedom.

Speaker 1: 58:45

We're going to do it in a spirit of play all the way through because, otherwise that's not. Freedom of spirit is not about being overly serious. Some of us are serious, right, but that's the spirit of the play.

Speaker 2: 58:57

Yeah. I know, I know.

Speaker 2: 58:58

And I've always used that when I run workshops as well, especially people filtered in copic and there's a certain terraceness in the room and the first thing I'll do is more or less like be irreverent and tell some inappropriate joke or, you know, make a silly comment, that's a little bit whatever, and I instantly see people crack and go, oh it's it. When the mind's terraced and contracted, um, it's very. You're not loose, so it's hard to absorb. You don't have the same access to the freedom of spirit and I'm sure there'll be a lot of laughing and lightness they will be laughing, they will be swearing yeah, exactly, you don't want that.

Speaker 2: 59:43

Let you know that you want to be intense, but you don't want to be tense, totally, I like that very much yeah well, katherine, tell people where they can find you if they want to hear or see more.

Speaker 1: 1:00:01

Two places so Truth and Transcendence that you kindly mentioned before my podcast is fantastic, although I say it myself. I've been on twice, so it must be pretty good, precisely. Yeah, go and listen to Anthony on my podcast. He was amazing, aw, with really good episodes. I loved them.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

I liked it too, but every single guest brings something completely different, and it's such a trip hearing wisdom of all these incredible people. And then the other place is my website, which is beingspaceworld, and there are some free e-books on there. The podcast is on there, youtube is on there. There's a load of stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:00:48

Um, great. Thank you so much for joining me on the be yourself and love it podcast. Um, you can find me at be yourself and love itcom. So until next time, be yourself, but don't just be yourself. Be yourself and love it. Thank you again.

Speaker 1: 1:01:05

Catherine thank you. Thank you for listening to truth and transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.