Casual Temple

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcript is auto-generated; errors are unintentional.)

00:00:03 Merrily

Welcome, dear listeners, to the start of season 2 of the Casual Temple podcast. We're on episode 35 and I'm your host. Merrily Duffy. Our mission at casual temple is to discover our connection to the unseen world of spirit and how that empowers us to know our true selves.

00:00:20 Merrily

If you would like a free way to support the show, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

00:00:26 Merrily

Our delightful guest today is Philip Carr-Gomm, who shares his path through drudgery, meditation, and perennialism. I learned the difference between what a Bard obit and drew it is, and was pleasantly surprised at how well-rounded and integrated these approaches are. Then they learned more about Perennialism, which looks at different spiritual paths and sees where they overlap.

00:00:46 Merrily

A perspective after my own heart do stay tuned to the Casual Temple podcast for the Mystical and magical play nicely together.

00:00:55 Merrily

Welcome to the casual temple. We have a wonderful opportunity today to chat with Phillip Cargo, M Phillips journey began and his team sitting drew drew with Ross Nichols and in 1988 Philip was asked to lead the Order of Bards Ovitz and ruins, a role he passed on to his successor.

00:01:13 Merrily

And your Burke in June 2020. Since then, he's been involved in the work of the Synthesis Institute, the Acer integration program, and the Sophrology Institute.

00:01:25 Merrily

Philip draws upon the perennial tradition, finding inspiration in the wisdom of all spiritual paths and teachings, and follows the way of the universal Mystic.

00:01:34 Merrily

In recent years, he has trained to be a teacher of yoga, nidra and mindfulness meditation, and has created an online school, the art of living well, as well as offering books, apps, meditation talks, online courses and events in the space for spirituality and psychology, meat. Phillip, I'm so thrilled to have you as our guests on casual Temple.

00:01:53 Philip

Well, thank you for inviting me.

00:01:55 Merrily

That's. Thank you so much. Yeah, you have quite a lot of things that you do, and I love it. It's a lot of really cool things that I've had some exposure to and some I have not. So so excited to talk with you.

00:02:10 Merrily

So we kind of just get started sort of at the wherever you consider the beginning of how you started studying drudgery and then the path you're kind of on today.

00:02:21 Philip

Well.

00:02:23 Philip

I think.

00:02:25 Philip

You know, there comes a time I.

00:02:26 Philip

Guess when when you become?

00:02:28 Philip

Interested in this topic you know, and this this can be at any stage in life. And I was. I was just.

00:02:36 Philip

Fortunate. Or it just happened that I became interested really early on. And so and I was also fortunate in that my family, you know, my dad in particular.

00:02:48 Philip

Was surrounded by people who are into spirituality and alternative spirituality. So it was in the 60s and you know, I was 11 and he was he. He had there was a family friend, Ross Nichols, who was the chief druid, not with the chief of the warbirds, of its druids. And.

00:03:08 Philip

And and so he my dad ended up working for him. He was running a a school and my dad worked for him.

00:03:13 Philip

As a teacher.

00:03:16 Philip

So, so and and and I was surrounded by kind of books and magazines and people who are interested in this kind of thing. So that's how. That's how it.

00:03:24 Philip

Started for me.

00:03:27 Philip

And.

00:03:30 Philip

Yeah, it's, it's, there's there's there's so much to say.

00:03:33 Merrily

Some other question.

00:03:36 Merrily

Let's see. So.

00:03:38 Merrily

Yeah. So definitely. So, when did you so you studied with Ross Nichols?

00:03:44 Merrily

And then what is exactly like? What is a drudgery, or at least what did the path look like then as you know?

00:03:51 Philip

Hmm. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, the past then it was funny because.

00:03:58 Philip

You know, I guess I had. I was living in sort of three worlds. I suppose. You know, I mean, well, four if you include the family, the world or the family, you know, and then the world of school with your, you know, your friends. Or is it very influential. And then.

00:04:13 Philip

And then there were these two other worlds that were my prime focus. Those are the two were background the foreground.

00:04:19 Philip

Was was the friends. You know, as I as I became 6, as I turned to 16 and became wanted to study drudgery, everybody was smoking pot. Then it was London in the, you know, late 60s and so. So there was my group of friends, you know, slouched in, in, in.

00:04:40 Philip

People sitting rooms, listening to music and you know, and misbehaving and and. And so that was one reality. But then there was this other reality.

00:04:50 Philip

Which was the world of the esoteric, the spiritual, the occult, the magical which I found quite fascinating. And.

00:05:02 Philip

My friends weren't into that because what they saw from the outside was kind of old people, people. You know, straights as they were called, straight, who are.

00:05:13

Who are you know?

00:05:13 Philip

Who are kind of the same age as their parents, but but were interested in, you know, magic and stuff like that and.

00:05:22 Philip

I didn't mind about that. Sometimes I've found it frustrating but but, but generally I was prepared to kind of.

00:05:31 Philip

Sift through that to get to, you know, to experience what I wanted. So that was that was what was going on. So I would sort of oscillate. My social life would move between being with my compatriots, my friends, and then being with people the same age as my parents.

00:05:49 Philip

Doing you know druid ceremonies or talking about astrology and the tarot.

00:05:53 Philip

And.

00:05:54 Philip

Going to lectures and things like that.

00:05:56 Merrily

Oh yeah, that sounds like a really cool different worlds that you were able to have it. That's very interesting.

00:06:02

Yeah.

00:06:06 Merrily

Now I so I'm like very, how do I say like I don't know too much about drudgery. I kind of, you know, probably what mainstream people understand that it is.

00:06:18

Hmm.

00:06:19 Merrily

But my my current sort of understanding about the path of drudgery is that you know, it was kind of lost for a while and then sort of like maybe you and you know, the groups in the UK are trying to kind of make a new sort of, I don't know, kind of revisit those paths and maybe rediscover.

00:06:39 Merrily

Them, but maybe you.

00:06:41 Merrily

Could explain a little bit more about that.

00:06:42 Philip

Yeah, explaining.

00:06:44 Philip

But well, basically, you know the original. You know, the ancient druids were were, you know, one of the spiritual and kind of magical groupings in pre Christian.

00:07:00 Philip

Europe, most particularly the the Ireland, the British Isles and what we now consider as Western France. So they were they were that they were, you know, Pagan, animistic, if you like. And an oral culture.

00:07:18 Philip

And and then when Christianity came, there was this period where that, that that those cultures, if you like or those spiritual traditions were subsumed by Christianity, some of some of some of some of it, got absorbed into Christianity and you could see the kind of traces of it in Christianity. Others were completely eradicated.

00:07:40 Philip

And.

00:07:40 Philip

And.

00:07:41 Philip

And you had a period of about 1000 years from around the 6th century, so by the 6th century the door had kind of closed on Druidry, being practised as a spirituality in Western Europe, and then and then for about 1000 years, you you didn't have any real manifestation of it, although there were traces and, you know, it's not going on.

00:08:02 Philip

And then in the in the 17th century.

00:08:06 Philip

People started to kind of look again at their ancestry and think, hang on a minute as the kind of grip of the church loosened with the Enlightenment that that where the grip of the church was sort of loosened, people looked at at their past and said, hang on a minute, these people were rather interesting when they they were philosophers and so on and.

00:08:26 Philip

Started to form societies where they would sort of study what they could of drudgery, so took modern day. Drudgery, has a written history of about 300 years. So from the sort of 17th century onwards.

00:08:42 Philip

People were writing about it, so lots of books and articles and 300 years of of written history, but they were working with material that was very far away. It was like 1000 years old. So, so, you know, a lot of fantasy got mixed up in that and.

00:09:01 Philip

We've reached a stage now, and so that was called the Druid Revival period. That was the revival period, peaking in the kind of in the early late 18, thirteen 19th century. So in the in the peak of the drill revival period, you had the.

00:09:20 Philip

Ancient Order of Druids having about a million members spread out all over the British Empire. Winston Churchill being one of them and with the Welsh nationalist Stedford and and that the in the Welsh with the the Queen being the being initiated into into the barbs there and so on.

00:09:40 Philip

And.

00:09:43 Philip

Then you had a period which.

00:09:46 Philip

Was then the 1960s came along and everything changed. Somebody threw a switch and everything turned to colour from a black and white movie, and suddenly, particularly in London and and and California and and and.

00:10:01 Philip

And and and you had this.

00:10:04 Philip

Kind of interesting fusion.

00:10:06

Of.

00:10:07 Philip

This revival dreaded.

00:10:09 Philip

And then essentially, the kind of impulse of the hippies and and and of of kind of alternative spirit, alternative ways of spirituality, Wicker as well, because Gerald Gardner, who was responsible for kind of some people, some people say creating some people say restimulation.

00:10:29 Philip

The tradition of Wicca and witchcraft, and he knew he was friends with my teacher, Ross Nichols.

00:10:35 Philip

So the two.

00:10:35 Philip

Of them really were responsible and around the 19, sort of from the mid Second World War onwards, the 1950s, they were responsible for reviving these two great kind of pills.

00:10:46 Philip

If you like.

00:10:47 Philip

Or streams through tradition and the Wiccan tradition.

00:10:51 Merrily

Ohh.

00:10:52 Philip

So, so, so and that coincided of course with the growing environmental awareness, the sort of the, the, the, the deterioration of the, the, the whole that the church had particularly on younger generations. So as you move from the 1960s through to the end of the century and then into the 21st century.

00:11:12 Philip

You just got more.

00:11:13 Philip

And more people becoming interested in it. So I mean now, you know, when I joined the Druid order, when I was 60, when when I was 18, I was initiated on Glastonbury Tour. There were probably in our order. There were probably a maximum of two dozen people, probably more like a dozen people who were active.

00:11:32 Philip

And they all seemed absolutely ancient to me. I mean, they were probably older than I am now myself, you know? But but at the time when I was 16 and 18, they they would seemed and.

00:11:43 Philip

Now we have like 30 thousand members of our group. We have people all over the world and people of all ages and so on. So it's seen a huge renaissance of interest.

00:11:52 Merrily

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, very cool. I love the. Yeah. I didn't realize that there was actually some written work that was sort of based on, even if it was like 1000 years old. So that's very cool.

00:12:06 Merrily

So kind of speaking about books she talked about, sort of, you know, Ross Nichols was being sort of a guide for you. Sounds like your parents and maybe the, you know, adults that that you were communicating with, maybe your friends too. But did you have some books that you could sort of recommend for somebody that, you know, if they're kind of interested in learning?

00:12:26 Merrily

More about drudgery. I know you have books too, but are there? Yes.

00:12:29 Philip

I've got books too, I know, and it's terrible. It's terrible to recommend your own books, doesn't it? You know, like, if you if you write books, you certainly I try to make it the best book available.

00:12:40 Philip

You know why? Why, why? Why?

00:12:41 Philip

Write the second best book you know in in, in, in terms of your own aspiration to so. So I've tried in, in, in books like Druid Mysteries and what do Druids believe? I've tried to really present, you know, the ideas as clearly as possible in the most kind of.

00:13:00 Philip

Accessible way for the modern sort of era if you like and and then in a book called Druid Craft I I kind of weave together stories and.

00:13:10 Philip

And and I and I.

00:13:12 Philip

You storytelling as a way of teaching sort of spiritual ideas. So there there are a series of stories, and and then the teaching that comes around that that was a book that I originally wrote is fiction.

00:13:26 Philip

And I reverse engineered it into nonfiction. But it's like I wish I hadn't, actually. Now. But but. But. But I decided that as fiction didn't quite work.

00:13:38 Philip

And so I kind of reverse engineered it back into non fiction, keeping it, making it a series of stories with with explanation and stuff like that around it. So that's that's that's the book dread craft. And then I and then I used the tarot to teach Druidry as well, and the druidcraft tarot. But there are other I mean, there are lots of great books on Druidry Penny Billington's written.

00:13:58 Philip

Nick books John Michael Greer in the states has written, written great books.

00:14:04 Merrily

Yeah. Thank you. That sounds sounds like a really good collection and the things that you've written, I'd like that you thought about sort of, you know sort of somebody that isn't familiar with it and kind of considering them and.

00:14:17 Merrily

And yeah.

00:14:17 Philip

I think it's, yeah, it's very easy. You know, when you're familiar with the subject, it's very easy to write.

00:14:25 Philip

Where you you forget that that people need it to be really accessible and and not to be simplistic. You don't have to be simplistic about it, but you can make it really clear.

00:14:34 Philip

And ask you so. Well, what do I really mean and what am I?

00:14:37 Philip

Really trying to say and so that's what I've tried to do, yeah.

00:14:40 Merrily

Awesome. Thank you. Now so I have this question because I know in the the name of the sort of the group that you're involved with that what you know is like the Druids. Ovitz is it, Ovitz or Avante or.

00:14:55 Philip

But the ovates bards, Ovates and druids. Yeah, the order of Ovates and Druids, yeah.

00:14:58 Merrily

Oh, it's.

00:15:00 Merrily

What would you say if there is any sort of any difference between?

00:15:05 Merrily

Three, if any.

00:15:06 Philip

And the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But there are like 3 schools, if you like, that are all part of one school. And the bards, they speak to the the creative side of ourselves, you know, the, the, the, the, the person who wants to, to encourage you to sing the song of your soul in, in the poetic way of looking at it.

00:15:26 Philip

And in other words, to really you know, the way you can sometimes go through.

00:15:30 Philip

I.

00:15:31 Philip

Wishing you could fully express yourself and you kind of can't quite do it, you know? And then and then, you know, in, in, in, in the early stages, you don't even know which medium you know when you're young. You know, I'm gonna paint or write or, you know. Yeah. And then you maybe find what your thing is, whether it's making music or painting or writing or or or anything, you know.

00:15:52 Philip

Anything. And then and then the the desire to be creative is kind of innate in humankind, I think. And so there's this whole bardic tradition in territory which comes from the ancient tradition that you find in every culture of storytelling.

00:16:09 Philip

So, you know, in Africa, wherever you go in the world, you'll find indigenous culture as a traditional storytelling and.

00:16:20 Philip

You know, but before we could.

00:16:23 Philip

Turn on the television. We would sit around the fire and tell you tell the stories you know, that's how.

00:16:27 Philip

We would entertain.

00:16:28 Philip

Ourselves. That's how we would learn it.

00:16:29 Philip

Ohh so so so any if you train if you want to train as a druid you know and So what we do is we have a training program and it's in six languages and and it's online and it has music and meditations and films and stuff and it's also printed if you want to receive it in the mail and that the first level of training.

00:16:51 Philip

Is is helping you sing the song of.

00:16:53 Philip

Your soul helping you become.

00:16:55 Philip

God tell the story of your life if you like, and and we do that by entering deeply into some of the old stories from the Druid tradition.

00:17:04 Philip

And really living into them and and and and helping them to illuminate our own lives and then and then once that's kind of established and and we're we then move on to the next level stage which is the ovate stage which is.

00:17:23 Philip

The desire in us to, if you would be ashaman or to travel between worlds, it's like one of the things that appeals to many people about this kind of path is the fact that there are other levels of reality. So we both, you know, love, nature, love the physical world. So druidry.

00:17:42 Philip

Isn't a spirituality that's trying to get you away from here or trying to teach you to transcend it and rise above it or, you know, not at all. It's a kind of sense. Your spirituality that's about getting more involved in the in, in physical matter. If you like, then that natural world.

00:17:59 Philip

But also recognising that there are other levels of consciousness and you can go to other worlds and other places in your consciousness and which is essentially the shamanic enterprise. The shamanic enterprise is you. You learn how to travel and journey, find things like healing inspiration.

00:18:17 Philip

Illumination of some kind and then and then you bring that back to your everyday awareness. And so Druidry has lots of ways of doing that and you kind of learn that. And you also learn about the powers of plants, of stones and of tree.

00:18:32 Philip

These and the the stars, you know and.

00:18:37 Philip

So that's that.

00:18:38 Philip

That part of the training and then the and then the third.

00:18:41 Philip

Level of training is the.

00:18:42 Philip

The the Druid itself is if if you like, and that's that's about philosophy ritual.

00:18:51 Philip

Learning how to to to to hold groups together, to work with groups, to work with people, and to give your gift to the world and and also learning about conducting, you know, rights of passage and the seasonal festivals and.

00:19:08

Cool.

00:19:10 Merrily

Wow.

00:19:10 Philip

That's the three, yeah.

00:19:13 Merrily

Yeah, that's really good. I yeah, I had no idea. But wow, what a really cool way to sort of break up the different phases of sort of and around it sounds very rounded for a human, you know.

00:19:25 Merrily

South.

00:19:25 Philip

That's right. You know, and they're only they're only separate and in a sequence for kind of practical reasons. I mean, the reality is all kind of weave together and all the rest of it that you sometimes you need to separate stuff out. Otherwise you just.

00:19:37 Philip

Get overwhelmed, you know.

00:19:38 Merrily

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm very much like I do in my own sort of practice. I have these, like integration periods where I like deep, deep, deep. Look at something for a long, long time. And then I.

00:19:47 Merrily

Like like this.

00:19:49 Philip

Subtle. Yeah, little that's right.

00:19:52

Yeah.

00:19:53 Merrily

Oh wow. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I love all that. Yeah, all that stuff is, like, very much up my, my own personal alley. So it's very cool. So thank you. Now shifting gears just a tiny bit because I know you right now, at least, you know, from what I can tell you, practice the perennial tradition.

00:20:14 Merrily

As well, and so I only am familiar with this because like a friend of mine kind of also does the is considers themselves a perennialist, but can you let us know what a perennial tradition even means? And how do you practice it?

00:20:23 Philip

Hmm.

00:20:27 Philip

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, even though I've been involved in surgery since I was 16, and that's been my kind of primary spiritual path and inspiration.

00:20:41 Philip

I've never wanted to kind of box myself in or even label myself, you know? So and. And you know, I think you know it it, you know, people will call me a druid and I kind of accept that because it's kind of logical. But. But I don't think of myself with that label. I'm I'm a kind of human being in this world.

00:21:01 Philip

You know, and just learning. I'm a seeker, if you like. And. And so I wrote a book a couple of years back called Seek teachings everywhere. And then it opens with a quote from the song Chen Tantra, which goes like a like a bee that seeks nectar from flower from flowers.

00:21:20 Philip

Everywhere, you know, go and seek teachings from many different sources of inspiration. And I think that's a a position that many people have nowadays that yeah, you know, we're really inspired, say, by the poetry of Rumi, the Sufi poetry. And then we might go into a church and be inspired by the.

00:21:38 Philip

Beautiful stained glass or?

00:21:40 Philip

Or by beautiful, you know, even though we may not be Christian and may not like a whole lot of aspects of Christianity kind of heavenly music, you know, the kind of beautiful music of Bach or something like that may just send us, you know, and we might we we might not be Hindus, but we'll do yoga and.

00:21:56 Philip

Go on and then critics say, well, that's that's they call that smorgasbord thing like Buffet style, new Age spirituality. And I don't agree with that at all. I I think it's a real recognition of the fact.

00:22:06 Merrily

MHM.

00:22:13 Philip

It's a bit like it's a bit like the way you recognize that everybody has something to offer. You know, you don't just mix with white people or only with men or only with women or only old people or young people.

00:22:23 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:22:26 Philip

You realize that everybody has, you know, has these kind of unique gifts and they're all human and they, you know, and they got their flaws and bits that you don't like and they've got great bits as well. It's the same thing with spirituality, you know, like virtually every, everyone has got bits that I don't like. And and it's got bits that I love, you know, and the perennial tradition is is like saying.

00:22:46 Philip

Let's let's get to the heart of the heart of this and what's what's the?

00:22:51 Philip

Kind of the.

00:22:52 Philip

Core you know that's behind all these religions and spiritual ways that's expressed in different ways. And so that's that's what I mean by the perennial tradition, you know.

00:23:03 Merrily

Right. Yeah, it seems like it's, yeah kind of getting to the heart of something and where there's sort of you need like an intersection or like, oh, there's kind of similar similarities.

00:23:14 Merrily

But also celebrating their uniqueness right of what they.

00:23:17 Philip

Yeah.

00:23:18 Merrily

Have to offer.

00:23:19 Philip

Exactly. You can. You can both and, and there's a. There's a nice analogy in here. The way we see, you know, we have.

00:23:20 Merrily

Yeah.

00:23:29 Philip

Stereoscopic vision. You know, the reason we see death is because our eyes have slightly different images coming into and and the combination from these two angles combines to make it to give you depth and.

00:23:46 Philip

If you if you study, if you're particularly interested in one spiritual tradition, if you study another.

00:23:53 Philip

It helps you to develop a kind of depth of perception and understanding because what what you find is is that it's very similar but slightly different.

00:24:02 Merrily

Hmm.

00:24:03 Philip

Gives you that gives you a sense of depth and.

00:24:11 Philip

I was talking to a friend about this and she explained how she she went on a retreat with the Jesuit nun who was an amazing woman apparently, and this woman said on this retreat I find the people with the deepest spirituality are often following two paths.

00:24:26

Hmm.

00:24:28 Philip

And that gives them that depth, you know.

00:24:30 Philip

So, so, so. So I think there's a lot to.

00:24:34 Philip

Be said for, not just.

00:24:37 Philip

Sticking the the the analogy that people I I once I met a Buddhist at a druid camp, we we for many years for 20 years we had camps 4 * a year. Fantastic events with kids and just brilliant big open fires and so on. And there was a guy there who was a Buddhist but.

00:24:54 Philip

He was.

00:24:55 Philip

Also a druid and I said to him.

00:24:58 Philip

How can you do Buddhism and druidism? Shouldn't you, you know, just dig if you're drilling for water, you shouldn't. You just drill in one place. What's the point? And then he started laughing and he said I'm by profession, I'm a hydrologist. And when you drill for water, you drill in two places at least.

00:25:18 Philip

Apparently you know that's the way you do it. So your analogy absolutely doesn't work. Yeah.

00:25:26 Philip

So hey, that's the. So that's my approach.

00:25:29 Merrily

That is a great analogy. I'm glad you had that conversation with.

00:25:33 Philip

Yeah, yeah.

00:25:35 Merrily

Oh man.

00:25:37 Merrily

So would you say there is a practice to perennialism or is it more just sort of an ideology to some extent?

00:25:47 Philip

Well, I think yes, it's not like perennialism is a path, if you like, it's the Ken Wilbur. You know the the American philosopher and.

00:26:01 Philip

Sage talks about a trans path path, which is a weird a weird term trans path path and meta path, so he gives us alpha alchemy. You know, alchemy as a as a as a. You know you have Christian alchemists and Islamic alchemists and.

00:26:16 Philip

You know you can.

00:26:17 Philip

Union analysts, you know, they're really into.

00:26:20 Philip

Welcome. And so so so.

00:26:24 Philip

Perennialism is if you like.

00:26:26 Philip

In my understanding of the term is is.

00:26:30 Philip

Is looking for the.

00:26:31 Philip

Jewels in every path and and you know. And and then.

00:26:36 Philip

Working with and feeling attracted towards those aspects that that speak to you because of your cultural background. Because your education. Because if you know somebody might say because of your past lives, you know your interests, yeah.

00:26:52 Merrily

Well, yeah, very explained, very beautifully. Finding the jewels, especially for yourself, right? Because every individual is an individual to some extent. So it's going to always be different.

00:26:57

Yeah.

00:27:01 Philip

Yeah, yeah.

00:27:05 Philip

Yeah, yeah.

00:27:07 Merrily

Excuse me? OK. So this one. I know you kind of blends a little bit of psychology with spirituality. So how do you see those two things?

00:27:19 Merrily

Intersecting or yeah.

00:27:22 Philip

If you look at religion and spirituality, a lot of it is really weird and in the extreme it's my God I was watching last night, a documentary on the Armageddon movement, you know? But but the millions of Americans who want Armageddon to happen.

00:27:40 Philip

The evangelical questions is that.

00:27:42 Philip

There's a whole.

00:27:44 Philip

Don't.

00:27:44 Philip

Watch the documentary.

00:27:46 Philip

It will bring you down so.

00:27:48 Philip

Deep it's it's.

00:27:48

Horrible.

00:27:49 Philip

But you know there are there.

00:27:50 Philip

Are there are really strange things that happen in religion? I was in a Unitarian church and then Tucket and Bill was it was a a holy day in the Jewish tradition, and there was a.

00:28:05 Philip

Rabbi, female rabbi who was the guest of the of the Unitarian minister.

00:28:09 Philip

And his in his addressing the the congregation, he said there's the story of the of the of the, of the scapegoat of the killing of the.

00:28:22 Philip

I've forgotten that the goat in in the, you know, in the Old Testament, he said. He said every year, whenever I look at it, I get quite confused by that story and I give it a different interpretation, you know, and what do you think? And he asked the rabbi and she she said yes, I can find that story confusing too. But there's a there's a particular Jewish sect where they.

00:28:43 Philip

Take a chicken. They take a live chicken.

00:28:46 Philip

And they spin it on a certain day in the year they do a ritual and they spin.

00:28:50 Philip

This chicken around.

00:28:51 Philip

Above their head until it dies and the the theory is that all the evil that that might be hanging around goes into the chicken.

00:29:01 Philip

And that's how they get rid of the evil.

00:29:04 Philip

And then she said, don't worry though, we give it to a poor family to, you know, it's not wasted. They they can eat it.

00:29:09 Philip

And I'm sitting there thinking, well, that's not very nice for the poor family to eat a.

00:29:12 Philip

Chicken, that's just got stuff. All the evil.

00:29:14 Merrily

People on it.

00:29:16 Philip

Energy anyway, so you know, so it's it's, it's hard not to see these. These sorts of stories accounts in kind of Monty Python terms. You know that it's just nuts, you know, and and every religion.

00:29:29 Philip

Has weird customs and strange ideas and so on, and so there's a whole psychopathology of relief.

00:29:32 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:29:37 Philip

And and and I I I believe that I think psychology has a huge gift to offer because it's an honest attempt to understand the human being, how we work.

00:29:53 Philip

What sort of things can go wrong? How we can help people when they have gone wrong or when they're suffrage?

00:30:00 Philip

So. So it's a, it's a kind of noble enterprise.

00:30:03 Merrily

Yeah.

00:30:04 Philip

Big enterprise as well. There's a huge difference between all the different branches of psychology and all.

00:30:08 Philip

That it's very novel and.

00:30:11 Philip

And then I believe the spirituality has a huge amount to offer, but that it can't be subject to the same kind of.

00:30:20 Philip

Analysis of psychology can be because it transcends scientific and the and the rational after, but the two together.

00:30:29 Philip

Make a fantastic combination as this kind of.

00:30:32 Philip

When you bring the two together, you have this field. Some people call it transpersonal psychology or spiritual psychology, but the two together work really well, so that's always interested me. And that's been with me ever since I was a kid because my dad, in addition to being surrounded by these people interested in spiritual stuff, he also knew various psychoanalysts.

00:30:52 Philip

Psychoanalysts used to visit our home and you know he was he had, you know, books on Freud and young and all the rested in the house. So to I kind of absorbed that as well. So. So I think both perspectives have value and the risk if you if you don't have a psychological.

00:31:10 Philip

Your perspective is that you can become delusional in some way and you know in this era of of kind of documentaries and Netflix and all the rest of it, you know, there's some great I mean you you probably seen wild wild country have you it's a three-part documentary on the ocean movement for instance.

00:31:15

Hmm.

00:31:25 Merrily

I haven't seen that one, no.

00:31:30 Philip

And it's on Amazon Prime on Netflix, and it's just fantastic. And it's so well made. It's trying to understand what went so horribly wrong in that whole movement. And and there are a whole bunch. There's a there's a sort of genre of of documentaries now about these, Kumari is another one, a marvel.

00:31:40 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:31:50 Philip

Film. There's one on you know, the the hot yoga guy. I've forgotten his name.

00:31:56 Merrily

Yeah.

00:31:57 Philip

Yeah, there's there's a whole bunch of these documentaries that help you to kind of get get inside these movements on the on the movement. I don't know if you've come across that the on movement.

00:32:08 Philip

Oh, started by a woman. But, but you know well worth watching that documentary as well. So there are lots of documentaries.

00:32:09

The.

00:32:17 Philip

So yeah. Yeah. So I think bring the two together and you have that's it's a kind of marriage made in heaven it's.

00:32:22 Philip

A really beautiful.

00:32:25 Philip

Kind of lenses to look at things with.

00:32:28 Merrily

Yeah, it's making you think you mentioned the hot year. I'm trying to remember the name of the the guy that started Bikram. Bikram yoga. Yeah. And so making me think like, oh, yeah, psychology. Because now I think a lot of people have been looking at sort of that, that guru mentality, right, like, maybe back however many years.

00:32:34

Yeah.

00:32:36

On my side.

00:32:48 Merrily

Like gurus would maybe consider like a positive thing, but now it's maybe kind of taken on.

00:32:53 Merrily

Maybe that's sort of a negative, but only in the sense that it's sort of more cultish, right? It can be kind of cultish and there's abuse that happens. But the psychology of that was studying it right, like seeing like, well, how how does this happen? Right.

00:33:07 Philip

That is.

00:33:08 Philip

It's strange. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

00:33:12 Merrily

That's really fascinating. Like, it's also considerate of, like, I think psychology is considerate of being a human being, right in this material plane.

00:33:22 Merrily

And then this, you know, spirituality is the human being, like in the spiritual sense. But I like that.

00:33:30 Philip

Exactly and and and.

00:33:31 Philip

The risk if you if you follow a.

00:33:33 Philip

Spiritual path that isn't informed by psychology. Such a risk. There's a risk of denial. Where you you deny the various kind of traumas and conflicts and difficulties that you have that emotional level.

00:33:46 Merrily

Hmm.

00:33:49 Philip

And and and and so that so that there's denial, there's a thing called spiritual bypassing. She's. She's the same thing. You kind of try to, to to.

00:33:54 Merrily

Right.

00:33:59

And.

00:34:00 Philip

What? What's that thing in monopoly? The game monopoly. I tried to get to.

00:34:03 Merrily

Like.

00:34:05 Merrily

Don't pass go or something it.

00:34:05 Philip

Get up.

00:34:06 Merrily

Was like a pass.

00:34:07 Philip

Are you trying to get to go without going with Dale or whatever? Something you get a card? Yeah, that's right. It's been ages since I've played that.

00:34:10 Merrily

Ohh yeah.

00:34:12

That's right.

00:34:16 Merrily

Ohh, get out of.

00:34:16 Merrily

Jail free. That's what it's called.

00:34:18 Philip

I mean, you get out of jail free card, but the.

00:34:19

Yeah.

00:34:19 Philip

The don't pass go thing because it's the.

00:34:21

Yes.

00:34:22 Philip

Thing. So. So yeah, so so a.

00:34:26 Philip

Lot of the in.

00:34:26 Philip

Impulse in spirituality can be how can I stop hurting, you know.

00:34:31

Umm.

00:34:32 Philip

Tough you know what? Meditation can I do? What ceremonies can I do? What magic can I do to get out of the pain I'm in? When often psychology will say, well, I'm really sorry, but you need to just spend a little time looking at it and and and and coming to terms with how you're feeling.

00:34:39 Merrily

Yeah.

00:34:52 Philip

Expressing it because if you just sit down and try and try and get to go, you you yeah, yeah. You know, you're gonna suffer as a result, even even more. And and and that's what you tend to see in the guru movement, you know, is the is that the guru himself or herself.

00:34:53 Merrily

Yeah.

00:35:02 Merrily

Right.

00:35:09 Philip

Wasn't dealt with their own shadow and their own conflicted stuff, and how maybe tuned in to a very valid kind of spiritual impulse that they're able to express. Yeah, this stuff has got repressed underneath, you know, and you watch those documentaries and you see it coming out and it's.

00:35:29 Philip

Pretty scary in some ways. It ultimately scary in movements like Heavens Gate in California and you know, the was it the Jim Jones massacre and so.

00:35:30 Merrily

Yeah.

00:35:39 Philip

On you know.

00:35:39 Merrily

Yeah.

00:35:40 Merrily

Yeah. And maybe even that the Armageddon thing that you were talking about too, like.

00:35:44 Philip

Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:35:47

Hi. Hi.

00:35:50 Merrily

Yeah. Thank you for walking through that. Yeah, that's a lot to think about.

00:35:52 Merrily

And consider so.

00:35:53 Merrily

Thank you. So kind of my next question kind of goes, I feel like it it's similar because.

00:36:01 Merrily

I'm I'm I'm also very interested in sort of being in a human body, right. Kind of observed that a lot of maybe at least Western traditions of religion like Christianity or Catholicism. It's about like, hey, we need to get out of this body. Let's get out of here. Get on to the next.

00:36:19

Hmm.

00:36:20 Merrily

OK. But you know.

00:36:21 Philip

Yeah, yeah. And being being an example, you know, they're they're hoping for the rapture.

00:36:28 Merrily

Right.

00:36:29 Philip

So that they can avoid death and and get out of the body and get out of this sort of, you know, incarnated world and be in in heaven avoiding it. So they're they're prepared to encourage, you know, arms to Israel and a final Armageddon but results in that. Yeah. It's very strange.

00:36:48 Merrily

Yeah.

00:36:50 Merrily

So what is your so your perspective of why is it great to be anybody and why why experience it?

00:36:58 Philip

Yes.

00:37:05 Philip

Does does does this experience of the intense beauty?

00:37:11 Philip

Of the physical world, the extraordinary beauty of of plants and animals and the landscape.

00:37:20 Philip

You know that in those moments when you.

00:37:25 Philip

When you experience that, you know you go hiking and you come to something audible Vista or you. You know the sun setting and you and it's just wonderful and. And then you start to to learn hopefully that you you don't have to just hike to to amazing mountain tops to to to be amazed that you can actually.

00:37:45 Philip

See this in in the natural world all around you, even just in the trees.

00:37:49 Philip

Outside your door.

00:37:50 Philip

Or in the park or whatever.

00:37:53 Philip

And and and so there's there's a. There's a kind of.

00:37:56 Philip

There's there's, there's an experience of beauty and a meaning you see.

00:38:00 Philip

If.

00:38:02 Philip

The problem with trying to.

00:38:02 Philip

Get away from it and and.

00:38:05 Philip

Is that it suggests that it's not meaningful. You weren't kind of supposed to be here. Take. If you take a philosophical position that will, you know, I'm here. You know what? If there's a reason for it, maybe I'm supposed to be here. Maybe that's the whole point. You know where I'm being? Some sort of weird mistake or whatever it's like I'm supposed to be here.

00:38:10 Merrily

Right.

00:38:25 Philip

And and what's good about this? Ohh, there's these beautiful colours. There's these trees. There's these smells. There's this music and.

00:38:41 Philip

And it's interesting that the experience of sex.

00:38:46 Philip

Which provides can provide such intense pleasure.

00:38:52 Philip

Also acts as a.

00:38:55 Philip

Locus point.

00:38:58 Philip

Of causing suffering both.

00:39:03 Philip

And this is a huge subject. We probably need an hour just for this. You know, when you think, when you think of the of the problems in in organised religions around say, you know the child abuse stuff and the.

00:39:14 Philip

All the stuff that happens around that.

00:39:17 Philip

You know that it's no coincidence that it should be around sex and you know there is. Of course there is financial abuse as well. Sex and money are the two big things, aren't they? And the abuses and power, I suppose you more we look more abuses. We can power money. What else is that? I.

00:39:34

List.

00:39:34 Philip

Don't know. Yeah.

00:39:37 Philip

Let's start a list, but.

00:39:42 Philip

Yeah. So I think I think I forgot where I'm going with.

00:39:45 Philip

That but but.

00:39:45 Philip

But but, but that's a good start. Beauty, beauty and.

00:39:51 Philip

And when you when you see a bit, you know when you're with little children, I mean, I'm. I'm blessed to have grandchildren and and and to have four kids and the joy of of holding a little baby in your arms and.

00:40:04 Merrily

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:40:05

And you know.

00:40:05 Philip

They're and they're. I think if you.

00:40:08 Philip

You.

00:40:08 Philip

Know if you want to know whether whether life is supposed to be meaningful and whether we're supposed.

00:40:12 Philip

To be here and.

00:40:13 Philip

And why we're here.

00:40:15 Philip

If you spend time with a little child, provided they're healthy and they're OK, you know the joy, the innate joy and a little child is just exquisite. And and that seems to me to be our natural state, you know.

00:40:29 Merrily

Oh yeah, that's really beautiful. Yeah, I think, at least for me, my sort of my, I don't know if you call it path, but sort of my practice is like trying to get back to when I was a kid. Right. Cause I remembering like Oh yeah, I used to be so excited when I met new people and have conversations which I get to do.

00:40:31

Then.

00:40:45 Merrily

Now this podcast that like, yeah, just being like, wow, it's really cool just being here and yeah.

00:40:54 Philip

Isn't that exciting? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, you know, there's I always remember a psychology book that that just began with a photograph of little kids playing, you know, with that joy in.

00:41:04 Philip

That and then.

00:41:05 Philip

Photograph of a bunch of guys on a commuter train.

00:41:09 Philip

You know they're.

00:41:09 Philip

Glum faces. And then the the caption is just what happened.

00:41:12 Merrily

Yeah.

00:41:13 Philip

You know what happened like, like how come we lose that and and and.

00:41:18

My.

00:41:19 Philip

Kind of goal is not to lose it and to to refind it and to to have that same kind of and. I know I can be naive. I can. I can kind of say stupid things and misunderstand. People get hurt because I'm too open, but I'd prefer to be that way and kind of closed up and tight.

00:41:41 Philip

And defended because I don't wanna get hurt and because life treated me badly and like, you know, and I I wanna be open and I want to have that kind of attitude.

00:41:49 Philip

Life and then everything becomes kind of playing or it's a bit like you, you and me on this thing. Now. I mean, like neither.

00:41:56 Philip

Of us have to do this.

00:42:00 Philip

This you know.

00:42:00 Philip

I could just said no to you.

00:42:02 Philip

And you could.

00:42:02 Philip

Have nobody bothered to ask? You know, it's like, you know, it's like we don't have to do this, but why are we doing it? Because well, we enjoyed talking with people and exchanging ideas and meeting new people and, you know, exploring topics and.

00:42:12 Merrily

Yeah.

00:42:15 Philip

So on.

00:42:15 Merrily

Yeah, it's being kind of like we kind of were saying, it's like being kind of vulnerable, right? It's like if you're going to.

00:42:21 Merrily

Be.

00:42:21 Merrily

Vulnerable. There's wonderful things about that. And then there's maybe things like.

00:42:26 Merrily

Not that it's not wonderful, but you know there's, you know, it's being horrible.

00:42:30

State.

00:42:31 Philip

Yeah, yeah. You can occasionally get hurt or something.

00:42:34 Philip

But yeah, but yeah.

00:42:36 Merrily

Oh yeah, yeah, beautifully explained. I love that. Oh, now I know you also have, like, your website, which is called or one of your websites, but it's the art of living well. And So what was your sort of inspiration for creating those particular teachings and offerings like?

00:42:56 Merrily

What?

00:42:56 Philip

Yeah, that was, you know that that that was the inspiration for that was so lovely because when I was when I was studying with Madrid teacher he as part of the the the the group of people there was a lovely woman called Olivia Roberts. Who Durden Robertson who started the fellowship of ISIS in Ireland.

00:43:06

Yeah.

00:43:16 Philip

And the wonderful kind of goddess centered movement in in Ireland that has had a big influence in the Pagan community and she invited me to.

00:43:26 Philip

Her, her place in Ireland, which is a castle and and and it changed my life completely. I was 18. I just started at university. I went to the castle. They invited me to stay forever and I dropped out of university because at that time the university was everybody on the campus was stoned.

00:43:47 Philip

Including the faculty. Everybody was smoking dope and I'd finished that. I'd done that for a couple of years and I was over that and I was in meditation and spiritual exploration, and I didn't want to get dopey, you know, I wanted to be clear and.

00:44:00 Philip

Yeah, and. And so I dropped out of university and I stayed there and and it changed my life and.

00:44:07 Philip

I.

00:44:08 Philip

Learned so much and.

00:44:11 Philip

So every so after I go back and it's like a spiritual retreat for me and I I went back there about probably it's probably about eight years ago now.

00:44:22 Philip

And and I I.

00:44:25 Philip

Add these kind of offerings that I wanted to I wanted to I had.

00:44:30 Philip

Develop these these training programs and territory bards, ovates and Druids, and we developed it as a course and that was all.

00:44:36 Philip

Going really well.

00:44:37 Philip

We had thousands of people doing it and.

00:44:40 Philip

Hundreds of groups around the world, and I was flying around the world giving, you know, to conferences and and gatherings of our group and all the.

00:44:47 Philip

Rest of it.

00:44:48 Philip

But I wanted to explore topics outside of drudgery.

00:44:54 Philip

And.

00:44:56 Philip

And I and I, but I didn't have the vehicle for doing that. You know, when you want to do something, you don't kind of know. Where do I put?

00:45:02 Philip

That how do?

00:45:03 Philip

I express it and and I was. I was. I was trying to get the vehicle and I was sitting in the old library in the castle and I suddenly became aware of this old mentor of mine, Olivia, who by then had died. I mean, she died.

00:45:16 Philip

You know, 15 years ago.

00:45:18

And.

00:45:19 Philip

And I and I asked her. I just. I just in my imagination, if you like. Or in reality, I I I suddenly became aware of her and.

00:45:27 Philip

I said what? What, what, what?

00:45:29 Philip

Should I do and she said, you know, the art of living well, this is. This is what you this is the the the channel, the framework. It's art. You're not. You're not kind of pretending it's science.

00:45:40 Philip

It's art which has the connotations of beauty and craft and creativity, and you know.

00:45:48 Philip

Art and it's it's living well, you know, because again, it's about being in your body here now, but living, living well and fully.

00:45:57 Philip

And so.

00:46:00 Philip

And and just present these in in these online courses. And so the first thing I did was I I wrote a little book called The Lessons in Magic, which was about how you make your dreams come true.

00:46:13 Philip

And.

00:46:15 Philip

And it sounds kind of corny, but but it. But it's, you know, you this is this is what we do is we think I I.

00:46:21 Philip

Want to dot dot.

00:46:22 Philip

Dot. Yeah, well, how do you make that happen? You know? And. And psychology and spirituality can illuminate that hugely.

00:46:31 Philip

And you know in in its kind of crude sense, you know, people talk about.

00:46:35 Philip

The you know.

00:46:35 Philip

The the the the law of manner, the art of manifestation and kind of working with some of that. But there's there's there are problems around that you know actually. But psychology and spirituality and some magical and can really help you to to, to, to, to, to to.

00:46:51 Philip

Bringing things into being.

00:46:53 Philip

And so I wrote sure, but and anyway I developed into an online course and I I launched that and it was really excited. Lots of people loved it, and they followed that. And and then I became interested in sleep because my wife had had a period of insomnia. I apparently wasn't understanding and empathic enough.

00:47:13 Philip

I thought I was being empathic, but apparently I wasn't enough.

00:47:16 Philip

And so the gods gave me a period of insomnia of about 3 months, and I discovered how horrible it is. It's really horrible. It's like it just affects everything. And so I decided to dive in and explore that from a psychological point of view and a spiritual point of view. So shine those two lenses on it, those two lights.

00:47:36 Philip

And so that that was that.

00:47:39 Philip

So I did a course in.

00:47:40 Philip

Sleep.

00:47:41 Philip

And so I have a sleep clinic, an online sleep clinic with the whole bunch of recordings and that developed gradually. I think they're about, I don't know, 10 courses or something now just over the years it's it's a fun. It's like I I find making online courses is like doing a book in 3D, if you see what I mean.

00:47:50 Merrily

Yeah.

00:47:58 Merrily

Oh yeah.

00:47:59 Philip

You know, in a in a book, you sit there on your own and you write the book and then it gets takes about a year for it to get published, and then it goes out by which time you've often moved on to the next topic.

00:48:09 Philip

And you don't really know what people think until the Amazon reviews start to appear. So you, you know, you're kind of really quite.

00:48:16 Philip

Connect to an online course. You're getting instant feedback. People are commenting on the lessons, so if you go into lessons and magic now, you'll see there are hundreds of comments of people feeding back and you know, and and and you're in, you you're doing film and you're doing text and you're doing audio and you can have music.

00:48:34 Philip

I've.

00:48:34 Philip

Got people involved in music?

00:48:36 Philip

Coming in and doing music as well. So you've you've got it all. So it's like 3D, it's it's a whole different world really.

00:48:44 Philip

So that's what the.

00:48:44 Philip

Art of living well is, yeah.

00:48:46 Merrily

Wow, very considered for sure. There's a lot, you know, like what are very deep. I yeah very.

00:48:52 Merrily

Cool. Yeah. Thanks for walking through that. I. So I know I I I think I actually saw your tea with Druid video segments on YouTube, which are really great. I highly suggest people to check them out because I think oftentimes when you're doing them, I'm at work in the morning.

00:49:13 Merrily

And I get to work at home and. And I'm like, oh, I'll, like, have a little bit of a like a like, a a little Oasis with Phillip and all your, you know, wonderful people around the world.

00:49:20

Yeah.

00:49:24

Yeah.

00:49:25 Merrily

So what? What was? So why did you decide to start doing those little segments?

00:49:31 Philip

Yeah, well, that was that. So I've done, I did yesterday. I did #311. So I've done 311.

00:49:38 Philip

And.

00:49:41 Philip

It started quite randomly and as much as my colleague Dave the Bard, who does wonderful. He's a kind of Pagan rock musician who who works with us. And he said one one day about four years ago.

00:49:53 Philip

He said.

00:49:54 Philip

Have you ever have you heard of Facebook live? I just did this. This. I just launched an album and he said there were hundreds of people watching, yet it's really fun. You live stream into, you know, and I'd never heard of it and I tried.

00:50:05 Philip

It.

00:50:06 Philip

And I found that it was fun. I I had a sense of connection with an audience. The kind of weirdness of just talking.

00:50:16 Philip

Into the blue, as it were, and not was. I got over that very quickly and and found I felt I was with people.

00:50:23 Philip

And.

00:50:24 Philip

And so I started doing it once a week, and the idea really behind it was.

00:50:32 Philip

So a couple of ideas. One was to create this Oasis like you say, because the thing about spirituality, the interesting thing is there's, like, you can get it. You know, you can read a book or you can have a meditation or have some kind of spiritual.

00:50:44 Philip

Experience I think. Yeah, that's it. I've got it. It's like, I understand. I'm, you know, I'm made of love and light and everything's marvellous and connected. And even it, you know, it all makes sense the worst. But then then you have to go to work or somebody calls from down says, hey, look, you haven't made the lunch, you know and and.

00:51:04 Philip

So you know, so you.

00:51:05 Philip

Know we need reminding and a kind of weekly reminder. I think the kind.

00:51:09 Philip

Of weekly service thing that I.

00:51:11 Philip

They think they were on to something when they came up with that idea, like once a week. That kind of top up little TuneIn. It's kind of off to me. It's like we need reminding, really a a kind of to to get gentle guiding hand say hey it's OK, sit down, relax. You know just from because I don't know about you but I'm kind of always on the go.

00:51:31 Philip

You know and and there's so much going on. Yeah, and.

00:51:36 Philip

So that was 11.

00:51:38 Philip

Impulse behind it, the other, the other impulse was to find a way of talking about spirituality. That wasn't the guru trip because I followed the guru for seven years and you know, and it was a very interesting journey because basically I think what happens is you fall in love with the guru.

00:51:47

Hmm.

00:51:59 Philip

And you know the falling in love thing is like, you get obsessed by the person. You can't stop thinking about them. You kind of hear their voice in your head and you have sort of conversations with them and and and. And you just wanna be with them. You wanna hang out with them all the time. That's the good thing. You just keep wanting to be in the ashram and to hang out with this person because they'd make you happy and laugh and smile.

00:52:19 Philip

You know, feel good and all the rest of it. And and and then you realize that you're with another couple of 100 or 1000 people who also in love.

00:52:27 Philip

With the same person.

00:52:29 Philip

So that produces some very weird dynamics. Everybody's trying to be super nice, but actually everybody's vying for being the closest to the guru. It's some very interesting dynamics happen.

00:52:41 Philip

There, and there's all the.

00:52:42 Philip

Daddy thing and the mummy thing, you know?

00:52:45 Philip

Those of us who haven't had a good dad, you know, if you find a really nice kind of old guy who's really warm and inspiring, it's like, Oh my God, you know, and who seems to like you, you know, it's like this is great, you know? And so for all these reasons.

00:53:02 Philip

The guru thing is problematic even, but the mentoring thing or the listening to somebody who might have something interesting to tell you or some interesting advice or helpful advice, that's that's valid, you know.

00:53:11 Merrily

Yeah.

00:53:18 Philip

So I thought, how can I?

00:53:21 Philip

Kind of share what I've learned over the last.

00:53:23 Philip

50 years or.

00:53:24 Philip

Hello.

00:53:26 Philip

In a way that isn't doing the guru thing and and and for me the kind of answer is just really just be yourself. I mean, you just you just chat like I'm chatting to you now like like I don't have an agenda. I'm just sharing what's coming through my mind as we speak and and and. And I'm fully aware of the fact that I might.

00:53:41

Yeah.

00:53:44 Philip

I might say something that's a bit stupid or you know that I've gone off a bit or, you know, forgotten something or whatever. Yeah. So, I mean, as you for the, I don't know if you've seen enough of them to see me doing that, but it's just like conversation, isn't it? I'm just kind of I I just chat usually about a spiritual topic of some kind.

00:54:02 Merrily

Hmm.

00:54:03 Philip

Or something that's you know that occurs to.

00:54:06 Philip

Or I have a guest and chat with.

00:54:08 Philip

Them.

00:54:09 Philip

And and and then and.

00:54:10 Philip

Then do a meditation and then I.

00:54:11 Philip

Gradually developed a sort of.

00:54:14 Philip

A particular way of meditating that I tend to use so the Meditations are short. They're probably just 10 minutes or so, popping in really nature based connecting with the natural world and with your sort of deep self. So that's how it's.

00:54:20 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:54:29 Philip

Solved.

00:54:30 Philip

Yeah, yeah.

00:54:32 Merrily

Yeah, definitely. Like I said, I definitely recommend people check it out because it's like, it's like every time like, cause I usually have like my laptop up and then I'll say, oh, so let's I, I.

00:54:41 Merrily

Can catch it today, so like watch it.

00:54:43 Philip

OK, that's great. And you know that like about, I don't know about 500 people, but what but say between 300 and 500 people turn up lie and then and then so there's a nice and there's a kind of a real feeling of of being together, you know?

00:54:51 Merrily

Yeah, yeah.

00:54:58

Mm-hmm.

00:55:00

Yeah.

00:55:01 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for doing those. Yeah, they're they're great.

00:55:05 Philip

OK.

00:55:06 Merrily

So we're kind of winding down a little bit, but so we're recording the week of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. However, this episode won't be out until October because I just ended our first season of the show. So are there any upcoming?

00:55:25 Merrily

Events or projects or that you want to let people know about around that time.

00:55:30 Philip

Around October, you mean? Yeah.

00:55:32 Philip

Yeah, that's very interesting. It's very interesting to be sitting here as the year starts to peak for the summer soil and then to think about October where where the year is really waning into Salen. You know, this interesting time leading up to the winter solstice and.

00:55:39 Merrily

Right.

00:55:53 Philip

Umm.

00:55:54 Philip

And and and and I I found it quite hard to do that at the moment. I mean just just and I think that the soul in time, the October time in the northern hemisphere is really a time for kind of psychic, if not physical shedding and go of stuff, you know, and of course.

00:56:11 Merrily

Hmm.

00:56:14 Philip

Maybe many of your viewers will, and listeners will do ceremonies which involve sort of letting go of stuff and burning stuff. You know we have in in the druid ceremonies, you know, we we write stuff down on bits of paper and burn them in the fire or, you know, we like, we have ways of doing that. So and and.

00:56:33 Philip

It's a very beautiful time. It's it's.

00:56:37 Philip

It's a. It's a. It's a a time that many Druids says their favorite.

00:56:43 Philip

Seasonal set, you know, cause we have 8 ceremonies during the year, the solstices and the equinoxes, and the cross quarter days. And they say that Sawan is their favorite festival and and it tends to be, you know probably one of the most powerful as well because it's the time of of letting go. It's also where you honor those who've passed before you people who've died.

00:57:05 Philip

And and.

00:57:09 Philip

So yeah, and of course.

00:57:12 Philip

Like everything, if we resist something, it's much tougher, you know, so that natural tendency to let to, to allow the leaves to fall, to allow the shedding to occur. That's the kind of secret in a way, even though sometimes it can feel scary because you don't know where it's going and what's going to happen. You're if you allow yourself to let go.

00:57:33 Philip

Completely and and for me it's always the starting place is almost always through the body. In other words, you know, I think if one starts with one's own body and you just tune into it and it's it's really interesting to track.

00:57:49 Philip

The tension in your body and you just and you just you just scan your body and you just start, you know, with your feet or or with your head and you just move through the body just.

00:57:59 Philip

Noticing and just letting go and letting go and relaxing and relaxing and and what you can do is sometimes you'll find that there's an if you do it several times, there's just more and more letting go. You just having to keep doing it and then you find you might find an area where you can't.

00:58:13 Philip

Let go. It's just like there's this little bit of tension there in the stomach or the head or something and it just how much you sort of will it or or wish it to dissolve. It just won't. So then you just hold it lovingly as it were. And just, you know, and and open and open up. So that's that, that kind of. That's the kind of practice.

00:58:25 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:58:34 Philip

But but I do around that time.

00:58:38 Merrily

Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, it is also my favorite time of year. It's a lot of people's favorite time of year, and I think it's for all the reasons that you said.

00:58:46 Merrily

Even if they're not, maybe conscious of it, you know, like, yeah.

00:58:51 Merrily

So where can everyone learn more about you and all the really cool things you're up to, like some websites or?

00:58:58 Philip

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of one.

00:59:01 Philip

Of one of the advantages when my dad, my dad, used to write books and he dropped, he dropped the gum off the name because he found it was clunky. It's like, you know, people misspell it and they say well then or I say so. If you just say car, it's easy and but. But. But but the the The thing is if you.

00:59:18 Philip

Have. If you keep the garment.

00:59:20 Philip

So weird, but you're the only. So I'm the only Philip Carr gone. If I'm Philip Carr, then then there be there other people. Call Philip Carr, Philip Carr. So. So in that way all you googled me.

00:59:33 Philip

Kindly straight away you know or ecosia me which is better, which is the eco friendly browser which where where they plant trees in return for your your so I always use Ecosia change your browser to your your search engine to reflect that and and and.

00:59:51 Philip

But I have a site which is myname.com with with the hyphen with the C double R-GO.

00:59:57 Philip

Double M and and and that that gives. You know my books and the course is the art of living well courses and the blog and so on. And the YouTube channel links and so on and.

01:00:12 Merrily

All, all of your stuff, all.

01:00:14 Philip

Of all of my.

01:00:14 Philip

Stuff. Yeah. And then and then there's there's some.

01:00:18 Philip

You know, there's Instagram and Facebook as well, of course. Again with the same name. And then.

01:00:21 Philip

And then and and then the order of bards ovates druids, which I'm still involved in, although I've handed on the mantle to Emma Burke, this lovely Irish lady who is also a psychologist. So she combined Bernstein, magic and psychology together. That's at druidry.org. And that's, you know, druidry.org.

01:00:41 Philip

And then there's lots and lots to explore there.

01:00:44 Merrily

Wow, cool. Yeah. Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you, Philip. Are you've shared so much wisdom with us today? Are there any sort of final words of wisdom that you'd like to leave us with?

01:01:05 Philip

I think that.

01:01:06 Philip

There's there's, there's there's there's. There's a a lovely.

01:01:10 Philip

Idea that that I heard just recently from and now I can't remember who it was. He's a psychologist called.

01:01:20 Philip

Ohh I have to I have to apologise to him for forgetting his name. He's written an amazing book called US and in, in, in this and in an interview with a the A friend of mine. He talks about how he realized how important it is to.

01:01:36 Philip

To to focus on connecting with people rather than trying to impress them.

01:01:45 Philip

And and I thought that was very helpful because in this world where it's like, you know, we talk about the attention economy, where everybody's competing for attention, you know, and and you know, they're even behavioral scientists who work for Facebook and, you know, and all the rest of it who are trying out, you know, how can we keep these people staring at the screen forever, you know? And.

01:02:03 Merrily

Right.

01:02:04 Philip

And and our attention is always being pulled in many direct.

01:02:08 Philip

So it's very easy for us to end up in this in this world. I think feeling like we're in a busy, crowded marketplace or street trying to say, hey, I I'm here, I do exist. I'm over here. You know, it's like I'm interesting, you know, it's like, come and look, you know, so we're in this kind of.

01:02:27 Philip

And particularly if you're a creative person, you know you do stuff, you write books, or you do podcasts or, you know. Yeah. So you. So you're you're you're embedded in this attention eco.

01:02:41 Philip

But it brings with it all sorts of problems, and so, and even in a social sense. You know when you like, when you, when you meet somebody at a party, it's it's perfectly natural. In a way. It's like everybody's laying out their store. Here's, here's where you should be interested in me. I I've done all these amazing things and. And you know, I I can. So you you you want people to.

01:02:52

Huh.

01:03:00 Philip

To see who you really are, you know, see you out your stall as as somebody.

01:03:07 Philip

Somebody put it once, everybody laying out their stools.

01:03:11 Philip

So and if you've ever been, I don't know if you've ever been to, have you ever been to kind of where those markets like on a Pagan fair or blind bodies? And if you go in just before, it's like nobody's all the markets, they're stall holders are.

01:03:23 Philip

All putting out their gear.

01:03:24 Philip

And they're not talking to each other because they're too busy arranging their stool with their tarot decks and their crystals. And.

01:03:32 Philip

All, all the rest against the competition and all the other people you know. And before the gates were open and the public comes in, you know, and so so so.

01:03:36

Yeah.

01:03:42 Philip

So that's it's very natural that we would want to show ourselves in our best light and show to people that we're really valuable and worth talking to and are interesting and can maybe they can go out with us or you know, we can marry them or you know whatever it is that we wanna do, you know. And but actually if you kind of switched the dial.

01:04:03 Philip

The connecting.

01:04:05

It.

01:04:06 Philip

It it just introduces a whole different feeling if like the reason I want to talk to you is not to impress you.

01:04:15

Rain.

01:04:15 Philip

With how clever.

01:04:16 Philip

I am or you know all that I can offer you or your readers or viewers and listeners, but instead, if I just want to connect to you as my, you know, just talk to you.

01:04:25 Philip

Another human being on this amazing planet just sharing stuff and ideas then that's that feels a very nice way to go about one's life.

01:04:34 Philip

I see.

01:04:35 Merrily

Oh, wow, that's so wonderful. Yeah, I love the idea of, like, more connection. That's so great. Oh, well, thank you so much, Phillip. I'm so honored and happy that you wanted to connect and chat today. And thank you.

01:04:40 Merrily

Hmm.

01:04:51 Merrily

It's a pleasure. Thank you.

01:04:52 Philip

Ma'am.

01:04:55 Merrily

I could listen to Philip talk for hours. What an inspiration. Do you take a look at the show notes to find out more about Philip's work on the art of living well website his team with a Druid YouTube channel, the order of Barbs, Ovitz and Druids and the Great Books he has written to support the show is so easy.

01:05:13 Merrily

We just needed a like follow and subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. It's free and takes a few moments of your time. Thank you for listening and being an important part of casual temple.

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EPISODE 35 - Philip Carr-Gomm

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