Embarking on a Spiritual Odyssey: From Shadows of Fear to Beacons of Love and Forgiveness

Have you ever encountered a story that shook you to your core, yet left you inspired and filled with a newfound understanding of love and compassion? Our latest episode introduces the incredible Geoff, a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter and spiritual teacher, whose life is a profound narrative of overcoming the darkest of trials through the light of forgiveness and inner transformation. Geoff pulls back the curtain on his past, marked by childhood abuse and the subsequent battle with fear and depression, and how he emerged as a beacon of strength for others facing similar struggles.

Embark on a spiritual odyssey with us as Geoff unveils the transformative power of writing, martial arts, and the profound teachings of Kabbalah and the Zohar. His insights into the destructive force of fears and the healing potential of love are not just philosophical musings but lived experiences. As he shares his method of turning inner monsters into mere shadows, we explore the depths of our own internal battles and how facing them can lead to immeasurable growth. Geoff's journey serves as a testament to the idea that confronting the darkest parts of ourselves opens the door to becoming vessels of a supernatural love.

This episode promises to leave you moved and possibly changed, as we examine the ripple effects of personal transformation on the world around us. Geoff's encounter with a rough sleeper named Evil and the symbolic cleansing that followed is a powerful illustration of how, by changing our own perceptions and acting from a place of love, we can truly make a difference. Tune in for a conversation that's as much about healing oneself as it is about extending that healing touch to the world, demonstrating the profound impact of service, forgiveness, and compassion.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents 

Transcript

Malcolm Stern: 0:46

Welcome to my podcast, slay your Dragons With Compassion, which is done in conjunction with my wonderful friends at online events, and this has been a series of podcasts that I've been doing, interviewing people who have a story to tell, people who've come through some sort of adversity and found a route through, and I've had some amazingly interesting characters on here.

Malcolm Stern: 1:08

Some are well known, some are not so well known, but at the end of the day, people have made major strides in their lives through adversity and I'm really delighted to welcome, interestingly today, someone I haven't met before. So this is our first dialogue will be this podcast, but I was recommended very highly through my friend James, saying that you were an extraordinary man, and I've looked you up on Wikipedia, I've listened to a little bit of you and I can see you've got a fantastic story to tell. So Jeff is basically a BAFTA award winning script writer, screenwriter sorry filmmaker, spiritual teacher and martial artist, and comes from very humble beginnings and is now considered rated one of the top karate experts in the world. But you've obviously gone through a lot in your life, jeff, so can you tell us a little bit about what's been your story?

Geoff Thompson: 2:02

Yeah, well, my story started off. You know, I was a young guy and I was going to trip the light, fantastic. I was going to change the world. I've these ambitions to do amazing things. And my trajectory was interrupted at the age of 11 when I was groomed and abused by a teacher martial arts teacher and it was devastating for me.

Geoff Thompson: 2:26

Every decision I made after that that impact what they were in in Islam they would call it Sabra, or impact, you know, like a wound. Every decision I made after that was determined by that one incident. I didn't trust anybody. I didn't trust teachers, specifically, I didn't trust my parents. I didn't trust my parents. I didn't trust anybody. I felt abandoned by everybody. I felt abandoned by God, which is which is, of course, what any kind of parasitical force that enters you. That's what it wants you to feel. It wants you to feel isolated. I definitely felt isolated.

Geoff Thompson: 3:06

So every decision I made from that point onwards was determined by fear and trying to avoid fear, trying to avoid conflict.

Geoff Thompson: 3:16

So that was a martial arts teacher that abused me, but I managed to get back into martial arts, but of course, this schema was stuck inside me.

Geoff Thompson: 3:27

It was this tremendous fear of abandonment, not even a fear that I could put a face on, because I was abused in the middle of the night and and I was lying opposite this person, we were all camping out in a, in a kind of boy center, and I just felt the abuse come from behind me.

Geoff Thompson: 3:44

So I never, I couldn't see it, it was just a hand, it was just a disembodied heavy creature that was interfering with me and it left me at me, terrified, absolutely terrified, and that would um, because I because I was unable to, um kind of evict it straight away because I was too afraid to tell anybody it kind of grew and burgeoned within me and basically took over my autonomy. It basically sat on my causal body, what they would call the bliss body, and every decision I made from then on was determined by that. So that led me to chronic jealousy, insecurity, I would say psychotic jealousy um, um, and it left me self-abusing and sexually self-abusing. These were difficult things to talk about and I was only able to individuate them and clean them and convert them eventually by writing about them and bringing them back into the light.

Malcolm Stern: 4:48

But so I just interjected for a second actually, because you just named something very important here. Um, the series is called slay your dragons with compassion, which is based on my loss of my daughter, melissa, through suicide, and the way that I found my way through it was to write about it. So actually you're naming something. That's a really important feature of how people heal, because a lot of people have I've worked with a lot of abused people in my role as a psychotherapist and a lot don't recover. They end up their whole lives not trusting. But you've done more than recover. You've actually managed to use it as a springboard for thriving.

Geoff Thompson: 5:25

I see as a. It was a reservoir of energy. It left me with deep, deep rage, dissonance, cognitive dissonance, confusion. But I recognized as I started to write about it that what we bring to light itself becomes a light. It wasn't just that I was able to, like, kill it or clean it. I was able to bring it up very much in the judaic sense of conversion, rather than killing. I was able to bring it up very much in the judaic sense of conversion rather than killing. I was able to bring it up and convert it into a light. And so actually when I when I wrote my truth, it actually went out there into the world as a truth and it helped to the people to speak their truth because they're saying well, if jeff thompson, this so-called tough man, can talk about being abused and then self-abuse and sexual self-abuse with that kind of visceral detail, then we can talk about ours. We're able to do it.

Geoff Thompson: 6:19

But what I recognised was that there's a lovely thing in Judaism where it says that if you meet somebody that's hurt, you chase after them and serve them because they have something of yours and you need it back and you have something of theirs. And that's what happened when I eventually met the person that abused me and I forgave him. I took my autonomy back. He'd stolen my autonomy and he'd left in what Aurobindo would call a partner or an agent in me and that was working away in the background and taking over my autonomy.

Geoff Thompson: 6:54

I was able to take my autonomy back by giving my fear, or giving that parasite or that powerful dark perception back to him. I said to him I forgive you and I gave it back to him, but not in the sense that I only realised later I didn't pardon him. I haven't got the power to do that. None of us have. Only contrite remorse can cure that kind of abuse. What I did was I gave it over to reciprocity. I recognised that if I gave it over to him, he would have it back and he would have to deal with that himself at some point when the universe balances its books.

Malcolm Stern: 7:34

So can I just interrupt you again here, geoff, for a second, just to say that that's quite a powerful way of operating with an adversity, and I'm wondering whether you had support along the way to do that, because you said you couldn't talk to your parents. You couldn't talk to anyone, you distrusted them. Did you find a way of getting support to do that, or you found it in yourself?

Geoff Thompson: 7:53

um, I have you. Have you ever heard of the concept of al-qaeda? Yes, yeah, I can't. That's that because I didn't trust teachers. I never had a teacher, very much really. I very rarely went to teachers because I always had this unconscious association with the teachers, with abuse. So my teachers came from everywhere, but they didn't come in a specific, in one specific human. So I met different characters on the path, so I had lots of invisible support. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what the turning point for me was.

Geoff Thompson: 8:24

The abuse left me suffering with depression, debilitating depressions, lonely, lonely depressions where I'd wake up four in the morning in a cold sweat, my wife in bed, my children in the other room, and thinking it's going to be a long day. It's going to be a long day and desperate, absolutely desperate for help. But knowing, quietly, knowing the doctor can't help me because he doesn't understand he just really understands medicine. And my wife can't help me because he doesn't understand he just really understands medicine. And my wife can't help me because she's afraid of me, because I'm like a lost puppy following around the house. Her husband is gone. So I feel as though there's no help and I know that my autonomy is stolen, that my life is taken over, and then just have this one moment of clarity where I just find this righteous anger, where I just say to myself I'm not going to live like this anymore. I refuse to live like this anymore. I've got a wife, I've got kids, I've got a life. I'm not going to live like this anymore.

Geoff Thompson: 9:19

And the moment it did that, I had this kind of what you might call a theological infusion, like an idea just fell into my head. It fell into my head like like a coin falling through water, and it just said write down all your fears on a pyramid at least fear at the bottom step, worst fear at the top step, and confront them one by one. Um, and I just suddenly had this hope I can do something about this. You know, all the people who said they could help me weren't helping me or weren't able to help me, but I could help myself. So I had this spark of light. In judaism they would call it chokmah, which is, which is wisdom. So I had a, had a concept nucleus of wisdom fall into my mind, but I unpacked into a, into a crystallized realization over probably over the next 30 years.

Geoff Thompson: 10:09

But I basically started to confront the things I was afraid of and I thought I was overcoming fears. But I wasn't really overcoming fears. I was literally finding the darkness in me, the ignorance, the wounds, and I was facing them, these three-dimensional monsters, until they became two-dimensional cartoons. I completely absorbed them. They became two dimensional cartoons, I completely absorbed them. And then the nature of the fear dissipated and the light, or the aeon that was in the fear transferred across to me and my consciousness expanded. So each time I climbed up the step of the pyramid I was a bit more expanded, a bit more, a bit more vision.

Geoff Thompson: 10:54

I was able to confront a bit more fear and eventually did this until I climbed to the top of the pyramid and confronted my fear of violent confrontations, which again in a to cut a long story short I eventually came to the conclusion that there was a parasite in me, a very dark implanted perception, or a demon, or a divided thought or a divided belief, and at some point I needed to overcome that. Now I'd developed the skills to physically kill people. I could kill in 32 languages. I was a veteran bouncer but I knew that wouldn't serve me. I knew it wouldn't help me against this parasite because it would only feed on that what I needed to do again.

Malcolm Stern: 11:32

You could either have gone to the dark or the light yeah, it feels to me there's an incredible creativity in you. I mean, coming up with the concept of the pyramid feels a bit like um, that you've managed to find a manifestation of something that's that's um, metaphorical, but also that gave you a stairway out and you talked about climbing up the pyramid yeah yeah, you managed to find this all inside yourself, which I find extraordinary it's all there, it's all in the very nucleus of our, of our body, in our heart.

Geoff Thompson: 12:00

But where the, where the mass is, the mass is in the nucleus. What I was doing I didn't realize at the time. When I built a pyramid. I was taking the positive again. This is kind of, uh, in similitude with the, the tree of life, and there was a net. There was a positive which wanted to overcome this and it was a negative that was telling me you can't. And I managed to place an isthmus or um or a filament between those two forces, which was my will force, that I started, started to regain and I actually created an inverted pyramid which formed a bridge, and from that bridge I was able to receive this starry descent, these divine speckles of wisdom that came into me. So the idea of the pyramid was a divine download, it was a gift or a grace, but I still had to do it, I still had to work it and I realised that if I could face the ignorances in my life and the things that lacked light, and if I could change those things in me, I could convert them into light and I could become light and part of my implicit covenant, if you like this was an implicit covenant, was that we're going to give you this because you've shown courage, but you must give it to other people. Because when I was searching for this truth, malcolm, and I was suffering with depression and feeling very dark. I remember reading books that promised to tell me the truth and none of them did. And I remember saying one day, when I find the truth, I'm going to tell everybody. I'm going to tell everybody. And again, I didn't realize at the time, but I triggered on the on the secret to life, which is, you know, the lovely Judaic saying uh, the master sets the table for the servant before he eats himself. In other words, if you want abundance, find somebody that needs abundance. If you want healing, find someone that needs healing. Whatever you want healing, find someone that needs healing. Whatever you want, bring it down for other people. So this idea of receiving in order to share. So I created a covenant, unconsciously.

Geoff Thompson: 14:12

So when this theological infusion, this grace, came into me about the pyramid, I started to teach it and it was so simple. It was just kind of like saying we are going to write down the fears, the things we're afraid of. The first thing we write down is that we're afraid to look at the things we're afraid of, we're afraid to admit that we're afraid, and then we're going to confront them but not overcome them. We're going to convert them because they everything, even even a thought, contains uh, mass. It contains light, contains an aeon of light, and if we're able to confront that and and absorb 99 of it, we can convert that light into into us.

Geoff Thompson: 14:54

And this is obviously. We know that this is in all of the scriptures, from the hindu texts, from the christian texts, from, you know, the Jewish texts. It's this concept of converting darkness into light or ignorance into knowledge is in all those places. But I was given it in my early, in my early 20s, as a divine download. But the covenant was you must share this, and I've been, obviously I've been sharing ever since.

Malcolm Stern: 15:20

And obviously you're enthusiastic about it. It's interesting because I feel like you've been sharing it ever since and obviously you're enthusiastic about it. It's interesting because I I feel like, um, you've you've been describing I studied for a while kabbalah with warren kenton or zev ben shimon halibi yeah, um, and what you've described feels incredibly kabbalistic. Yeah, it's just kabbalistic, yeah yes, I've studied kabbalah.

Geoff Thompson: 15:37

I studied the Zohar. I took six months off to read the Zohar. I did 72 pages of notes but I was able to eventually reduce down by doing notes on the notes, on the notes, because, as you know, the Zohar, which is kind of an exegesis of the Torah, it's kind of the deeper aspect of Kabbalah. I was able to reduce it. It's kind of the deeper aspect of Kabbalah, I was able to reduce it. It's kind of very quantum. When you go into it you don't expect to understand it, but it knows you.

Geoff Thompson: 16:10

You go into the Zohar and it goes oh, this is Jeff, this is where he is, this is what he wants to do, this is the pace he can work at. So it was like I was surrounded by this plethora of uh, of divine teachers who taught me through through the zohar. So I would, I would go through and just certain words in certain places, random and not connected, would speak to me. I'd write them down. I had 70 pages of notes and then I did notes on the notes and I was able to reduce it to one word, one word Light, light. And of course that was a concept nucleus itself. That was something that contained all of the knowledge of all of the worlds. That was a Hachman.

Malcolm Stern: 16:54

Exactly so you said they can see the pace you can go at. Yeah, hearing is, you've got incredible energy to actually take it, run with it and really make it yours this lifetime. That's what.

Geoff Thompson: 17:07

I mean, yeah, it's saying to me that there was um. You know, like when they talk about the parable of talents, each receives according to their ability. It was saying to me you can increase your ability by um, by doing the work. Doing the work, as Gurdjji always said, are you doing the work? So if I did the work, if I sat down and, believe me, when I sat down with the Zohar, I was going through a particularly difficult regeneration and it was only my ability to sit in the center that kept me in it. But every single time, every day, I read the Zohar, every line, in every page for six months felt like torture. It felt like a divine chemotherapy session. It felt like an antibody was going into me and rooting out any negatives that were still in me.

Geoff Thompson: 17:56

So it took tremendous will force to sit and just study that um, knowing that it was, that it was cleansing me, but it was also um, it was also building something in me as well. I could feel as though it was building a new body in me. So when I reduced it to light, I recognized that that was a concept, nucleus, and, and that I could also work on that and unfold that and get a greater understanding of what that was. It's obviously light. I just translate that as love and I always say to people it's just really about love and I'm aware when I say that that they think I've gone socks and sandals, that it's like a soft solution to the hard problem of consciousness. But as Rumi says, love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation that's beautiful.

Malcolm Stern: 18:45

That's beautiful. I really love that say that again.

Geoff Thompson: 18:47

I just really like that love is not a subtle argument, the door. There is devastation. In order to access love, which is god, in order to return to love, or repent to love, or repair to love, or find refuge in love, we have to devastate everything in us. That is not love, everything. So any, any, you know, any wounds, any darkness, any confusions, any false perceptions? They're semi-autonomous thought forms. They, you know they have. They have some kind of autonomy. We have to.

Geoff Thompson: 19:20

I think Jean-Emile Charon, the French Einstein, said we have to elect a designated, a distinguished aeon. We have to elect one part of us like a Moses character or a Hercules character within us. That goes well. This is my body, I'm in this body, but I, but I haven't got autonomy over this body. And this part of us has to go through with the golden sword of discernment and win back all the territories of the body so that we can become unitotal. Then, when we become unitotal, then we are useful to god, we can please god, or we can certainly work in the hope, after merging, that we are pleasing god. So the idea was that, um, uh, that it was just about love, but not sentimental love, but, um, supernatural love, a love that is infused into us when we remove the ego and and just let it come through us as a vessel.

Geoff Thompson: 20:23

So and then once I realized that I just thought I'm just gonna work, I'm just gonna work from a place of love, but I'm aware that it's the hardest thing I've ever done, because there are elements in me and elementals in me that are terrified of love, because, of course, they'll be dissolved by love and that continues to be the work that's funny.

Malcolm Stern: 20:44

I mean I've the last few years I found myself um in my psychotherapy groups saying the essence of this is is love. Yeah, and I understand it. For the first time I've actually got in touch with that, that as a therapist, if I'm in the place of love with the people I'm working with, I'm not going to make mistakes, I'm going to find my way through, because it's not my way through, it's not the ego's way through, it's something to come through me. Yeah.

Geoff Thompson: 21:08

And to do that we have to have a distinguished Aeon, we have to have a central, you know, like a Moses character that goes okay, I'm in charge. A bit like who was it? It will come to me in a minute, it was. I'm thinking about the character that went to the. No, it's not coming. I'll leave it for now. But it's just about finding this leader character within us that wakes up and goes yeah, this is my kingdom, but I'm not in charge of it. I haven't got authority, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go around and I'm gonna clean it up, I'm gonna win autonomy back over it and then, once we've done that, we can be of service. But, like I said, it's not a subtle argument. This is what roomy says to continue the poem um, uh, we, you know, um, we make great sky circles, circles with our freedom. But how do we, how do we learn it? We fall, and in falling we're given wings. That's where he talks about that.

Geoff Thompson: 22:11

Love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. So it's really difficult. We might not know what god is, we might not be able to articulate what love is, but we know what it's, not the sense of apophatic theology. We can start going. Okay, I don't know what it is, but I know what it's not. I know it's not jealousy and there was no envy. I know it's not judgment, I know it's not unkindness. So what I will do is I will you know, from this concept of buddhism, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on dependent arising whatever rises and isn't whole, isn't sanctified. I am not going to engage it, I'm not going to identify with it, I'm just going to let it convert to love. I'm just going to keep this center, center, nucleus of love. When it comes up, it's just going to be exposed to love and be converted into love and itself become a part of love what I'm hearing is that, for me, I've been very fortunate to come across a lot of really great teachers.

Malcolm Stern: 23:08

I studied with the rum dust, with arena, tweedy throughout the chasm of fire warren, kenton and some some really wonderful teachers people I can't um and and I got a lot of um, incredible knowledge from that. But what I'm hearing from you is that you found your teachers, but you found it through really hard graft. Yeah, you have studied that has been your way but you found it through really hard graft and actually, you have studied, that has been your way through, and you're still studying, presumably Studying and writing.

Geoff Thompson: 23:37

Yeah, I'm studying and I'm being taken off in so many different directions and everything I'm studying, you know, it's finding a collaboration. In every faith I'm sitting has come to the same conclusion. If you study science, it's saying the same thing. Whether we're talking about science and modern physics or whether we're talking about ancient religion, they all agree on the same thing.

Geoff Thompson: 24:00

Our job here, um, is to increase knowledge and love, and what we have to do from the very beginning is convert ourselves, convert the ignorance in us and convert the non-love in us, so that we can become a uni-total being, so that we can create this triangle, because we're living in a three-dimensional reality. So we use our will force to bring the positive and negative together, create a three dimensional triangle that automatically connects to a four and five dimensional space. So when I am able to center myself, using this concept of bringing my will force to bring these two opposing forces or these complementary forces together, I can connect to God or I can connect to the yukashic and I can ask questions and I will get very real, very quick answers.

Malcolm Stern: 24:53

I only ask if I'm not if I really want to know, because obviously knowledge is very powerful, and then, once I get those answers, my covenant is always the same tell people, pass it on interesting so I I've used the e-ching for for 40 years or more and that's given me incredible insight into if I, if I need an, if I ask the right question, I get an answer that I can understand.

Malcolm Stern: 25:15

So that's fine question. But again, what I'm hearing is that a lot of this has come to you not through the use of external forces, but only something has developed in you, and I'm wondering what I'm? What I'm thinking is I've been very impressed with the work of Joanna Macy, who talks about the great. We're at the time of the great turning, where we're either going to evolve and take our next step of evolution and become human beings that we'd be proud of being, or we're going to be an experiment that has had its day on planet Earth. And I'm wondering about your optimism for life as we go, as we reach a point of real difficulty on on this planet. I think we're at a time of great, we're at the divide now, and what do you feel about that?

Geoff Thompson: 25:58

I'm some I'm I'm not even optimistic, I'm excited. I'm a bit frightened by the amount of knowledge I receive. I'm having to, I'm having to live my life in constant prayer just to cope with the energy that I'm getting. Science will tell you that and religion will tell you the same that the world is a cognitive projection. So we have this idea that we need to change the world. But which world? There are 8.1 billion versions of it. Our job is to change our world. But which world? There are 8.1 billion versions of it. Our job is to change our world.

Geoff Thompson: 26:30

If, if we're trying to fix the world at the level of the screen, we're never going to fix it. We've got to come back to the projector. We've got to look at the film. We've got to look at the cognitions, the perceptions, the precepts, the concepts, the beliefs you know and we take. So we've got to go to a higher level of perception. So we change our, our world. When we change our world, the world itself changes. It feels. It feels as though that's not possible. But that's exactly what science is saying. He's saying that the world as you see it, is an illusion. Not that it's not there, but it's. But you're not seeing it correctly.

Malcolm Stern: 27:04

Everybody's trying to change somebody over there.

Geoff Thompson: 27:06

But we just need to change us and we need to, and to change us, we need to, um, we need to work from love, only from love, but love is not a subtle argument and are you?

Malcolm Stern: 27:19

obviously you're out there doing your thing. You've given ted talks, you've written some wonderful scripts. Um, you're out there, sort of giving your bit to the world. Have you taken on students where you're actually educating people into, into doing what you're doing?

Geoff Thompson: 27:33

well I, I caused so much damage when, because I was, because I've got this parasite in me, um, and I spent quite a lot of years being violent and uh, being living unkindly, um, I spent a lot of time, probably 30 years, when I woke up, um, and realized that this was my kingdom, but I weren't in charge and I started to win it back. I recognized that part of my atonement, part of my repentance. My return to love was, um, to speak to everybody, in anybody that god put in front of me, and I was literally taking phone calls from strangers for probably 30 years and going out and teaching and doing all the things I was asked to do writing the books, or I've written 50 books. I've done myriad films, myriad films and um, and so that was when I was in my what I would call my incandescent um frame of the teaching which was I was just because I had so much to cleanse, I, uh, I was giving it to everybody that was put in front of me. Then it was intuitive to me that I, that they wanted me to go to a um, uh, a more directional form of teaching or a more directional form of service. So, rather than talking to everybody, some of them who were ready and some of them weren't.

Geoff Thompson: 28:59

It was saying we want you to work directionally. So like, if you look at an incandescent light bulb, it loses 90 of its heat, of its light to heat that's what I was doing. But if you look at an led light bulb, it goes to a chip and it retains 90 percent of its light because it's directional. So god was saying to me we want you to work directionally. And it's not difficult because because the holy spirit, the advocate, will tell you where to work, when to work, how long to work, who to say yes to, who to say no to, when to push, when to yield. It will give you every instruction, it will send protection before you. It will actually give you protection at your franken sides. You will be looked after, providing that you keep the covenant that you don't worship false idols. In other words, when. But you know, so that you don't start thinking this is me and this is all about me, and I need more followers and I need accolades and all that. So it was just saying just serve us, just please us, and we will tell you who to serve. So that has been coming through film, um, through uh, I'm writing a book at the moment.

Geoff Thompson: 30:11

I had an incident three years ago, um, with a rough sleeper on oxford street and it triggered a download, a massive download, which I initially wrote into an eight minute film eight minutes and it's been animation that's just come out and it was such a powerful concept nucleus that when I'd written the film afterwards, I've written so far in the last three years, three causes of a million words based on this one incident of offering a rough sleep at love and not only sanctifying him but sanctifying the whole of Oxford Street and the whole of London, I bet. To cut a long story short, I basically was walking past this rough sleeper in Oxford Street with no shoes on and I couldn't walk past him and I had this moral battle in the head is it my job? Is you know? Have I got the time? Have I got the money? In the end, I found myself, um, uh, buying him some clothes and coming back and and giving him these clothes and giving him some money, and it was a supernatural infusion, wasn't? It wasn't my charity, it was a much bigger charity than I could ever do.

Geoff Thompson: 31:21

And I said to this guy what's your name? And he said evil. And I said evil and he said his name was evil and I heard I heard this voice coming from yeah, what are you going to do about the evil? Well, I'm going to dress it and feed it and robe it in the armor of the good and in doing that, I was able to sanctify him. Sanctify, in other words, make him whole. I'm talking about evil in in, in the, in the way that aquinas would talk about evil as a privation, as something that lacks wholeness, as a virus that is lacking a certain amount of electrolytes. And I'm an antibody that has extra, extra, as extra electrolytes, and I'm going to just embrace it and neutralise it just by giving it something that I've got. So I was able to sanctify evil as a privation just by giving this guy a bit of love, but not love that I have, but love that I allowed to come through me.

Geoff Thompson: 32:26

And because I did that, this film we managed to get Chris Eccleston to do the voiceover. It's already been nominated for one of the biggest awards in the world in film, and it's because it contains a very, very powerful message. You could watch the film and think it's just about feeding a homeless person, but it's actually about sanctifying evil with love, just with love. But love is not a subtle argument. Everybody that everyone we talk to, always thinks that love is a soft option. But I'm saying it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, because you're going to have to devastate all of those wild opinions you've got and all of those um pervading perceptions and convert not only, not only confront them and look at them, but convert them into love it's interesting because rena maria rilke, the german philosopher, says that if in our lifetime we can truly love one other human being, we've achieved a great deal.

Malcolm Stern: 33:26

and what I'm hearing is that your practice is love and your practice has come from being robbed of something effectively when you were young and then finding a way out of that and coming through that and actually finding that you have a task in this world and you are clearly Geoff in service to life.

Geoff Thompson: 33:44

Yeah, that's my life and I'm in service to God. God, I just want to please God because I know that God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent.

Malcolm Stern: 33:53

So if I'm pleasing God, of course I'm pleasing everybody and, of course, when you're talking about God, you're not talking about some religious concept of God, you're talking about the divine, the great.

Geoff Thompson: 34:02

Well, you tell us what you're talking about well, I, you know people, people are against religion, but religion comes from the word religare. It just means to realign man to man, man to his soul. So God just is love. So we realign to love. You might call it light or spirit, but so we're just realigning to love. So when I talk about God, obviously sometimes people are offended by that which I'm comfortable with. Because sometimes people are offended by that which I'm comfortable with, because if they're offended by three letters, um, then that's a dharma gate. I'm their teacher. If they're offended by three letters, that just being offended by three letters blocks them from entering any bible that's available.

Geoff Thompson: 34:42

I've been able to enter all the virus, I've been able to enter all of the bibles as a dharma gate of learning, of emancipation. Because I'm curious, I'm very, very curious, I want to, I want to understand, and my covenant, as I said, is always about we are going to give you this, we're going to show you this and it's going to unfold over 30 or 40 or 50 years and your, uh, your part of the covenant is that you just have to keep it moving. You know, like the lovely water wheel by roomie when he says the water wheel receives the water and turns and gives it all away weeping. That's the only way it stays in the garden. So it's saying you will receive this abundance, but you must. You must receive it and you must conserve it and you must process and train it, and then you must deliver it into the world, but not just deliver it, malcolm. Deliver it where we ask you to deliver it.

Geoff Thompson: 35:42

He's not asking me to go, and you know, knock on doors and talk to 10 000 or a million people. If he asked me to do that, I'll do it. What he's asking me to do, and you know, knock on doors and talk to 10 000 or a million people. If he asked me to do that, I'll do it. What he's asking me to do is just to deliver it with the people he puts in front of me, and that might be a rough sleeper. A rough sleeper, um, on oxford street, has just given me three quarters of a million beautiful words that come from every different faith, even from science, which is, which itself is a religion, because it's it's constantly trying to align to a singularity, to one single place, which, which, of course, it does well, I'm really happy to hear your passion and your clear um direct experience of something beyond your individual body and being oh, so many I got.

Geoff Thompson: 36:33

Did I ever tell you I got told off by irene sweeney, irene tweedy? No, you didn't tell me that. She appeared to me in a coventry cafe and told me off and I know this is a little bit out there, but I was reading daughter of fire of Fire because I love Irina Twigli. So I'm going to use the word envious because I am actually envious that you met her in training. I would love to have met her, you know, when she was alive, but I was reading her book.

Geoff Thompson: 36:58

This was many years ago and at the time I was making the mistake of, I was so eager, I was trying to read everything quickly. I've been a voracious reader and I was reading the book and I was rushing it and I found myself trying to skip through because it's a big book and I thought I was trying to skip through to the good bits. That was, my ego was taking over and I could feel the effects of it in my body. I could feel on my endocrine system. I could feel it. It made me, made my sympathetic nervous system trigger.

Geoff Thompson: 37:27

Anyway, I'm in a cafe in Coventry and I'm queuing up for a cup of tea and in front of me. There's this little old lady and she's dawdling a little bit and I just try to gently squeeze past her and she grabs me. She literally grabs my arm and I'm not kidding Malcolm, the room disappeared. It was just me and this old lady. She said you are rushing me, you are rushing me. And I said I'm, and I was like overwhelmed. I said I'm so sorry. I said I am so sorry. I said I I didn't mean to rush you. And she said you could have hurt me. And then she just she saw I was bewildered and she just kissed me and laughed and walked away and I just thought she's so familiar. So when I come back home I came online and had a look at some images of Irene 3D and it was her.

Malcolm Stern: 38:19

In my 20s, I used to go on a Friday evening to her house. There'd be a meditation and about 18 lie on the floor and this is I mean. This is the extraordinary thing. We would all have visions and I took it as normal. I was in my 20s. We have visions of things way beyond our comprehension. Yeah, it's this little old lady making tea and wandering around and chatting to people, and she'd sometimes chat to people over on the other side of the room and the voice would come boom, and you'd know that those words were meant for you as well.

Malcolm Stern: 38:47

For you, yeah yeah, so I'm content sharing her because this reminded me of of a very beloved teacher of mine as well.

Geoff Thompson: 38:56

So you're, so you're so blessed to have uh been able to meet her and work with her. I loved her. All of my kids read her work after I read her and I said to them don't rush her, don't rush this book, because she will tell you off.

Malcolm Stern: 39:11

So we're coming to the end of our, of our podcast. There's been a joy really hanging out with you, geoff, and I really really appreciate you coming on not knowing anything about me well, you've read a little bit now, but, um, but actually come on and you've just done your your thing here. But I just want to ask you the question I'm asking most people at the end of the podcast is what is the particular dragon you've had to slay in order to become who you are?

Geoff Thompson: 39:34

um, I think. I think there's a sense with all of us. There's certainly a sense with me. There was a sense with me particularly when, when I was younger uh, especially because of my cultural upbringing was that you're just not good enough, that other people can do this but that you can't. And I was always afraid of coming across as being pretentious. I was afraid of middle-class professionals. Middle-class professionals basically ran my life when I was a working-class kid. They were our doctors, they were our solicitors, they were the policemen, they're the magistrates. We were terrified of middle-class professionals. So that was the first big dragon that I had to slay, actually because I ended up working in theatre and film and ended up mentoring lots of business people and professionals and realised that you know, that was just an idea that I'd got and I was able to convert that to light.

Geoff Thompson: 40:34

I would say, my biggest dragon now and I'm still working on is this fear of being a city on a hill now, this fear of being obviously our. Our only protection is when we are actually in service. You know, it's one of the things that jesus said to thomas when he said what's the sign of the father in you? And he said, uh, movement and repose and they're both the same, really that we, when we're in movement, we are in repose, and our anxiety is only there. When we're not studying, we're not, you know, when we're not doing the work, when we're not there, when we're not studying, when we're not doing the work, when we're not serving, when we're not following the commandments.

Geoff Thompson: 41:12

So, although I know the safety is by being a city on a hill, because nothing can approach a light and not be converted by it, but I still have that fear of being a city on a hill. I have that fear that God is going to ask too much of me, and that's something I'm still working on. I'm working on every day. It's not like it used to be, um, because I'm understanding more and more as I go but, um, uh, but that can. That continues to be something that I'm working on lovely, that's great.

Malcolm Stern: 41:44

Thank you so much for uh for being with us today. I really appreciate it, jeff, and it's thank you.