Co-Evolutionary Culturing

Composting power-over culture from the inside out

Our podcast


What if... tending to the threshold between the inner and outer dimensions of change might amplify your impact as a funder - and that of your grantees?

What if... the way we are currently trying to 'fix' things is making things worse?

What if... there is a richer conversation you could be having with life - your own and that of the wider Earth community?


We want to have the largest conversations possible with you, at the crossroads of deep time, the future and the now. We invite you into this space for consciousness shifting spells of dismantling the power-over culture from the inside out. Join us, in tracking the scent of inner-led change out into the wildish world, remembering that we are earth, not just troubled guests on this planet. There, at the wellspring, where the hooves of creatures have pressed their hieroglyphics into mud, we will listen to Earth’s Dreaming in the sound of water over rock and then gather to speak what we’ve heard at the emergent edge of the unknown. We invite you into the ritual practice that is co-evolutionary culturing.

You might listen to this podcast out in a wildish place, along a river, or in a meadow or forest or, you might be surrounded by humans and their creations and get curious about how we too, are nature.

In whichever ecosystem you find yourself, we invite you to fully give your attention to the music, words, images, sensations and feelings that might arise while listening to the podcast. Please do not drive, do dishes or other business while listening, as we are inviting a different kind of consciousness to emerge. The consciousness you might experience after watching a sunset, or listening to the black bird’s evensong. We invite you to imagine we were sitting together in circle out of doors. You might even call in a group of human creatures to listen to the podcast together and then to speak in a sharing circle afterwards about what is moving in you in response.

In listening in as we prepare for the podcast, we ask ourselves, how do we de-center the human in a podcast? What ritual technologies help us to shift consciousness? What kinds of conversations might innoculate an inner-led transformation?

Inner-led change supports us to source our actions to support life and bring about change from expanded dimensions of consciousness, rather than creating them from the very same consciousness that created the problem.

"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house"
Audre Lorde

Our podcast is about preparing the ground and planting the seeds of new consciousness and cultures that expand beyond the binary of Human and Nature, Mind and Matter, Inner and Outer. We are not looking to mend the modern paradigm, our intention is much more audacious! We want to help it die and compost and therefore, transform, and we too alongside it. Earth’s evolution has been crafted through continuous cycles of rupture and repair. What if this current cycle of rupture (collapse) is part of the larger pattern that is Earth’s knowing? What if there is no “problem” to be solved?

I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
.”
Dawna Markova

Our cyclical offerings will be gently tethered to the celtic wheel of the year since we 3 hosts share celtic ancestry and have spent years following the wisdom and depth of these cycles. Attuning ourselves to the natural rhythms of death, decay, rebirth, flowering and fruiting that are manifest in the wheel of the year, we are decolonizing the gregorian calendar and re-membering ourselves within an ancient knowing that is embedded within the land and the reciprocal relationship with the humans who are part of it. It is both a ritual and a practical step towards listening to the older voices, the other than human voices and the wisdom of Earth, before we make decisions or plans. We hope it will ignite these same cyclical flames of deep listening within you (and your groups, organisations and communities too).

About us:

We are tending to the dismantling of the power-over culture as it lives within each of us, (and the groups, communities and movements we are part of), as well as calling in risky conversations at the crossroads of deep time and our current turbulent times, the known and the unknown - to question the things we take for granted and trouble our learned way of perceiving the world.

We are  leaning in to the emergent edge of this rupture that is the 6th mass extinction, and listening for the ways Earth might be dreaming through us in these times. We are ritual midwives for Mystery, Seers and visionaries, soft bellied humans engaged in the very real daily grit and grind of becoming more and more resourced and healing our collective trauma in a time of cataclysm. We are listening to the larger story told by the web of the other-than-human world and thereby de-centering the human narrative.


Co-Evolutionary Culturing: composting power-over culture from the inside out.

Welcome to our co-evolutionary pot of fermentation and composting, ritual and wonder! We want to have the largest conversations possible with you, at the crossroads of deep time, the future and the now. We invite you into this space for consciousness shifting spells to compost power-over culture from the inside out. We are leaning in to the edge of this present-time rupture that is the 6th mass extinction, and listening for the ways Earth might be dreaming through us in these times. Listening to the larger story, told by the web of the other-than-human world and thereby de-centering the human narrative so that our ways forward are sourced from wellsprings of wisdom, well beyond the limitations of the strategic-mind. Join us in tracking the scent of inner-led change out into the wildish world, remembering that we are earth, “not just troubled guests on this planet” (David Whyte). There at the wellspring, where the hieroglyphics of the hooves of creatures are pressed into the mud, we will listen to Earth’s Dreaming in the sound of water over rock. We will gather and speak what we’ve heard at the emergent edge of the unknown. We invite you into the ritual practice that is co-evolutionary culturing.

A note about how to listen in: You might listen to this podcast out in a wildish place, along a river, or in a meadow, forest, park or your garden. You might choose to listen whilst in your home, workplace or community, in the good company of other human creatures. In whichever ecosystem you find yourself, we invite you to give your full attention to the music, words, images, sensations and feelings that might arise while listening to the podcast. Please do not drive, do dishes or other business while listening, as we are inviting a different kind of consciousness to emerge. Thankyou x

PODCAST EPISODES (most recent first)

EPISODE 3

The second part of our Eco-Awakening conversation of belonging to Earth Community, with Bell Selkie Lovelock and Sara McFarland. In this episode, you’ll find an experiential invitation to deepen into your senses and encounter the wild others within and without. We speak about how to Eco-Awaken, how to experience ourselves as Earth and how to continue the practice of it in our daily lives. With poetry by William Stafford and Joy Harjo. Music by Tamsin Elliott.

Listen to the episode on Podbean (coming soon)

Episode 3 Show notes

Music by the incredible Tamsin Elliott from her debut album “Frey”

In order of being played:

I Dreamed I was an Eagle

Lament

The Losses Endured 1

http://www.tamsinelliott.co.uk/

Tamsin Elliott - press kit.pdf

Tamsin's critically acclaimed debut solo album ‘FREY’, which features the playing of Sid Goldsmith and Rowan Rheingans, is out now on Penny Fiddle Records.

"Tamsin Elliott's debut album, FREY, is, in a word, sublime. Few albums this year have taken us on such a magical journey" - TradFolk

Poem

Being a Person

by William Stafford

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone's dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn't be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.

http://poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/S/StaffordWill/BeingaPerson/index.html

A Map to the Next World

BY JOY HARJO

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.       

You must make your own map.

"A Map to the Next World" from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems:1975-2001 by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2002 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.

Source: How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2002)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49621/a-map-to-the-next-world

EPISODE 2

Eco-Belonging - awakening to our place in Earth Community

Bell Selkie Lovelock and myself, Sara McFarland, speak about Eco-Awakening, or Eco-Belonging, which is the psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual remembering or awakening to the fact that we each are a part of Earth, are Earth and Water and Fire and Air and that all beings are our Kith, in reciprocal relatedness. Poetry, song, stories of our own Eco-Awakening and the wandering way of trying to put the ineffable into language that can only point to the Mystery which is at the center of Life and our place in the larger web. We talk about Descartes and mechanistic thinking versus thinking like a cosmos, Animas Valley Institute, Mary Oliver, Birdsong, Welsh words of place and the ancient ancestral knowing that each of us has in our bodies. Come along with us for an imaginal journey into the heart of belonging to Earth Community.

Listen to the episode on Podbean

Episode 2: Show notes

Bell Selkie Lovelock and myself, Sara McFarland, speak about Eco-Awakening, or Eco-belonging, which is the psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual remembering or awakening to the fact that we each are a part of Earth, are Earth and Water and Fire and Air and that all beings are our Kith, in reciprocal relatedness. Poetry, song, story or our own Eco-Awakening and the wandering way of trying to put the ineffible into language that can only point to the Mystery which is at the center of Life and our place in the larger web. We talk about Descartes, Animas Valley Institute, Mary Oliver, Birdsong, Welsh words of place and the ancient ancestral knowing that each of us has in our bodies. Come along with us for an imaginal journey into the heart of belonging to Earth Community.

Eco-awakening: shifting from ego-centric to ecocentric consciousness

“Eco-awakening is a truly profound moment for the people blessed to have had this experience. It rocks your world. You now realize you had previously been a kind of refugee, existentially and ecologically homeless, disconnected from the very world from which you emerged at birth. (“Emerged,” because, from an ecocentric perspective, we do not enter this world from somewhere else; we are formed by it and from it and for it.) Now much of the restlessness, anxiety, alienation, and displacement you had experienced all your life, without knowing why, disperses like mist in morning sunshine. Now you feel at home in our animate world in a deep, rich, and unprecedented way, a way you had not known was missing, had not even known was possible. Now each thing — “each stone, blossom, child,” as Rilke puts it — is no longer an object, but a subject to whom you are related, someone to whom you have always been related. Kin. Separation has ended. You have returned consciously to the world into which or from which you had been born, a breathing world in which everything is alive, everything speaks in its own way, everything is related to everything else. You have returned from your long banishment, awakened from the flatland, the relatively lifeless world of synthetic, industrialized, disconnected, conformist-consumer society. You are free now to be fully and wildly human in communion with the Others — both human and other-than-human — as together all things co-create a self-organizing and ever-evolving world.” Bill Plotkin

More on the Starter Culture website about Eco-Awakening and our design principles: https://starterculture.net/about/our-approach-to-change/

Poems : 

Wild Geese   

Mary Oliver -

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

breaking the spell  

Steve Hyde

sometimes the only way 

to slow the world 

down is 

to step away from it 

to walk the night 

roads 

to follow the lonely pilgrim 

ways 

to swim in the deep 

waters of despair 

what keeps being 

forgotten 

is what you are 

here to remember 

what keeps being 

lost 

is what you are 

here to find 

what you have been 

given is the journey 

the only question 

you must answer  

is this 

have you become 

whom you were 

born to be  

What to remember when waking 

David Whyte  - 

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

Earth  

Derek Walcott -

Let the day grow on you upward
through your feet,
the vegetal knuckles,

to your knees of stone,
until by evening you are a black tree;
feel, with evening,

the swifts thicken your hair,
the new moon rising out of your forehead,
and the moonlit veins of silver

running from your armpits
like rivulets under white leaves.
Sleep, as ants

cross over your eyelids.
You have never possessed anything
as deeply as this.

This is all you have owned
from the first outcry
through forever;

you can never be dispossessed.

Books mentioned : 

                                                                                                   
Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme “ Journey of the Universe ( Yale 2011)

Bill Plotkin - Wild Mind / Nature and the human soul/ Soulcraft/ The Journey of Soul Initiation

Organisations mentioned :

Animas Valley Institute  Animas Valley Institute | Nature-Based Soul Initiation

Starter Culture             Starter Culture - Collective Transformation from the Inside Out

Episode 2: Transcript

Sara McFarland    Intro

Welcome, welcome to co evolutionary culturing, composting power-over culture from the inside out, the podcast from Starter Culture. Today with myself, Sara McFarland, and Bell Selkie Lovelock. Bell is one of the core team members of Starter Culture. She's a poet, a seer, a human development guide, a wild mind guide with Animus Valley Institute, and one who belongs very deeply to the place that she lives and works and loves, where her children have grown up and where her vegetables grow and her bees fly. And we spend some time talking about this thing called Eco-Awakening, or what we could call ecological belonging. What it is, why would we really want it, what it means for these times. We at Starter Culture are very much in a process of emergence, we are listening for what the cosmos, the mystery at the centre of life, Earth, is dreaming, or is speaking or longing for through us. And sometimes we have to make middle of the air changes, I'm just watching an Osprey change direction flight, as I'm speaking with you here. And this podcast was kinda like that. My mic cut out a third of the way through, and so I had to listen in for a way that I might craft something of beauty and inspiration and offering out the really, really beautiful things that Bell was saying. And so I've added some of my own music, and a poem by David White. We're gonna call this part one of Eco-Awakening. And our next podcast will be more of the practical variety of how to Eco awaken. How to know that we belong to Earth community, first and foremost, experiencing ourselves as earth and water and fire and air and Kith with the other than human world. But in this podcast, we step into these waters, in a more inspired poetic, philosophical way. You kind of get the lay of the land about what Eco Awakening even is. So, I hope you will enjoy this exploration and wander through the wilds of what we call eco awakening, today, on Co-Evolutionary culturing, composting power-over culture from the inside out.

Sara McFarland 

I'm noticing right now I'm really grateful to hear the birds singing in the background of your place. And I'm noticing I'm really grateful that I've been to your place so that even though we're speaking over zoom, I have a body memory of the place where you're sitting and the birds outside and the way your garden is laid out and you in relationship with it and remembering the bees right now.

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

They're really flying today. It's a sunny day. I was just looking out of the window, at Mountain and listening to the newly arrived Willow warblers. Here we are in our places. You're in yours, and me in mine, hey.

Sara McFarland  

With my new Osprey neighbours

Bell Selkie Lovelock    

it's amazing.

Sara McFarland   

I don't have my own children. But like I said, it's almost as if I'm pregnant or like my sister is pregnant. You know? The kind of joy  I have that they're gonna be having babies there.

Bell Selkie Lovelock    

Yeah, there's so many faces on the mountain today. There are huge cumulus clouds. And then there's these shadows over the mountain and then bright sunlight and a bit of white because it's cold up there. It's feeling gratitude to be here. So, what we here to talk about?

Sara McFarland   

Aren't we already doing it? 

Bell Selkie Lovelock  

Eco awakening, is that what is that is a phrase? Isn't it eco awakening? I think we need to be aware of our dear listeners. And let's talk about language a bit, shall we? Say a bit about language? And yeah, what might happen during this podcast with language?

Sara McFarland   

Well, I'm sitting here with a poet. So, language has particular power and capacity to open worlds. And spell cast, shift consciousness. Just feeling that the poet of you and the seer of you. And also, we were talking earlier about wanting to really be generous and kind of wide open with recognising that not only one sort of person is going to be listening, not only poets are going to be listening to our podcast rather, you know, hopefully, all kinds of different people who have all kinds of different home places and all kinds of different experiences. So we had this intention we spoke of not wanting to be kind of jargony, or using special words. 

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

Without notes, yeah, there's a there's an expression that we might use, dear listeners, which is other-than-human. And the reason we use that rather than saying Nature, is that there's some kind of weirdness about saying, I'm going out into nature, because it kind of presents itself as a separation. Like, as if there's somewhere other than nature to be. Like, as if we're abiding somewhere that isn't nature, when of course, we're on a planet, which is made up of nature, and we are part of nature. So we say other-than-human. And if, if we're including humans, in it, we say more-than-human, because it's humans and everybody else: rocks, trees, birds, caterpillars, everything.

Sara McFarland   

Because humans are made of nature too- we're made of earth and water and fire and air, and every breath of every ancestor of every creature that's ever lived is,

Bell Selkie Lovelock    

...and will ever be. Some might say. Yeah. So, yeah, let's be mindful of language and its ability to create stories that we then live into the world. And I'm mindful that some people listening will be ones that would identify themselves as activists, who are direct activists. And there are some people listening who are activists, because they are working towards a change in the culture. But they might not consider themselves by that term. And there might be people who don't know what the hell we're talking about. And they're wondering why they're listening to the podcast, and we say welcome, and stay with us. That's great. Hopefully, there'll be something in here for you too. Yeah. 

Sara McFarland   

The other language moment I'd like to pick up on here is, I'm remembering because you spoke about separation and the way we make this separation of nature, separate from human or separate from indoors or houses or as if anything is made of anything other than nature . 

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

shopping malls

Sara McFarland    

Yeah, you know, everything is actually made of things of, of Earth. And I'm remembering, because I did the storytelling this week of Hospicing Modernity from Vanessa Machado de Olivera. Her word for it is separability.

Bell Selkie Lovelock    

Yes. 

Sara McFarland   

The kind of speaking with the indigenous folk in the in South America that she's in relationship with and in what we call Canada that she's in relationship with. This kind of what we, what I might call the trauma of separation, this erroneous belief that we're separate from, from Earth, from the other than humans, and the loneliness that that creates and this kind of longing to belong. And that might be a beautiful place to start with this funny thing called Eco awakening. Which is this weird word but actually, basically sums up to mean knowing somatically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, that we belong. And we belong to Earth and Earth community.

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

So in our bodies, and in our feelings. Yeah, I was just just saying, just thinking yeah, if you have ever felt like you don't belong, like that you're somehow some kind of weird alien, then you'll know the loneliness that you're speaking about. And if you've ever felt a feeling of a really deeply settled and kind of profound and life changing experience of yeah, oneness with everything, and it's not, it can be a very physical oneness. It doesn't need to be a kind of like in the head oneness it, in fact, it wouldn't be that it would be in your body Then you probably know what we're talking about. Eco-Awakening. And it's, I mean, it's a term that has come from a chap called Bill Plotkin, who has written several books. And he has, with many others, set up and created this entity called Animus Valley Institute. And Eco-Awakening is quite a key thing in our lives, because, now how can I say this better? What is Eco-Awakening? It's kind of the, the first experience that you feel in your body of connection with everything. So I've said that already. What I want to say is that in nature based healthy cultures, and we don't live in one of those, they don't have Eco-Awakening, because being well, it's kind of seamless, you come out of your mother's womb of belonging, and you come into the womb of earth of belonging, of the apparent world of the world, that we see the material world if you like, and there is no separation. And everything around you, the culture around you also affirms your belongness, you are welcomed by trees and skies and stars and your tribe, your human tribe. So yeah, so that's an important piece to get, is that in other cultures, because we tend to imagine we're the only culture on the planet, and what we think is the same for everybody else. But in other cultures still existing and cultures that we've managed to squash out of existence will destroy or are destroying, there is still this innate knowing of Belonging.

Sara McFarland    

and you say "our culture", so I'm just going to speak that also plainly, of the what we at Starter Culture anyway, are calling the power-over culture. Some folks call it the modern paradigm or the

Bell Selkie Lovelock  

military industrial complex, 

Sara McFarland   

late stage capitalism, Western culture, you know, whatever the all the many different words are for that. And, and I think the reason you and I want to talk about this today at all, is because the, it's sort of like a moment, which becomes a practice, that... it's like walking through a door that you didn't know existed, and your life is never the same after that. 

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

And there's something about when you have been through that doorway, as you called it, or you have awakened to your place in the family of things, to quote Mary Oliver, everything changes. And so things that defined you before, such as ethnicity, and gender, and nationality, and religion, enriching and wonderful as those are, they become secondary to this primary relationship of, I am part of this great entangled complexity that is the web of life. And the universe. In fact, it goes beyond the Earth, it's like. So, those are the two key things then of Eco-Awakening, it describes this first conscious experience of belonging that you, it's not just a rational thing, it's not like an ecological understanding. You haven't got a degree in ecology, or you've read a good book about ecology, it's like, your whole body feels it. And you can't act in the same way you did before, where you do not have a sense of the other-than-humans being alive and sentient, (that means that they feel stuff), and intelligent. You know, it's like, it's profound, it's huge, it's like rocks your world basically. So it's not like oh, yeah, I get that, you know, humans are part of this food chain and all that, so it's not that. So if you're thinking that, let that, you know, maybe you're not convinced yet, and that's fine, you stay with us. And we're not trying to convince you, we're just telling you how we perceive it and see how it feels in your body, see how it lands. So...

Sara McFarland  

okay, so I'm, I'm feeling inspired to tell the story of my own Eco-Awakening, I was living at a Zen Centre, which shall remain nameless, for seven years. And there was one of our retreats, which was a month long, we did that twice a year, and it was in August. And during this during this August practice period, we would sit from six in the morning until nine at night, formally, together. People could start as early as they wanted, or as late as they wanted, they could sleep in the Zendo, if they wanted, but our formal period was from six in the morning till 10 at night with sitting and walking and we were eating formally in the Zendo. And there was a work period and a rest period. And in the afternoons, there was a talk, a Dharma talk. And I think that the talk had already happened, although I'm not sure, maybe not. We had two or three hours of meditation in the afternoon. And I had been working with a particular Koan, a particular teaching story about a fish that leaped up over the dam, freed itself by leaping up over the dam into the upstream into the wild waters. And at some point, something shifted inside of me, and I became the fish leaping upstream and my whole consciousness shifted. Deep absorption and just shifted into great spaciousness and kind of deep time mind, I would say, deep time of the now or the now of the deep time. And I started to laugh and cry at the same time. Kind of I got the cosmic joke. And was in this kind of absorptive, you know, unitive consciousness. And, but I was laughing, crying at the same time, and I was being loud. And in the Zendo, of course, you were supposed to be silent. And I sat for periods in a row. And I remember, I stayed put after everybody left the Zendo. And then I tried to get up and my feet had fallen asleep and so I fell over. And the current co-Abbot, at the time, found me kind of fallen over in the Zendo and asked me to leave the practice hall, asked me to leave the Zendo. Because I was apparently disturbing folks, whatever, it doesn't really matter now, but in fact, it does matter because it was this huge gift. 

Because I went outside, in this state of consciousness, that was not the everyday mind. And I lay down on the grass, and I and the sun, the golden sunlight of the afternoon was streaming on me. And I, suddenly my unitive absorptive state became a unitive physical embodied spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical oneness unitive absorption with Earth. And in that particular case, this first moment, it was the grass and I, I had the feeling I could hear the grass growing, I could hear the grass singing. I could, I could, I could feel the consciousness of, or the awareness, the aliveness of grass in my own consciousness. And I, I wasn't allowed to go back into the Zendo. And there wasn't any food for me because everybody was eating inside. And I didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do and so I started to walk around the grounds and I went down to the river. And it was this kind of golden sunlight drenched, incredible, high desert afternoon. And this experience that I had had with the grass just kept deepening and deepening and expanding and expanding until it really, like took over my whole body and every creature that I met every plant, or tree, or furred, or winged creature that I met I had the same experience of. Like I was sharing consciousness with them, like my body could feel the being woven into the same web of life with them. And this went on for hours, and I picked wild herbs for my supper. And I stayed down there in this kind of, in this expanded unified consciousness with all of Earth for quite some, some hours, and it fundamentally changed how I understood myself to be and who I understood myself to be. It changed me forever. And ultimately led to me partially, leaving the Zen centre, and doing the wilderness work and the nature-based work that I'm doing now with folks, because I wanted to support other people to have such kinds of consciousness expanding experiences, and most importantly, consciousness expanding into the web of life, to physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually understand ourselves, experience ourselves as part of the ecological web of belonging.

Bell Selkie Lovelock    

Yeah, I feel like I've been on a little journey myself just hearing that. Yeah, kind of moving. And I hope that yeah, people getting that idea of what it actually feels like, it's a game changer to experience everything as alive and sentient. And so I just want to... I live in Cymru, I live in Wales and the language here Cymraeg has words that because it's an old old language, some would argue it's the oldest in Europe. It has words that are rooted in an old way of living like the, our ancestors were indigenous once you know. And there are some words that link us to this belonging and the sentience and the agency of other-than-humans. So words like Cynefin, which is kind of like, mostly you'd hear it talked about the sheep up on the mountains who know their place, Cynefin is a knowing of your place. And it's a kind of belonging in the place, you're woven into a place if you like. And so sheep with Cynefin know, you know, there are no, there aren't like fences on the mountain or walls right on the top so but they know, they stay in their place, because they know their place and they're woven into it and they're, but humans have Cynefin too. And yeah, and there's another expression which is Milltir sqwar, which is spoken of like you're from your square mile. But it's not just your human square mile. It's like you belong to the trees, and you belong with the trees and the rivers and the rocks and everything else. 

And yeah, and there's a an expression in English, which kind of moves towards it, which is kith and kin. And we often think of kith and kin these days as like, two types of kin. It's like family and extended family. But the original Germanic word meant other-than-human, so not human kith was "not human". So, but it was still you're in a kind of familial relationship with trees and rocks and rivers and birds and everything else. So, it still kind of is clinging on there. Kind of surreptitiously hidden in English as well, this idea of kith and kin. So it's not, it's not something we don't know. And it's but it's kind of hidden in our culture and lost in our culture, or buried. I wouldn't say it's lost because we can find it. I'm one of those who's found it and we've just heard your story of how you were found by your family. If you like, let's give them the agency. We don't find them. They find us maybe, or something finds us. Yeah, so I'm just really Yeah. Want to bring that in that this isn't like something new. This is something ancient that we're remembering. We're bringing back to into being by Yeah,

Or it is being brought back into our being by something other than us, she says mysteriously...Yeah. So I was wondering about maybe we need to talk about culture, a bit. About different cultures, we have touched on it, but like about, because what can happen is, I don't know how true this is for you. But when this Eco-Awakening happens, you've had this incredible experience of everything's alive and sentient and relating to me, and I'm relating to it, and I am totally changed by it. And then you go back to your family, your normality, in mainstream culture, in the power over culture. And everybody else is treating the others. Like, they're things. They're inanimate. They're kinda like machines, if you like, you know, it's that mechanistic mindset that came in, in the enlightenment. That everything, only humans have consciousness, I think it was Descartes that kind of was a philosopher who spoke about that. But it's like everything, everything else is soulless, and only humans have kind of got consciousness and everything else is just a machine. And you can understand it through mathematics and science. And yeah, and so that kind of mindset took over. But before that, there was an understanding of soul of the unsold pneus of everything. And so you have your Eco-Awakening moment, and then or, yours wasn't a moment, it went on and on. But you're this experience, and then you go back into the mainstream culture, and there is nothing there to support you to remember that. I mean, that's the impoverishment with which we live in modernity. And I don't want to diss modernity, of course, you know, it is part of the great unfolding of life. And you know, it's not for me to say that it's bad, or good. I can see that it causes quite a lot of trauma. I feel it, I have it. And I'm one of the lucky ones being white and you know, yeah, educated and whatnot. But um, yeah, but we live with an impoverishment. And so we come back, or we have these experiences, and then we come back, and we're not met. And it makes me think about, I've been listening to Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme's book, the journey of the universe, which I really recommend. And they're talking about the universe. It's like the science of the universe, but how that actually translates into culture and our connection with life. And where we're at, on these, these edge times that we're in, you know, like, of close to mass extinction and climate collapse. And, you know, the composting of the current culture that I would say we're in and you would say, we're in probably, and and I'm all for Yeah, and I'm trying to encourage along. I'm feeling sorry for us, in a way us modern humans and our, what's that poem? our sense of being troubled guests on this planet, as opposed to "we are this planet." We are what you know, in the same way that something a body has organs were one of the organs of this planet, as this species has a particular job to do on this planet. We're not just beamed in to cause a mess, and then die off. You know, we're doing something and we've, we're here to do something, and this planet has made us to do something potentially, or, you know, the universe. If we're, you know, because the planet is not separate from the universe, you know, Earth is not separate. 

So, but then I was just thinking, hey, but you know, we've got poetry. And I would say that, and I just, yeah, I'm just thinking about yeah, there's poetry that speaks to, that tells stories. And it's one of those things that takes us to the threshold. Like, for instance, Mary Oliver. I think I might read it. Although I probably know it off by heart because it this was one of those moments that reinforced my own Eco-Awakening. I walked into somebody's house and they were smashing down a wall and their house had been in disarray for a long time, and they'd written all over the wall. And this poem was on the wall, and when I read it, it was like the world stopped breathing or turning and everything changed for me and it was, it was like a so here it is, 

WILD GEESE

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

   love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Sara McFarland  singing

breaking the spell

Steven Hyde

sometimes the only way 

to slow the world 

down is 

to step away from it 

to walk the night 

roads 

to follow the lonely pilgrim 

ways 

to swim in the deep 

waters of despair 

what keeps being 

forgotten 

is what you are 

here to remember 

what keeps being 

lost 

is what you are 

here to find 

what you have been 

given is the journey 

the only question 

you must answer  

is this 

have you become

whom you were 

born to be  

Bell Selkie Lovelock   

When I first started  this work that we do, well over a decade go, i went for a wander and so I'd read these books by Bill Plotkin. And I'd got this yearning, and I was just like, "I need to be fully giving what I have for Earth". It was such a strong yearning in meand kind of like there was a real grief that I wasn't... I could feel that I was a bit dull in myself or a bit not alive because I wasn't finding the way to really offer myself or surrender, and so I had been through this period of longing and I'd come across his books and I read this book and I was like, wow. Mind blown and I went, I took myself away. I'd had several children at that point and I hadn't had like, any solo time for quite a long time. And I took myself away, to the Brecon Beacons, if anybody knows them, and I went on this wander, as I described, didn't have an intention was just wandering, as described in these books. And which is where I learned to do it. As an adult, I knew how to do it as a child and did it all the time. But somehow education kind of beat it out of me, mainstream education, I would say.  

I was wandering, and I had a real dilemma at that time about where I was living, and I was drawn to this rock, this mossy rock and I sat down and it was November so it was pretty squelchy, sat down. And the river was full of really loud, yeah, really loud water. And I started and I started off by talking to the rock and telling the rock about how I experienced it, how it looked, how it felt, I told it about its moss and how it felt, how it smelt, I even tasted it I licked it, you know, and, and was just there talking to the rock. And after I'd kind of like, described rock to itself, I then started telling rock about myself and my dilemma that I was in about where to live. And then all of a sudden, and I said something like, I was describing saying, and I live in a community because I did at the time in an intentional community. And I just heard, and I would say the rock said it. But it wasn't like I heard it like a voice. It was just, a question was posed to me, which was and what kind of community do you want to live in? And it completely broke my story of who I was open, because it was the first time I admitted I admitted that I didn't actually want to live in an intentional community. But more deeply than that, it was like, it was like a recognition of I am here to live in the the greater Earth community. And to, and that was my work. That is my work. 

That's why I'm talking to you on this podcast. You know, it's like it's that. You know, it's our birthright, you know, and this is the impoverishment of the culture we're in that we don't live in this birthright. Because we're not born into this innate, belonging, we have to kind of offer ourselves to the world to find it again, like move out of our minds into our bodies and our imaginations and our feelings, so that we can reclaim a birthright, that everything on the planet has, which is to be kind of living in the beautiful enriching, life enhancing, and death enhancing (because life and death have two sides of the same coin) web of life on this dear green and blue, spinning ball that is part of the universe, which is part of a mystery that we don't understand. So yeah.

Sara McFarland   

What to Remember When Waking

David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

Bell Selkie Lovelock  15:58  

It's important Eco-Awakening, I feel like saying more, more about why it's important. Just to summarise that, you know, I think we've spoken to, or we've, if anybody's listening with their hearts, they'll feel how important we feel it is, you know, but to actually speak that, that, for me, it's it's important, because the most important importance is that our current culture makes us think that we are in charge of everything. You know, like if you think about the creation story that pervades through modern Western culture is one of like being given dominion. And that's not what our indigenous ancestors knew. And that's what not how healthy indigenous cultures relate. It's one of reciprocity and even indebtedness, you know, it's not often definitely not domination. So it's something eco awakening is what decolonize is us is out of our idea that humans are some kind of exception. Like when we get into this whole discussion about "saving the planet" in rabbit ears. This idea that whatever we do, every single human has to stay alive. You know, I'm not saying, I wouldn't want anybody to die, not, of course, but it's like, it's a strange place to start the conversation from without saying, and everybody else, and all the songbirds and all the alligators, and all that, you know, it's kind of like, that's what I mean by human exceptionalism, this idea that somehow we're a special case, and we have special dibs on this planet. And it's kind of like, yeah, it's quite, it's so woven into the way we think we're dyed in the wool with this, you know, it's like, I keep finding it. I've been doing this work for a long time. And it's like, I keep finding it in me every day, this kind of idea that somehow I'm a special case. And so when we get into that special case scenario, of course, I mean, we're more familiar with it in racism, or sexism, of like, there are some genders that are more important and more, a lot more power than others, or some skin colours. Or, you know, we're more used to recognising it there than we are in around our speciesism, if you like. So, it's important because the way we go about currently, I would say, having been an activist all my adult life, sometimes a direct activist, sometimes a pro-activist, I call it where, you know, I've tried to raise my kids differently and live in a different way from the mainstream or less influenced by the mainstream, is that there's still this idea that we need to think what needs to be done, and then do it. 

And where Eco-Awakening fits in to this is, is that it helps, it's the start of a big shift, where instead of thinking we know what to do, we become humbled. And humble actually means to return to the topsoil, the humus layer of the soil. So we become humbled. And instead of thinking, we know, we start to listen to what we're being told to do. Because there is an intelligence that's bigger than us. That already knows. And I mean, some of you have probably heard of the Gaia theory, and some of you, you know, probably heard of indigenous cultures. And some of you may have a belief system that allows for an overarching principle, such as God or spirit or universal. I mean, we call it mystery. Personally, I say mystery because I don't know what it is. But so it is a mystery to me. And I don't see a guy with a beard and I don't see a woman you know, a great goddess either. If I see anything I see the universe, and stars, that's what I see. But it's like there's an overarching pince principle, and there's something unfolding and we don't understand it. I'm not dissing science, I love science. But it is like looking through a keyhole. Really, because we can't see the whole picture, as far as I can tell, because there are things that science can't explain. So, you know, when we even Well, I know lots of scientists, and they would admit to that, so there are mysteries. So until everything is explained, then there is a mystery. So and I, yeah, I tend to go along with my indigenous ancestors, and those cultures that aren't destroying the planet who tend to believe that there is some kind of organising principle that is unfolding. And it has an intelligence and if we learn to listen, we can find out what we're here to do not just use our strategic mind to work out what science says is the best thing to do. And I think this is where this is the big shift that Eco-Awakening is the beginning of.

Sara McFarland   Outro

Thank you for joining us today and listening with your heart to this wandering way of conversation, and dreaming and storytelling, and poetry reading about an essential way of being human that is so needed for these times.

If you're interested in joining us at Starter Culture, for practices, invitations, in the future programmes and webinars, storytelling events or Bell's writings, please do check out our website at www.starterculture.net. And join our newsletter that comes out about every six weeks, where you'll receive links to storytelling events, recordings, Bell's blog, and announcements about upcoming programmes.

We feel you in the web, and we're so grateful that you are part of the community of humans listening in to Earth's Dreaming. Please like, comment, and share this podcast wherever you listen, as well as pass on our newsletter to others who also longed to create a human culture that knows its belonging to Earth community. We'll see you for part two. Next time on Co-Evolutionary culturing, composting power-over culture from the inside out

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

EPISODE 1

Welcome to our first podcast, in which we dive into the heart of Starter Culture and all the ways in which we expand consciousness beyond power-over culture into human wholeness and the other-than-human. We talk about the necessary death of the modern paradigm and the grief and fear it brings with it, the ways we might decolonize at depth and at scale, and the necessity of inner work for outer change for a possible future cultural renewal.

Watch the video conversation here:

Episode 1: Show notes

Episode 1: Introducing Starter Culture and our Podcast!

Inner-led change: The term inner-led change is the long-overdue reuniting of ‘outer’ change work (which recognises and challenges harmful societal structures and tries to build alternatives) with ‘inner’ change work (which supports us to; explore our own entanglement in the power-over culture perpetuating these harmful societal structures; cultivate healthier relationships with ourselves, each other and other-than-humans; and to co-create the healthy, transformative and just cultures our hearts long for - and which our current social and ecological crises demand). More Info: https://starterculture.net/about/what-is-the-inner/

Power-over culture: When we say power-over culture, we mean the current modern paradigm of control and consumerism that is based on a disbalance of power in relation to those that have and those who do not, as well as historical realities of racism, genocide, colonialism, violence, oppression, ecocide and resource extraction that the current culture is based upon.

Death: When we speak of death, we are talking about both the physical reality of death, but also the psycho-spiritual reality of death as essential to transformation and renewal. Every change in our personal and collective system requires a letting go, and releasing, a dying of the old way.

24:03 When I, Sara, say we can’t point to anything that is human made that is not soaked in the modern paradigm, I am of course speaking of things we use within the modern paradigm. Those things made of and with connection to Earth Community and in the sacred and traditional ways or vision and dream-led ways are absolutely birthed by and steeped in another kind of consciousness than the modern paradigm.

On Woundology and Trauma: https://starterculture.net/gateways/trauma/

We mentioned the work of these folks in the podcast:

Bayo Akomolafe: https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/

Drumming: deep down percussion loop from Garageband

Cover art: Lauren Forrester: https://www.twentyeight.london/

How to be in touch with us:

Starter Culture Website:  https://starterculture.net/podcast-episodes/ 

Podbean website: https://coevolutionaryculturing.podbean.com

Shareable Link: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wshxd-13a5f2e

Sign up for our newsletter: www.starterculture.net and click on sign up in the upper right corner for information on our webinars, online storytelling events, articles and blogs and soon information about online and in-person programs.
We’d love to hear from you! hello@starteculture.net

Episode 1: Transcript

Sara McFarland 0:00  

Hi, everyone, we're really happy to be with you here in the interwebs, the virtual portal of zoom. Or, if you're listening on one of the other platforms to the podcast, we greet you. This is our very, very first inaugural Starter Culture podcast episode. And we're really excited and a little bit nervous. And happy to drop in with you today. My name is Sara McFarland. And I'm here with Claire Milne, who is the co-founder of Starter Culture. And,  I'm so excited to be together to just have this time to, yeah, to really introduce Starter Culture into the world. I know that it's been around for a while, but it feels like this is kind of renewal rebirth moment is you know, happening at this time of year as the, as the spring is, is gathering, the sap is flowing, and the buds are, you know, swelling, that there's this this rebirth, renewal feeling at Starter Culture. So, and part of it's this podcast, right, of what's getting born into the world. I'd love to just invite you to share with me and share with us, because I'm just joining Starter Culture, you know, officially about a month ago now. Yeah, I'd love to invite you to just share with us. Who is Starter Culture? Who is this creature that is Starter Culture?

Claire Milne  1:26  

Thank you. It's Yeah, wonderful to be here having this conversation. And yeah, it feels like it is a kind of, there's a an iteration of rebirth happening in you and others kind of jumping or fully in now. So I kind of feel like whenever I speak of, you know what, what it is who it is that starter is a starter culture is. There's something of a kind of constant process of iteration and reiteration and emergence. So I kind of, I'm curious to see what words will come as to what's happening right now. And I love that that is how we work, you know, so emergently and honouring of what's been but you know, what's now and what's becoming. So, how to explain a little, share a little of what Starter Culture is and where it's come from, and what it's becoming? I always find it helpful actually, to start with a sharing of kind of its roots. Because somehow, it kind of gives the most tangible way of understanding the creature that starts culture is. So the roots of Starter Culture really well, the tangible roots, at least are those that in that there were three of us three co founders, myself and Eva Schoenfeld and Joe Hamilton, who, who ended up in a conversation or in a meeting together, each of us with about 20 years of experience in working in social and environmental change in a variety of ways. And found ourselves with a shared kind of passion and kind of concern really around how much the inner dimension of the change that we're involved in was neglected and the absolute cost of that, you know, just looking at these, you know, hundreds of 1000s, millions of people so passionate about bringing about change in the world about being part of co-creating something different that really honours, what you know, our hearts kind of can feel has to be possible. And yet, just what an uphill struggle that seems to be and really landing. And it seems to be so largely because we find it so hard to turn towards this inner dimension, that for whatever reasons that I'm sure we will dive into at some point, whether today or another time, gets neglected. And you know, and that's not just within social environmental change, of course, it's within our mainstream culture, more generally. So that's how started culture kind of started out. And then we decided to carry out this kind of what we've called our Cups of Tea Process. And so the Cups of Tea Process was across 14 countries, and we had like over 250 cups of tea conversations to kind of really find out how is it for those those social and environmental change practitioners, makers changemakers? How is it to try and integrate an inner dimension? Like how is that for you? What What, what are the challenges you face in that? What are the needs and the opportunities? And that's in a way when when we come to what the current iteration of Starter Culture is, it's so fed by those, you know, some 250 conversations that pointed to many, many things. But there were two things that they kind of most obviously pointed to that felt like they were the real core, the kind of underbelly of what what I guess it is to be integrating this inner dimension into our lives and social environmental change. And one of those was lack of funding. And recognising how hard it is to get funding to actually give the time and get the support that's needed around integrating this in a dimension to allow changemaking to really flourish. And, yeah, to take it seriously and not just keep skipping over what we all know is, is problematic. And then the second thread is really just seeing how, in a way, all parts, all threads within the conversations ultimately kind of dug deep down into the roots of what we could call power-over culture and the reality that, that it's this consciousness that we've all been kind of acultured into, that we could call power-over culture that seems to be running the show. And that ultimately, if you look at any given problem, I would suggest we were likely to find power-over culture at its heart. And so in a way, you could say that Starter Culture is a kind of a collective endeavour adventure experiment, to shift consciousness beyond power-over culture, and to do that within ourselves. And to do that, kind of, amongst ourselves and other humans and just as importantly, to be birthing into a consciousness that goes well beyond human-centrism, and recognises our more than human reality. And that we're not just individuals, that we are inherently part of a wider web of life. So, So yeah, there's different iterations, but they all have the parts kind of all the parts lead to this dismantling of power-over culture. And recognising that you know, how much we've internalised it, how much it lives in us, no matter how dedicated we are, to transforming oppression and oppressive systems, it has to live inside us because we've been cultured into that. So there's startup culture is dedicated to that inquiry at various levels of scale, individual, group, other-than-human of how have we internalized power-over culture, how do we dismantle it, and then make space thereby for something new to be birthed through us that isn't from the strategic mind? That is a product of power over culture, but that is listening deeply, deeply, deeply. From the emptiness to Earth's dreaming to mystery to something that mind it couldn't fathom on its own.

Sara McFarland  7:22  

Thank you so much. I'm feeling so inspired and so nourished, like yes, this is why I am with Starter Culture

Claire Milne  7:30  

Well, maybe now is a good moment like I kind of feel like there hasn't been time in our working together to hear that from you. So if you feel like, I feel like that would be a really beautiful contribution if you feel to share, what is it that called you in to Starter Culture, other than my loud howl, but yeah, I'd love to hear

Sara McFarland  7:53  

Well, essentially, exactly that. That exquisite stretch, that holographic stretch between the tender human heart and inner work and you know, ways of coming more and more to know ourselves and unearth forgotten or repressed aspects of ourselves, integrate those aspects, remember ourselves as more-than-human and in the other-than-human web of life. And that the stretch, the reach of that into right, and that in and of itself that work in and of itself with if we have that lens is  this shifting of consciousness that can, that could, if we're lucky, you know, birth something new in the future. Which is yet to be seen, what will happen. We don't know what's up with, with the collapse. What did Vanessa Andreotti...  I was just listening to something on YouTube from her about hospicing modernity where she said, you know, we're facing the death of everything we know and love. And how to stand in that place of horror and loss and grief and beauty and love and say yes to the transforming-with and for me, Starter Culture is a possible way of being exactly in that place. In that place of, we can't do this alone, right, we need to build community to heal the the civilization trauma of separation, weaving community together, and including with other-than-humans, and also doing this work. For me, that's just the, it was like a clarion call of what I myself was feeling mystery calling me into the world and into my life and into my work and Starter Culture was like here! Here's a home for that work. Come join us. Yeah, so it just felt like it was ultimately because you know, the residents of, of your howl with mystery's call, you know, of how I'm supposed to show up in the world and the gifts I'm to bring just felt so resonant that I could do that, I could fulfil mystery's invitation or call to me, within the liberating structure of Starter Culture, because of its dedication to shifting consciousness. Yeah.

Claire Milne  10:45  

Yeah, thank you. So I always find it so expansive to kind of receive other people's relationships with Starter Culture and what it is that particularly resonates? Because somehow it expands Starter Culture, even the alignment's already there, it's like, yeah, it just got a bit bigger, bit brighter, bit bigger. Yeah. And what you just ended with there around the kind of shifting or expanding consciousness, it feels like more and more, they're the kind of boots that Starter Culture is realising that it's filling. And it's kind of, you know, such deep blessings and gratitude to elder, our elder Joanna Macy, who kind of framed this you know, just how the the piece around shifting consciousness is so you know, is key to being able to deliver on the other ways of going about change that are, you know, outer focused. And, and it feels like Starter Culture's contribution is to really make this tangible. You know, what, what is it? What does this shift in consciousness, this expanding consciousness, what does that look and feel like, and what is it and what is it not? And what are the costs of not attending to it? And what's possible when we do? And, and yeah, it's almost like it's opening that Pandora's box of ways of expanding consciousness, so that we can go beyond that, which has created the pickle that we find ourselves in and really naming without compromise, that if we don't do that, if we don't commit ourselves to expanding beyond the consciousness that created the reality we're in now, then we cannot create something different, we can only keep replicating the same mistakes in different form. And I'm sure we all know it, through trying to change aspects of ourselves that unless we get to the real core, and the consciousness that's created the problem, maybe it's an addiction, or whatever, or pattern or behaviour we don't want to be doing. It just finds its way into another kind of Yeah, rivulet have its way with us. And so yeah, there's something of that that kind of expanding consciousness shifting consciousness that feels really important. It's interesting, I'm noticing my language here, because for me, actually expanding consciousness somehow feels like it's really true to what Starter Culture kind of is about. In that it's, it's not about making something wrong and saying, Don't do that. It's saying, Oh, this is where we are like, welcome to the reality of what it is to be human right now, but we need to expand beyond that. And we can't get rid of what we've got, but by other than by kind of helping dismantle it so that we can expand into something else that is impossible to know from this place.

Sara McFarland  13:24  

Yeah, that's making me think of what I was hearing when I was out on my walk today around you know, composting, the process of composting, which we talk, which is the title of this, the tagline of this podcast, right? Composting power-over culture from the inside out. I was thinking about how, or I was listening to how composting is the engine, the heat that happens in the compost pile is like the engine of transformation. And that it's not that it's, in fact, the very, the very material that dies, and is composted into, eaten by worms and mycelial filaments and all the aphids and all the creatures that are in there, as well as the heat of it, are actually transforming it into something that's nourishing and able to grow the seeds of the of the future.

Claire Milne  14:22  

Yeah, and I'm remembering that when you named that part of the the heat, the transformative energy of of composting, the other thing you said and I wrote it down because I loved it was, death is the invisible heart of renewal. And I was just like, yes. And there's something of like, when you and I and you know, other Starter Culture family are talking about, you know, the need to support this cultural death. It feels so natural and easy. And then it's like, suddenly there's a kind of a moment of like, oh, you know, that that isn't a conversation that everyone is always engaged in and, and yeah, so just recognising how for us that is so integral, you know. Leaning into and really embracing the reality of death, not just of our immediate loved ones, which is obviously a really, really important part of living in these times and growing into an expanded consciousness, but beyond that going into going into what is it actually to recognise that, that these times seem to be longing for us to not fight to keep them, to fight to upstand them, but actually to support them to die and, and that to us does feel like quite a natural part of our conversation. But I'm also aware that that isn't a natural part of a conversation for a lot of people, I guess sort of our work yeah, part of our work is to normalise it, to kind of make that kind of something that is just rolls off our tongue.

Sara McFarland  15:45  

And there we're pointing, pointing to the first example of how we expand consciousness, right? It's like, let's think about death. Can we think about death in a, in a different way? Can we invite the truth of the way it is, right now, you know, we are in the middle of or the beginning of a sixth mass extinction, and our own death and the death of those we love and the death of everything we know, is happening. Right? And that we don't like scramble and try and save what we can, but that we turn towards and, and help along. You know, I mean, my prayer, really my deepest prayer is to, I know that violence and destruction are part of life, you know, volcanoes and earthquakes are, are part of life. And yet, you know, the soft belly human of me hopes so much that there'll be as little violence as possible in this transition and knows, you know, creatures in their death throes who are fighting death often do a lot of damage. So that's a little side note, I guess, but, but to really lovingly turn towards the death and dying as, as the invisible heart of renewal, we can't have one without the other. We can't have the new life without letting the old life die. We know that from from initiation practices and stories and journeys, we know that from myths, we know that from looking at cultures over time, at species and renewal of earth over time, the way that destruction and, and regeneration are how the earth evolves.

Claire milne  17:28  

Gosh, it's such a just when you spoke then of you know, this reality of how when creatures are dying, often, sometimes often, there is a kind of violent fight that can actually cause a lot of pain and suffering to others around them when in that dying process. I was just so kind of struck and so sobered by by that, like, it's like, yeah, that that's what's happening on a collective scale, right now, you know, we're kicking and screaming, and, and turning to our addictions to absent ourselves, so we don't have to kind of admit to the reality of our situation that we are in this cultural death process. And that doesn't mean that there isn't something beyond it, it's almost like unless we allow ourselves to turn towards the reality of death. And that that might, that inevitably isn't going to be entirely smooth, and it is going to involve a degree of suffering. Unless we tend towards that, then it's almost like it is impossible to be truly birthing something different. And so we're kind of blocked, it's kind of like, you know, there's a blocking to the, the actual extent of what's possible, because if there's resistance to what actually is, and how can we possibly, you know, create something different. So yeah, I'm, I'm really with that. And, you know, as is often the case, in our conversations is that for me, there's this interweave between, when we're looking at this at an individual level, and we're thinking about what does this mean for me as an individual and my friends and loved ones around me and, you know, activists and changemakers at an individual level, you know, and that that in itself is quite confronting to be like, how do I dismantle you know, like, how this culture is showing up in me because I'm going to dismantle, if we're going to dismantle power-over culture, then I have to start with what's going on in me and how I'm living. And how do we do that in our groups and in our organisations and in our, in our movements? Because that, to me, feels like it's I know, from, I suppose living it through Starter Culture, it's this realisation of how ingrained actually this power-over culture is within our organisations and how so much we perceive that their future depends on a perpetuation of that of elements of that power-over culture. And you know, in in our conversations, often there's a kind of like process where there's a part of me hanging on to like, no, no, no, but we have to keep that bit, like I couldn't possibly kind of go and do that in organisations because that's just too much or something and then you're very always very skillfully, kind of like, Ah that might be power-over culture showing up in you, Claire? With so much love, and gratefully received. It's just such a rich dance to kind of be like, Do you know what, our groups and our organisations and our movements also need to support power-over culture in them to die, and that that's a scary process, because most of us are entangled in financial realities that feels like if we are to truly honour that, then that kind of lifeline will be cut, you know, that if we were to say to our funder, for example, that, Oh, actually, we need to entirely reinvent ourselves, we need to take a year off and do something completely different, or whatever it is that it looks like, I'm just making this up. But we believe and we project that we would lose our funding, or whatever your version of that is, if you're in a group, or an organisation. It's like, you know, if I, if I change radically how I'm doing what I'm doing, and then nobody will come to my programmes, if I really step into my truth that is outside of power, you know, beyond power-over culture, then it will be too radical, and nobody will come or whatever your version is. It's like, oh, no, but that's exactly what needs to change. Because again, just as much as unless we dismantle power over in ourselves as individuals, unless we dismantle it in the collective in our groups and movements and organisations, then we are just part of perpetuating it.

Sara McFarland 21:27  

That's great. There's a couple things here that are just really delicious verses, I'm really getting kind of a lived, embodied feeling of inner lead, what we mean by inner lead change, from what you're just saying. That it's inner-led, to dismantle the power over culture that we need to start with it in ourselves. And, and within our organisations like that, we don't look over there. But that we look within first, and I'm feeling the rub of like, oh, right, and there was just something in there also about privilege, and oppression and white supremacy, and this piece around. There's one way of doing this work, where we're looking at it and separating ourselves from it, and making like judgments about the modern paradigm or the power-over culture. And there's a way of kind of, therefore keeping ourselves safe from it and distancing from it, judging it, because, of course, it's wrong, you know. But there's something also about uhuh, and there's this kind of insidious privilege in there in terms of how let's see how I want to say this. The kind of the cult of the individual, right, one of the markers of, of power-over culture is the cult of the individual, that I can have my own little house and my own little world and my own little vacations and my own little dreams. And I can kind of ignore everybody else. And I have the capacity to do that I can have my own swimming pool, I don't have to go to the public swimming pool, you know, whatever. And so it's like, are we willing to be messy and, and dirty and with another, with each other and include ourselves in like, Oh, here's how I'm complicit, not in the shaming way. As we know, shame is a tool of the, of the power-over culture of the consciousness of that's gotten us into this situation. But as an inclusionary way to return from separation, we are neither separating ourselves as victims of something and nor as perpetrators, but to see uh huh, how are we all part of the warp and weft? And, boy, is that difficult. You know, how do we how do we change consciousness within the consciousness because everything is soaked in this consciousness. It's in our culture, like, I was thinking about that, too. It's like, where do you can't really point to anything that's human made, that's outside of the consciousness of power over culture. And I think that's why what's so radical about Starter Culture also, is that we point to the other than human because the other than human, the wild ones, you know, the herons and the egrets and the cranes that are flying overhead outside of my window. They're carrying and embodying a consciousness that is other than the power-over culture, right? It's they're beholden to the biology and the warp and weft of Earth community and Earth consciousness. And that, for me is one of the most important and beautiful pieces about Starter Culture is that our commitment is to centre other than human centre, mystery centre, Earth's Dreaming, not a human's Dreaming, even as beautiful as our human dreams are.

Claire Milne 25:00  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, gosh, there's so much and what you've just said, it's like, you know, for me, that last piece you've just finished on, it's like, yeah, it's there's something of that kind of real humility that goes with this journey of recognising that, the kind of integral to power-over culture is this belief that we can predict and control and, and that turning towards and expanding into more than human consciousness and, and, you know, and our ally ship and you know, with the whole earth community. It's like, therein lies the way forward. And it can't, it can't exist without it, because it, it is a reality. It's almost like it's not, it's the choices choice, it's like, oh, okay, unless we lean into this and expand into this reality, it's not going to work. You know, and the same goes for, like, you know, when we're thinking of all of the polarity within the human dimension, you know, and the, the oppression and the marginalisation and the inequality and injustice, it's like, that's not, you know, turning towards that, and learning how to collaborate across difference. That's not kind of an optional extra, it's integral, it's like, it is an integral part of life happening. It's like, there's no contesting it, you know, it's it is life, it exists. And it is the beauty of the expansive love that we will live as, you know, and so yeah, so absolutely. And for me, I kind of feel like there's a double edge within the funding kind of piece that we were, you know, we're working a lot with around, you know, really dedicating ourselves to finding ways to make more funding available for inner-led change, partly, or largely, because we recognise that it really, really sucks and it's not okay for us that it's the you know, that to be able to get support around the work that we're talking about is, is a privilege, and that unless in the world that the market economy that we sadly live in currently, unless you can afford it, it's unlikely that you're going to get the support needed for a lot of what we're speaking of, you know, and we don't want that to be the reality, I'm really committed to doing everything we can to transform that, you know, there's, there's a reality that so much of what gets understood to be inner work actually is born of the same consciousness that has created those inequalities of power-over culture. And so a lot of what you were speaking in, and that kind of that need to splash around in this mess together and not kind of feed the separation with like, you know, some of us are broken, and some aren't, and, you know, and shaming each other for not getting it right, in the ways that we communicate, it's like, yeah, really landing into the kind of as Bayo Akomolafe would say, it's like, you know, the trauma is, is the collective waters that we're currently swimming, you know, and, and we can't kind of it was just not true to kind of imply that there are those that are broken and need fixing. And some of us don't, and who are you? It's like, No, we're all there. And if you're, if it's not awaken in you yet, that's because it's not awaken you. Yeah, you know, it's like trauma lives in all of us, it has to because we share the same collective histories and, you know, if we track each of us track ourselves back, our lineages are going to be a mix of oppression and oppressing and so that lives in us and yeah, so there's something in this that feels so important to kind of just really recognise the complexity of power and privilege within this within, as we keep kind of presencing, within the kind of the creative tension of of leaning into birthing into a consciousness beyond that which we are birthing it from.

Sara McFarland 28:41  

Way. I just want to make space for that just a moment here because that was...

yeah, how do you talk about everything all at once? And and both say yes to it, you know, how to, how to live fully alive and how to die beautifully and how to offer our gifts and do the justice and equality work and, you know, be active in terms of living a diverse and other-than-human honouring Life, in the human community as well. And at the same time, and do our inner work, and at the same time, you know, have this kind of meta perspective of, "here's what we're really up to, we're really up to participating in this dying, that's happening". And, and the hope there of, or the trust, or the faith in Earth's cyclical death, rebirth, capacity of renewal and evolution, and, and not knowing if humans are going to be part of the future evolution. You know, we have to say yes to this without any guarantees of anything. Yeah, I keep finding myself in that place of like, oh, those parts of me, you know, that are scared or that don't want to say yes, or that pull back, or that want to blame or push away. Because it's, it's, you know, it's big. It's really, really big.

Claire Milne  1:20  

It's really big. And, and it's, there's something of the this reality of, you know, through one lens, the conversation that we're having right now, and everything we're pointing to is such a privilege, you know, to have the time and the space and the resources to be dedicating ourselves to this conversation is such a privilege. And there's something and so of course, it's like, there's always going to be the parts of us and the voices that are saying, how on earth can you be attending to this, when there are people dying, and they're suffering? And, you know, yeah, and it's like, it's both and and I guess the point we're trying to make, and what we're trying to live through Starter Culture is the reality, that it has to be both and that yes, of course, the kind of firefighting actions that are in the immediacy of, you know, people in so much pain and suffering right now, those kind of more sticking plaster approaches that are kind of just trying to, like, alleviate the suffering right now are so essential. And we're just trying to prise open that kind of, that window to say, and if that's coming from, you could say victim, persecutor rescuer consciousness, you know, whereby we're just trying to rescue and we're not, you know, actually inquiring into what parts of us are jumping in there. And we're not having a longer view, you know, and we're not kind of feeling into the collective well being, and we're just attuning to something micro, then then we're missing something. So you know, it's both and more. It's like..

Sara McFarland  2:54  

Here's a second way I'm hearing that Starter Culture is committed to and encouraging of ways of dismantling power over culture from within is the shift of consciousness that happens or the expansion of consciousness that happens when we hold non-binary truths, when we say yes to holding all the perspectives, whether they're all the perspectives within us, right of all the voices of ourselves, or all the perspectives of the people at the table, or all the perspectives of the creatures, when we  let go of this the relative or perceived safety of a position of a binary position of right and wrong or knowing what's going on and we're able to expand into both/and more consciousness right, then then there is defacto a consciousness transformation that happens, a way that that modern paradigm is or power-over culture is composted within us. And therefore, our ways of being in the world are arising from that kind of a consciousness, which invites that in other people automatically, or invites them to be in reaction against it!

Claire Milne  4:22  

Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, I mean, as you're speaking that I'm I'm just feeling the kind of the point of what I'd call a transmission of like, when we are brave enough to kind of and resourced enough to allow all of what's here to actually exist all of the different parts, even when they can feel like they're in competition with each other or contrast to each other. It's like just that process of allowing the wholeness of life to exist, is expanding into a consciousness beyond power-over because we're no longer trying to control it and have it from that position of perceived safety that is ours. And I kind of see it a lot actually, in various different group contexts where, when difference arises, how often, you know, conflict can come in and it can become so heated. And there's this sort of curiosity from an outside perspective of like, wow, why is this so heated, you know, this, this kind of what it feels like so much is at stake, because there's some different perspectives showing up. And just realising how much that kind of experience of difference, different perspectives and different needs, can tap into the parts of us that believe that that means I don't belong. And that means I'm going to get exiled. And it's, it's this kind of either or scarcity consciousness that we've been...is part of power-over culture is both part of and a result of power-over culture, that, that kind of creates this kind of mainly unconscious terror that, you know, that it's me or you, we can't both exist, you know, and that, again, like you just so beautifully spoke, it's like, in this kind of allowing our state of being to play host to the kind of the infinite multitude of parts and voices and realities, that in itself is beyond power-over culture. And it sounds simple, but actually, you know, it's a, it can be a gruelling process that can take time to really allow, it's like we're trying to rework in atrophied muscle, you know, that that kind of atrophied muscle that is conditioned to either/or, as opposed to just being a vessel to allow what's happening to arise within us.

Sara McFarland  6:43  

Way, yeah, I'm thinking of like, an ecosystem, you know, an ecosystem is, everybody's all participating all at the same time. And they're all in their eco niche, they're all in their capacity of giving and receiving, they're all in their capacity of, of being with another. And, of course, there are times of, you know, one species might swell. And there would be a devastation, a more devastating effect on the ecosystem. But there's that checks and balances, right? There's that, then the die back or there's stress on the entire system, and the whole ecosystem responds, maybe each part of the ecosystem is responding differently, and how that's such an exquisite... for me right now, just really feeling the, the lived metaphor of that both inner and outer of the truth of that capacity, to imaginally, gosh, our imagination and the imaginal is such an important is also one of the really powerful- this seems to be my job in the podcast, it is to be like, Oh, look, there's another there's another aspect that Starter Culture is offering!-  practice, and talk about atrophied muscles, you know, practice of the imaginal, that we that we invite the imaginal capacity, not as escapism, right, but as ways of listening with the heart to the other than human voices or ways of imagining what, what our minds don't think is possible, or that our hearts as you mentioned earlier, you know, do. There's some way of the imagination being a bridge builder, or a world shifter or shaper, traveller. And what an essential what an essential ingredient in expansion of consciousness.

Claire Milne 9:01  

Yeah, and as you speak, that it's like, just reminds me of how, you know, this, this kind of term imagination, it's kind of a mysterious word in itself. And, you know, for us, it's, it's not about the strategic mind, it's not about kind of, you know, imagining with the strategic mind, it's the art and skill of emptying out so that we can receive from the more than human consciousness so that we, we are a vessel for the whole and how its dream coming, you know, the future into being. And that's a very different thing to kind of imagining in a way that's like, I'm just going to imagine the future I would like, and that, you know, that which is you know, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's a much narrower realm of, you know, it opens a much narrower realm of possibility and it's very unlikely that it's going to go beyond the power-over consciousness and culture, whereas, you know, when we do the work, which is what you know what started culture is about this expansion of consciousness when we do the work, that we are genuinely able to empty out, not an idea of emptying out, but a really genuinely emptying out that we can be the space in which life is emerging, then something else comes through. And then deep imagination reveals itself to us. And we're taken by utter surprise, and, you know, yeah, it's a left field kind of response. And so, yeah, something of you know that, like you say that being integral to what Starter Culture is about. And to be able to do that we really need to, talking about atrophied muscles, we need to lean into these other windows and ways of knowing, you know, it's not just the strategic mind. And you know, this is massive for both of us, I know, it's like, it's, you know, we're not just saying other people need to do this has been huge work for us, because we both have very sharp strategic minds. But yeah, what is it to like, lean into, you know, the felt sense of the body and what moves through the body and what moves through the heart as feelings, and what moves through the wider whole as as the deep imagination, so it's like, without all of those kind of faculties of being, then ironically, the emptying out can't happen.

Sara McFarland  11:21  

Gorgeous, I want to pick up this word emptying out, because you've said it a few times in the last moments. And I want to unpack that a little bit. Because that feels important to say here, I mean, several things. And please correct me or add to what I say, but that it's not about getting rid of a part of ourselves, right? I mean, I know, you know, this, but that's not about emptying out, it's not about getting rid of parts of ourselves, or suppressing or denying or throwing out or any of those things. It's a it's more of a, well, I would say two things, right? And again, add what I've missed. One is our capacity to dis-identify, or identify-with the largest, most expansive part of ourselves. The most compassionate, curious, big, loving, part of ourselves, and dis-identify with the parts of ourselves that are in the wounding are the protective strategies, right? So for me, that's one aspect of the, the emptying out is like, Can I expand into the biggest stretches of me? Which, of course, doesn't really ever end, it just kind of moves into ecosystem. But that place that, you know, can I expand to that place where I become ecosystem? That's how I think of it. And the other thing is, can I integrate, love, welcome home the previously exiled or suppressed parts of myself to, to acknowledge ways that I'm conditioned and part of the power-over culture, ways of trauma and wounding, you know, all the other parts, that are the ones that tend to react with power-over culture habits or strategies or, yeah, that's enough. And, and choose to align ourselves with more mythic, more other-than-human more resourced parts of ourselves.

Claire Milne  13:47  

Yeah, beautiful. I love that you've initiated a kind of unpacking of this term. And there's probably a billion terms that we could do this all kind of quite quite helpfully. But yeah, just to kind of embellish on that, I guess, a riff off that. Yeah, absolutely. Everything you've said, and I guess the the layer that I would then bring in, it's almost like what you're naming to me kind of is almost it's that kind of the, it's, it's rebuilding that muscle to be the witness. And, it's not enough to have an idea of the witness and watch, it's like we actually need to viscerally experience those parts and you know, and be embodied in those parts. And the more we're on that journey, the more we see, and because, you know, there can be this idea that the more we're on the journey, the less will show up because we've kind of transformed more but it's like no, no. The more we're on the journey, the more shows up and  it just gets kind of harder and harder to kind of digest because they're more and more exiled, for good reason. So yes, to kind of what I would call almost that kind of observer witness place of that, you know, the kind of wild allyship to these parts that we've marginalised, that our culture our power-over culture has conditioned us to marginalise and the kind of welcoming them back home. And then for me that the other layer of emptying out, which feels like it's almost like a yeah, it goes hand in hand, in a way with what's necessary is, this kind of embodied kind of visceral, experiencing ourselves as the space within which everything is arising, you know, and by everything, I mean everything. And so it's a, it's not, again, there's the concept of that. And I know that within a lot of kind of esoteric traditions that you know, that that is the mantra. And yet, it's a very different thing to actually viscerally in your, in our being almost skin shed these, these layers that kind of make me feel like just the individual self, so that there is a visceral melting in a way and skin shedding that then allows me to experience myself as the ecosystem you speak of. You know, that as Indra's Net, you know, that really is the whole, in which these different parts and voices and ideas are arising. So that there's not an identification with this kind of this shape of a being, and then we've become a vessel through which, you know, something surprising from the deep imagination can visit us and gift us with the humility to know that by virtue of living in this fleshy human dimension, I have an ego and I'm not going to ever get rid of that. And shouldn't, no, that's not the aim. But there's something of remembering that, you know, this emptying out process isn't about becoming fully enlightened, it's, you know, because as long as I'm here this dimension, then I'm not enlightened. And I have an ego that's going to colour and filter kind of what arises through that deep imagination, which, you know, again, so both/and.

Sara McFarland  16:57  

Yeah, both/and, and a body, you know, and this kind of this earth being that we are, you know, that again, it's not all just conceptual head, but there's this squishy, human animal body, that we are, we are in this earthly way. And also the reality of the earthly body, the shape, the colour, the size, the ability, the, you know, all of these ways of making difference, bad or wrong that power-over culture does and reifies and makes is, you know. It's not about saying, like, all you have to do is empty out, and then everything's fine, like, there's no such thing as racism, and there's no such thing.... No, again, it's both/and, you know, how do we how do we hold the knowing that the experience of being in the body you're in, has a huge, makes a huge difference for how you are in the, the human world and the power-over culture that we're in. And, again, to circle back, you know, that's where it's about, not the individual. That's where inner-led change of the individual meets the collective. That part of the work of inner-led change is to own one's power and privilege or be in relationship with the way one is, with power and privilege if that one's experience. Although, we all have power and privilege in some sphere, in some way of being, if we have experiences of marginalisation, you know, all the ways that we are in this human experience is also something that needs to be both metabolised as an individual but also actively shifted and changed just like you were saying, in the collective.

Claire Milne  19:03  

Absolutely, yeah, thank you again, I feel like what you're bringing there kind of yeah, really brings me into sort of sobering moment of it's, for me, there's this kind of dual kind of reality of the the exhilaration of the possibility of transformation and you know, what it is to lean into everything we're speaking of and how exhilarating that you know that transformation is. And, the reality that a precursor to the actual exhilaration of transformation often is, you know, a humbling painful process that is leaning into the reality of what it is to be in this fleshy body, whatever in our particular existence is the kind of the challenge you know that we've been here born into this lifetime to alchemize. You know, just really recognising that you know that, that our wounds are our greatest gifts if we are able and we are lucky enough to be given the support to to alchemize them and you know, as you speak of the body and the reality of the body, it's like, as you know, it's like for me I live have lived for 25 years with a chronic health condition. That means that living in this body isn't that easy for me. And a lot of the time, I'm in a lot of pain and difficulty and, and so I want to include that as a kind of like, I suppose just to include that, you know, we both you and I both have our own versions of kind of what it is to really struggle and to, you know, to know that everything we're speaking of comes with great challenge, and that life is a balance in that way. And yeah, body is portal is what you know, really is a helpful reminder to me that, you know, what is happening is is a portal to the transformation and the never ending spiral and being able to embrace the difficulty that can often precede death is part of life.

Sara McFarland 20:59  

Yeah. And so that's, of course, reminding me of one of our other threads is, you know, how we talk about, and we're probably coming to the end of our time here. So, I don't know how deep we want to go into this, but just recognising also, this thread of wound, and, and trauma and that we hold this a little bit differently than lots of folks and that there's this kind of, just like you were saying, you know, as portal. And, that the gift is laid in the same crucible as the wounding so that we're not proponents of, you know, woundology. At the same time, that we're also not ignoring the suffering, that's very real. There's healing to be done, trauma work to be done on the healing level. And there's alchemizing that is beyond healing of the wound, that becomes a Sacred Path of one's deepest and greatest gifts, that one's here to give.

Claire Milne  22:13  

Yeah, I feel it's almost inevitable that we will have a session exploring kind of core to sacred wound alchemizing. And I wonder, before we do kind of draw to a close, do you want to just say a little bit about what you mean by woundology, because I'm just aware, it might be a term that some people aren't that well, lots of people might not be familiar with? 

Sara McFarland 22:32  

Yeah, sure. The way I understand it is, there can be a way that we are so identified with the wound or wounding that we've experienced, that it becomes kind of the central focus around which we revolve. And it becomes almost a religion, you know, a ritual practice of devotion, or, or one way that I talk about it is the tyranny of the trauma, the way that it tyrannizes our lives and is a unidirectional gravitational surface, you know, like, pulls all of our energy into its, its grasp, so that we are stuck revolving around it. And, while there's wisdom, in and healing within wound work that's necessary, we want to liberate ourselves from that gravitational pull. That that can keep us spinning in a in a cycle of reiterating or regurgitating, the wounding of the modern paradigm in the victim perpetrator the rescuer circle cycle triangle, and cycling around and around through through those roles.

Caire Milne  24:03  

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, hearing you in the way you're explaining it, it's reminding me that Yeah, I mean, one key piece there is that, you know, this culture of woundology, it's like it shines the light on the paradox of trauma, in that, you know trauma does have this kind of function inherently within it, that when trauma shows up in our system, it makes us become fixated on it, you know, and it's part of its nature. And yet, expanding consciousness and transforming trauma, or we could call it awakening, or we could call it liberation or Co-liberation. It's like, the paradox is, can we wake up in that moment and not get fixated, even though the very nature of trauma and suffering is to get fixated and at a very neurobiological level. And so it's like, it's that kind of the impossible possible, you know, impossible mission that is the transformation and is not just a kind of waking up at the individual level, but actually is the key to co-liberation beyond the paradigm we're living in, that makes that kind of paradox of consciousness a reality. You know, it's like, so yeah, so I mean, gosh, we're, we're diving deep right here at the end. This a much bigger conversation, the paradox of trauma and, yeah, karmic imprints, it's like, yeah, we'll get stuck into that another time. Give it more space.

Sara McFarland  25:37  

well, I think all of our, all the threads we've been weaving have been quite, quite meaty, we, I think we could dive into each one of them. And I'm really grateful that we've touched on these because they're such essential, essential threads in Starter Culture's, fabric of how we go about doing what we're doing, which is supporting expansion of consciousness, beyond the power-over culture, or composting, power-over culture, igniting that heat and that fire of transformation. And, centering the other than human, you know, shifting consciousness, also into the, the expansion of the other-than-human in the ecosystem. So all of these elements that we've been speaking of are so for me, are so essential in the, in the fabric of that, like, the core of what we're up to.

Claire Milne 26:33  

Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of feels like, by way of bringing this to a close, it's kind of, oh, you know, in terms of what we're hoping for this podcast, it's like, you know, and for Starter Culture, more generally, it's like, we're really wanting to create an experience that really goes beyond just being a talking shop. We don't want to kind of... just for you to just come in and listen to us kind of have a ramble on, even though to some extent, that's what this introductory one is. But we're definitely paving the way for something that's, that's far more experiential, and that really centres, you know, a kind of more-than-human ritual approach to, to the expansion of consciousness that we're speaking of that we see as a really key kind of tool that we all need in our tool belts, whether it's for that sort of transformation, dismantling of power-over culture, within ourselves as individuals and changemakers. And that we bring back to our groups and our organisations as inspiration, kind of to how can we transform at a collective level as well as within me? And how can I in my group, and in my collective kind of take these tools back and kind of inspire and infuse. So there's something of us constantly pulsing in and out of this kind of, yeah, the dismantling of power-over culture, at the individual level, and at the group level, and the organisational and movement and cultural level. And really expanding into more than human consciousness, so that we're not kind of limiting the possibilities and the support and the, you know, the web of support to the human and to the individual. It's like, it's so much bigger. So that's our hope. We have no idea how we're gonna do it. That's our kind of approach is, working with emergence and as we say, emptying out to be able to see what life wants to move through us and offer.

Sara McFarland  28:30  

Beautifully said. Yeah, really beautifully said thank you. Yeah, offering the experience, the experiential practice of expansion of consciousness, that's what we are aiming for, in with this podcast. And when we do speak, have more talky kinds of podcasts, that the speaking hopefully is coming from a place in us that's not so... so it's more imaginal and less structured in the modern paradigm less strategic and, and is a kind of earthquake, cracking of the walls of the house of modernity, so that we can get out. Go outside, into the wild world. Get out of the house!

Claire Milne  29:27  

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, my heart is welling up with gratitude for just yeah, for you Sara for the conversation and kind of, I guess the, the love that, that births in my life and my heart and that it allows me an opportunity to grow and expand and have these kind of expansive conversations that I become more than me, and you know, who I started the conversation as. And an extension of that would be just, gosh, what gratitude for yeah, the kind of the the challenge that has led to me being in a position that I'm hopefully able to offer some, some kind of words and gifts in the world that can be a source of support to others. And so giving gratitude to my challenges and to the difficulty that that kind of yeah makes room for the the earthquake of transformation. Yeah.

Sara McFarland

I’m so grateful to you for giving me a place as Death Doula for the Great Dying to do my work. And the image that i received when I was listening in was, I am grateful for the molehills out on the meadow. And in each molehill today, this black, dark, loamy, sandy earth, in each molehill was a little snail shell, a mini snail shell. And I just had this image of, ah, there is something coming up out of the depths and this little spiral life within, like a seed.

Claire Milne

Very slow life, in it’s cocoon.

Sara McFarland

Thank you my dear

Claire Milne

Thank you and thank you everyone who is listening out there. We’d love to hear any feedback you want to share and that you’ll join us again.

Sara McFarland

Thank you so much for you, dear Claire, and thank you for listening, all of you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai


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