Episode 4
And Everything Goes From Black and White to Colour
Tim Freke — philosopher, spiritual pioneer, and international bestselling author of 35 books — describes the single 'Technicolour' moment that launched a lifetime of inquiry. In this conversation, he frames bravery as the courage to follow your highest calling, shows how spiritual awakening is the shift from black-and-white to colour, and reveals why reflection and conscious choice open the door to a life that feels vividly alive.
"Life is mind-blowingly amazing."
"The universe is a process made of the past."
What we explore:
- Wisdom as the courage to do what's right — and how reflection builds it over a lifetime
- Spiritual awakening as seeing in colour, and simple practices for switching it back on
- The evolution of consciousness, and Tim's idea of a super-soul and collective intelligence
- Choice and agency: taming the instinctual self and creating your own journey
- Soul-to-soul connection as the most radical act a man can offer in a world trained in distraction.
Connect with Tim:
Podbook & Podcast: youtube.com/timfreke
Website & Events: timfreke.com
Substack: timfreke.substack.com
Instagram: @timfreke
Facebook: facebook.com/TimFreke
X: @timfreke
A little about Hamish
I spent 25 years building a life that looked successful from the outside, but within, it was the opposite. Everything was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on that fire. The joy of life had fallen away. Late November 2018, I had to make a choice: live or die. I chose to live, and everything changed. I had to confront the pain I was carrying, look at the stories, and change. I built The Brave Man Project because there was nothing like this when I needed it.
Podcast website https://thebravemanproject.com/
Hamish's website https://hamishniven.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishniven/
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/
Personal Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven
Transcript
I thought, imagine a world in which everyone sees in black and white.
Speaker:That's what you see. And then one day you open your eyes and everything's in color.
Speaker:And then it goes.
Speaker:and you're back to black and white.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think the experience of spiritual awakening is something like that.
Speaker:And it can be full technicolor or it can just be a little bit of color,
Speaker:Mmm.
Speaker:but you know what's happened. So for me,
Speaker:a spiritual experience is any experience where you go,
Speaker:hang on, there's more going on here than just my sociobiological existence.
Speaker:Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of the Brave Man Project.
Speaker:Today we're talking to Tim Freke and this is going to be
Speaker:a really interesting conversation.
Speaker:I've been looking forward to catch up with Tim.
Speaker:He's got some really interesting ideas and philosophies on life.
Speaker:So Tim, thank you so much for turning up today.
Speaker:It's a great pleasure.
Speaker:Let's dive in. This podcast is all about being brave.
Speaker:So what do you consider is bravery?
Speaker:That's a big question. So bravery,
Speaker:being courageous, well it's not being foolhardy.
Speaker:I think it's being wise. I think those can easily get confused.
Speaker:I would say the courage that I aspire to would
Speaker:be the courage to do what my deepest wisdom says is the right thing to do.
Speaker:and whatever that is. So that the,
Speaker:not counting the cost, I'm doing what my deepest intuitive wisdom says,
Speaker:act in this way. But that needs the wisdom because otherwise it just turns into
Speaker:means the wisdom.
Speaker:a kind of rashness and I don't think it's that at all.
Speaker:I like that. So where do find your wisdom?
Speaker:Well, I would say, Hamish, that the whole of life is a journey
Speaker:of trying to accumulate wisdom.
Speaker:I think that's one way of describing what happens in a life.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And I certainly feel, I hope, I'm wiser now in my 60s than I was when I was younger.
Speaker:I spent a lot of time, now I'm older,
Speaker:looking back over my life and feeling how foolish I've been.
Speaker:But that's a sign, I hope, of having got a bit wiser.
Speaker:I think through the struggles and trials and,
Speaker:but not just, I think a great deal of wisdom can come just from reflection,
Speaker:from actually looking at oneself,
Speaker:I'm actually looking at oneself,
Speaker:what are the, what I would call the pastivity,
Speaker:how...
Speaker:the way that the past has governed how I act in the present,
Speaker:and how much of that pastivity is serving me,
Speaker:how much of it isn't, how do I ideate,
Speaker:meaning what are the ideas or categories with which I understand what life
Speaker:one of the ideas or categories which I understand what is putting into my narrative.
Speaker:is and put it into a narrative.
Speaker:And is that the best
Speaker:I can find? So a lot of wisdom comes through challenge
Speaker:and through difficulty. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker:That's my dad.
Speaker:But I'm not someone who thinks you have to do that.
Speaker:I think you can circumvent that.
Speaker:And part of the wisdom is to know that you can circumvent
Speaker:the problems by reflecting in advance,
Speaker:by looking at, by the old injunction that was there over the oracle at Delphi.
Speaker:Gnothi Seton in the Greek, know yourself.
Speaker:It's like to have the wisdom to become wise,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:to have the wisdom that you know that you're foolish and that therefore
Speaker:to have the wisdom that you know.
Speaker:you can look at yourself and try and preempt the errors before they happen
Speaker:before they have it and it involves the understanding to act better.
Speaker:and evolve the understanding to act better in the world.
Speaker:That's so simple. I like that.
Speaker:It's so simple. I my problem has always been putting out the fires or coming down
Speaker:to binary choices before I get there.
Speaker:How did you manage to stop and think,
Speaker:I'm going to think before I fall or something like that?
Speaker:Because I think most people will come to a
Speaker:existential crisis or a point where they have two choices left.
Speaker:You don't have one choice, you always have two,
Speaker:but how did you manage to find how to circumvent falling down that hole,
Speaker:that dark night of the soul or something like that?
Speaker:~ Well, obviously I have faced lots of challenges.
Speaker:~ I don't think I've had the dark night of the soul experience.
Speaker:And that's probably, well, I have to be open to the possibilities.
Speaker:I've just been lucky. But also perhaps some part of it was,
Speaker:and maybe this is the being lucky,
Speaker:that from a very early age...
Speaker:I've been awake to the mystery of life.
Speaker:And so my priority in that area,
Speaker:I mean there's lots of areas in life,
Speaker:in that area of my life, which has been a very important area to me,
Speaker:has been what the hell is this we're in?
Speaker:And what should I be doing with it?
Speaker:So that I didn't need some dramatic thing to wake me up to that because
Speaker:I was aware of that the whole way through.
Speaker:So always that has been the priority.
Speaker:always has been the reason because of that I've managed
Speaker:And because of that, I have managed
Speaker:somehow to create a life for myself in which I've been able to indulge that.
Speaker:which I think is the most...
Speaker:And I still am, you know, I'm what I do with my pod book,
Speaker:I'm doing with the pipe. I'm going to discuss the point that we were doing.
Speaker:which we'll probably discuss at some point and the work I'm doing where I
Speaker:can give a lot of stuff away now is because I've created a life where
Speaker:We're going to begin with the host of the pipe.
Speaker:I can really focus in on this every day.
Speaker:I can't really follow the signal this everyday.
Speaker:So not everyone has that opportunity and not everyone makes that opportunity,
Speaker:So, not everyone has that opportunity,
Speaker:and not everyone makes that opportunity,
Speaker:but it's worth it because
Speaker:but it's worth it because
Speaker:I think it's strapping that we have
Speaker:I think it's also having the wisdom to stop.
Speaker:to stop smoking. A few days ago,
Speaker:So a few days ago,
Speaker:I felt a bit like, why am I doing all of this?
Speaker:I felt a bit by upon doing this smoking.
Speaker:was a bit exhausted with
Speaker:it all, bit of burnout with everything I'm doing.
Speaker:And I've learned now that when I hear a voice go stop,
Speaker:I stop. And so I have a whole day,
Speaker:I do nothing. I'm purely introspection.
Speaker:I don't eat even. It's just like,
Speaker:stop.
Speaker:And then I see a whole load of things which I need to see.
Speaker:So I know to do that. And also when I was younger,
Speaker:I think I did that early on, I had two periods of withdrawing from the world.
Speaker:And like everything, Hamish, like it sounds,
Speaker:you gain something, you lose something.
Speaker:Because you can't do everything.
Speaker:So while other young men were making their way in the world,
Speaker:I was retreating into meditative retreat twice for long periods,
Speaker:which meant I gained a whole load of stuff that they didn't have.
Speaker:but I didn't have a whole lot of things which they had.
Speaker:So I hadn't come into the world.
Speaker:In some ways I was probably more spiritually mature than them,
Speaker:but less mature in other ways.
Speaker:And I've had to learn that.
Speaker:you know, ~ life is so individual,
Speaker:don't you think? some people,
Speaker:Mm. Mm.
Speaker:lot of my heroes woke up when they were 40.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And they were in the world, they were professors and established people.
Speaker:Richard Halbert, Ram Dass, was an influence for me.
Speaker:He was at Harvard when he woke up.
Speaker:I was 12. So I never came in and did all that.
Speaker:I had to do all of that later.
Speaker:So that idea of awakening up,
Speaker:does that mean? So if someone's listened to this and they go,
Speaker:well, I've heard this, people talk about awakening.
Speaker:sounds very woo woo. It sounds very spiritual.
Speaker:And ~ I guess what initiates that?
Speaker:And then what's the driving force behind it?
Speaker:Well, during my quiet day that I had a few days ago,
Speaker:the analogy that was coming up for me,
Speaker:which is just an analogy obviously,
Speaker:but it might be worth sharing with you,
Speaker:was this. I thought, imagine a world in which everyone sees in black and white.
Speaker:That's what you see. And then one day you open your eyes
Speaker:and everything's in color. And then it goes.
Speaker:and you're back to black and white.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think the experience of spiritual awakening is something like that.
Speaker:And it can be full technicolor or it can just be a little bit of color,
Speaker:Mmm.
Speaker:but you know what's happened. So for me,
Speaker:a spiritual experience is any experience where you go,
Speaker:hang on, there's more going on here than just my sociobiological existence.
Speaker:Now I think our social,
Speaker:and biological existence is really important.
Speaker:I don't want to lessen the importance of that.
Speaker:minute.
Speaker:But what comes with the spiritual experience is that,
Speaker:most people, lots of people anyway,
Speaker:have had moments where they've gone,
Speaker:there's more going on here, isn't there?
Speaker:What is that? And when you get it vividly,
Speaker:it's like everything comes into color.
Speaker:And when you get it very vividly,
Speaker:you
Speaker:it's like technicolor. And then the whole thing becomes
Speaker:the questions you're raising, like what the hell just happened?
Speaker:How can I get back to it?
Speaker:~ what creates it, all of those questions.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:So what happened to me when I was very young was that I had
Speaker:a Technicolor version and set me off on this whole life I've led going,
Speaker:asking all those questions and looking for the best answers.
Speaker:But in terms of like what that means in terms of,
Speaker:know, like, okay, so that's an analogy.
Speaker:I think, and there's lots of different ways of experiencing this.
Speaker:And most difficult way of experiencing this.
Speaker:It's not like one thing, but commonalities would be,
Speaker:It's not like a pantheon.
Speaker:I think that you feel a profound sense of communion or connection or oneness
Speaker:you feel like sense of communion or connection upon us.
Speaker:Something you're not, you don't feel isolated.
Speaker:so that you're not, you don't feel isolated from the rest of the universe.
Speaker:feel like the of you, as you feel intimately,
Speaker:You feel intimately part of it.
Speaker:keyed a bit. That's beautiful.
Speaker:And that's beautiful.
Speaker:a heightened appreciation, often with the senses,
Speaker:A lot of appreciation, often with the senses,
Speaker:like the senses do literally come into
Speaker:but the senses do literally.
Speaker:color, they're more alive, but also in terms of meaning,
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:~
Speaker:when the difference between,
Speaker:I'm just alive, know, to I'm alive,
Speaker:wow, wow, you know, it's that,
Speaker:wow, that movement from a kind of,
Speaker:often I describe it like this,
Speaker:because I like to do visual things,
Speaker:I say, awakening's like this.
Speaker:It's like that there, like that.
Speaker:And then for me, the most important thing is the sense of being
Speaker:profoundly connected to a greater intelligence.
Speaker:into a race for intelligence.
Speaker:And that feels like this enormous love.
Speaker:That was what it was for me when I was a kid.
Speaker:It's absolutely impossible to be
Speaker:The first thing that hit me wasn't anything philosophical.
Speaker:It was, oh, there's this huge,
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:huge love. Or that's what I felt was this huge love.
Speaker:So the connection isn't just a dry,
Speaker:Plus the connection isn't just a drive.
Speaker:"Yes, I'm one with everything." ~
Speaker:the beach.
Speaker:And that's what the whole of all the esoteric traditions are about that teaching
Speaker:us focus like this, try out this.
Speaker:also, you know, there's loads of ways,
Speaker:there's loads of ways. You can get there in a million ways.
Speaker:Anyone that goes, I've got the way,
Speaker:it's like, it's not true. Life is the way.
Speaker:There's a million ways and everyone's different.
Speaker:Yeah, everyone is different. I,
Speaker:when I go for walks, I will consciously say,
Speaker:right, I'm going to see beauty.
Speaker:I'll start that again. When I go for walks,
Speaker:No
Speaker:I will often say I'm consciously going to see beauty and back to your Technicolor,
Speaker:the leaves start glowing, the clouds become more visceral,
Speaker:the birds sound louder. It's exactly as you described it.
Speaker:It's really visceral and I can turn it on.
Speaker:~
Speaker:those not watching, I've got my eyes closed,
Speaker:I'm imagining, I'm remembering the sound of the birds,
Speaker:the colours, the textures, the trees,
Speaker:everything just becomes, as you said,
Speaker:black and white to colour, I go 2D to 3D,
Speaker:it comes three dimensional. And I think that is a conscious choice to
Speaker:do that kind of thing. I suppose that's the same as what you talked about
Speaker:was your reflecting.
Speaker:Yes, although I think that's closer to what I mean by Psi-Sensing.
Speaker:So one of the ideas I've been exploring is that we don't just sense with the body,
Speaker:we sense with the psyche or the soul.
Speaker:So we're Psi-Sensing or soul-sensing,
Speaker:you could call it, it doesn't matter.
Speaker:Because you can't sense the oneness of everything.
Speaker:You can't see it or hear it or touch it.
Speaker:Likewise, know, this vast loving intelligence,
Speaker:you can't sense it with the biological senses,
Speaker:but you can sense it.
Speaker:but you could sense it with the soul.
Speaker:and smoke.
Speaker:And what you were doing, I suggest,
Speaker:with that walk, which is a lovely thing to do,
Speaker:was consciously focusing that ability.
Speaker:And then it turns up. One of the ideas that
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:has been central to me over this last period has been to go,
Speaker:The US law spirit has been...
Speaker:~ consciousness, what we mean by when we're conscious of something
Speaker:is high definition processing,
Speaker:You're
Speaker:meaning...
Speaker:We're taking in lots and lots and lots and lots,
Speaker:taking in lots and and lots and of huge amounts of information.
Speaker:huge amounts of information all the time.
Speaker:I mean, I'm taking information for
Speaker:the moment about how I'm sat on the chair.
Speaker:I'm just not conscious of it, although I am now.
Speaker:And I am now because I mentioned it and therefore my attention's gone to it.
Speaker:Wherever I put my attention, I process that in high definition.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:~
Speaker:But I'm taking in loads of information I don't,
Speaker:and that's a very wise thing to do because it uses up a lot of bandwidth,
Speaker:as it were.
Speaker:to process in high definition.
Speaker:But once you get that, then you can see that meditation or sight sensing
Speaker:or any of these things is about focusing high definition attention.
Speaker:So you're walking out and you're not taking in anything.
Speaker:And then you go, hmm, let's just
Speaker:take in the color of the sky. And then suddenly the color of the sky is,
Speaker:Take the color of the sky. And there's only a color of the sky.
Speaker:~ let's just take in the texture of the leaves and the rustle.
Speaker:I'll just take in the texture of the leaves.
Speaker:And then.
Speaker:and you're shifting your relationship with it because you're now processing
Speaker:it in high definition. And one of the big shifts for me when I was in
Speaker:The pain shifts were made when I was in those periods of treatment,
Speaker:one of those periods of retreat,
Speaker:the second period of meditative retreat in my early 20s,
Speaker:the same period of treatment just did for a tree by early twenties.
Speaker:was I'd been taught ~ to meditate on
Speaker:It a big difference to the day that I brought it up.
Speaker:my breath as most people are. And when I started off,
Speaker:I was probably one of the first people police group that I was probably going
Speaker:I think it was a Buddhist group that I was probably got it from.
Speaker:And my understanding of that Hamish was,
Speaker:to get I understand the pain,
Speaker:which
Speaker:is because this is your pain.
Speaker:This is so boring
Speaker:that if you spend enough hours doing it,
Speaker:you will become enlightened.
Speaker:But then one day, something happened.
Speaker:and I focused my attention and it became exquisite to breathe.
Speaker:And by focusing that, suddenly,
Speaker:wow, wow. And by the end of that period of my life,
Speaker:Wow, I can't believe that people in my life,
Speaker:felt, even if I'm incarcerated,
Speaker:do you really even want to be cultivated?
Speaker:I've got this. I can just pay attention to my breath and it's amazing just
Speaker:Mm-hmm. You've got this. You can just pay it.
Speaker:to do that. And.
Speaker:And once you set up something like that,
Speaker:whether it's walking and looking at the sky or it's your breath or something,
Speaker:you have a place where you can break yourself out of this narrow kind
Speaker:of black and white vision and back into color.
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:And that opens it up then in other ways.
Speaker:you start to remember that life is mind-blowingly amazing.
Speaker:the thing which is strangest is how easy it is to miss.
Speaker:Isn't that the truth? And that is so sad.
Speaker:We just go on nine till five, eight till six,
Speaker:Netflix and chill, going to work,
Speaker:coming back. Yeah. And just figure.
Speaker:And the
Speaker:irony is, you know, all of that is amazing.
Speaker:All of that is just great. You just don't want to miss it.
Speaker:And it's like, get that, you know,
Speaker:because you, can get into a sort of spiritual little thing where it's like,
Speaker:that's all, what you should really be doing is something more profound.
Speaker:you
Speaker:I don't think that anymore. I do like to do profound things.
Speaker:I love it. But also I like to remember,
Speaker:you know, when I sit of an evening having worked hard all day with my wife
Speaker:and we watch
Speaker:some nonsense or maybe it's good,
Speaker:it doesn't matter, but it's just chilling out for an hour before bed.
Speaker:I really want to remember, oh God,
Speaker:look, we're both healthy, we're both alive,
Speaker:we're here, we're doing this trivial,
Speaker:beautiful little thing together.
Speaker:And if I were not to have this,
Speaker:God, I'd miss it. If I didn't have the magic of just sitting here with
Speaker:the woman I love, having been with her all these...
Speaker:years and just watch this thing and just chill and it's like or I could miss
Speaker:all of that and we're just doing it but not not having that it's the same
Speaker:as you and exactly the same as you and the walk it's the same thing isn't
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:how do you, do you consciously make an effort to step into that,
Speaker:I'm not going to call it mindset,
Speaker:into that thigh sensing. Is it like,
Speaker:okay, I'm sat with my wife, we just had a lovely meal.
Speaker:And then it's like flick a switch.
Speaker:I mean, I guess it's automatic now,
Speaker:but how did you...
Speaker:start to get into that stage because I think that is spectacular.
Speaker:think that is getting beyond the mundane,
Speaker:appreciating there is magic in the mundane and things like that.
Speaker:You're already shattering all my illusions of like,
Speaker:don't like mundane, I don't like boring.
Speaker:It's like, now I'm going to,
Speaker:so thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker:How, well, I mean, I do forget,
Speaker:but I think the.
Speaker:Well, I took the day where I stopped.
Speaker:I'm not saying other people should do that.
Speaker:That's very much a Tim thing. That's one of the things I do.
Speaker:But because things were getting a bit black and white,
Speaker:and because I've been doing this really all my life for decades,
Speaker:generally there's at least a little bit of color.
Speaker:sometimes a lot,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but at least a little bit. And if that goes...
Speaker:Yeah, I feel pretty bereft. And it's quite good for me though,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:because it reminds me. And part of my motivation for what I do,
Speaker:you know, I'm a philosopher, I think we need to change our worldview,
Speaker:you know, I want to change culture,
Speaker:know, play a little role in that.
Speaker:But also, in a much more personal,
Speaker:individual basis, I just like to do anything I can to help people see in color,
Speaker:because life is precious and it's really hard.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:You know, and there's a,
Speaker:it's, you know, even if you, you're the wisest person in the world,
Speaker:it's pretty hard unless you go for the whole detached thing,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:~
Speaker:which doesn't attract track me at all.
Speaker:That whole spiritual detachment.
Speaker:I never get unhappy. I'm always like,
Speaker:that seems like really, that just feels like you've just lost life.
Speaker:And you know, life is, you know,
Speaker:just to, just to love is to take the risk of suffering.
Speaker:I think, you know, if you love someone,
Speaker:you've thrown yourself wide open to suffering.
Speaker:So just.
Speaker:get on board with it, that's the price,
Speaker:I'm paying it. It's
Speaker:like, it's a deal. And so there's all of that.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:And so if you've got that, just
Speaker:to remember that black and white life is hard.
Speaker:Honestly, I feel like people who don't have some sense of what I call
Speaker:the vast loving intelligence, whatever you want to call that,
Speaker:that greater thing which holds you and supports you.
Speaker:I don't know how they get through.
Speaker:So I want to offer anything I can to people
Speaker:like that, regardless of what philosophy you adopt,
Speaker:to just get that sense,
Speaker:to touch that love enough times that you can bring it in day to day.
Speaker:And that's what I try and do. I just do my best.
Speaker:rather, whenever I say that, I always think,
Speaker:do you Tim? Do you do your best?
Speaker:I don't think you do, you? But I do do my best to do my best.
Speaker:To do my best would be a huge achievement.
Speaker:Maybe one day occasionally I do my best.
Speaker:The rest of the time I just do my best to do my best.
Speaker:That's good enough isn't it? I some days getting out of bed is a heroic achievement.
Speaker:Yeah. And it sounds like last week was getting back into bed
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:was the heroic achievement. Just saying stop enough.
Speaker:Yeah, that's bold, that's brave.
Speaker:the intuition is an interesting thing because
Speaker:what I mean by it is it's your most emergent or most evolved level of processing.
Speaker:So there's two things for me. One is it's not absolute and it's often wrong because
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:~
Speaker:it's only my best wisdom and I'm limited,
Speaker:but it's the best I've got. So it's no good just thinking if I just follow that,
Speaker:everything will be perfect. That's not true.
Speaker:I found that out. I followed it all my life.
Speaker:It hasn't always been
Speaker:perfect. That's just the way it is.
Speaker:But it's the best I've got. So if the voice,
Speaker:if I'm following that wisdom, then do it reflectively,
Speaker:be critical, change your mind if you need to.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:it is trying to alert you to where you,
Speaker:from the two-way dismay to where we're
Speaker:or it is me, to where I'm losing the thread.
Speaker:the
Speaker:I'd like to step back towards ~ what you said,
Speaker:this divine love, this incredible being.
Speaker:Do you think humans are spiritual?
Speaker:I think there's a spiritual, it's difficult word,
Speaker:spiritual, because it's often associated with lot of nonsense.
Speaker:And I'm so critical of religion,
Speaker:spirituality, the way it is right now,
Speaker:because I've been around it all my life.
Speaker:you know, I'm probably more critical than most.
Speaker:But I would say that what the best of spirituality addresses
Speaker:is a level of reality. I'm convinced of that.
Speaker:question is what is it and what's its relationship with the other levels
Speaker:of reality and the traditional idea is that it's a supernatural level from which
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:we have fallen in some way so you really belong somewhere else
Speaker:you really will not be able to give full extent.
Speaker:and you've fallen into this dense illusion and you need to get free
Speaker:or you're a spark of God become trapped in matter and that's often
Speaker:the traditional picture and I think
Speaker:What I'm trying to do is go, look,
Speaker:that level of reality, that's for real.
Speaker:If you explore it, you will find that.
Speaker:But that understanding, we need to turn spirituality the right way up.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's just the wrong way up. And we haven't fallen from something supernatural.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's the most emergent level of the natural.
Speaker:So that the evolving universe has come through matter and life and psyche,
Speaker:mind.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And that level is not just a by-product of biology.
Speaker:It's a whole domain, just like spirituality is always said.
Speaker:And if you explore it with spiritual practices
Speaker:or psychedelics or whatever way you do it,
Speaker:you will find it's a very profound level of reality.
Speaker:In fact, I think it's the most emergent level of 14 billion years
Speaker:you
Speaker:of evolution and that we can come to understand in that way.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I like that. I I've listened to you before and you've said that
Speaker:the universe started off as matter.
Speaker:And then over the 14 billion years,
Speaker:we've got Hamish and Tim having a conversation together using technology and stuff.
Speaker:So as life has evolved,
Speaker:you're saying the universe has evolved,
Speaker:consciousness has evolved or consciousness is another step in that evolution.
Speaker:I mean, what's next? Exactly. So,
Speaker:Exactly. you know, it looks
Speaker:you know...
Speaker:like, well, we don't want to get into this in this conversation,
Speaker:I don't think, but just to give it some context,
Speaker:I think the first thing we need to see is the foundation is actually what
Speaker:we study with mathematics, information,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:which is why physics is so mathematical.
Speaker:And then from that has come a pre spatial level,
Speaker:which we study with quantum physics.
Speaker:And then you've got physics, which is the material universe.
Speaker:And that's extraordinary. And then here,
Speaker:at least on this little blue planet,
Speaker:life.
Speaker:And for four billion years, life has been going and evolving from
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:one cell into everything. And then from that,
Speaker:we've got conscious life, the ability to focus in high definition
Speaker:and experience it like this. The psyche,
Speaker:this realm we're experiencing now with images,
Speaker:isn't within the, it isn't within the biological space at all.
Speaker:It's somewhere else. And that's the spirit realm for spirituality.
Speaker:That's the soul. The psyche is the Greek word.
Speaker:for soul, they mean the same thing.
Speaker:Soul is from a Germanic root, mind also.
Speaker:.
Speaker:They're all essentially referring to this other level,
Speaker:which you're in the whole time.
Speaker:So when people go, do you believe in the soul?
Speaker:It's like, of course, you're experiencing it now.
Speaker:You understand the meaning of the word soul in your soul.
Speaker:It's your psyche, that's what it is.
Speaker:So we've arrived there, but I don't...
Speaker:I don't, and that I think has evolved very fast.
Speaker:It's evolving all the time. know,
Speaker:biology takes, it speeds up. Physics took a long time to evolve.
Speaker:and
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Biology is evolving much quicker.
Speaker:And then psyche is evolving. Well,
Speaker:it's evolving literally now in this conversation.
Speaker:It's like, that's how fast it's evolving.
Speaker:And then my, the thing that I'm exploring,
Speaker:I'm, that increasingly makes sense to me,
Speaker:let me say it like that, is that there's another level.
Speaker:And that this experience of a vast loving intelligence,
Speaker:Yes. Yes.
Speaker:which people have been having for some time,
Speaker:~
Speaker:and which I stumbled into when I was young and have been exploring ever since,
Speaker:the assumption has always been,
Speaker:~ that must be the source of the universe.
Speaker:But increasingly,
Speaker:I am thinking that it is not the source of the universe,
Speaker:that actually it's what the universe is flowering into.
Speaker:and that it is the leading
Speaker:edge of evolution and that we are contributing to its emergence.
Speaker:again, it's like turning it the right way up.
Speaker:It's not, we haven't fallen from this thing,
Speaker:we're growing into this thing that we experience in these deep spiritual states.
Speaker:So we're helping God grow to keep it really crazy language.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker:what I'm really suggesting is that what is in the past being called God,
Speaker:which comes with a lot of bad news,
Speaker:isn't just a supernatural mind that just exists outside of it all,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:inexplicably. It's actually the most emergent level of intelligence system.
Speaker:So one of the ways you could see the whole evolution of everything
Speaker:is the evolution of all these different intelligence systems.
Speaker:The intelligence of the plant behind me,
Speaker:of the atoms that making up the air,
Speaker:and then you and me and...
Speaker:And that hasn't stopped. And what
Speaker:I'm suggesting is in the same
Speaker:way that individual cells came
Speaker:together to form multicellular organisms like me and you on the biological level,
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:in the same way individual psyches,
Speaker:individual Mm-hmm.
Speaker:individual souls are coming together to form a super-soul.
Speaker:~
Speaker:a super system and that that super system is that super intelligence
Speaker:and that when we come into these deep mystical states of what I call deep awake,
Speaker:when we're, we do this, we see in color,
Speaker:vividly in color, we come into oneness with the universe,
Speaker:we begin to integrate our soul into a super soul and
Speaker:that's what we experience and that's why it's so absolutely amazing.
Speaker:That's what's absolutely amazing.
Speaker:It's so beautiful, it's so much love,
Speaker:It's so beautiful. It's so much love.
Speaker:it's so wise because we get to touch something much bigger than us and
Speaker:It's so quiet. We get to touch something much bigger than us.
Speaker:be part of it.
Speaker:And that's what I think the great mystics have been exploring for a little while.
Speaker:It's just that we need to revise our understanding because they didn't have
Speaker:the idea of an evolving universe.
Speaker:They had no idea. We now know that the universe has evolved.
Speaker:They had no idea about that. So they had,
Speaker:saw it in a different way. So you capture the essence of their wisdom,
Speaker:but now turn it the right way up.
Speaker:I like that tremendously because I mentioned to you earlier,
Speaker:I'm studying shamanism and I find it absolutely beautiful.
Speaker:And there's an aspect of shamanism,
Speaker:which is all about soul retrieval,
Speaker:which is a ~ piece of one's inner child,
Speaker:an aspect of you that has been
Speaker:lost for whatever reason, call it trauma,
Speaker:doesn't really matter at this stage.
Speaker:~ But I was working with somebody the other day,
Speaker:or they were working with me, and he's not a shaman in the traditional sense.
Speaker:He's a therapist, he does energy psychology.
Speaker:And wow, there was Hamish happily buggered off over there doing his own thing,
Speaker:and we brought him back. ~ He's a shaman in his own,
Speaker:but he's a 21st century shaman.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Shamanism has evolved, religion,
Speaker:spirituality is evolving. All of these things are growing.
Speaker:I suppose it's an egg and a chicken,
Speaker:isn't it? Are we doing it? Is it doing it to us?
Speaker:Or is it just like an ~ avalanche,
Speaker:a ball rolling down, a snowball rolling down?
Speaker:Well, it has a momentum for sure,
Speaker:but the key thing about the evolution of psyche is that it comes with choice.
Speaker:And that speeds things up immensely because we can,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:know, most of evolution has happened unconsciously with no choice.
Speaker:So it takes a while and it's random
Speaker:or at least it's gonna try out a whole load of dead ends.
Speaker:Whereas we get to try out dead ends
Speaker:in our imagination before we actually implement anything.
Speaker:we can reflect, we can change much quicker.
Speaker:The power of our choice is that's the creativity of the universe now conscious.
Speaker:And we have that. So that seems really,
Speaker:really, really important and valuable.
Speaker:I think that's staggering because I mean I'm just thinking back you know this little
Speaker:cell did that thought it died because of this and this one and it
Speaker:was purely random and as you're saying I'm now going if I do that that's
Speaker:the answer that's that's a consequence or that's a consequence so I'm
Speaker:not going to do that so I'm literally dividing these cells
Speaker:and then choosing choosing a pathway so that's
Speaker:Yes. Yes.
Speaker:That is incredibly powerful. It's also scary because I can choose to
Speaker:go down a rabbit hole. I can choose to become a monster.
Speaker:~ as certain people have done throughout history.
Speaker:But it's also tremendously exciting because I suppose we're creating
Speaker:our own journey, aren't we? We're making our choices to live how and who
Speaker:we want to be. Yes.
Speaker:Yes, I think
Speaker:so. And obviously it's not 100%.
Speaker:You know, you're into, you are,
Speaker:I would say this, Tim is a relationship with the universe.
Speaker:And so is Hamish. Tim isn't some independent thing that just exists somehow.
Speaker:No, I've arisen from the universe and I live always in relationship with it.
Speaker:So that's what it is. I'm a relationship.
Speaker:So is it, I don't create myself?
Speaker:but I have a role as well. It's like in our conversation now,
Speaker:it's both of us. And the same with the relationship with the universe,
Speaker:it's both of us. So that interplay,
Speaker:I get to play a role. How well I play that role,
Speaker:that's my wisdom. And not only can I try out things,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:but also I can learn. And by consciously learning,
Speaker:by going, ooh, that was a mistake,
Speaker:or looking back and going, I regret that,
Speaker:or that worked really well.
Speaker:or I'm really pleased I did that.
Speaker:All those things we do, we are speeding up the evolution of the universe whenever
Speaker:we do that.
Speaker:I was just putting all those words in together to make sense.
Speaker:I like that. So it is, you're saying it's incredibly important to be reflective.
Speaker:It's incredibly important to make choices.
Speaker:~ And I suppose within there, you've got gratitude and compassion
Speaker:for what you've achieved at the end of the day or the end of the week.
Speaker:Absolutely, but don't get me wrong,
Speaker:I do think it's hard. I mean, I think it's a hard thing to do.
Speaker:And this is the deep essence of what the spiritual message has been really
Speaker:in different forms all along. It's been like,
Speaker:you you need to... There's a fascinating line in the Christian tradition,
Speaker:you
Speaker:which is an interesting tradition,
Speaker:which I was thinking about just the other day was...
Speaker:where this figure of Jesus says,
Speaker:the way it's translated is, the meek will inherit the earth.
Speaker:And it all sounds a bit like, should be all very meek and so on.
Speaker:But actually, the word that's used there,
Speaker:the translation is written in the Greek and then translated into Latin.
Speaker:And the word in the Latin makes it really clear because the word is best translated,
Speaker:I think, as tamed. The self-tamed will inherit the earth.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And I
Speaker:think what the whole thing is about,
Speaker:also in the East, where you get the ideas,
Speaker:for example, in Zen of the 10 bulls,
Speaker:where the aim is that the initiate tames the bull.
Speaker:In fact, you find this everywhere.
Speaker:So that spirituality is about taming your instinctual nature,
Speaker:which is really your unconscious nature.
Speaker:So the challenge is, can you tame yourself?
Speaker:And then as you grow, you tame yourself on another level,
Speaker:which means that you're not just reacting.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:you're able to be reflective. And that doesn't mean reflect all the time,
Speaker:~
Speaker:you just notice when you need to.
Speaker:And you're willing to do that.
Speaker:So that you're becoming more and more,
Speaker:there's a strength in it. It's not meek like,
Speaker:it's like it's a really powerful,
Speaker:~ I've
Speaker:tamed myself as best as I can.
Speaker:It's a different thing.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:it is a different beast. It's it's a really compelling beast to be to be wise
Speaker:and to be discerning and to make back to choices keeps on coming back
Speaker:to choices doesn't
Speaker:it conscious choices ~
Speaker:And it's a strong thing, you know,
Speaker:it's like a, and that's where it means important to the conversation about men,
Speaker:I think, is to go,
Speaker:this is really about developing a spiritual strength,
Speaker:which you get from knowing yourself.
Speaker:But the thing I wanted to add,
Speaker:I don't know if this is a bit of a detour,
Speaker:because it's a bit philosophical,
Speaker:but I want to say more than that,
Speaker:really, Hamish. want, because I have a...
Speaker:a take on identity and on time.
Speaker:Those are two big things to do in a few minutes,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:but I'll have a go. The overall ontology,
Speaker:the study of what exists that I'm suggesting,
Speaker:is that ~ time doesn't pass.
Speaker:It's information that accumulates.
Speaker:So in this moment now, everything that's happened before is implicit.
Speaker:Otherwise it wouldn't be this moment.
Speaker:and this moment leads to the next and to the next.
Speaker:And so the past hasn't gone anywhere,
Speaker:disappeared. It's actually, and this is partly what you're exploring,
Speaker:I think, with your personal relationship with the shaman.
Speaker:It's like, it's all there. So it's all there.
Speaker:Mm. Mm.
Speaker:And the past is forming this. And so when you get that,
Speaker:you go, right, of course, because the universe is a process.
Speaker:So it's made of the past. That means I'm a process.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:What is my identity? Well, my identity then is my past.
Speaker:My identity, what I am, is this unfolding process made of all
Speaker:of my relationships with the universe all the way back.
Speaker:Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So you're meeting everything that Tim's ever been,
Speaker:all those relationships. And then you get something really deep,
Speaker:I think, which is with your choices,
Speaker:you are creating yourself, not just because you are your life.
Speaker:That's what you are.
Speaker:And that's your identity.
Speaker:I think that's what you take with you forward into the future.
Speaker:I think it's what you take with you after death.
Speaker:It's everything
Speaker:you've ever been. Nothing's ever lost at all.
Speaker:You're not trapped by it. You can keep it evolving.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It's not a burden, but it is what you are.
Speaker:you
Speaker:And the wisdom is when you turn,
Speaker:~
Speaker:it's like the alchemy, when you take the lead and turn it into gold,
Speaker:you find the thing that's been weighing you down and you turn it into wisdom.
Speaker:And that's what we're doing. We're doing it all the time.
Speaker:I'm seeing a pyramid. are. There's there's Hamish day one,
Speaker:year two, year five, year 12, building that pyramid and every little bit,
Speaker:every experience is a rock I put underneath my feet to build me who I am.
Speaker:And yeah, there's been some there's been some dodgy building here
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and there and there's some bits where there's there's one or two
Speaker:big holes down there. But. And I suppose you're saying I don't have
Speaker:to identify as those.
Speaker:They're just a part of me.
Speaker:Yeah, and
Speaker:also, for a little bit that I know about what you've said about your journey,
Speaker:Hamish, you may agree with this,
Speaker:is that where you have allowed the difficult experience to make
Speaker:you wise in some way, then it's a treasure now.
Speaker:It doesn't make it any better.
Speaker:Yeah, totally. No.
Speaker:You wouldn't do it again. But...
Speaker:You redeemed it. You found something of real value in it.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And so it's part of you. And in some ways it's a really valuable part
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:of you now because it's the thing which led to the greater,
Speaker:greater, pastivity, more wisdom.
Speaker:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's put me on this path of creating this podcast
Speaker:of creating everything around it because,
Speaker:you know, I'm, I'm holding up a mirror,
Speaker:you know, you are a part of me.
Speaker:I'm a part of you, as you already said,
Speaker:I'm sharing your story, your experience,
Speaker:joy and wisdom and enthusiasm that is just bowling me over for other people just
Speaker:to see, you know, I want a bit of that.
Speaker:How did Tim find it? And, you know,
Speaker:a bit of Hamish, you know, he's overcome
Speaker:that, that, that, and these things.
Speaker:How did he do it? Why did he do it?
Speaker:Because, yes, that is not passivity,
Speaker:passivity. What's the phrase you use?
Speaker:I spell it past-ivity. It's kind of like I wanted to find a word,
Speaker:I couldn't find one. So I wanted it to sound a bit like gravity.
Speaker:So it's a bit like it's something which is holding everything together.
Speaker:Mm. ~
Speaker:And in a way, it's like the algorithms that run everything because it's
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:the patterns from the past that repeat but in a creative way.
Speaker:And so I want to go look, the past is...
Speaker:the fabric of the universe. We know the universe is expanding as space,
Speaker:but I think it's expanding as time,
Speaker:and everything that's formed already informs what is now forming.
Speaker:So here we are in the moment where it's brand new,
Speaker:It's
Speaker:but it's informed by everything that's formed.
Speaker:So for us, that's the way our body works,
Speaker:but it's also the ideas we have,
Speaker:the conversation we've just had,
Speaker:that leads to the next moment,
Speaker:the next moment, the plant's doing its plant thing.
Speaker:It's the nature of what exists.
Speaker:Yeah, I need to sit down after this conversation,
Speaker:reflect on this a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker:you
Speaker:So while we're sitting in that kind of spiritual realm and the physical realm,
Speaker:the body, is this a vehicle?
Speaker:Is this me? Am I a soul inside of this body?
Speaker:What do you?
Speaker:what do you presume that we are?
Speaker:Well, one of the big shifts for me that's happened over the years is I want
Speaker:to go look.
Speaker:I'm a psycho-biological system.
Speaker:I'm one system. I function on these two levels,
Speaker:the biological level and the level of the psyche.
Speaker:I'm doing it now. And I'm not something else.
Speaker:There's a great tendency of spirituality to come along and go,
Speaker:hey, Hamish, you're not really Hamish.
Speaker:You're really this other thing.
Speaker:You're either this other soul thing that you've forgotten,
Speaker:or you're really God and you've forgotten,
Speaker:or you're really just the presence of consciousness.
Speaker:and the idea that you're Hamish is just an illusion.
Speaker:Stop thinking you're Hamish. I hate all of that now.
Speaker:I go, no, you're Hamish,
Speaker:how fantastic. This is Hamish meets Tim.
Speaker:So the potentiality to become everything has become the universe
Speaker:and in that process, it's turned into Tim.
Speaker:And it's not there's something in the background that's looking through me
Speaker:and
Speaker:as if I'm some sort of tunnel.
Speaker:No, the beingness of everything has been,
Speaker:is.
Speaker:Tim, it's arisen as Tim and that's what I am right now.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:However, I do think that
Speaker:the process of evolutionary emergence has led to the point where
Speaker:the system has learned that the psyche bit can continue to function without
Speaker:the biological bit. so that the thing you're in right now,
Speaker:the psyche,
Speaker:You know, most of us know that if you cut down your senses,
Speaker:we do it in meditation, we do it in sleep when you dream,
Speaker:you can do it with all sorts of different practices,
Speaker:then the other world becomes more more vivid.
Speaker:And what it looks like happens to me is that when the body dies,
Speaker:that other world becomes super vivid.
Speaker:And that's what we have an enormous number of people now telling us happens when
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:we die from near-death experiences.
Speaker:And what's so interesting about them is how they're very similar.
Speaker:They're not like just random crazy dreams.
Speaker:know, if you and I sat down and went,
Speaker:what was your dream? Well, I dreamt,
Speaker:really I dreamt this man shit.
Speaker:It'll like, yeah, it would be like,
Speaker:yeah, it's a dream. But this is not like that.
Speaker:These are people very clear, very vivid,
Speaker:very similar experiences or comparable experiences.
Speaker:So my hypothesis is that the system has learned to be able to continue.
Speaker:So what you are is your past.
Speaker:What continues is you, all of you.
Speaker:Everything you've ever been continues,
Speaker:but now it's functioning in this new way,
Speaker:or it's focused on this level.
Speaker:It doesn't have a biological level.
Speaker:And one other thought maybe to add to that for folks who might be listening
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:to this thinking, really? That doesn't sound,
Speaker:know, is When you look at the evolutionary process and you go,
Speaker:look, the whole thing started as hydrogen,
Speaker:even before that, was plasma.
Speaker:and it has literally become YOU
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:It's like, well, you, this whole thing is blowing your mind.
Speaker:So the idea that a psycho-biological system can learn to function on the biological,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:the psyche level without the biology,
Speaker:doesn't, really doesn't seem that outrageous,
Speaker:given everything else that's happened.
Speaker:And it would explain these huge numbers of people reporting,
Speaker:that's exactly what happens.
Speaker:I'm just, I'm just looking at the single cell.
Speaker:As you said, it's coming together and there's two of them,
Speaker:there's four of them and then you've got the fish and then you've
Speaker:got the primate who has learned and teaches somebody else,
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:another primate to use a tool.
Speaker:And then communication and then writing and then,
Speaker:you know, I'm aware that's my finger that hurt,
Speaker:you know, if I poke you, that hurts you.
Speaker:that scale of evolving is...
Speaker:Is incredibly beautiful, I mean it is overpowering.
Speaker:So you can see why there's a God who has done all of this right back from
Speaker:the beginning of time. ~ Or,
Speaker:and I like your way, that it feeding itself,
Speaker:it's putting a brick in front of itself to step on.
Speaker:The shift for me, Hamish, came from going,
Speaker:hang on, this starts in the simplest of ways and becomes ever more complex.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So why am I putting this incredibly complex thing,
Speaker:some divine intelligence, because to make any sense of it being a source,
Speaker:it needs to be some sort of intelligence.
Speaker:Why am I putting that at beginning?
Speaker:It's just there when what actually seems to be there is very simple.
Speaker:So I'm much more attracted to
Speaker:Thanks
Speaker:like the Taoist tradition, where what's there is the Tao,
Speaker:which is empty, as yin and yang,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:relationship. It's very simple,
Speaker:the one is two. Incredibly simple,
Speaker:no big minds. And that rather than this being intelligently designed,
Speaker:that this is the evolution of intelligence.
Speaker:That that's what's been happening for 14 billion years.
Speaker:And that it's now reached the level
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:where we are, is it intelligent
Speaker:in the way that we are to have this?
Speaker:It's just amazing, isn't it? It's like that hydrogen or the plasma,
Speaker:We've got
Speaker:if you like, that has become you and me having a conversation about
Speaker:the nature of the universe. I mean,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:that is endlessly mind blowing on the internet.
Speaker:mean, just what?
Speaker:And we're doing it by passing funny sounds to each other,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:which somehow convey ideas. And we just take all that for granted.
Speaker:So that's a level of intelligence.
Speaker:Well, maybe
Speaker:there's another intelligence which is bringing together all of those intelligences.
Speaker:a bit like, well, look at the internet.
Speaker:You've got a lot of different computer systems,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:you plug them all in together,
Speaker:you get a supercomputer system.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And I think the same with the soul.
Speaker:You get a lot of souls, you plug them all in together,
Speaker:you get a super intelligence. And I think that's what's happening.
Speaker:And then the thing which I really find...
Speaker:beautiful about this vision is it then goes,
Speaker:Check your hips.
Speaker:if you can get the thing about identity,
Speaker:that you are your life, and you can get the thing that you can plug into this higher
Speaker:intelligence, then you can contribute your life to the evolution of God.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:That's what you bring to it.
Speaker:Yeah. ~
Speaker:which is, like, you want meaning?
Speaker:As bucket loads of meaning. Doesn't
Speaker:diminish all the everyday things,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:the watching Netflix, the beautiful bring up a family,
Speaker:~
Speaker:it just says all of that is part of what you bring to God.
Speaker:All of it, because it's all what you are.
Speaker:And the wiser you are, the more wisdom you can bring to
Speaker:It works. It's elegant. It doesn't involve ambiguity or giving your power,
Speaker:your agency away. It's, it's very sovereign,
Speaker:isn't it? It's very, and I think,
Speaker:yet very sovereign.
Speaker:I think that is so important because we,
Speaker:we give our power away so easily just because of it's easier,
Speaker:takes less effort and all sorts of things.
Speaker:I mean, I want to be encouraged and I want to encourage others to really have that
Speaker:and
Speaker:level of reflective autonomy that you can create your life,
Speaker:that create yourself. that's the waking up,
Speaker:the seeing in colors. And just to see that you're doing that every
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:day and how meaningful life is.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Even in, you whether it's going for a walk like you described or watching Netflix,
Speaker:it's like even in those moments,
Speaker:it's not just, it doesn't have to be just in the moments where you're having some
Speaker:profound spiritual experience,
Speaker:spiritual spirit.
Speaker:although that's lovely, amazing,
Speaker:but just it's always there actually,
Speaker:Church. ~
Speaker:because you're shaping who you are.
Speaker:And the wisdom then becomes knowing today's the day to do this or a day day to day,
Speaker:I just need to relax. And you know.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:It doesn't mean I'm not meditating enough or,
Speaker:yeah, that's one option. Just do what's right for you.
Speaker:And that is the sovereignness as well,
Speaker:isn't it? Not do what the guru tells you,
Speaker:Mm. Mm.
Speaker:not do it. What is right for you?
Speaker:You find it. You know,
Speaker:are you going to go, I want to go and study shamanism and,
Speaker:you know, take ayahuasca, or are you going to go,
Speaker:I want to go for a deep walk or read poetry?
Speaker:or listen to music or dance or meditate or...
Speaker:Who knows what your thing will be?
Speaker:making choices, as you said, you're being sovereign,
Speaker:you're making choices and you're
Speaker:you're choosing a direction that you really want and that does require effort though
Speaker:doesn't it? is a conscious decision and I suppose it is out
Speaker:of character with society and expectation and it is being brave to be honest.
Speaker:It really is taking that effort to change your life to make
Speaker:a difference for yourself.
Speaker:Yep, yep. Well, I think sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's hard.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:That's like that with life generally,
Speaker:isn't it? And I think it's like that with this.
Speaker:Some days it just happens, you just feel like it's the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker:existing.
Speaker:And then other days, like, you know.
Speaker:It's a chore.
Speaker:yeah, you have to, have to, but like,
Speaker:but it's worth it. It's worth it.
Speaker:you,
Speaker:And you do those things, well I do those things when I do because
Speaker:I know how valuable they are.
Speaker:And that's partly why it feels like we need each other.
Speaker:Because you can run out of that,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:you know, it's bit like you can run out of physical energy,
Speaker:biological energy, where you feel like exhausted and then you know you have
Speaker:to sleep or eat. I think in the level of the psyche,
Speaker:you can run out of psychic energy and you become depleted and low and
Speaker:you don't have that enthusiasm,
Speaker:you don't have that love of life.
Speaker:And some of these techniques and techniques,
Speaker:I don't like that word really,
Speaker:but some of these activities.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:can generate that.
Speaker:well, listen, go for a walk. You're in relationship now with the blue sky.
Speaker:That will generate energy. You can listen to music that you love.
Speaker:Mm-hmm. Mm.
Speaker:That will generate energy. Art generates lots of energy,
Speaker:Mm. Yeah. Mm.
Speaker:but also conversation like this generates a lot of energy and really does.
Speaker:Yeah. Mm.
Speaker:Doesn't it? Yeah. Mm. Mm. Mm.
Speaker:Yeah. So friendship and the ability to share,
Speaker:that's the way we can keep invigorating each other by coming into these more
Speaker:emergent relationships.
Speaker:which allow us to keep the energy up enough.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So you can be courageous.
Speaker:Yeah, that brings us really nicely on to your pod book,
Speaker:because I know you, you have a community where you you support people
Speaker:and things like that. But explain to me what your pod book is,
Speaker:or certainly to the listeners,
Speaker:because I think this is this is something quite exciting.
Speaker:Yeah, so I've written a lot of books,
Speaker:35 I think it is, and I wanted to do something a bit different.
Speaker:And my last book was a big shift,
Speaker:which was Soul Story. And then for the last eight years since Soul Story,
Speaker:I've been really focusing on developing the philosophy in that.
Speaker:And it's a deep philosophy book,
Speaker:this one. And I've presented it as a series of videos.
Speaker:So it's like the love child between a book and a pod cut.
Speaker:podcast. So it's me presenting chapter by chapter,
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:get this, now next chapter, get this,
Speaker:just like you would in a book.
Speaker:But it's me speaking spontaneously.
Speaker:So you really get to connect with me rather than the printed word.
Speaker:I'm really, really pleased with it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's completed now and it's free and it's sitting there available as audio from
Speaker:a podcast provider or on YouTube.
Speaker:It's called Why Your Life Really Matters because I wanted to get a sense that this
Speaker:isn't just abstract philosophy.
Speaker:This is about
Speaker:This affects like we've been discussing today,
Speaker:it affects your life. And so that was really important to do that.
Speaker:I think there's far much more I want to say.
Speaker:So I'm now launching a ~ series of podcasts,
Speaker:Me Talking, called the Univigil podcast.
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:~ And I'm gonna do a series called Univigil's Meditations so that people
Speaker:can try out how to explore these ideas experientially.
Speaker:And like you said, I gather people together,
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:lovely people all over the world,
Speaker:small group, intimate explorers in the international community of Univigils.
Speaker:Maybe you should say what a Univigil is.
Speaker:So a Univigil, another word I made up,
Speaker:Yes, please. ~
Speaker:I'm a terror for making up words because I can't find the word I'm looking for.
Speaker:So the idea of a Univigil is it's an alternative to the traditional ideas that were
Speaker:the spiritual aim is to be an enlightened master.
Speaker:or a kind of a saint figure. And my feeling is that was great.
Speaker:I hugely admire those people who went down that road in the past,
Speaker:you
Speaker:but now I think we need to turn it on its head and go,
Speaker:this isn't about getting away from the individual.
Speaker:It's taking the individual to the next level.
Speaker:So the univigil is an individual that
Speaker:is becoming conscious of unity with the universe.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So you're entering these deep mystical states.
Speaker:as an individual and your individuality I think actually profoundly increases
Speaker:so that whole forming yourself
Speaker:on a new level and that's what I'm interested in in the philosophy
Speaker:and the practices supporting. So I have a group we meet online every week
Speaker:on a Sunday and I talk philosophy and we do practices and we hang
Speaker:Two,
Speaker:out to ~ support each other.
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:you.
Speaker:and
Speaker:to develop the ideas, take them into the world.
Speaker:And everyone's very welcome to come and try it out and see what they think.
Speaker:It's a great way of interacting personally.
Speaker:Well, I will be there on Sunday.
Speaker:We'll definitely put the information in the in the show notes.
Speaker:Completely lost my train of thought.
Speaker:that's right. Yeah. Sorry about that.
Speaker:This happens from time to time.
Speaker:My brain is so much faster than my tongue.
Speaker:Of course, me too.
Speaker:I really like your idea of the individual.
Speaker:I've been having some fascinating conversation with some friends recently around
Speaker:need. And I think to thrive, we need people,
Speaker:not that need, I need you to rescue me.
Speaker:I need you to support me. need,
Speaker:you know, it's that communion.
Speaker:It's that being together, your group,
Speaker:for example, being one of many,
Speaker:but that need inherent in being a physical human being
Speaker:to thrive.
Speaker:Certainly to get through that mundane and see the beauty,
Speaker:to see the magic.
Speaker:couldn't agree with you more, Hevesh.
Speaker:So one of the things that I do online,
Speaker:but also in my in-person experiential events,
Speaker:we run these weekends usually,
Speaker:often in Glastonbury, where I live,
Speaker:called Soul to Soul Experiences.
Speaker:And what I focus on there is how much we
Speaker:can transform each other through connection.
Speaker:And so...
Speaker:just by, you like now, know, there's your,
Speaker:I see pixels on the screen, but it's you.
Speaker:And if I go, well, I can't, I mean,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:even if you were in the room, I wouldn't see your psyche,
Speaker:but I'm sure as hell connecting with it.
Speaker:And if you have that experience of connecting soul to soul or psyche to psyche,
Speaker:the source from this.
Speaker:it's profoundly transformative.
Speaker:And so I think it turns out that the greatest way of waking up,
Speaker:coming into color,
Speaker:is through connection with each other.
Speaker:It's hugely powerful.
Speaker:And no surprise that we love it so much.
Speaker:One of the greatest experiences for most people at some point in their life
Speaker:is falling in love with another human being or having children
Speaker:or having good friendships. These are massively important.
Speaker:You led me straight into these communities,
Speaker:these things that you run in ~ near your home.
Speaker:Tell me a bit more about them.
Speaker:How do they work? Because I'm also going to come along to one of those this year.
Speaker:Great, well I'm so pleased to hear that.
Speaker:Yes, so we gather together on a Friday night through to a Sunday afternoon,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:midday. And they're primarily experiential,
Speaker:but they're obviously informed by all of the philosophy that I've been sharing.
Speaker:And we do numbers of ways of connecting,
Speaker:primarily, also meditation, ~ to shift
Speaker:our state and bring us into a state of communion.
Speaker:And what that leads to, there's a beautiful film,
Speaker:we've just released it on YouTube.
Speaker:It's called ~ The Soul to Soul Experience.
Speaker:And it's a film of one of our circles where we connect with people.
Speaker:imagine this is just one of the ways,
Speaker:but it's a very deep way that we use.
Speaker:So I'm connecting with you now and we sit here with each other and I focus.
Speaker:Now I'm focusing on your psyche that I can't see,
Speaker:but...
Speaker:I'm focusing on your eyes, but it's leading me to your psyche.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:When I focus on it, it starts coming into high definition.
Speaker:Now it starts becoming vivid. If I just remain quiet and really focus on it,
Speaker:it becomes very vivid. And there can become a moment where suddenly there's
Speaker:one of us. It's like there's two of us,
Speaker:but there's also we've communed.
Speaker:And that is immense. Imagine I do that with you for...
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:two, three minutes, and then I move on to the next person and go,
Speaker:now I'm do it with you. And I do that again,
Speaker:and oh, and then I move on, I do it with another person.
Speaker:And you get to do that with everyone who's at the event.
Speaker:And by the end of that, you're in the soul to soul communion.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:You've plugged in to this bigger thing.
Speaker:And the love and the sense of the color is vivid,
Speaker:really vivid.
Speaker:So that's the sort of thing which we do.
Speaker:if you want to see the film, it's worth having a look.
Speaker:It can look a bit like, that looks a bit intimidating,
Speaker:meeting all those people. But actually,
Speaker:it's the safest thing you've ever done.
Speaker:It's so weird because you start off
Speaker:thinking, what's it going to be like?
Speaker:And then within about a few minutes,
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:you kind of go.
Speaker:yeah, this is really nice isn't it?
Speaker:And everyone's doing that. And everyone's doing that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And then the thing which happens,
Speaker:which is gorgeous, is that suddenly you're looking at someone who you
Speaker:may have only met like the day before and you're going,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:wow, God, this person is so beautiful.
Speaker:Cheers.
Speaker:Wow. And then you realise at some point everyone's looking at you going,
Speaker:I am so here you go.
Speaker:wow, this person's so beautiful.
Speaker:And because it's like you're walking out into nature.
Speaker:You look in that way and suddenly it's like,
Speaker:how did I miss? How, you know,
Speaker:I remember my mum who was, she's dead now,
Speaker:you
Speaker:but God, she was a gorgeous woman.
Speaker:And she came along to one of these events to see what I was up to at one point.
Speaker:And her comment at the end will always stay with me.
Speaker:She just said, hmm. She said, well,
Speaker:She just said it.
Speaker:I arrived, this room was full of weirdos,
Speaker:Thanks
Speaker:but now it's full of angels. How did that happen?
Speaker:And it's like, yeah, it's like,
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:yeah, you just, you see each other.
Speaker:That's why I call my group the ICU.
Speaker:It's, you know, it's the International Community of Individuals,
Speaker:Yeah that
Speaker:but it's also ICU. And when you do,
Speaker:it's exactly what you said about going out for a walk,
Speaker:is that. And suddenly the whole thing is just spectacular.
Speaker:So we're doing one of those in May,
Speaker:and we're doing one of those, I think it's October,
Speaker:in Glastonbury.
Speaker:You can find out about all of this stuff on my website,
Speaker:timfreak.com. And as long as you spell freak right,
Speaker:because it's a weird old name,
Speaker:but as long as you spell it F-R-E-K-E,
Speaker:you'll find me.
Speaker:No, super. I think, well, I'll be there,
Speaker:definitely. But I think you've nailed probably one of the most important things
Speaker:Fantastic.
Speaker:there is seeing each other. When somebody gets
Speaker:seen and heard, their capacity to change is just vast,
Speaker:isn't it? They're seen, they're heard,
Speaker:they're experienced, they're acknowledged.
Speaker:And that changes people.
Speaker:And you know, think of kids. The biggest thing they want is your attention.
Speaker:Because your attention is it. That's the most valuable thing you have.
Speaker:That's not so
Speaker:You give them that. And we're like that too.
Speaker:And it can be done in a really healthy way.
Speaker:Meh.
Speaker:And one of the things I love about what I'm playing with with attention,
Speaker:because you can do it with listening,
Speaker:we do it with listening as well,
Speaker:with eyes closed for instance.
Speaker:down.
Speaker:It's not just about looking. But,
Speaker:and other things.
Speaker:We're doing it all the time. So with this technique,
Speaker:it's not like, well, you know,
Speaker:remember your mantra. Well, nothing against that,
Speaker:but you know, it's simpler. It just goes,
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:you know, you're looking at people all day.
Speaker:Try and practice seeing them. You know,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:you're listening to people all day.
Speaker:Try and practice actually hearing them by which you go,
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:I'm connecting with another psyche right now.
Speaker:~ wow. And my overwhelming experience is that when you do that,
Speaker:people, even if it's just the person at the local shop,
Speaker:for a second,
Speaker:you'd both know. Not always, but often you do.
Speaker:And it's special. And a little ripple of goodness goes out into the world
Speaker:What a place to finish a fabulous conversation.
Speaker:Wow, Tim. ~ Yes, I'm going to listen to this back because there's several things
Speaker:I want to pick up on, but that was fabulous.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:A real delight, I've loved connecting with you Hamish and it's been a lovely time.
Speaker:I think so too. I wanted to ask you what you think bravery is,
Speaker:but I don't think that's even relevant because we're not about that.
Speaker:This isn't about being brave. This is about,
Speaker:maybe we are, maybe being brave is making informed decisions,
Speaker:daring to do that. So yeah, so.
Speaker:Yeah, think bravery, courage,
Speaker:I think it is important. I think you're on to something of real value because it's
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:the...
Speaker:It's kind of like there's so many ways of approaching it,
Speaker:but it's also like the courage to shake yourself out of the familiar
Speaker:and be creative and to take the risk of being you in the world in
Speaker:the most emergent way you can.
Speaker:And I think it's worth it. mean,
Speaker:Thank
Speaker:if you asked about my pod book,
Speaker:this is kind of maybe a, you know,
Speaker:I had to come out when I did my pod book and go,
Speaker:you know, those 35 books, 34 of them had a central idea that I now think is wrong.
Speaker:And I knew that that would catapult my career as an author down the pan.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And it did.
Speaker:But I'm so pleased I did because what it led on my journey has been amazing,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:absolutely fabulous. And what I've got now is so much better than what
Speaker:I had and wouldn't have come unless I'd gone,
Speaker:I have to take that risk, I have to.
Speaker:so having, you have to take the risk to follow your highest calling,
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:that's courage,
Speaker:isn't it?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it really is. Thank you,
Speaker:Tim. Thank you ever so much. This has been fabulous.
Speaker:a really amazing conversation and one I think we're gonna have lots
Speaker:of fun sharing with people.
