Navigating Success and Trauma

As I sit across from Julian Russell, his story unfolds like an intricate tapestry, revealing the vibrant threads of his aristocratic lineage interwoven with the somber hues of his family's history during the Holocaust. This episode peels back layers of privilege and pain, as Julian recounts his departure from a predestined life of ease to forge a trail of self-discovery and empowerment. Our dialogue traverses the transformative cultural tides of the 1970s, the era that beckoned him to pursue a deeper calling, and the birth of his Life Talent Program, aimed at guiding others to their own profound revelations and purpose.

The heart of our conversation pulses with the complexities of childhood trauma, as I unveil the shadows cast by my mother's heroic yet haunting wartime service and how PTSD fractured the tender bonds of family. We grapple with the enduring scars of such experiences, and I share the catharsis found through therapy and spiritual growth, including the poignant moment I embraced the bodhisattva vow to honor my late brother. Julian and I explore the necessity of addressing our inner conflicts to not only mend but also to enrich the lives of others, exemplifying the healing power of introspection and the promise of legacy in the light of personal transformation.

In the closing moments of our discussion, we contemplate humanity's deepest challenges—from the silent reverberations of transgenerational trauma to the urgent call to safeguard our planet. The stories of our ancestors and the lessons of history serve as both cautionary tales and beacons of resilience, prompting us to make sustainable choices and embrace our role in the world's unfolding narrative. With Julian by my side, we reflect on the joy of living fully, the audacity to seek adventure, and the unwavering commitment to personal integrity and collective responsibility, leaving our listeners with a sense of hope and the inspiration to craft their own journey towards a more harmonious existence.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents 

Transcript

Malcolm Stern: 0:46

Welcome to Slay your Dragons with Compassion, my podcast, which is run in conjunction with my wonderful friends at online events, and what I'm doing is interviewing a number of people who have extraordinary experiences. Sometimes they can be quite ordinary people with extraordinary experiences, but I'm interviewing people to find out what are the obstacles, what are the dragons they've had to slay in order to become who they are out, what are the obstacles, what are the dragons they've had to slay in order to become who they are, and what directions have their lives taken and what is their particular story. So, and the great thing is, I get to interview quite a lot of friends, and who I'm interviewing today is a very close friend, julian Russell, who was best man at my wedding in 1987, which sort of dates this quite a long way back that we go, and Julian has had quite a sort of like an interesting life, and we'll find out a bit more about that in a while, but first I'd like to say a big welcome to Julian Russell. Hi, julian.

Julian Russell: 1:43

Nice to be here with you, malcolm. Great, I'm glad someone thinks my life has been interesting.

Malcolm Stern: 1:50

Well, I hope you're not going to disabuse us of that. Well, maybe.

Julian Russell: 1:54

I'll find it more interesting as the interview progresses. You probably will.

Malcolm Stern: 1:59

But I think what's interesting, we met in the early 1980s and we both worked together in an organisation called Nucleus Network which was exploring at the time the different organisations who were involved in new age activities new age as a terminology then for spiritual activities and there were lots of very weird and wonderful organizations. But I remember having a dream about you after we'd met that you were driving a rolls royce and and I sort of like it was. That was quite interesting. It's sort of like where did that come from?

Malcolm Stern: 2:30

And then I discovered that actually you'd been very come from a very privileged background and you were at Harrow Public School and and you could easily have gone a direction of of being a big businessman or of sort of finding something that would allow you to sort of make your way in the world in a big way, something that would allow you to sort of make your way in the world in a big way. And you've done that because I think you were one of the original people who was involved with NLP neuro-linguistic programming early on. But your life took a very different direction than your fathers would have done and that your other family members would have done. So perhaps you can tell us a little bit about what took you out of the sort of the mainstream where you would have fitted very easily and I could have seen you even as a Tory politician at one point.

Julian Russell: 3:17

I would never have been a Tory politician, but yeah, but actually I have different, you know. So I've got aristocratic lineage from the Duke of Bedford and then my great-grandfather, lord Arthur Russell. But they married into a family that was half German and half Jewish. The Jewish part of the family got wiped out in the Holocaust in Berlin and there were some German members left in Berlin at the time. So on the one hand I've got this incredible mix of the sort of privilege of the British upper classes, colonial empire, all of that, and then I've got being wiped out in the Holocaust. All of that is flowing through my genetic history, my transgenerational history, and then I've got some British military class. They were the ones who went and did the dirty work for the empire.

Julian Russell: 4:12

I'm really glad to say that the Germans in my lineage who were in Berlin during the Second World War, you know, were old ladies, you know. Thank God it wasn't some of the nasty, really nasty folk. So I do have all of that. It's really a sort of complex background and I wouldn't want to overemphasize the British upper class background, although that's what we identified with and it's true that you know one of the people I went to school with all ended up as chief executives or chief financial officers of big institutions or senior military officers. Many of them ended up in those sorts of roles.

Julian Russell: 4:49

So the I mean I come from a really messed up family and I'll say more about that.

Julian Russell: 4:53

I didn't really understand how messed up it was in my teenage years, but I do remember a moment when I didn't do well at school, I didn't behave particularly well, and a teacher was really being benevolent and he looked at me and he said you come on, julian, if you just pull your socks up a bit more, you could make a good life for yourself. But I looked at him, I looked at how miserable he was and his unhappy life and I thought to myself I don't want a life like yours. And fortunately at that time sort of 1971, something like that there was all the sort of new age, alternative, new thinking, revolution taking place and so there was already the possibility of having a different life in the culture, in the field in England at that time and I just thought I'm not going to have a life like yours, I'm going to follow my own path. I think that was the first time that I really decided that I was going to follow my own path.

Malcolm Stern: 5:48

So what is if you were to sort of give me a headline for it? What is your life now? I mean, I know quite a bit about it, but it's like I'd love to have you share. What do you do?

Julian Russell: 5:57

Okay, so what I do is there are two things- Actually this year I'll tell you what I'm doing this year.

Julian Russell: 6:04

First, this year I'm taking quite a bit of a sabbatical in, including walking 500 miles across mountains on my own with a rucksack and a tent, because I'm really this year, particularly for myself, exploring my inner space, the space of of peace in myself. What I generally do is run workshops on how to fulfill your potential in life, and I have individual clients who do that. I have a 20-day program called the Life Talent Program, which is about so how do you give your gift to the world? How do you fulfill your potential through giving your gift to the world? How do you fulfill your potential through love? And how do you fulfill your potential in facing the human condition, of which one part is the bliss and the beauty and the magnificence of life and the other is the great suffering and agony of existence? How do you deal with all of that?

Julian Russell: 6:59

Um, I could be a trainer of coaches. I could be a trainer of psychotherapists, but I'm more interested in helping human beings be the most that they can be. So that's what I do one-to-one clients and training courses. This year I'm not doing so much, but I am going to Greece and I am going to China twice this year to teach, but most of this year, I'm glad to say, will be spent on a 90-day walk through mountains.

Malcolm Stern: 7:27

That's a great thing to give yourself as well. We have a whole concept of sabbaticals, but we actually don't really find the time. That's what I find. I think I'll take a holiday and I rarely do but you've actually given yourself a really big chunk of time, and what do you want to achieve in that three months? What do you imagine that's going to bring you?

Julian Russell: 7:46

Well, I want. I'm a little bit coy about it, because I had a famous Buddhist teacher who I was very close with until he died, but for nearly 20 years, and I was spending two and a half months a year with him, of which one of those months was usually a solitary retreat, and one of the things that he taught us was never to talk about our spiritual experiences, never to predict them or talk about them, because you know you put words on them and then you want to make yourself sound like a big shot and instead of reducing the size of your ego, you are increasing the size of your ego. So, but I so what I want is I essentially I want to do a meditation retreat, but rather than sitting cross legged, I want to. Wouldn't it be great to be walking and camping and in nature, in the natural world? So I want to just really feel into my own direct experience.

Julian Russell: 8:40

All of that exercise will have a really amazing effect on both my body, my emotion, my mind and my spirit and just be really open to what it is that is calling me in the rest of my life. So when you start out with personal development, it's really great to find your life calling. But later down the path you want to listen to how life is calling you, and so that's what I want to do this summer, and I already know how life is calling me, and so that's what I want to do this summer, and I already know how life is calling me. But I think there'll be some nuances and some depth and deepness and clarity that will come from I'm hoping that will come from this big trip.

Malcolm Stern: 9:22

Well, I was very aware that you spent, I think, something like 20 years with your Buddhist teacher and you had a very intensive meditation practice. You were very, very disciplined and, uh, and there's something about giving yourself to that that practice, to being utterly disciplined and, um, are you still disciplined, is that?

Julian Russell: 9:41

I am. I'm still, but I'm disciplined in a different way because, because as you progress along the path, the what is required of you changes. At the early stages you just need to be, you know, super, almost like regimented, disciplined, and then later on you can relax a bit. It seems like it should be the other way around, but it's actually, you know, if you talk about so a buddha nature is present all the time. So the question is can I be aware of it? When you're a beginner, you don't really know that. So you have to sort of force yourself into the experiences of the sacred, you have to push yourself into that. Later on, you start to notice that it's there, um, all the time.

Julian Russell: 10:22

What I would say to people about discipline is that you know it really, if you want um to connect with the sacredness of life, to the fact that you are one with the universe, that you came out of non-existence into existence, just like the universe did, it's all a part of the same thing. You're a, you're a wave on an ocean, but the wave isn't really separate from the ocean. It has a unique identity for a short amount of time, but it doesn't matter whether you're a christian, a jew, a muslim, sufi, a buddhist or any of the or you know um an indigenous tradition. It doesn't matter. What matters is following a path with the heart and really going as deep as you can into that connection.

Julian Russell: 11:03

Um, that's the most important thing, um and everybody, people every day, should have a practice, have some time when they stop and they give up um, you know that sort of making stuff happen bit of life. And they come to this, to in this very moment, something extraordinary is taking place, which is my existence, my consciousness, the existence of the world, the, the existence of life.

Malcolm Stern: 11:31

And presumably that's not what you were educated in at Harrow Public School.

Julian Russell: 11:35

No, I wasn't. I mean, I have to say that Harrow was really good for me because my family was really messed up and it was really great to be out of the toxic field. It was a good school and they had something really which I really liked, which was they didn't expect you to be academic but they wanted to help you find one thing that you were good at. It could be a sport, it could be art, One thing. That's what they were interested in. So I actually I really look back with fondness on that, and they were quite liberal at the time and they did know.

Julian Russell: 12:07

I mean, one of my jokes is that I was trained to run the British Empire but there wasn't one left when I left school. And that's not really quite true because they already knew. The teachers were, all you know, well educated, probably, you know, on the left of centre, and they knew that all of that was over, but they were still in the paradigm of you know. You know, you are here to run society, you, you are here to be a leader of society.

Malcolm Stern: 12:34

Um, so what took you away from the, the, the obvious path where you could easily have gone into business? I think, um, your dad owned a merchant bank.

Julian Russell: 12:43

As far as I, he did, yeah, but he had a merchant bank and he went bankrupt uh, the merchant bank went bust, so that wasn't he actually asked me to join it. I could have been there when the bank went bust, um, but fortunately I didn't. So the first thing was that call from you know, looking into the eyes of this teacher and just saying, oh, I must find a different way.

Julian Russell: 13:06

And then after that I actually quite quickly you see synchronicity, accidentally was going through Scotland was interested in Tibetan Buddhism. There was a center in Scotland. I went to a teaching there and there was only, I think, two students in the class, a translator and a famous Tibetan master and he taught a very, very high teaching and we were the only three people there. It was just quite, and I understood it straight away. I have to say that it just made complete sense to me and then I slightly drifted away from that.

Julian Russell: 13:43

I, um, I actually found in the forestry commission, in the forest near near that Tibetan Buddhist center, a cottage that was run down and sort of wrecked but with a dry roof for five pounds a week and I was going to go and do a retreat there. And somehow I got called back to London and I bumped into you and I bumped into various other people and together we formed this thing, nucleus Network, which was to really see how the world could be different looking at all the different psychological, spiritual, economic, environmental initiatives that were happening at that time, and we created that amazing organization. So, yeah, that was the start in a way.

Malcolm Stern: 14:29

And we were very you know. It was about to enter into a new age and everything was going to be love, light and peace. That's how I thought at that time, and I think we had great ideas of how we were on the cusp of change. But actually the world is not turned out the way that I would have expected. And yet I feel like both you and I have been drawn to following paths, as you say, a path with a heart and a path that has some discipline, a path that gives meaning to life. Because when you go through all sorts of disasters and, as you know, I lost my daughter, melissa, to suicide, but your brother, your twin brother, you lost him along the way as well, and perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that, if that's OK. I could.

Julian Russell: 15:14

But actually there's something more important that I want to talk about, which really precedes that, which was that actually both of us my twin, so my twin brother died of a heroin overdose in I think it was 1998. But really that was just a product of a really toxic childhood. My mother was from a military family and wanted to be a soldier in the Second World War, and the only place that she could be in the front line was as a woman was in the Free French Army. So she joined the Free French Army as an ambulance driver and she won two of the highest French medals the Croix de Guerre for rescuing people under fire, and in fact one of the medals she got was artillery. Shells went through her ambulance but because the sides were made of canvas, they didn't explode. So she had PTSD. She was a really cool woman, but she had PTSD and she didn't connect with her children. She wasn't able to really show love in an obvious way. Our needs weren't met as babies and she went back to work within a week and we were then taken care of by a succession of carers and that's you know. In a way, some of the people that you've interviewed have had these massive life events, but actually these really subtle things like, um, um, lack of proper attachment as a baby, that will, that will, um, you know, change you for life, affect you for life.

Julian Russell: 16:45

And I remember from an early, very, very early age, my brother and I fighting because we were fighting over this limited commodity of love, uh, of attention. And then, you know so we did. We didn't get on very well in school, uh, you know so. And when he became a heroin addict at the age of 18, I remember thinking I'm not, I need to. Just there was things going on between us. He was, he was very difficult to be around and I decided that I had to save my own life. Both my father was going bankrupt, my and was alcoholic, my twin brother was a junkie and hanging out with bad people. And I just thought I've got to save my own life.

Julian Russell: 17:26

And I had my spiritual, I had the beginnings of a good spiritual practice, but I realized that I was pretty messed up and, thank God, I went and did lots of psychotherapy and you know, my recommendation to people is that if you know to fulfill your potential in life, you need really to understand yourself psychologically and spiritually. There's a theosophist saying, which is to find yourself is half the way to God and to lose yourself, and all the way is trod. And so it's that balance of finding yourself. And people who just go to the spiritual can have something called spiritual bypass, where they're pretending that everything is great but they're not dealing with their unconscious feelings, their repressed feelings, and, you know, they can feel unhappy and they wake up in the morning they don't feel quite right with themselves and they've got anger that leaks out or they've got anxiety. So it's really the, the psychological development and the spiritual development. I did a lot of therapy. You know I've probably had about five different therapists during the course of my life. I actually believe that to fulfill one's potential life, one should have a, you know, one should be doing that sort of deep inner work for the whole of one's life. There's no point in which you've got there or got the answer. Um, and that is true for the great masters, the enlightened people that I've met they're still growing and developing themselves. Um, so that's what I did, um, spiritual practice.

Julian Russell: 18:54

Oh, and then something really important relating to my brother, which was your original question, which was so he died in 1999 and that was the first year. I'd already been connected with my buddhist master for a number of years, but that year I went to France, to the center in France, and my Buddhist teacher decided that there was there's a vow called the bodhisattva vow, which is when you, you take a vow to have all other beings enter nirvana before you enter nirvana. You're going to make, you're going to make way for them, help them get to nirvana before you enter nirvana. You're going to make, you're going to make way for them, help them get to nirvana before you get there yourself. And the date he chose was the was my birthday, which, of course, is my twin brother's birthday. Uh, so on the first birthday after he died, I took that vow and I can't tell you how I was just sobbing all day and I was partly doing it. You know, I was doing it for both of us, I was doing it for myself, but I was also doing it, um for him and I am.

Julian Russell: 20:04

I was talking, I talked to a psychotherapist who you know, um, harvey carman um, and he said to me he, pre a couple of years earlier, he said you know, the one person you can't help in your life is your twin brother, because, because you can't see the wood from the trees. You're too close to the family system. And so then, at that time, I made a vow, which was if I can't help my brother, I'll help other people. And then recently, a few years ago in China, I was standing in the training room with 60 people doing deep work and I suddenly felt my brother's presence next to me and I suddenly remembered oh, I'm still doing what it was that I said I would do, and it was like my brother was really happy because in some way I was fulfilling through my life something that was his life was meaningful, through the way that I was making a difference in the world, something like that.

Malcolm Stern: 21:00

So very sort of, very touching, but of course, you know there's a lot more I could say about it well, essentially because I think you know, as you're not quite the elder, that I am, but you're not far off as well at this stage. But, um, I think there's something I'm still a young man, you will. Of course you are julian, but, but there's something about I'm still a young man.

Malcolm Stern: 21:16

You will, Of course you are, julian, but there's something about reaching a certain stage in our lives where what was important before, what drove us before, doesn't drive us any longer, and I'm starting to experience that. It may be that you haven't hit that moment yet. But I start to experience. Now I'm looking at legacy. Now I'm looking at what do I want to fulfil with the rest of my life, and I've got ideas around that and I'm wondering what your legacy idea is.

Julian Russell: 21:45

I don't know, because I'm so in the Buddhist path. You realise that the you is a sort of illusion and that everything's ephemeral and that, for I'm much less interested in who I am, and so the idea that having a legacy is not really an important one for me, because who is, who is the me? You know, this is sort of an artificial construct, so, but there is something about. You know, I have limited time. You know every single human being has limited time left on my, on the earth. But I'm less, you know, I'm more aware of the limited time I have left, and I have good genes and stuff. So I could, you know I could live for a long time, but there is a sense of what is important in my life and what. You know, what do I want to attend to? To? And that's part of the reason for this long walk, um, because for me, the most important thing is really being connected with presence, with spirit, with buddha, nature, with um, living from the great mystery we are. You know the kingdom of heaven is within. You know it says in the new testament, well, within's, in here. So you know the great mystery is here, um, so I want to live more clearly from that place. That's, I think, one thing I'd like. And then the other thing. It's not exactly about legacy, but I am aware that I'm.

Julian Russell: 23:19

You know, I'm writing this massive book, 180,000 words. I've got really a lot more to say about how people fulfill their potential in life and that I really want to focus that. And one of the differences now is that I don't really need to earn money like I used to need to earn money. You know I've got. You know I've got my finances sorted out so I can really focus on. In the past I worked a lot with senior people in organizations and they only wanted to grow this much. That's fine, you know they wanted their boss's job or something. I don't need to do that work anymore. I want to really focus on having people have an experience of life where on their last breath, they say wasn't that great, you know, when they really can feel that they've traveled the journey of the, of the great mystery that they came here for.

Malcolm Stern: 24:16

That's what I'm interested in um, and probably that's quite rare, isn't it? I think for a lot of people there's a sort of sense of of having their lives snatched away from them. At the end they're not ready to go. And I remember talking to Eckhart Tolle and sort of him saying, when he goes, he goes. And I could see he was at peace with the fact that at some point he will die and he's not giving that a lot of energy either.

Julian Russell: 24:44

And he's not giving that a lot of energy either. Yeah, I sort of can imagine that if you had done everything that you needed to do in your life, if you were satisfied with your life, then you'd say hey wow.

Julian Russell: 24:55

The next adventure and being satisfied with your life does not mean that you've achieved everything that you wanted to achieve. It doesn't mean that at all. It means that you've recognized that that life is great and life is difficult and that some things have worked well for you and some things haven't worked so well, and you have compassion about everything that you've experienced in life and you've forgiven yourself for everything, and that you're at peace with yourself. It's not that you've, you know, nobody has a perfect life. Eckhart Tolle doesn't have a perfect life, but Eckhart Tolle is at peace with himself. You know, I would assume my buddhist teacher was at peace with himself. So, to be at the point where you say I've really given my all in this journey, I haven't, um, you know, I've forgiven myself, I've forgiven other people. Um, I'm, you know, I've done everything I can. That's that's what I want to help people with. But also that can include doing some amazing project, you know, uh, doing something, you know. You know, I mean a lot of my friends think I'm crazy walking across a mountain with a tent and, uh, you know all my food supplies and all of that stuff. You know, the other day I thought maybe I should go and be an ambulance driver in gaza. You know what? What are the things that you know? What is it that that really calls you into? What? What is it in the life that calls you? Go and do it never be too old to follow what calls you? Um, you know, yeah, it's like what really, really touches your heart and how can you lean more closely into that?

Julian Russell: 26:38

Um, there's also talking about aging. You know there are some really negative self-fulfilling prophecies around aging. You know, people start to stoop, people start to act old. Um, in some ways it's worse for women because we're in a patriarchal culture that values women for their looks, whereas men can be valued for their brains more. That's changing, but there's still a lot of that around.

Julian Russell: 26:59

But you have to, you know, let go of all the conditioning that society wants to give you about your age and say well, inside I feel. How do I feel inside? My joke is that you know, you know, I feel like a. Well, I do feel. In some ways I feel like a 35 year old. My knees don't bang quite so well, I've got tons of energy. Sometimes I need to sleep a bit more. So what is it that? What is the next adventure? What is the next opening, what's the next opportunity for people? I've just taken up a form of dance or contact improvisation which is for very bendy young people. Basically, you're rolling around on the floor, you have to fall over. You know we were doing an exercise the other day where you had to hold another person and both of you had to fall to the floor at the same time.

Malcolm Stern: 27:46

My creaky body really difficult, but it's challenging me to to um, to become more bendy and more stretchy um I think that's one of the things I see in you is that is that you, you do rise to challenges. It's like you are very much an explorer of life and, um, you, you do have rich experience. I mean, I'm actually envious is probably the wrong word about your journey through the mountains, but I think there's something very powerful about giving yourself the time to take a few months to do a solo walk across the mountains. I think that's profound. I'm wondering what some, what dragons you've had to slay. This is the sort of the title of this series is what have you had to overcome to become who you are and what you are becoming?

Julian Russell: 28:34

Actually I don't believe in slaying dragons. Actually I believe in tickling their tummies and going. You know, you know, st George, he didn't't say any dragons at all um you know, he wasa tag. He was turkish, uh, father was turkish and mother was syrian, and he was a member of the roman empire, and, um, he died in palestine. Um, so, um, what dragons have I? I know what you mean, though. What shadows have I had to face? That's really it?

Malcolm Stern: 29:04

What are the demons that have beset you? How have you, how have you dealt with them?

Julian Russell: 29:10

And I mean the biggest one was Believing, not feeling loved as a child, and believing it was because there was something wrong with me. There was something wrong with me. You know that second part is almost worse than the first part, because there must be something wrong with me if I wasn't loved as a child in the way that children need to be loved. That's been really one of the biggest ones, and then that thing about something must be wrong with me. Both affected me in relationships, but also in terms of how I faced the world and did my work and all of those sorts of things and really, from childhood, almost felt like an outsider. I didn't have friends at school, you know, until my 20s I didn't really have friends. Then I discovered that one thing I did you see, there's always a positive, because there were different women carers, au pair, girls in my childhood. You know, as a child, you need to connect. So I learned to connect with these young women who were caring very, very quickly, and when I got to my 20s the people. I didn't have any friends, but I discovered that I could empathize with women better than most men could, and so then my friendship circle became women and that's how I became more confident about myself, as well as psychotherapy and spiritual practice. So that's the sort of, that's the big, the big wound, and there is the one that I'm.

Julian Russell: 30:35

One of the wounds that I'm exploring now that I haven't really thought much about was this very complicated transgenerational wound, you know. So one part of my family, you know, is really entitled but also created the British Empire, which was really pretty horrific. We did some horrific things in the world that the consequences are being acted out today, so that sort of combination of entitlement and guilt about what we did. Then there's the sort of I have physical tension in my body which is is chronic and that probably comes from the military class. You know the oppressor. There's a really great book called my Grandmother's Hands which is about racism in America.

Julian Russell: 31:15

But what the trainer does, which is so touching he's a black guy. He shows them a picture of the police officers that he's teaching, a picture of a lynching, and they say what do you see? And they very embarrassingly and ashamedly describe what's happening to the black people. He says no, look at the expressions on the faces of the white people. When you look in their eyes you can see they've all got PTSD, because guess what, the oppressor gets PTSD. If you have to go and do horrible things to people, you will end up with ptsd. And I carry some transgenerational trauma about that from the military class in my background.

Julian Russell: 31:54

Then I've got the you don't exist, you'll be wiped out any moment from the jewish, german, jewish part. You know it's sort of then you, you've got. The Irish bit of me is sort of like let's being oppressed by the English, you know, and it's all tangled up and confused. At one moment I feel incredibly entitled and the next moment I'm going to be wiped out. So that's what I'm currently working with. But and also there's something about the British legacy which is of that pull your socks up, don't show emotion, don't connect deeply, don't be in touch with your feelings. You know I was born in 1955, which was 10 years after the Second World War, and I carry that sort of attitude that was needed to get Britain through the Second World War and it's still in my body today and I have to be compassionate with myself for being a man born at the time I was born. Does that, is that helpful?

Malcolm Stern: 32:55

Yeah, that's, that's good. I'm that period after the war where it felt like everything was starting to free up as well, where we had the 70s and the 60s and the time of love and light and peace and all of that and no wars. It feels like we had a brief hiatus of maybe 60 years and now we're back in the place where it feels quite threatening to be in the world again.

Julian Russell: 33:21

Absolutely, and I think one of the things we underestimated thinking about personal psychology and stuff was you know I was brought into a time of peace. You know there was rationing when I was born but it ended quite quickly. But what we forgot, you know, and I think about you, for example, you know that we all carry the transgenerational memories and you know so many of you know the jewish people I know have got either from the holocaust or from the pogroms of eastern europe and the soviet union, carrying sort of ancestral memories that are very, in some ways, very unconscious. You sort of think, well, I'm a modern person of modern time and those sort of unconscious memories really impact us all. And then so of course, with with war in gaza at the moment, then that's being really triggered in all the jewish people I know and also those ancestral memories are being touched in all the jewish people I know and also, of course, in in all the Jewish people I know, and also, of course, in all the Arab cultures which were oppressed by Europe and Britain and France and Belgium and all those countries.

Julian Russell: 34:28

So one of the things that I'm interested in we need to do to heal the world is to somehow find a way of helping people look at the transgenerational, the ancestral trauma they have have and to bring healing to that, rather than just to see the world through the lenses of our ancestors. Um, and that's something I'm doing for myself, but it's also something I want to offer for other people. My, my path is I explore stuff for myself and then I offer what I've learned to other people.

Malcolm Stern: 34:56

That's I think that's, that's probably a wise path. And I think you know I've only realised fairly recently that I have been quite subtly brainwashed through my schooling, through my religion, through quite a lot of things that have happened in my life, that I've actually believed things to be how they are, and having to undo all of that and find out who I am through experience and also through taking the path of supporting others in their growth and learning through others as well. And for me, this podcast series is part of um going to places with people to explore what makes them tick and what have been their formula, to find their way through the sort of like the the labyrinth that is the human existence I think one you know the most important things.

Julian Russell: 35:44

You know psychotherapists and coaches and trainers want to come up with a very complicated super duper. You know extra plus model that you know that makes them famous and makes them earns them lots of money. But really the most important thing is to be witnessed with a loving heart and really clear presence. That is the most powerful healing quality of all to have oneself witnessed with full presence, and that's what I'm interested in. It's like if we could witness a person's story and we witnessed that person, both the positive but also to be really compassionate with the most difficult feelings or the most shameful parts of their experience then healing can take place naturally. And that you know, and techniques are very helpful to support that. But this is even more important than those, those techniques. Um, the other thing I just want to mention which is super important, which is you know, we are individuals, we are community, a collective consciousness, humanity, mind. We are nature. A very small part of our brain thinks in a linear, logical way and education has has overly dominated our focus on that part. The rest of our body just works the way forest works. It's just works like nature.

Julian Russell: 37:16

And yet, the most important thing for the survival of the species is not supported by capitalism. You know, we are not willing to spend the money that we need to spend for the species to survive, and this is going to be the big challenge of the next hundred years. I don't know whether we will succeed or not, because governments are so short term, particularly democratic governments. You know the next election. We've got to radically change our behaviour to have a liveable planet. I don't know whether it's going to happen or not. So that's one of the things when we can't just think of ourselves as individuals, we can't just think of ourselves as community, we can't just. We have to think of ourselves as nature and we need to think of ourselves as nature and we need to think of ourselves. You know, every single being in the universe has come out of nothingness into somethingness. We're all a part of the same something you know do creative process. Yeah, you know we're. And for people on this, people and beings on this planet, we're all in it together.

Malcolm Stern: 38:26

Yes, and I think that's what you're practising, that's what you're living. I totally understand that as well, and that if we are to survive, we have to evolve. And I think that it's really interesting because Joanna Macy is a wonderful, wise woman. Yeah, it's about that. We're at the time of the great turning, where we're either going to survive and develop ourselves and evolve into what we can become, or we're going to disappear. But no matter what, we have to act as though we're going to survive and we have to keep feeding the planet. We have to keep feeding the people we are in relationship with.

Julian Russell: 39:05

I don't know you know, I think the prognosis isn't very good. But there's a guy from something called extinction rebellion. He started extinction rebellion just stop oil, insulate britain. And I went to a talk that he did. Actually it was at a christian festival and he stood up and he was like an old testament prophet and he had fire burning out of his eyes. He was saying you're all gonna go to hell and he's shouting at us all and he said well. And then he said well, if you don't believe in hell, you know you're gonna. You know, what are you gonna say to your grandchildren when the world is burning up and they say what, grandpa, what did you do? Actually, I don't have children, you know I won't have grandchildren.

Julian Russell: 39:47

But that feeling of when people ask me 2050, uh, um, what did I do? And I say nothing, um, that's not going to feel very good. Um, and so the thing about hope is it? There's two sorts of hope. Um, there's a sort of hope it'll all be fine in the end. You know it'll work out. We've got technology or we'll all evolve.

Julian Russell: 40:11

That um could lead to inaction. What we need is a little bit. Or I'll have hope because I'm going to take some action. If I take some action, my friend malcolm may take some action. If I take some action, my friend Malcolm may take some action, and then his friends. You know I can't do it all on my own, but you know the swallows murmuration when you get hundreds of thousands of swallows all flying together, flocking together. I'm hoping that there will be some sort of murmuration of humanity when we all decide stuff this of humanity, when we all decide stuff this which you know it's not survival of the planet. Or drive electric cars you know survival of the planet. Or have to spend money insulating our houses survival of the planet. Or, um, take less holidays by plane and take the train a bit more. It's like you know. You know survival of the planet, you know, and I'm hoping that we'll get there maybe a bit too late, but maybe not so late that it's a complete obliteration.

Malcolm Stern: 41:17

On that happy note. That's where we'll close out.

Julian Russell: 41:20

Let me end with one more happy note. The happy note is notice, if I'm really aligned with myself and really, then I can, just I can be the best I can be, do what I can, and after that it's up to spirit. You know, whatever you know, I've played my part, be have integrity, live as best as I can, help as many people as I can, and after that, well, it's up to the rest of us, it's up to spirit, it's up to you know well, uh, I think we're.

Malcolm Stern: 42:00

There's an ancient chinese curse that says may you live in interesting times yeah, we certainly live in interesting times. Yeah, we certainly live in interesting times. I want to thank you very much, julian, for coming on this morning, and really good to see you and good to see that your spirit is still strong and that you're still striving out and adventuring as well.

Julian Russell: 42:17

So I hope that happens till the candle blows out. Yeah, exactly, I hope to be on a mountain or wherever, in a kayak, on a river when I die Sounds great, lovely to see you.

Malcolm Stern: 42:32

Thank you so much. Be in touch.

Julian Russell: 42:35

Lots of love, Martin.

Malcolm Stern: 42:36

Lots of love.