ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the true life podcast I hope everybody's having a beautiful day I hope the sun is shining I hope the birds are singing I hope the wind is at your back I have another incredible show for you today I am incredibly honored to introduce a truly visionary guest, one whose work fuses the wisdom of nature with the depth of human psychology. Roger Duncan is not only a trained biologist and a Waldorf teacher, but a guide of profound rites of passage in the wilderness. With thirty years of experience, Roger has walked the wild paths of both nature and human transformation. bridging the gap between our internal worlds and the natural environment that sustains us. Roger's journey took him through pioneering roles at Ruskin Mill Education Trust, where he crafted therapeutic education programs for complex adolescents, immersing them in the transformative power of woodlands and wilderness settings. As a systemic family therapist, Roger now works within the NHS and in private practice, guiding individuals, families, and organizations to find innovative, nature-infused paths to healing and growth. But Roger doesn't stop there. He is the author of Nature in Mind, a groundbreaking book that examines the deep-seated madness at the heart of our modern world, a world that has severed its connection to the ecosystems that sustain us. His writing is a clarion call for reclaiming our indigenous relationship with nature, a topic he champions through webinars and immersive course in eco-psychotherapy. With a career dedicated to blending systemic thinking with ecological mindfulness, Roger is at the forefront of a movement that seeks to heal both the individual and the collective by reconnecting us to the earth. Today, he joins us to share his insights, wisdom, and the healing potential of the imaginal world. Roger, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Thanks, George. Thanks for inviting me. It's an honor to be here. Great to meet you. Yeah, well, I appreciate it. It's likewise. I'm super stoked that you're here. And, you know, when I started looking and researching for interesting people like I do on my podcast, I came upon... this idea that's been this nature of mind and the sort of rewilding of the mind that seems to be kind of taking place. And you've been at the forefront of this for quite some time. How did you have this brilliant connection with nature and what got you started? That's a good question, George. I think I've always been connected with nature. When I was a kid, my parents had a big garden and I used to spend my time in the garden I remember they had a big nut tree, hazelnut trees to crack nuts with my teeth. And they had lots of old apple trees. And they used to run around in the garden. And I just really connected with nature in a really strong way. Yeah. I mean, is there any better teacher than a... is there any better teacher than a garden there's the battered coastline or a waterfall but a garden is a great place to begin learning about systems and relationships what do you I I find myself out there sometimes like just wandering through nature and I'll look down and you'll see this little ecosystem of a big tree a shade tree and underneath are these little plants propping up and these ants like there's a whole ecosystem there exactly exactly a lot of learning yeah There is, yeah. And what I write about in my book was one of the seminal moments was when I was exploring this old chicken run we had in our garden. It used to be the next door neighbours and it was abandoned chicken run. And all the stinging nettles were all dead and everything. And I found a little skull of a mouse. It was the first time I found an animal skull. And when I turned it over and looked at it, I had this really strong sense of wellbeing from the skull. And it was like, It was like a hit. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. And that kept me, you know, I kept going back to try and find that that sense of connection. And actually, you know, I spent a lot of time collecting animal bones, animal skulls. And each time, you know, I got that sense of real connection. Much later, I realized intellectually what that was about. But when I was a kid, it was just the visceral fun of finding bones and animals and that kind of stuff. Yeah, there's some real, isn't it interesting, the word discovery? Like sometimes you can be out there and you can discover these bones and discover these trees and also discover a lot about yourself. What do you mean later in life you found out what it meant intellectually? What did it mean? Well, I mean, what I did is I explored, I suppose I explored that feeling that, you know, what it means to be in nature. So I was drawn to spending more time in nature, more time in Because I grew up in the UK, the closest we have is Scotland, which is pretty wild. It's not America in terms of space, but in terms of the power of nature, it's pretty strong. And then I suppose later on, when I trained as a Waldorf teacher, I found different ways of thinking about nature, different ways than you get in the biology books. And that really inspired me, finding patterns in nature. And then later when I trained as a psychotherapist and started to explore eco-psychotherapy, I realized there was a lot of people onto this. You know, people like Gregory Bateson were saying this kind of stuff. And later on, other thinkers were, you know, Carl Jung was onto it. And I spent, I suppose I spent, well, I suppose my book really was stitching all that together, you know, getting a sense of like, well, this is my journey and this is where it's brought me. Yeah, it's almost like a language. Can you break down what is eco-psychotherapy? So that's a really good question. So eco-psychotherapy, so originally when I started on this, we only had eco-psychology. So a lot of the books, a lot of the early books were eco-psychology. It's like, wow, what's eco-psychology? And it was really how we combine understanding psychology with understanding ecology. which seemed to have been separated. And it was, I can't remember the name of the guy. I'm just searching for his book now. Anyway, a guy brought it together into, I'll remember it as I go, brought it together and saying, for this term, eco-psychotherapy, eco-psychology rather. And that was an American word because in America, to be a psychotherapist, you have to be a psychologist. Yeah. In Britain, it's different. We have a different pathway. So you can be a psychotherapist without being a psychologist. So eco-psychotherapy is more of an anglicized version of eco-psychology in a certain way. But it's all semantics. But basically, it's about joining up the human and the nature at a deep level, a psychological level and an ecological level. I love it. When I think of ecology, I think of relationships, the relationship to the birds to the sky or the fish to the sea or the grass to the ground. And then once you begin going down that path, you can't help by seeing those patterns to relate some of those patterns to yourself. They just merge together, right? Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. Why is that? Yeah. Yeah, well, because we are nature. You know, I think, you know, that's the reality. You know, they don't tell us that at school particularly. And I think, you know, you mentioned this, the business about modernity in the modern world. You know, what we tend to grow up with in the West is this idea that nature is something else. It's out the window or something we see on the telly. And, you know, so we don't follow those threads through. We don't follow where our food comes from. We don't follow where our sewage goes to. We don't follow where our rubbish goes to. But if you go but when you go camping, you know, if you go wild camping, you do that. You know, you make sure you don't mess up the water because it's what you're drinking, you know, and you don't you make you make you know, you're much it's much more obvious. The loops are much more closed when you're when you're wild camping. And that's what I found. you know, when you spend time in nature, the feedback loop is very fast, you know, so you can't be separated. You can't hold that place of separation. It makes so much sense. When I think about the madness of modernity and I think about what you've just spoken about, we are so disconnected and it runs through not only our relationships, but like you look at corporations that have employees that have employee numbers that are in a different state or another country. Like this disconnection is, it's killing us. It is, it is, it is. And I think, do you think it's just something that's, that's, that's, that's American? Do you think it's a worldwide thing? Because I think in other, I think in England it's, it's different. We have, certain you know we have we're quite quite similar to America but we also have a a sort of connect an older connection somehow which which keeps us keeps us connected in a different way and I suppose I I touched into that you know growing up in England the sense of you know that the connection with the land is not so is not so far back really a few generations only I think it's both cultural and individual. There's definitely, at least in my opinion, there's a big push or there has been. Maybe when the Prussian school model came to the United States and they decided that they needed to have... obedient factory workers. Maybe they started stripping nature out of it. They're like, you don't need to know about that. You got to put a widget in the van and that's all you need to know. Don't read that guy. That guy's a poet. He doesn't know it. Come on. There's an instruction manual over here. You know, so I think it starts early. I think it starts in school and I don't know if it was malicious, but I think it's a, I think it's a process and it's a slow evolution of distance from nature so that you're willing to do things that you wouldn't normally do. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think, I think now with AI, it's, it's, it's even worse. You know, I see pictures, I've seen pictures on, on the internet of birds and people go, wow, look at these amazing birds. And it's like, that's an, it's not a bird. That's an AI image. It's not a bird. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's interesting to think about how, how far we can be disconnected, but it's also amazing to think how quickly we can be reconnected. And you've done a lot of that with kids and yourself. Maybe you can talk about, we can, we can dive deep more into why we're disconnected, but I would like to hear a little bit more about the process of reconnecting. Cause you've done it to a lot of people. Maybe you can talk about some of your experiences reconnecting yourself and youth. Yeah. Yeah. So, as I said, I was always interested in nature and started training as a Waldorf teacher. I began to see that there are these real deep patterns in nature, fractal patterns that are kind of telling us something about how nature works. And it's not just survival of the fittest, Darwinian evolution. There's a whole connection that's under the surface. So I got really into that, you know, in terms of, looking at animal forms, looking at plant forms, and got very good at reading what those patterns were about. And then about quite a few years ago now, I started at an innovative college in the UK called Ruskin Mill College. And it was based on Rudolf Steiner's ideas about connecting, because in Waldorf education, Rudolf Steiner's ideas, there's a strong connection with nature, art, socialization, relationships. Anyway, this project was based on craft and land. So the idea was we would take students who are disadvantaged or had complex behavior and teach them through contact with craft and land work. And my role in those days was to develop the fish farm. We had an old fish farm that was kind of historic fish farm. And we developed that for the students to work on so that they actually were exposed to nature through working, through building the ponds and looking after the fish. And then I went on to work in the woodlands. So we had a small woodland and I managed the woodlands. I set up a sustainable woodland management plan with an educational component right in it. So basically the students were in there every day doing the work of hands-on woodland, felling trees with hand tools, planting, all that kind of stuff. And what we found was, as we suspected, because a lot of us had Waldorf backgrounds, was they were transformed by it. So when you take people out of modernity, when you take people away from disconnection culture, from the diaspora of the disconnected, and you plug them into nature, then they heal because we are nature. We're the same thing. We're tuned in. And you get a kind of resonance that indigenous people talk about that actually, yeah, something's going on here, which doesn't get into the school books, you know. yeah I love it it's it's so healing to think about and that's probably why when you sit out in nature whether it's just laying out in your patio or a backyard or even in a window getting some sunshine like it's so warming and welcoming and yeah it's it's really wonderful to to connect in that way that you said something that the diaspora of the disconnected what tell me about that yeah that comes that comes from I'm quoting uh uh First Nations lady called Rowan White who set up a project where she was growing seeds. She's a Mohawk heritage lady and she started growing Mohawk seeds and she reconnected with her heritage through growing seeds. What she recognised was the Western culture is the diaspora of the disconnected because we're all spread out but we've lost our indigenous roots. You know, and that's a problem, actually. You know, because we all ultimately, we were once all indigenous people. We all had a land stolen by somebody. And we forgot, most of us forgotten who it was and where that land was. You know, for First Nations people now, they have, you know, memory and lineage and story of that. But for most Westerners, we don't have that. Yeah. I'm almost reminded of the Orwell quote of, he who controls the future controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the present. It's just this constantly rewriting of history until you forget about what happened. Exactly. It's so crazy. Exactly. But you see, I think the connection is, like you said, how do people connect? Well, a lot of the young people we work with had came from broken homes or dysfunctional families. So they didn't have a connection. You know, even the immediate connection was lost. But by connecting with nature, you're doing a deep dive. You know, you're bypassing the history and you're plugging straight in. And actually what happens is when, you know, the thing about our bodies, our bodies are nature. So when we, you know, when we spend time outside, our bodies kind of wake up, particularly if we use our bodies, we move our bodies. Our head, of course, is doing something else. The neocortex is spinning us a tail, which is not necessarily true. Yeah. It reminds me of Ian Gilchrist's work about the left and right brain, right? Exactly. Have you read that, guys? I haven't read his new book, but I heard it's fascinating. Yeah, I haven't read the new one. I read The Master and His Emissary. But yeah, that's it. That's it. Steep stuff. Yeah, it's so it's so amazing to dive into this because it's on some level we have all these certifications and we have all these regulations and all these schools that say you have to do these things in order to be this kind of person, which I think, you know, exasperates the whole disconnection. But it doesn't take a whole lot to begin learning what nature is trying to tell you. If you just spend time out there, whether you're walking a coastline, going for a walk by your house, like you can really get into tune with your neighborhood, with yourself, with all your relationships. Maybe you have a cool story about working with kids or maybe a cool story about yourself, about having a real deep discovery, just being out in nature. Yeah. I mean, I suppose what I think what I discovered, cause I used to, the other thing I used to do is he's take kids out on wilderness trips. Yeah. So, so I, I heard, I heard, um, I had a friend of mine who was, uh, a teacher in, um, Sweden, uh, a wall of teaching factor. And he used to take kids out on a trip to Northern Sweden to the national park. And, uh, he got the kids to walk from the national park, but he took a, he took a, motorbike an old motorbike and he left it one side of the national park and he took the minibus to the other side and then he just walked the kids all the way through and then he'd get on the motorbike go and pick up the minibus and what he discovered was uh something happened when he did that you know first of all he took loads of notes and and um uh notebooks and stuff like this drawing materials and then he realized just by walking the kids something changed um You know, they would get home and the parents would say, I don't know what you've done to my son, but he's different. So I thought, hey, this is amazing. I'm going to do this. So I set up a similar program and had exactly the same experience in Scotland, you know, taking people out for ten days. We took all our food with us. So we didn't have to see anything that was human made pretty much for ten days. And what you notice is after four days, People drop into a place and people just, there's a relaxation of the body. And it's all about the body. There's a relaxation of the body. And all that kind of angsty adolescent energy just slows right down. And then after about five, six days, they drop in again. After ten days, you know, people are pretty chilled. And they say, we don't want to go back. yeah you know this we want we want to stay can we just stay here we don't want to go back to school so there's something about just the you know long-term exposure to nature not doing anything not therapy therapy people are doing some you know clever workshops just walking camping which has a powerful powerful impact on people you know therapeutic impact it takes us out of our egos, out of our minds, we start to work collectively. But of course, that's what human beings have been doing for thousands and thousands of years, been walking around the earth in groups of a hundred and fifty or thirty, finding food, hanging out, camping, drinking water from the streams. So our bodies remember that, you know, because that's where we're supposed to be. And it's difficult to, it's difficult to It's difficult to find that in Western culture unless you're looking for it deeply. I couldn't agree more. The idea of we don't want to go back. Man, I see that. That happened in my own life. Most people on my podcast will know this, but I'll just give a quick summary. For thirty years, I was a UPS driver. I loved it. I love talking to people. It was great. But I became so disconnected from all the things that really mattered in my life. And as I was a father to a young daughter, I realized my wife was working. I was working. We're making tons of money. But at the same time, I was so unfulfilled. I put in like seventy hours a week, ship my daughter to school. My wife goes to work. And it's like at some point in time, like my body just started acting up like crazy. And my mind is like, what are you doing? Like you are leaving everything you love for to go make some money so that you can pretend to have things to be fulfilled. And it takes a giant leap of courage or in my case, multiple security guards to walk you out of the building, you know, to to realize like this is wrong. And I think that's what this disconnect is. I think we're seeing a pretty big movement, Roger, of people coming to terms with this idea of I don't want to go back. Like on some level, the connection, we're severing that connection, whether it's willful or unwilling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, definitely. One of the ideas I've been thinking about recently is this difference between, I've just been writing about this actually in my second book, about the difference between, it comes from Francis Weller. He talks about the difference between trauma culture and initiation culture. So trauma culture is where You know, we're pretty traumatized all the time because actually we're out of our natural habitat. We're out of nature. We have to survive in the dog-eat-dog world. And it takes us into a kind of hyper-individualistic state. Whereas an initiation culture takes people into an awareness of connection. And there are lots of different levels of initiation. The simplest one is just going out in your garden going, wow, I really love my garden, into things like wilderness where you drop in four days deep. And then also things like vision quest or vision fast where you do that in a ritual setting, you're held in a ritual setting and there's a lot more preparation. where you're dropping much deeper because you're not eating and drinking. So you're preparing yourself for a deeper connection, really. And lots of other ways as well. Yeah. Yeah, I, you know, I, I titled this one, the rites of passage and, and I'm so fascinated by it because there's been a lack of it with the exception of sort of, at least in my life, like these empty, empty rituals, like being wasted on your twenty first birthday or getting your driver's license. There are these echoes of initiation, these echoes of rites of passage, but my family was sorely lacking in the, Hey, here's grandpa. showing my dad showing me how to fish, something like that. Like we missed that. And I think we're missing that as a culture. Maybe you can speak to the ideas of rituals and losing them and bringing them back. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I think we have lost them. And I think we lost them with our connection with indigenous cultures. culture, indigenous land. So the echo of them is still there, you know, as you say, in these kind of somewhat hollow rites of passage, like, you know, as you say, getting wasted and this kind of stuff. The idea that you're going to be a man, you know, and again, that's the difference between your trauma and initiation, that you get traumatized, you know, like something like a difficult military experience could feel like an initiation, but actually it comes with a lot of trauma. you're initiated in the sense that you're taken into a new place. You're taken to a place where you're transformed. Whereas traditional cultures that I've read about and the work that I've done through the School of Lost Borders and further reading is that the initiation is really about letting go of the ego. It's a dying practice. So it's about preparing ourselves to let go of our lives, to die. And what we're letting go of is a small ego, who we think we really are. And that's a difficult process because we don't want to let go of that. That's who I am. I don't want to let go of that. So getting people to that phase is quite difficult, particularly adolescents. But I think, you know, people in their, you know, probably in their mid-thirties, you know, my son has just done a vision quest in Arizona. You know, when you're in your mid-thirties, you think, actually, you begin to search for a new direction. And something like a vision quest or a vision fast, fasting for four days and nights, you have water, but you don't have food, allows the body to wake up. Because as I said, nature and the, you know, our body is nature. So our body wakes up and goes, hey, I know what this is. I've done this before. This is good stuff. And it brings your psyche along with it. So there's a sense, you know, the young people have taken through those experiences and the adults have taken through those experiences, come back different. And they don't come back different in the sense of, you know, They come back different in a subtle way. So you get a subtle, you begin to, your life begins to move in a different way. So your orientation begins to change. And I think one of the things about ritual and ceremony, again, which is difficult to access in the West because we think, well, what are we doing? It opens up this, you know, this contact with the imaginal when we're working with ceremony. And again, our body wakes up and goes, hey, I know how to do this, you know. So you can drop in to a deeper level. And the other thing that happens is that, is that, uh, and it happens, this happens a lot of vision fast is nature begins to show up. So people see have encounters with animals that no one else has. And that, and that encounter is relevant to their story. You know, they were the guy, you know, this, this person saw the hair because it was about their story. This person saw a bear because that was about their story. You know what I mean? So it's, um, It's a very profound experience and it kind of blows open this fantasy of disconnection with nature. We realize actually nature, we are connected with nature at a very deep level. We are the same. Yeah, it's no wonder that so many answers to life's mysteries are found on a walk in a park or alone in a room or swimming in the ocean. There's just these things that are revealed to you when you're alone with yourself. Yes. You know the fractal patterns. I see them everywhere. Once you begin seeing that, you can't unsee it. It's everywhere. It's almost like a language. I really feel, Roger, nature is a language – That's probably trying to get our attention. Like, hey, look at me. Hey, let's talk. People are like, I don't want to talk to you. You're not right. You're not there. Exactly. Exactly. But you have to learn the language. You do. And the other thing about Western culture is it's highly intellectual. Yeah. It's highly intellectual. So that's how we get taught at school. And what we're talking about, what I would describe that language is it's an imaginal language. It's the language of the imaginal. Which means, and what I mean by that, because a lot of people say, what do you mean by the imaginal? Yeah, break that down, please. So the imaginal is, there's a kind of spectrum from the imaginary. When we think of the imaginary, we think, well, stuff we made up is fantasy. I just made up a story. Well, you're imagining it. I saw a unicorn in the garden. No, you didn't. You're imagining it. Yeah? And there's a whole realm of that. in our minds. We can make up stuff about who we think we are or what we're going to do or whether some girl's going to like us or whatever it is. When we're kids, we have an imagination. But the imaginal is something different. The imaginal is not a thinking space. So it's not, we can't think it. So basically, we have to switch off our thinking. So in Western culture, we don't really do this other than in things like meditation and perhaps in psychedelics a little bit. So we switch off our mind, but also it's not, the imaginal is not sensory. In other words, we can't see it. So if we can describe something in words and concepts, or we can see it and we can paint a picture of it, it's not the imaginal. So we've got to separate those two things apart. And in the middle, is like a blank space, a kind of meditative blank space. You know, when you meditate, you drop into blank space. And if you learn to drop into that place and you take your felt sense there, you begin to get, the language starts to speak to you. And what it's like is it's like a thought in your head, which is not yours. So one of the characteristics of the imaginal is it tends to be a surprise, and it tends to be meaningful, but the meaning is not always apparent. So again, many of us have had these experiences. Quite often when you're out in nature, you suddenly have a revelation about, wait a minute, I should be changing my job, or whatever it is. And it's like, hey, how come I didn't think about this before? So what's happening is you're getting new information that's coming from somewhere. to us. And once you develop that practice through spending time in nature, through ritual, you can begin to hear what nature is telling us. And again, it's not factual information. It's fractal knowledge you know you we get we get a sense of it and again that touches into the the psychedelic realm because that comes through very strongly in in psychedelic experiences but you but you but you don't need to have you can go into nature without psychedelics and still connect with that but it takes a little bit of practice Wow. It makes me think of so many things. I'm a huge advocate of psychedelics, and I've had a long-term relationship with them. And as my relationship with particularly psilocybin or mushrooms has advanced in my later years, the imaginal – and I've never really – heard that term or or heard people talk about it but it makes so much sense to me and I think some people confuse I'm not judging or anything but it seems to me other people describe it as like an alien or they describe it as something else because it's it is alien the first time you hear the imaginal what is this thing bigger than me talking to me you think you're going crazy you're like I know these things how do I know I know these things You try to explain it to people and they're like, dude, get out of here. You are a wacko. And you're like, no, no, this is real. This has to have been going on with people forever. And you can see the lineage of people like Sometimes I wonder, Roger, is it just people finding their way to the imaginal or is this like something that comes in cycles? It seems like maybe it's the people I'm hanging out with or the crowd that I find myself seeking more knowledge from has the same thing. But does it come in cycles maybe? Are there waves of it that tend to grow bigger or what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think it's always been with us. If you hear what indigenous people are saying, they're saying, this is what we've always done. You can talk to nature. It'll tell you stuff. And you can have a conversation with it. And if you're growing up as a Western kid, you're going, what are you talking about? How do you do that? Where's the book? How do I? Because you process it through the head. And what I found is after a while, Once I got this concept of the imaginal, which is actually a Western concept. So people like Jung, the collective unconscious, he was informed by this guy Henri Corbin, who had been studying the imaginal in esoteric Islamic literature. And Jung got some of these concepts from him and went, well, yeah, collective unconscious, there's something going on here. We're all connected to, it's a collective and it's in our, it's, it's inside us. It's endogenous to us, you know, so that's, so a lot of the, a lot of the Jungian, a lot of Jungian deep psychotherapy touches into this space. And you, you get this space in, in therapy as well. You know, when you're, when you're deeply into a therapeutic space, sometimes what happens, something arises between the two people, between yourself and the, and the client or the patient, which is new, it's new information. And it's surprising and it's healing, you know, and it connects. So, you know, you're part of the therapeutic process is you're, again, you're dropping into that kind of blank campus space, allowing something new to come in, which, you know, and I would say it's the imaginal. And part of what I've been doing in my writing is trying to get clear about the language because a lot of it's about languaging. And if you can't language the imaginal, you're never going to find it because it's a hidden place. It's that secret passage. It's the secret doorway in all those fantasy stories, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. They can go through the wardrobe one day, and the next day they can't go through it. Yeah, there's such a rich connection to language because in these spaces, whether it's a psychedelic journey or a walk on the beach or a profound moment of uncovering when you're alone or whatever it is, The only term we have for it is like ineffable because you can't describe it. It's imaginal. It's there. It's almost like people have to have the experience for them to thoroughly understand what it is. Maybe that's part of the initiation. I think that's exactly right. That is part of the initiation, that people have the experience. They have some crazy experience and they come back. But then you've got to have some elders, some old beardy guys who go, oh, yeah, yeah, I know this one. I've been there. I've seen that being, whatever it is. But they've also learned from their dads, their grandfathers. The other thing I've learned about the imaginal is there's a spectrum between the imaginal and magical thinking. So you can go off the deep end here. with magical thinking, where you think you're God or the universe is talking to you and you become a bit crazy, what keeps the imaginal grounded is you can share it. So you can share that space. You can travel into that space with someone else. In a psychedelic space, sometimes in a dream, sometimes people can have the same dream, but you can also cultivate it through dropping into ritual space. So I work with a friend of mine, Lucy, who has been doing a lot of this work for a really long time. And we're able to drop into an imaginal space where we have shared images. And she can lead me, because she's a little bit ahead. She can lead me. And she can say, do you see that? I can't see that, but I can see this. She says, oh, yeah, I can see that, but there's this. And so in a sense, And I can get the same visuals, if you like, that you get from psychedelics, but also in dreams. So there's this sense that you can access. There are a number of thresholds into this imaginal space. Yeah, I agree. Shout out to Leiter. Leiter, thanks for being here today. You're an awesome human being. I love when you're chiming in. She says, they say, our true identity would be labeled as highly delusional in today's world. yes yes but but again but again I think that comes back to the story that we're running the western story we're running we're born we're empty vessels we're filled up with stuff we make a living we die end of end of story that's not what indigenous people are saying they're saying no no we're we're cosmic beings we've been around here a long time you know and we've got a mission and everyone's got one and it's super important And we as elders, we need to know what it is so we can help young people find themselves. So it's really about changing the narrative and it's finding a place where it's legitimate to have an alternative narrative. You know, and school isn't that place. Yeah. It's such a fascinating journey. You know, I know so many cool people, yourself included, where once you start figuring this thing out and you've been around it long enough, like you're almost compelled to help other people try and see it. I mean, you can't tell them, you can't force them, but you can reach out to them. If you see someone on the cusp of it, you can be like, hey, have you noticed this other thing over here? You can suddenly tell them, like, look at this, look at that. Exactly. Then it will be their own idea. And then they become another person that's awoken to it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I got a question coming in here for it. And they say, this one's coming from Clint Kyle's. He says, many see environmental destruction as an external issue, but you argue it's deeply tied to human mental health. What psychological wounds mirror the wounds of our planet? Okay. Good question. Good question. What's his name? Kyle. Yes. Clint. Clint. Okay. Clint. Yeah. So, so basically, um, you know, one of the, one of the, one of the branches of Western psychotherapy, but you're the union, um, talks about that. Jung talks about this, uh, this realm, which is called the psychoid realm. And the psycho realm is when you go deep inside, um, nature, and mind, our identity and nature are one. In other words, the separateness drops away. And, you know, there's another guy, Jeff Kripal, who talks about the philosophies, which is called dual aspect monism, which means monism is everything is the same. We're all one. But we, and the two aspects, we language it differently. Self, I'm over here. you're over there, you know, we're different or I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm here, nature's out there. So when you begin to get that, when you begin to get that sense, uh, what we realize is the psyche, the human psyche, the collective human psyches and the earth, the ecosystems of the earth are connected. They're the, it's the same stuff. So there is no, there is no separation between you know, our mental health and the mental health of the earth. And, you know, I think one of the things, one of the things we're, one of the things certainly I'm experiencing and maybe other people are experiencing is, you know, some of the crazy things that are going on in the world now, particularly on, you know, your side of the pond, affect us, you know, because we're connected. And part of it is, yeah, you could switch your phone off and it would all go away. But actually that's not, again, that's not, that's not how, indigenous people have described it they're saying we're all connected everything we do is is connected because all the stuff our psyche our identity all of nature has its root in the imaginary world it has its root in the in the dream time that's where it all comes from that's that's the mothership That's the place to go. So I feel the mental health crisis and the environmental crisis are two aspects of the same thing. They're in a kind of dance, really. And there's no clear, you know, it's not clear which way it's going to go, really. Yeah, I forgot the great, I'll butcher the quote, but I'll try it. I believe it was, um, no, I'm losing the guy's name, but it's a race between fear and love or, or chaos and something else. But I, yeah. Yeah. And you see, I think it ties in, it ties in with trauma and initiation because actually if we're, if we're traumatized, we go, well, I'm going to look after myself because that that's, that's all I got to do. I got to, I don't trust anyone else. If you're, if you're initiated into recognizing that actually we're connected, then your gesture is much more like, actually, I need to play my part here. I need to find out what I need to do to make this place a better place for everyone else, because everyone else is me. We're all connected. Yeah, it's, I'm just taking a moment to think about the relationship between trauma and initiation. And you spoke earlier, like it is, trauma is an initiation. And maybe that's, maybe that's what the collective, maybe that's the, I think it's. I mean, what's, what some people are saying is, yeah, we're going through a collective initiation. Right. Right. You know, because, because what we're, what we're doing to the earth, we're doing to ourselves and we, you know, and the wake up. And, and if you're, if you're on the trauma end of the spectrum, you're going, yeah, well, that's over there. That's not me. You know, those, the fires in California, I'm fine in England. Cause that's not me. But if you, if you realize that they're all connected, then you're in a different place. You're saying, actually, we're all connected. We're all in this together. If the Earth goes down, we all go down. You know, there is no planet B, as they say. You know, Mars, it's not really going to work. You know, how is lockdown? How is lockdown? You know, when people couldn't go outside. Well, imagine lockdown. Living on Mars is going to be like lockdown forever. And there's no outside to go to. This is probably an unpopular take, but I can't personally understand the concept of going to the moon or going to Mars. In my opinion, you as an individual can no more go to the moon than the ocean can go to the moon. You can't go to the moon more than the ocean can go to Mars. You're part of this planet. You can't go to that planet. You're part of this one. What are you talking about? You can't go there. What's wrong with you people? Exactly. Yeah, no, I was just reading this book recently and they were saying, you know, what happens to astronauts even just in orbit is their bodies start to break down because there's no gravity. So, you know, it's not really going to work out. But you see, the more interesting question from a psychotherapy point of view is what's that about? You know, because why would somebody want to go somewhere where they can't survive and there's nothing there? what are they running away from you know and it you know it could be yeah that's an interesting question maybe responsibility maybe running away from the very thing that would free you like that that's what it seems to be responsibility is we need to take care of the earth because it's us right yeah Do you think that there's a... Over here in the States, there's this sort of rebirth of the psychedelic culture. There's this sort of... They call it the psychedelic renaissance. And I'm so stoked on so many people in this community. They're doing so many amazing things. But it seems to be sort of really tightly kept in this medical container, almost as if people are worried, hey, we can't... Not everybody can do this. It'll cause chaos. Do you think that... Do you think that that's there? Is there a problem with a really quick awakening or is there, in your opinion, do you think it should be contained to a medical container or to certain people? What are your thoughts? That's an interesting one. I think, and again, it's about language and story. So one of the things that's happened with the psychedelics is it looks like a quick fix. Hey, we can cure trauma with psychedelics. It looks like a magic pill. Yeah. Because we, because we live in a culture where we expect to have magic pills, you know, like, like antibiotics. If you get an infection, you take antibiotics, you know, before antibiotics, you didn't, you died basically, you know? So, so we're in, we're in a, in a magic pill culture and it's easy for people to imagine that. And of course, you know, people are selling magic pills. I think this is great. We can sell a lot of magic pills. Um, And it also links with what I was saying about trauma and initiation. So trauma is about what's in it for me? How can I fix me? Can I fix myself with a magic pill? Whereas an initiation culture is about, hey, wow, we're all connected. I've got to find who I am and make my connection with the world. So I think what's happened with the psychedelics is the medical narrative which is obviously backed up by Big Pharma, has created a narrative around psychedelics, which is business as usual. We've got a new magic pill, guys. We can sell it to you. Whereas people have been doing this a long time. Traditional cultures are going, yeah, no, this isn't a magic pill. This is part of an initiation process. And a part of the initiation process, you need to know what story you're plugging into. You need all those old grandmothers telling you what this is about and what these stories are about. And they're much, much bigger than these little head trip stories we have in the West. They're imaginal stories. They're mysteries. They're mysterious patterns, which we don't know the meaning of right now. And it might take us years to figure out what that is. And we have to stay humble with that. And we have to stay humble to what what it's telling us rather than saying, yeah, I want to fix my trauma so I can get back to work or, you know, improve my business or whatever it is. So I think it is problematic that it's held within a purely medical model because the store is not big enough. It makes it makes a lot of sense to me. And it's not only because I talk to a lot of people, but I think people that live it like you on the on the topic of, you know, I want to fix my trauma so I can get back to work. Maybe your work is the trauma. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Why are you working so hard? You know, that's is that is that trauma? know what a big part for me and I think other people is it is this thing about identity like you've been fed this cookie cutter idea of who you can be and what you can be since you started going to school by the time you're thirty or forty or fifty it's very difficult like you said to let go of this identity it takes courage to be like I'm not gonna do it anymore what about your family what about your money what about that car what about your house how you gonna live All these what ifs, all these hows are showing up. And it's like, you really got to start working through those and come up. And for anybody within the sound of my voice, like if you're there, man, I want to give you a big hug. Congratulations. If you are in the midst of a personal crisis right now, that is the wake up call. That is the initiation. That is the point where the source bigger than you is telling you like, look, I love you. Get out of this. This is the problem. You have to face it though. It's, it's, it's hard. It's hard to have the courage to do it. Don't you think? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But, but also it's, you know, I work with a lot with adolescents who come from difficult, difficult situations. And, and, and you, you know, it's about the story. So again, so again, they don't have these, all these grandmothers telling us, telling stories from the past. They have Netflix or the culture or what they learn at school. So the idea that actually there's a bigger picture than the one we're living is not available. Unless you can access therapy, which is expensive. In the UK, you can access it for free, which is amazing. But even many therapists are still running a more of a medicalized model, a magic pill model, because that's what's funded. I think what's interesting with the integration of psychedelics and psychotherapy is it's opened up psychotherapy to much more of an imaginal space thinking. which is closer to what our indigenous ancestors have been doing, which is, yeah, who are you really? Tell us what you come here to do and we'll help you do it, rather than you've got to get your exams and get that job. Man, it reminds me of the stories and the myths and the old books where you would read and students would come to the teachers and be like, who is this young woman over here? Who is this young child? Well, let's see what gifts they have, you know? It's a more beautiful way of education. It's trying to figure out what gifts this person has instead of trying to give them these books to read. I don't know. It's amazing to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, one of the things I've been doing, I suppose, through my book and through my work is trying to find pathways that have traction and that are replicable, that can be replicated. So, you know, one of the things about the rites of passage work is where you can create structures like Vision Fast, so you can take people through that process and then they're on their own journey. you know, and that might take them wherever it goes, but actually it's quite, you know, that, that's not accessible to a lot of people. You know, I, I, I had to come to America to do, to do that training. And there's, you know, there are people that do this work in the UK, but it's not, it's, it's, it's not in the mainstream. And part of my work has been trying to bring this conversation to the mainstream. And that's at the moment, that's what, that's what my work is. It's trying to have a conversation with people who work in, in the NHS and, and, about this initiation culture, what it looks like, how to do it, what happens when you do it, what it means for mental health. And it's quite simple. You know, it's complicated. But once you get there, once you know how to do it, once you can create, once you know how to open that imaginal space, it's actually quite simple. You know, in the sense that it's not intellectually complicated. It's imaginatively complicated. It's not intellectually complicated. yeah it's beautiful I I'm I'm hopeful that we can break through and get more people to understand how important ritual and ceremony and all of these rites of passage are in life yeah I don't know I got another question coming here for you this one's coming from desiree she says You emphasize the need to bring experiential encounters with the imaginal world into mainstream culture. What is the imaginal world and how can reconnecting with it heal us? You've covered a little bit. Yeah, great question. What's her name? Desiree. Desiree. Great question, Desiree. The imaginal world, we talked about this a little bit, but it's difficult to get. One of the images I have is of But imagine three windows. And we used to have, this is a story I used at a conference recently. We used to have this kids program called Play School. And they used to tell a story and they had three, they had this little framework of three windows, a round window, square window, arch window. And they'd say, which window are we going through today? We'll go through the round window. And they'd tell a story. And the next day they'd go through the arch window or the circular window. So imagine we've got three windows. And the first window is the cognitive window. so that's that's language cognition that's window one the other window at the other end is uh sense sense perception sound images all the images on your phone that's the other window so that's basically our world we have cognitive stuff we want to know anything we read a book about it we ask someone about it we talk about it we theorize about it that's the that's one window or we look at all the images on the internet but what what the imaginal world is is a space between the two. It's the middle window. And the middle window is not sensory. In other words, you can't sense it with your senses. And it's not cognitive. You can't think your way through it. So you have to go into this felt sense. And you stay with a felt sense. And if you open that space and stay in that space, then the felt sense begins to talk to you. through like thoughts coming into your head. So what I'm saying, Desiree, is that's the imaginal world. It's about holding that middle space, which is not cognitive and not sensory, and cultivating that. And as I said before, it's a shared space. So, you know, if we go through that on our own, if we go through there with our own ego, then we get into magical thinking. We become crazy people. Yeah. But the thing about the imaginary space is just a shared space. So George and I, we could, you know, we can have a shared dream or we can have a shared experience, a shared ritual. Yeah. Or I could, I could hear your ritual and I could, I could witness it. And in that process, it becomes grounded as a reality, as a truth in, in the way that as a heart truth, we know it in our hearts. We know that to be the case. And that's what that's what, you know, that's what a lot of the the in Europe, Easter practices in Europe, were involved in that finding the finding gnosis, heart knowing, knowing through the heart, rather than knowing through the head. And so that's the space, that's initiation space. And then we can go through them, we begin, then we begin, and then we can begin to hear what nature's talking to us about. I love this. I love the idea of the three windows. Like for the first time, it really helps me to understand the, not only the beauty, but the perils of psychedelics and the imaginal. Like when you look, like there is real potential for someone who's very, very talented and intelligent to hop through that first cognitive window and just start a whole bandwagon, you know? And then everybody else is like, this guy, this guy is ruined over all of us, man. oh I get it like it's it's interesting to see that like you get the holy man syndrome like it's yeah exactly exactly oh it's amazing thank you desiree that was a beautiful question we got another one coming in here from this one comes in from neil he says do you believe western psychology is fundamentally incomplete without an ecological and mythological perspective yes for sure So that's a no brainer. And the reason it is, is because the human psyche, which is the soul, that's what psyche means. The human soul is ecological and mythological. So if you're doing psychological work without that, you haven't got the whole package. Yeah. You know, I think it should be required reading to read Joseph Campbell's Masks of God. Or, you know, you could probably just throw a dart at Joseph Campbell's work and do a lot of learning in that aspect. Yeah. These myths go so deep. They do. They do. But you see, the guy who was really into the imaginal was James Hillman. And I think I'm pretty sure he's a mate of Henri Corbin. I think they I think they they hung out together. So famously what James Hillman says about images on symbols is don't interpret them. In other words, don't go through the cognitive window. Hang out with them. So stay in the imaginal window. So if you dream of a snake, you just hang out with that image and see what happens. And as you know, When we stay with something, it shapes us and transforms, it changes into different things and it begins to tell us different things. So there's a real power in learning to travel in the imaginal realm, really. Thank you. Like I, I have been having for, for me in this podcast and I do a lot of images and some artwork too. And it's really begun to grow in a part of me that is, borderline addiction. The world of imagery to me speaks so loud that I can almost not concentrate on other stuff. It's like, what is this? It's addictive stuff, isn't it? It really is. It's so meaningful. Maybe that's why... The cognitive language, the words we use, the linguistics of today are a fantastic tool, but it seems so often we just talk past each other or they lack meaning, especially meaning. It seems so meaningless language sometimes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. What was the gentleman's name? Henri Corbin? Henri Corbin. He's a French philosopher. C-O-B-I-N, he's spelled Corbin, but he's French, Corbin. I see. I can't wait to look up some more of the things that he's been writing about. We've got more questions, though, so here we go. You've worked with individuals, families, and even organizations. Have you seen systemic healing where reconnecting one person to nature creates a ripple effect in their community? That's a good question. I can't think of a direct example. I suppose the examples I have are of young people who've gone out, been on trips with me and have come back and said, and the families noticed them changed, but also they've come, you know, I've met, you know, these young people, twenty or so years later. And they were saying, oh, yeah, that was the trip we did with Roger. That was the best thing I ever did at school. And it's like, OK, great. I'll take that. But actually, I didn't do anything. You know, I dropped them in the space. You know, it wasn't like I did some magic, magic thing. And so and so, you know, so there is a sense there is a sense when you work systemically, in a clinical setting that you can change one person and it just changed the whole system because what happens with families and organizations of course is um they're kind of enmeshed in a pattern so and if you take a significant person in that mesh pattern and change it then the whole the whole the whole pattern begins to change so think think about it actually I have worked with organizations where I've worked with individuals and the organization began to change what happens is in my experience of organizations is the stuckness goes up, goes up the hierarchy. So you, so you, you know, I work with a couple of managers and the problem was these managers weren't talking to each other. So I've got the managers talking to each other and they realized they didn't really have a problem sorted. Great. But what happened was that the kind of stuckness went up to the board of trustees or whatever it was, the higher level, and they weren't interested in doing the work. So it's like, okay, I can't reach that because they, because, you know, and it's that sense of, it's that sense of ego, ego and initiation is, you know, when you get hired for an organization, you don't, you don't want to rattle a cage. You don't want to change. You don't want to change your identity because you're earning a lot of money. You've got a lot of power. Whereas in initiation culture, there's a sense of, Okay, dying practice. Like, what can I let go of? What can I let go of that's going to open up new space for me? So, yeah, so I think, I hope I'm answering your question. So, yeah, I do a lot of work, working with systems clinically, but also working with individuals outside. I do a retreat. I've done a retreat for a couple of years, you know, taking people outside, a mini vision fast. And actually people, you know, people are changed by that. Yeah, it makes sense. Especially when an individual begins to change their life in a way that's meaningful. It changes all their relationships because they're different. They're going to relate to everybody else. Some people don't like that. Some people, hey, why don't you go back to the old person? You like that guy better. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So one thing I really love about all this is it is accessible to everybody. You don't need anything but the courage to sit in the dark. You know what I mean? It's there for everyone. Well, it is if people know it's there. There is a sense that it's like the question, well, what is the imaginal? Where are you going to learn about what the imaginal is unless you read Henri Corbin or Jung or somebody? And so, you know, we don't we don't have roadmaps for how to get to this place. I mean, you know, we can hear about indigenous stories of initiation, but you think, well, that's that's way back then. It's not I can't possibly do that. You know, I suppose one of the one of the one of the revelations for me was realizing that I was an indigenous person. You know, that that that that is that is far down the line of having lost my connection to my stories and my initiation processes, but I have the right to refine that and have a birthright to refine that as all humans do. We have a birthright to be connected to the earth because we are the earth, the earth is us. But it's a question of how you find your way back there from a Western culture. You can't just steal indigenous people's stuff because that's inappropriate, but it's about being informed by indigenous practices to find a way back to something that we were once all connected to. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's like there's all these road signs if you're paying attention, especially in language. We talked about the cognitive, and I said how it's not meaningful sometimes. But for me, I've always found these little one-liners that just speak to me, like simple stuff like seek and you shall find. Like, what does that mean, you know? But, like, you start following these little clues that have been left in literature and books and movies. These clues are everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a really nice example, George, of the imaginal. Because what we know about the imaginal is it speaks to us. So, you know, that might not, that little phrase might not, I might read and go, whatever. If you're in the right space, it's like, oh, I picked up this book, I found this passage, and actually now I'm on this whole trip. So that's what the imaginal does. We put something into the world, a question or whatever it is, and it shows up. It comes back to us. And it can be You know, I've had people have messages that come on their mobile phones. Yeah, totally. You know, it's like, you know, someone's out in nature and then they get a call from someone they haven't heard of, you know, heard from for fifteen years. And it's meaningful. And it's like, well, why did that person call then when these people were in this ritual? You know, it's like, it's going back to that dual aspect monism. that we are the world and the world is us. It's all the same matrix. Yeah. I find myself sometimes crying and laughing, but it's so weird how you find yourself all the time. I'll start leaving clues, not even knowing I'm leaving them. I'll start quoting these things that I found awesome, and then someone will be like, hey, George, what were you talking about three podcasts ago when you said this thing? I'm like, oh, hey, let me tell you what that was, because I know exactly what that was. It's that same imaginal clue. It's like you almost become... the deliverer of clues, once you start spending time in that world, you can't help but leave it out. I'm not saying it right. It's hard to explain, but it's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I kind of know what you mean. I kind of know what you mean. But I think once we get the understanding that the Earth is alive, then it's a different thing going on. It's not just... loads of plants and animals and dead rocks it's actually alive in the way that we're alive and we you know the separation we feel which again is what indigenous people have been saying forever the separation's a lie we're not separated yeah so you know but finding the connection takes a little bit of work you know we have you have to dig deep you have to be in communication with the imaginal you have to do what the imaginal asks you to do sometimes sometimes you don't want to do it you know so you know yeah one one that I found recently is each step reveals the next and that's pretty tricky because for me like I I've always had or wanted to be certain I've always wanted to have certainty in my life but that's an illusion like there is no certainty there is no certainty yes that's right that's right that's right yeah yeah it's amazing all right let's we've got a bunch of these questions stacking up rogers are you okay I'm good I'm good yeah okay So you've guided wilderness rites of passage. Why are initiatory experiences in nature so vital for human development, especially in adolescence? Okay. So especially in adolescence, because in adolescence, what happens is I think we begin to wake up to an inner space in our lives. So which looks like, externally, it looks like testosterone and interest in the opposite sex. Internally, it looks like a sort of quest for meaning. You know, when you're an adolescent, you start searching for books about, you know, looking at weird stuff. Quite often people are drawn to risk-taking, quite often people are drawn to sort of dark, dark, dark things. And also what happens in adolescence is we revisit most, a lot of the things that happened to us when we were a kid. So again, working with the adolescents I work with, quite often they've had adverse childhood experiences. which kind of go underground when they're pre-adolescent, and then they resurface in adolescence. And there's a process, the process is like, well, this needs addressing now. And there's some emotional depth to be able to do that. So that's the stage where adolescents are in a process of transformation. So that's a good place to offer them a transformation experience. Because actually, where adolescents don't go through a transformation experience, they implode into their own ego. And so what you end up with is egoism, and narcissism, because you close down, you close down on your adolescent identity, and protect it, rather than dying to it, and allowing a new, a new, a new aspect of your identity, a deeper aspect of your identity, a more connected aspect of your identity to show up in the imaginary space. So that's why adolescence is a really important time. What we see in Western adolescence is there are no rites of passage that are meaningful. So the adolescents go a bit wild. Quite often they do risk-taking behavior, which can result in death or self-harm or destruction of other people and property. And then when they become adults, they don't have a map or a somatic marker, a feeling inside themselves of how they're connected and who they really are. So, you know, they just buy into whatever narrative looks best, easiest, or whatever it is. So, you know, taking adolescents through a process of contained, culturally contained introspection and transformation is really important. It's really important for our culture. And I think one of the reasons the culture's in such a mess is because we stopped doing that. you know, it was, you know, what happened with the colonial powers, they went out, one of the things they stamped out in all indigenous cultures, if you check out the literature, is this connection with nature, rites of passage, stories, you know, Russia, they shot the shaman on sight, because actually they wanted to get that, that was, you know, that you can't control people who are plugged into their own individual destiny. They're potentially dangerous for a dominant culture. I think there's lots of people that make that argument for the sixties is that we began to see this sort of rewilding and the powers that be were like, nope, we ain't doing this. Yes. Let's see if you guys stand up and you don't. Yeah. Yeah. And you, and you can see what we see in the, in the psychedelic Renaissance is that's come back again. Yeah. You know, and it's come back in a, in a different form, but it's come back stronger. Yeah. I, it's interesting. I was talking to, um, Josh Hardman the other day, who's got a great newsletter called psychedelic alpha. And we were just having this conversation and all agent bash. We were all in the same sort of wavelength where, you know, it's, it's, and we talk about fractals and history repeating, but on some level, you know, I can almost see Trump. He's making these statements, not that I'm all political or anything, but you can see Trump making these statements about putting all drug dealers in jail. And I'm like, man, that sounds so Nixon esque. And yet there was all these people that really advocated for psychedelics and helped him get elected. And I'm like, man, I can really see him clamping down. And then all of a sudden, these sort of Huxley elitists that are into psychedelics just start sending waves of cash to radicals. On some level, I'm like, hey, we might see these day glow school buses again. We might start seeing some real music again. We might start seeing some real things start happening here. It's weird how history kind of repeats itself. Yeah. yeah yeah but I think what you know I think you know when you think about the the the sixties I just read a book about about it recently there's a sense that something was emerging you know something was come something was coming out after that post-war period where everything was pretty pretty flat it was pretty bland and there was a sense that actually you know there's a bit more there's more to this there's more to this and you know psychedelics are obviously a a trigger in that and um you know I suppose the hope is that with the ecological crisis and, you know, the social crisis we're seeing around the world and the opposite pressures, that it will, you know, something positive will come out of this. Because, you know, that tends to be what happens politically in hard times. The artists, you know, create a lot of new material, new thoughts, philosophers and all that. Yeah. Like I'm a shout out to all the artists out there. I hope you thoroughly understand how important the work you're doing is, whether you're creating NFTs or whether you're making murals with metaphors or you're cooking, whatever you're doing. If you, and I think, I think all people are artists. I think it's so important to get in touch with your creative side because you have no idea the ripple effect that your art can create for somebody else. Well, it's a threshold. It's a threshold to the imaginary world art, isn't it? It's one of the thresholds. Yeah. That's interesting. Maybe we could talk more about thresholds. I always think of threshold guardians. But what are some other thresholds to the imaginal? Well, I think the threshold is like a door, isn't it? It's like a doorway. And either you go through it or you don't go through it. So the threshold is a place where you're passing through a door. And one of the things... what we often use in ritual is a threshold. So you consciously mark a space. Okay, this boundary, you're out of ritual. The other side of boundary, you're in ritual. So it's clear. And of course, as I said, our bodies know this stuff. Our minds are going, what is this stuff? What is this weird ritual stuff? Our bodies know it. Our bodies go, oh, great, ritual. I can do that. um so you so you can mark you can mark these boundaries and by marking the boundaries you get a sense of the difference between you know so if you're working with that you know work in that middle window with that with that kind of blank space which looks like nothing you you get a sense of it when you go in and you come out so again you know again like like like like like a psychedelic space you know you get going in you know can be one thing and coming out is another thing and then you've got a difference between okay this is Yeah, this is a psychedelic space. It's not a psychedelic space. And the difference between the two starts to give you some nuance about what you're working with. And it's the same with, you know, it's the same with going into nature in a ritual way or, you know, spending time in extended time in nature. You know, you have a different sense of yourself and then you come back and you can remember it and go, okay, yeah, that's how I was then. So I think thresholds are really important. And of course, the importance of the threshold is it's potentially a transformation. And what I mean by that is we don't know what's on the other side. So if we knew what was on the other side of the threshold, like moving from your living room to your kitchen, it's not a threshold. It's a doorway. It's not a threshold because you know what's in the kitchen. You're not going to be different. But if you're crossing an imaginal threshold or a ritual threshold, then there's an element which is a dying practice. You're going to leave something behind. You don't know what's on the other side. So, you know, someone doing a vision fast, you know, just camping out for four days and nights without any food. I can do that. That's fine. but you don't know what's going to come up. And because it's a deep ritual, because it's an imaginal ritual, it brings up a load of fears and anxiety for people, which are real, because actually we're stepping into the unknown. And part of the imaginal is the unknown. I think part of what we have in Western culture that's gone off the rails a bit is everything's known. You can go to the supermarket and buy oranges from all over the world. You know, every shop has what you want. There's no unknown unless there's some kind of, you know, the planes get grounded or something. Yeah, great point. Shout out to John Anthony Cafe. He says, baby child, adolescent adult. Yeah. You know what? There's another threshold that I'm curious to get your thoughts on, or maybe another rite of passage that, that we don't see. I wish there was more of, and that is sort of like the transition from adult to elder. Like when you get in your fifties, you know, like that's a big one. It's like, yes, people that I got now I'm supposed to do this. Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do? Who am I? You have another, who am I kind of going on? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And, and, you know, and I suppose what I've, found in in my you know and for you know for me my link with this you know I returned to psychedelics when I was sixty you know I had some I had some mushrooms when I was at university and it was like I saw some lights and wow you know you know it's just a trip whereas you know return returning as a elder older yeah in my sixties for a ritual um ceremony it's like okay, this is a different, now we're in a different ballpark. You know, we're touching into something which is, you know, all the things that the, some of the literature, you know, the indigenous literature and some of the medical literature tells you about what's going on there. So, yeah, and I think for me, as I've got older, that threshold into the imaginal world is much more easy to access, partly because You know, I'm not bringing up family and working as much as I was. But also there's a porosity that comes as you get older. You know, you're looking beyond, you know, your life. So you begin to have a different sensibility to what that threshold is. And also you begin to, I feel, I begin to develop the skills of being able to cross that threshold and come back and get stuff and learn stuff. But as you say, because it's really valuable that it's shared, that you have mates to go, actually, do you experience this? Do you experience that? And I experienced that with my friend Lucy. And I have a men's group that I also do that with. But again, there's not a lot of wise elders out there who know this work. Not that I know of. I mean, there are spread around the world. But they're not easy to find. Yeah. It's, it's, you have to really go looking, you know, and I love that quote of the, when the student is ready, the master will show up, you know, maybe it's in a, maybe it's in an old book or maybe it's in a phone call that a guy knows somebody, or maybe it's in your, your, your wife's father or your wife's mother or something, you know, but they're there and they're, you really have to look though. And it's, that's part of it though. Like you have to, you have to be sort of, I don't know, maybe called to do it on some level or, or, or willing to do it or have the courage to do it. Like, is there any going back? Like sometimes I think that, like I've learned that there's, my opinion is there's no going back. Like when you cross over, you can imagine you could go back, you could think about going back, but you can never go back. Like it's, that part is done. And like that, that should be something we celebrate, but it's, I don't know. What are your thoughts on not, not going back, never going back? How'd you meet? How'd you mean going back? We get going back to your younger self. Yeah. So let's say the ritual, like, okay, I'm going to try to put this in words here. So bear with me if I don't get it out exactly. You know, when you read, I've read some really cool rituals where they talk about an indigenous tribe and the gentleman that was describing it says it's getting to witness time through different ages of your life simultaneously. And it's this aspect of a young child watching his brother go through a ceremony to become a man who's watching his father at the end of the threshold, whose father is watching his grandfather. On some level, you're getting to experience all parts of life simultaneously. And there's no going back. You can catch a glimpse of the future, but you can't. And I get goosebumps when I think about it, but there's no going back. It's easy to get stuck and like, oh, well, that part was good. No. Yeah, it was good, but you're on this now. So stop doing that. Stop moving here. We need you here. exactly exactly exactly yeah yeah yeah no I'm thinking of I'm thinking of this experience of deep time which is exactly that you know where you where you can have the experience of things and things that things are connected they haven't they have a story they have a narrative if you like where they connect or less of a narrative more of a fractal pattern um you can you can resonate with these things um and and again you know I think in in you know because we don't have so many concepts like that in Western culture. We have chronology. Time is on the watch. Time is on the clock. So there's a sense like, well, it's Tuesday again. I can just do Tuesday. Well, actually, no. Last Tuesday was a different moment in time. So yeah, I don't think we can go back. But we can sometimes experience the aspects of deep time, I think. It's so well said. I think that that is part of moving, at least in my limited experience. And this is just my opinion of it. And what I've learned so far is that moving through middle age into becoming someone who's on the cusp of maybe being an elder or moving to that space is your fundamental relationship with time changes. Like, oh, okay, I used to punch this clock. Now these days kind of blend together over here, you know? And like, it really allows you to see the world in different ways. It reminds me kind of, you know, who has a great part about this is Merce Eliade. And he talks about his, in his book, Sacred and the Profane, he talks about sacred time and how I can share sacred time versus profane time. Maybe we could just dig a little deeper on this. What are your thoughts? Yes. Yeah, sacred and profane time. I'm not familiar with that. What I've learned in my first vision fast was this difference in the sacred and the relationship between the sacred and the profane, that actually in the West, we tend to think of sacred as churchy. It's a church. You don't mess around in church because it's sacred. Whereas actually, that's a very Western idea. I think for indigenous cultures, the boundary between these two is, from what I've heard, is more porous. It's not so serious. We can take life a little more lightly. So that, you know, it's like the story I told about the guy with the phone. You know, he was in sacred space. He was in ritual. And his phone rings, which is, you know, that's a profane thing. But, you know, he's answering his phone. He's answering an email. But actually, it was a message from the imaginal that come through his phone at that moment in time. And it was meaningful, you know. So there's something about not judging, I suppose, in this. yeah it's it's so amazing to to look back at some of one of my really good friends and one of the mentors and one of the incredible people I talked to I'm fortunate to talk to on a long-term basis is dr david a solomon and he's the creative director at christopher newport university but he's also a medieval mystic scholar and he's oh he's amazing and and he's you know, he speaks Latin and Hebrew and English and he speaks all of the Greek. So he's read all of these texts in their original language. And he's written up about like Julian of Norwich and just, you know, he can quote Aquinas till you're blue in the face. And it's just, it's so amazing to get to hear his insights on how he sees some of these books, like the cloud of the unknowing and like, yeah, yeah. There's all this rich history for people that find themselves pulled towards mysticism. There's so much rich history to explore and learn and make your own and experiment with, isn't it? Yeah, no, I think there's a very rich history in Europe. I think it was... You know, certainly in England, there was a conflict with the church, you know, in terms of, you know, a lot of the, you know, the burning of the witches and the breaking of those wise women lineages through the church at a particular time, you know, over quite a long period, actually. Yeah, it's amazing to think about all that history, right? Oops, my headphones are kind of jacked. Okay, we got some more questions coming in for you. Do you think the lack of meaningful rites of passage in modern society is contributing to a generation unmoored from purpose. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Because one of the roles of a rite of passage is letting go, dying practice, allowing something new to come in. But at a deeper level, it's about plugging into purpose. What brings you here? What's your unique gift? You know, Bill Plotkin, who does this work in America, in Colorado, talks about our eco-psychological niche, that everybody has a place, an ecological position, if you like, on the planet. Every person has a place that they fit in the world. And that has the quality of a pre-earthly intent. In other words, it's what we've come here to do. And once you find that, I think, then it's pretty clear what you need to do. It doesn't mean it's easy. It's quite difficult because no one else is doing what we're doing. So it's not like you've got loads of mates who are doing the same thing. It's like, oh, that's what I'm doing. It's pretty lonely. But actually, I'm connected to that at a deep level. And without that, or without the knowledge that that's even a thing, then it's very easy to get untethered. And that's what we see, you know, that's what we see with a lot of adolescents. They're looking for something to tether themselves to, which has, which is deep and meaningful. So they're looking for, is it music? Is it in, you know, fashion? Is it in political groups they're looking for something to tether themselves to and actually you know the the traditional knowledge is is one there's a tether for you and it's yours and you've got to you've got to figure out what it is but I can help you do it because we've got a few psycho technologies to to get you on the way and and you know a rite of passage a soul-centric rite of passage is one of those things it's about plugging people into their soul or plug what I would say plugging people into the into the mothership, you know, connecting with the, with, with, with the big picture. Yeah. So John Anthony cafes, thanks for chiming in over here. And he says, baby, child, adolescent, adult crisis, middle age, old age, death. Is there an internal witness to this? I think, you know, this idea, what are your thoughts? Well, I think I, I suppose it depends, you know, an extra, an external, an internal witness. Yeah. I think there probably is. I think the problem, and then maybe that is the soul, you know, that's the sense that actually, if you can get, if you can, if you can, you find that place, you're able to witness yourself, get yourself going through those stages. But of course there's another part of us, an ego part, which gets caught up in all the stuff. Like, you know, am I an elder? How can I call myself an elder? And everyone's going, no, you're an elder. You know, other people can see it sometimes easier than others. And again, that's why community is so important because actually, we can get caught in our own ego world. And if you've got elders or, or people around you, you, they, they can mirror back, often mirror back to us who we are more clearly than we can ourselves. Unless, you know, unless we're, unless we're really plugged in and not that many people are plugged in really. It's a great point. It's maybe why isolation is so suffocating. Like we don't know who we are unless we're part of a community. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I, Yeah, and I was thinking, you know, and again, the other thing about a traditional initiation was it was a giveaway. You did it for the community. It wasn't ego. It wasn't like an ego matriculation. It's about I'm doing this for the greater good, for the wider system, the systemic intelligence of the earth. It's not about me. Yeah, it brings up for me the question of the observer effect. You know what I mean? I wonder if that's tied into it. What does the esoteric say about the observer? I'm not sure. I mean, the power of witnessing is very powerful, isn't it? Just being witnessed. Yeah. You know, I think that's really important. Yeah. It's so interesting how it fundamentally changes your behavior, you know, just by someone watching you has an incredible influence over whether you do or you don't, you know, I bring up the esoteric because I always see the symbol of like the eye and it's like, something's always watching, you know, whether it's in a negative connotation or I like to think of it as a positive connotation. Like, yeah, someone is always watching. Like that's, why you are the best version of yourself and that's why you can communicate with something bigger than you you can reach out to an intelligence that's right there because watching be part of it yeah be afraid of it yeah and maybe that's that internal witness you know maybe you are what maybe we're just watching ourselves all along yeah I think sometimes you can pick up on that you get a sense of like oh yeah no this is I'm on track now another time just like yeah I've no way I've no idea what I'm doing yeah yeah it's a great way to be probably a There's probably a lot of work you can do there with grounding and just that insight. This comes in from Betsy. Betsy says, if humanity does not change its relationship with the earth, where do you see us in fifty years? Is there hope for a return to balance? Yeah, that's a good question. Where do I see ourselves in fifty years? And again, it comes back down to, it comes back down to stories. So, you know, what stories do we have available that take us fifty years into the future? You know, one of the things that you probably remember, George, from these books, the old science books we used to get when we were kids, there was this hockey stick curve into two thousand and space travel. And it was like, you know, Stone Age, The Plough, horse-drawn vehicles and then it kind of went so now we're there and it's like what are we doing you know and you know and it's pretty clear that it's not sustainable you know there's a kind of emperor's new clothes effect going on and we don't we don't have a story other than you know Netflix you know dystopian sci-fi movies where the earth where you know AI's taken over the world So one of the things we don't have is we don't have deep time stories for how we negotiate crises. And again, one of the things traditional cultures had is they had deep time stories of how the Earth has ended before and how people have negotiated that more than once. you know, one of the, one of the, one of the things, one of the, the great quotes from one of the books I was reading is we need, we need better science fiction. You know, we need, we need better, we need better imaginative stories about how we're going to make it through to the future. Because, because if we have stories that are too small, then we're not going to make it, you know, but what does that, what does that, what does that mean? I mean, you know, it comes back to this, comes back to this, sense of a rite of passage is we're facing a threshold and we don't know what's on the other side you know the classic the classic picture of the threshold is the you know the caterpillar to the butterfly the caterpillar you know has no wings has no reproduction reproductive organs doesn't know it's going to turn into a chrysalis doesn't know it's going to turn into a butterfly because when it's in the chrysalis it completely dissolves and then it transforms into something else So we're at that caterpillar stage where we're kind of munching up the planet, going, how do we stop this? And what we know about the Earth, the ecosystems of the Earth, what we know from old stories is, well, it's a life. It's a being. It has not a plan, but it has an arc of trajectory. And we don't know what it is. But also when you think about human thinking, which is our main tool for figuring out how we're going to get through this, human thinking hasn't been around that long. The Earth has been functioning and evolving and changing for a long time before humans came along and for a long time before humans developed books and thinking. So the idea that we can think our way through this is, is hubris really, because actually the earth, the earth, the earth's doing something. We're part of it. Something's going to happen. And we're, we're going through that threshold, whether we like it or not, we don't know what's on the other side. So part of, you know, what, what we can do is, um, find it, find a way of keeping ourselves settled with the unknown. I'm part of one of the, one of the ways, one of the ways to do that is through, um, Something like rites of passage, a threshold process, a dying process where you face the unknown and learn how to be comfortable with that. So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question there, but that's where I'm at with that one. I like it. I see it a little bit different, and I'll offer this story for Betsy, is that I think we've been in the chrysalis. I think we have made it through the consumption phase the same way the caterpillar just consumes the entire plant until it can't anymore. And I think what you're seeing right now is the beginning of a new form eating through the detritus of the old. And you're right. You're right about the story. We were fed this story of consumption that we'll live like the Jetsons and we'll have flying cars. And that story is not true. We're not there. It's not happening. And therefore, that story and the people that spun it... Maybe not the people that spun it. However it was spun, the articulators of the story, that is the detritus through which we're eating. But I see so many talented young people, and I firsthand am participating in this incredible art explosion where I'm like, oh, this is a wing emerging right here. What is this? Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, when I when I hear a lot of these stories and I have a young daughter and her school talks a lot about overconsumption and saving the planet, like I offer this as a story of hope, like we are emerging as a new form right now. It's coming. It's here. It's it's history or the future is here. It's just not evenly distributed. Yes. I'm so thankful. It's beautiful in so many ways. If you can allow yourself to suspend that other myth of we've over consumed, we're killing everything. We needed to, we needed to, and now we're here. Now we have to make the changes necessary to be in this new form. Will we do it? Will we chew our way out of there? Will we be born? I hope so. You know, a lot of times children die in birth and it's possible, but I'm hopeful for it. What are your thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think so. I like the idea. I think you're right that actually, you know, young people are coming with a different imagination and, you know, and they're not, you know, a bit like the sixties, they're not buying, they're not buying the story of the old guys, you know, but, but, but also it's beyond, you know, it's that middle window. It's beyond the magic, beyond our imagination. We can't think, you know, we can't think what it is and we can't, we can't regulate it or moderate it or, even you know tell them it's okay or not okay because actually it's the it's the future and you know that is that is part of the you know I think I think you know the next generation are part of the well they're part of the earth coming to heal itself really that is so beautiful I'm gonna I'm gonna write that down Yeah, I'm so enamored by the youth and how quick they are to adapt and use these new technologies. And, you know, there's another great quote. I think it was, you could probably take it all the way back to the Emerald Tablets of Toth where they talk about the inventor of a technology is the worst person to tell you what that technology is going to be used for. You know, you have all these AI guys out here like, this is what it's going to be used for. Don't go in here, we're doing this. No, no, no. Thanks for the tools. I love it. I love it. Okay, I got two more over here. I know you've been very patient with your time, so let me just knock out a couple more of my last two guests. If you could design an ideal education system that integrates nature, imagination, and systemic thinking, what would it look like? That's a good question. Well, I was partly able to do some of that when I worked at this Ruskin Mill College in the UK, where we were able to, we had access to land and we had freedom of curriculum to a certain extent to expose people to craft and land processes. And it was very transformational. So part of, I think there are a number of different things that are needed in that in that education process one is um contact and contact with nature and contact with nature in the context of um creation making something doing something not just hanging out in nature but actually transforming natural materials into something beauty the beauty way is is the I think the navajo the beauty way you actually have to surround yourself by beauty So what that enables is it enables the bodies to calm down. There's a trauma-healing element in that, I think. So once the trauma's healed, then the two, and I'm just writing about this, actually. I'm just writing about this today. Then the next one is being able to provide a new story. Opening a story from, yeah, we're just gonna chew up the earth and it's all done, to actually, well, what if? What if this? And those stories that resonate with ancient wisdom are really important because they have imaginable shapes and patterns in them, which have wisdom that we probably don't even know. And then the third one is how to you know psychotechnologies to reconnect to plug into the plug into the great mystery the great the great mother and those can be things like vision fast um but also psychedelics but then you know and psychedelics are you know have that have a bit of an edge to them for various reasons um But certainly a rite of passage, a ritual rite of passage, which enables people to find themselves and find their connection with the sacred is essential. And then once you've got, if you've got all those three, then job's done, really. You can let people go and do what they need to do. Create the wings of the butterfly. I love it. It's so true. This whole conversation has just made me understand the... more frequent sound or feeling an imagery of the imaginal like it's growing stronger. I think it is. It's it's what once you get the imagine takes a really long time once you get it. It's a game changer. yes I hope more people just hear that word and will explore and seek and find and look because it's there's that other quote too let me just put this one out there for people that which you are seeking is seeking you yes that's one of my favorites exactly exactly well that's that that that's the imaginal right there yes you know it's not it's not about you there's something that's there's something that's looking for you you know There's something that's looking for you. I love that. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's, you know, maybe that's that internal observer going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, you don't want to be doing this job. You want to be doing that job. Yeah. Yeah. And you're going, but I like this job. It makes me feel good. No, that's the one. It's so beautiful when you get to a point and when you can look back and be like, oh, I see. That's what was supposed to happen. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of healing in there. There's a lot of healing. There's a lot of healing. But, you know, it's very difficult to let go of the ego. It's so hard. It's so hard. Yeah. Okay, let me finish up here with – First off, thank you to everybody in the chat who's hanging out with us and spending some time here. Yeah, great questions. Great questions. Okay. Let's see. What practices can people start today, right now, to begin rekindling their relationship with the natural world? Okay. Another great question. Who's this? This one... Sorry, this one's coming from Christian. Christian. Great Christian. So... So I think the simplest practice is to get your hands into nature or your feet into nature. So gardening is great. So just grow stuff or walk in nature without any agenda, without sort of headphones, without listening to podcasts, without naming things. the birds or whatever it is, just spend time moving, moving your body through nature. So walking in nature is really good or touching nature or doing, working with natural materials is really good. touching or touching uh organic materials it's really good bones feathers this kind of stuff and just see how that see how that works with you and then and then the that's that's that's an easy one and the next thing is to I think to find somebody who can take you into more of a ritual space. It can teach you how to make a ritual space. So you drop into the more of a marginal space and you begin to listen out for that thing that's talking to you. And practice that for a while. And then, you know, there are other things you can do, like, you know, therapy is really helpful, but it's difficult to access. or finding someone who can hold you through a rite of passage like a Vision Fast. There's a lot of Vision Fast guides in the States, particularly on the West Coast. Sign up for one of those programs, and that'll open a lot of things for you. Fantastic. Well, Roger, before I let you go, where can people find you? Like, let's say they want to, they're there. They heard your story. They want to read your books. Where can people find you? How do they get ahold of you? What did they get your books? What do you got going on? So they, so, uh, I should have prepared for this one, shouldn't I? So, so, uh, the book, my books available, you know, on, on, on these, uh, different sites, soul and nature. So you can get that off Amazon or route ledger or anything like that. My, um, And you can email. I haven't got my – let me just see if I can find my – Yeah. You might have to edit this bit out. Actually, LinkedIn is a good place to find me. Okay. People can access me on LinkedIn. And that's the easiest way. Let me see if I can find the email as well. Okay, so my website with my wife is www.kithandkintherapy.com. So that's K-I-T-H and K-I-N therapy.com, all one word. Is it a A-N-D or is it just a symbol? And it's a word. So it's kithandkintherapy.com. Okay, fantastic. Well, hang on briefly afterwards, Roger. I wanted to tell you some closing thoughts. But to everybody else within the sound of my voice, to John, to Betsy, to Neil, to Christian, to Leiter, to everybody that chimed in and hung out with us, thank you so much for being here. For those of you, I didn't get to your questions. Sorry, I will be back again. I'll try to answer them outside here. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful day. Aloha.