Latest / Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson / Talking to Stones, Ponies, and the Sacred: Empathic Interbeing with Emelie Cajsdotter | Ep 26 Live Free Ride Free

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Talking to Stones, Ponies, and the Sacred: Empathic Interbeing with Emelie Cajsdotter | Ep 26 Live Free Ride Free · Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson

0:00
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
0:00
, people, this is an interesting, , and rather exceptional
0:04
podcast we have coming up.
0:05
I just want to give a disclaimer.
0:07
There will be some potential triggers in here.
0:10
We'll be talking about, , suicide, suicidal ideation, and also some
0:15
aspects of the supernatural.
0:17
So if any of these three things are trigger points for
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you, please switch off now.
0:24
Thanks for joining us.
0:25
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
0:27
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of
0:31
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
0:32
Before I jump in with today's guest, I want to say a huge thank you to you, our
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0:59
So now let's jump in.
1:03
Welcome back to Live Free, ride Free, where we talk to people
1:07
who have lived and are living self-actualized lives of all kinds.
1:13
And what can we learn from them?
1:15
Today, Emily K's daughter you're gonna think I'm nuts.
1:21
Emily doesn't just talk to animals.
1:24
She talks to the stones, the mountains, the trees, the lot.
1:28
And those of you who know me will know that I'm actually quite skeptical of
1:32
this because in the work that I do with horses and with autism, I get a lot of
1:39
people coming and saying, oh, I'm an animal communicator and blah, blah, blah.
1:42
And usually my bullshit meter goes, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
1:47
And the reason it does that is because frequently the reports of what the animals
1:52
are saying or whatever is often somehow negative towards the humans or something.
1:56
And I, in my time with the Bushman the sun in the Kalahari where
2:02
there's a lot of direct animal communication going on, those kinds
2:05
of things are never the message.
2:06
They're always much more within the animals sphere of reference
2:13
of which we are peripheral, not.
2:16
Central.
2:18
And so this idea that, well, you know, my rider doesn't ride me well enough, or
2:21
something like that, just always struck me as sort of one human to another human,
2:25
sort of using the horse as a, you know, way to criticize another human basically.
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But the fact is that communication with nature is a real thing and has been a real
2:36
thing ever since humanity has been here.
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Because guess what?
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We're part of nature.
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And if you've spent any time with hunting and gathering people, some of
2:45
you listening have, you will know that the way in which they communicate with
2:52
the environment around them, anima and inanimate is appears supernatural.
2:58
However they would posit and I think I would posit having spent
3:03
a lot of time with them, that it's not supernatural, it's natural,
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it's just that it's happening on a level that we have forgotten, lost
3:13
the need for, become deaf to, et cetera in post agricultural society.
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So anyway, that was a long preamble to say that Emily is one of the
3:24
few people I've met who seems to have an unbroken connection.
3:31
Despite being within our society.
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And I find this fascinating and I want her to talk to us about it.
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So, and, and how really this has defined her life and, and
3:40
her livelihood and everything.
3:42
So, Emily, welcome.
3:44
I hope I did you justice.
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Tell us who you are, what you do.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Thank you for having me here.
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And as you and I know but maybe the listeners do not, is that you helped me
3:59
a great deal by, by saying that, this way of relating to your surroundings
4:08
which I have recently just given the concept name empathic inter being that
4:16
that is a natural state for human being.
4:20
So maybe I'm not the weirdo after all.
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And that was both very devastating for my ego and helpful for myself.
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Rupert Isaacson: Oh, sorry.
4:31
I'll try to stroke your ego.
4:33
No, no.
4:34
We inate of course.
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No,
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Emelie Cajsdotter: once we got it crashed, please don't put it together again.
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Yes, it's, it's hard to know where to begin.
4:43
An answer to that question.
4:44
Start,
4:45
Rupert Isaacson: start at the beginning.
4:46
Okay.
4:46
You, I forgot to say that you're in Sweden.
4:48
You are in a very natural place in, in Western Sweden.
4:52
But take us back to your beginning because I know that you were not always
4:57
raised in nature that no, not at all.
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How did this evolve for you to start as a small girl?
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And just take us on the journey, please.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: I think when people see the work I do today, which
5:09
is living in nature, working with biodiversity, communicating with all
5:13
sorts of living entities it's easy to think that I grew up in the countryside
5:18
in very sort of loving and caring environment, but it was the opposite.
5:24
I don't mean to blame anyone by saying that it wasn't loving and caring.
5:27
It, it was a, a great destructive mess as I think why,
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Rupert Isaacson: why
5:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: or civilization in many places are.
5:36
My father I grew up in a highrise building in the outskirts of Gothenburg in Sweden.
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One of these high rise building with sort of 10 floors and several doors in.
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And I had a key around my neck because, there weren't
5:50
really very many adults around.
5:52
And it was this sort of concrete jungle type environment.
5:58
And my father, who most likely today would have been given some sort of
6:05
diagnosis within the autistic spectrum, was a researcher in abstract mathematics.
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And that he could do, he was apparently very, very
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intelligent in that narrow field.
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And he lived his life on that very fine line.
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That fine line.
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Didn't include any social skills any capacity to at all interact
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with his surroundings including me.
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And he died when I was five in what was most likely suicide.
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He had asthma and he mixed his asthma medicines so that he suffocated and died.
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And I was five at the time, and I was with him when that happened.
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So I would say that that had a huge impact on me and still do.
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It's like there are things that you sort of get over and that there are things
7:00
that you learn to integrate in your being.
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And I would say that that would be one of those.
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Rupert Isaacson: Does that mean you actually watched him die?
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, I watched him die.
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Rupert Isaacson: Can please, if it's all right, take us through that, because
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Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah,
7:14
Rupert Isaacson: that could mean so many things.
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Can you, can you be as clear as you can be?
7:18
What, what happened?
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
7:21
Well, I was five and people think, tend to think that children are
7:26
very unaware of what happens around them, especially in a younger age.
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And I have very clear memories from a very young age, and maybe because
7:35
those are my links to my ancestral memories and maybe I, my being would
7:43
be more alert to really collect them somehow knowing that he would pass.
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This was not the only complication.
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My mother was not really equipped for the role of having children.
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And she knew that she knew that that was, this was really not at all doable for
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her for various reasons, but she grew up in a, in a generation where having
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a husband and children is what you do.
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So.
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It, it was what it was.
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She couldn't really at all deal with having children.
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So, and since my father was also incapable of any kind of care it was
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my mother's mother, that grandmother that would basically raise me.
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And she was a psychic healer.
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So thi this is the, this is the little pool.
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Rupert Isaacson: Just quickly, you were an only child?
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
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I think maybe, I mean, as much inspiration I got from this upbringing, I, it
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might also be a good thing that there weren't a lot of kids in this situation.
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Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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And then the second thing, this grandmother.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
8:56
Rupert Isaacson: Your mother's mother.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm-hmm.
8:58
Rupert Isaacson: Also in the tower block there in
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Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah, in another highrise building.
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Actually, not in the beginning, but after my father died and she realized
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that this is all gonna go to pot she moved to another highrise building.
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Where, where was she
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Rupert Isaacson: before that?
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Was she more in the country or, or No,
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Emelie Cajsdotter: she was in the middle of the city as well.
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Her interesting dream was always to become a mathematician.
9:21
She was also highly intelligent in that measurable way that
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makes sense for mathematics, if
9:29
Rupert Isaacson: well, all these people working for Saab.
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I know that Gotham, no,
9:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: none of none of them were
9:33
Rupert Isaacson: center for the Saab.
9:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: My father was working in the university and my
9:38
mother was working in the university too, because she has this whatever
9:43
unusual skill with languages.
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So she speaks seven languages.
9:47
And your mother?
9:48
Yes.
9:48
They all have like racing heads.
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Rupert Isaacson: Is your mother still around?
9:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
9:53
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
9:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Okay.
9:54
And so, so did my grandmother, but my grandmother being born
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sort of, well more than a hundred years ago she was never allowed to
10:05
pursue in any studies of that kind.
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Rupert Isaacson: And when you say she was a psychic healer, sorry,
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I'm, there's a journalist in me.
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I've gotta piece all puzzle pieces together first before we.
10:17
Psychic Keila.
10:18
How did you know?
10:19
How did she know?
10:20
And in that urban context, that's million
10:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: dollar question.
10:22
She was very good at looking into people's future, and I didn't
10:26
really like that because she
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Rupert Isaacson: would do that as a party trick.
10:29
She'd do that for a living.
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No, no, no.
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People came
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Emelie Cajsdotter: to ask her for help and she never charged money.
10:33
She had some other daily,
10:36
Rupert Isaacson: but how did that evolve?
10:37
How did it evolve that, did she go around saying, oh, and by the way,
10:40
you, oh no, people just, you're gonna blow your nose next Tuesday week.
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Or like, how did people find out and how did, I
10:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: don't know because I was so young, but they just, they just
10:48
knew and they just, and people would were
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Rupert Isaacson: around coming to her.
10:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
10:51
They would come to her.
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And I, they never
10:53
Rupert Isaacson: asked.
10:53
She never told how it evolved.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: No, actually I never really thought of it
10:56
until you ask now, to be honest.
11:00
Anyway.
11:01
She would very good at, at that's, that's brilliant.
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No, she would see people's future.
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And I found that a bit uncomfortable because it, it raised the question
11:12
in me whether there actually is a, a set destiny or not.
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And I didn't really like that.
11:20
Mm.
11:20
So I didn't want her to see anything about me.
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Some, she said a few things anyway, because she just couldn't stop herself.
11:28
And, and so far she's been correct.
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But she also believed in all sorts of guardian, angels,
11:35
reincarnation all of these things.
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Rupert Isaacson: Do you know how she evolved these beliefs?
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Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
11:40
Okay.
11:41
Rupert Isaacson: Because it doesn't sound like it was in the family culture.
11:44
The family culture was very cerebral and very intellectual.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
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I have no idea where that comes from.
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Was she religious?
11:52
Interesting thing is that on my father's side his sister has almost
11:57
the same qualities and nobody knows where that comes from either.
12:00
Okay.
12:00
So
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Rupert Isaacson: strange northern people.
12:03
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
12:04
Yes.
12:05
And she was such a good healer that if I was at home and she was at home and I
12:12
had a headache because I had migraines for as long as I can remember, and
12:17
I would have a migraine coming on, I would call her and she would just do
12:20
something that I wouldn't know over the phone and the headache would go.
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And, and to me that was always normal and.
12:29
And when I started to have experiences myself and, and, and being confused and
12:37
scared and overwhelmed, I would tell her logically she would be the one to tell.
12:42
And she would always tell me that it's normal.
12:46
She never made a big deal out of it.
12:48
She never made me feel special, and she never made me feel wrong.
12:54
So, thinking about it afterwards, I think that approach of this
12:58
is fine, this is normal was very helpful in whatever happened later.
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Rupert Isaacson: And she never, she never asked, told you, or you never
13:07
asked, where does this come from, granny?
13:09
You know how No.
13:10
Okay.
13:10
Okay.
13:11
There.
13:11
No, it just felt
13:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: natural and normal.
13:14
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
13:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: And before my father died he went to her and asked
13:21
her if she could look after me.
13:24
And she saw him dying.
13:26
She told me that years later she saw him dying and didn't want to believe it.
13:31
Mm-hmm.
13:32
So, but she didn't want to upset him, so she said, yes, of course I will.
13:37
And then he died.
13:39
So, she would be my sort of human contact, but she, I think she taught
13:46
me so many things, and maybe one of the most important things she
13:50
taught me, because she later ended up committing suicide as well, but then
13:54
I was 17 years old is that there is nothing black and white in this life.
14:02
Mm-hmm.
14:02
It's not that.
14:05
How could she teach me all the things that has proven to be so helpful
14:10
throughout my life and still not being able to live with herself?
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How, how is that possible?
14:17
And, and how can my father who I felt some strange bond to, although he
14:24
could never show emotions in the usual way, he could definitely radiate love.
14:30
How could he kill himself?
14:33
And I come to this soothing free conclusion after
14:40
dealing with this for years.
14:41
Is that because all of it is possible at the same time?
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It's, yes.
14:48
My grandmother could teach me all these things and she still
14:51
couldn't live with herself.
14:52
And both are true.
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And although they are completely contradictory they can definitely
14:58
coexist within the same human being.
15:00
And it doesn't affect my love for her or for any other of my
15:07
highly destructive family members.
15:10
Rupert Isaacson: Let's just go back to, I, I want to delve into, in, in
15:13
a moment what we think the motives.
15:15
'cause I suspect the motives for each of them to take their own lives
15:20
were probably a little different.
15:21
And I think this is a, a worthwhile topic to explore for the reasons that you just
15:28
mentioned, and that many things can exist simultaneously, including timelines.
15:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
15:33
You
15:34
Rupert Isaacson: know, having, again, spent a lot of time
15:36
with indigenous people.
15:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
15:38
And I think for, sorry, for a modern, civilized human being you could say
15:43
that this was a harsh learning curve.
15:46
Rupert Isaacson: Yes,
15:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: for sure.
15:47
But maybe a small chart
15:48
Rupert Isaacson: because, you know, you also rely on your parents to
15:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: but maybe that's what it takes to break down this linear mind.
15:56
Rupert Isaacson: Right, right.
15:57
And linear, I think is the word there, because if one thinks of time as, as
16:00
vertical, which indigenous people tend to that, as far as I've been aware,
16:06
then as you say, things are happening simultaneously, past, present, and future.
16:09
We think of it obviously very much as linear.
16:12
And are brought up to think that way.
16:15
And of course it's comforting.
16:17
I feel more to, and I'm all about comfort.
16:19
I think comfort is good to think of it as vertical.
16:22
But let's just go back to, I just want to now dial us back to your father.
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Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
16:27
Yes, please.
16:27
Rupert Isaacson: You are you, you said, you say you, were you in
16:30
the room with him when he died?
16:31
Like, did you see him die?
16:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I saw him almost die which also is a storyline.
16:39
He had taken those medications, he mixed his medications, and later I
16:45
was told that he'd mixed them several times before and ended up in hospital.
16:49
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
16:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: So I understand that he, to some
16:52
extent, knew what he was doing.
16:55
And this was between Christmas and New Year's.
16:59
And I remember that Christmas, I was clinging onto him in a way that I would
17:04
never do because, because he wasn't physically accessible as a father.
17:09
You couldn't sit on his lap.
17:10
You couldn't hug him.
17:12
He didn't, that, that's not how you interacted with him.
17:15
But and, and for me, that was fine.
17:17
But on that Christmas, I remember like really grasping him, like holding on.
17:25
Legs and arms and clothes and whatever.
17:28
So, so somehow I knew and, and, and he knew that, that there,
17:34
there is a parting coming.
17:36
And when it actually happened, he was sitting on the bed in the bedroom
17:41
looking out through the window.
17:43
And outside of these windows in this flat, we were on the third
17:45
floor, were this amazing old tool.
17:50
Although we were in the city beach trees, like huge, very dark stamps.
17:56
And, and it took me many years to fully understand how present they were.
18:04
It's like, yeah, you think you're alone and, and you're
18:07
vulnerable and very exposed.
18:08
You are when you're a kid and everything is falling apart.
18:11
But those trees, they were there and they helped much more than,
18:17
than I was aware of at the time.
18:19
So they were also there.
18:21
So he's looking out of the window at the trees and so am I, he's not looking
18:25
at me, we're not having any contact.
18:27
And I understand that he can't breathe and he's about to fall,
18:31
so he collapses on the floor.
18:34
So I see him collapse on the floor and I think that he is
18:40
still in his body as that happens.
18:44
And sometime around that time, the neighbors comes and they take me out
18:50
and they, and they say that, oh, he's, he, he only has difficulty swallowing.
18:53
I know that he's dying.
18:56
But I think the fact that I, at that point in time didn't see his spirit
19:01
leaving left me in a state of something that later turned into quite an extreme
19:11
workaholic personality where I spent many years trying to save and rescue, I
19:17
dunno how many individuals and animals, mainly, I mean, we have a sanctuary here.
19:25
And I'm not saying that that's wrong, but in adult years I
19:30
understood that within me.
19:34
He wasn't really fully dead.
19:36
It took me years to accept that he was.
19:39
So, every time I got a chance to save someone, there was hope for him.
19:45
And every time I couldn't, I had to face this bottomless pain
19:52
of accepting that he's gone.
19:56
So you could say that that story went on past that point.
20:00
Although after his death, quite shortly after, I could see him sitting in the
20:05
living room, always in the yellow pajamas.
20:07
I have no idea why he would always have those clothes on.
20:10
But and, and I could talk to him and I realized that he is dead.
20:15
But he's visible to me sometimes.
20:17
I can't control it.
20:17
I can't ask him to come.
20:19
But sometimes he comes.
20:21
And you mentioned the reason for him choosing to die, and, and I
20:28
think he answered that in, in one of those early meeting points.
20:34
Then I went on into my own self-destructiveness.
20:36
So
20:36
Rupert Isaacson: you can't go on, you just gotta tell us what that is.
20:38
You can't drop that and leave it.
20:40
No,
20:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: no, no, no.
20:40
I'm gonna go.
20:41
Okay.
20:41
But what, what he said is that the difference between
20:45
you and me is the words.
20:48
And what I understand from that sentence is that.
20:54
Yes.
20:54
I also live a life that is quite a thin thread that goes
20:59
far out from what's normal.
21:01
But I have a way to reconnect to the common world of fellow human
21:07
beings, which is through the words.
21:09
And he didn't he left a box of equations that no one could solve.
21:16
He never expressed himself except that one time after death.
21:23
Rupert Isaacson: Do you think he left because he found it to painful to be here?
21:29
Do you think he left because he felt he could do his work
21:38
better from another place?
21:41
Do you think it was an act of, was it an act of distress, him taking his life?
21:46
Or was it an act of
21:50
logical creativity to sort of go to the next professional phase or something?
21:56
What, what, what, what do you
21:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: I always felt it was more on the desperate side.
22:01
Okay.
22:02
Rupert Isaacson: What, what was it that he found so painful, do you think?
22:04
Because if he had the job in the university and he could exist
22:07
in that mathematical world.
22:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm-hmm.
22:10
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
22:10
You know, he had to, and then
22:11
Emelie Cajsdotter: he had been offered a job at Stanford University
22:14
too, so he could have gone deeper.
22:17
Mm-hmm.
22:17
And probably met more people that wouldn't find him so odd.
22:21
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
22:22
Emelie Cajsdotter: But he, he chose not to which is unexplainable.
22:28
But I think what I continue to explore after this and still do,
22:36
is the isolation of modern humans.
22:42
Mm-hmm.
22:43
I think there is a specific pain in isolation that may not be like emotional
22:51
heartbreak, the type of pain or anxiety, pain or those things that we can phrase,
22:59
but another overwhelming pain that is both inside and outside and might be the reason
23:09
why we feed ourselves so much stimuli and why we are so costly for this planet.
23:18
And I, I think for him that isolation was, very obvious and maybe the things
23:27
that more so-called normal people would do to suit that pain didn't work for him.
23:37
Rupert Isaacson: Do you think in another, perhaps more authentic human
23:42
context he'd have been All right.
23:44
And if so, what would that context have been and what would his
23:48
role have been, do you think?
23:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I think when I live with animals, any
23:56
other species, I notice that when you remove the filter of linear
24:02
thinking, you also remove hierarchy.
24:06
And when you remove hierarchy based on values everyone seemed to have a
24:14
unique role that is unmeasurable in value and uncomparable with anyone else.
24:22
And what I also notice is an obvious acceptance that you're
24:26
not meant to be anything else that would be stupid to be honest.
24:32
So it seems like everyone else except the modern human, linear
24:38
society is making maximum use of.
24:43
Individual capacity one way or another which means that you don't have to
24:49
do things that you're not meant to or that you're not cut out to be able to.
24:54
Which means that if he lived in, in a, in a herd of horses, he could
25:00
probably have spent his whole life diving into this far, far, far
25:05
away place of abstract mathematics.
25:09
And someone else would make sure that the wolves don't eat him or that they
25:14
do get to the water place and that he does get to sleep sometimes thinks that
25:18
he could never really do for himself as a human being would maybe in a
25:23
different society be okay because it would fit somebody else's unique role,
25:30
Rupert Isaacson: I guess.
25:31
Right.
25:32
My question there though is that he was, he was clearly valued, right?
25:35
He had a job at the university so people saw the value of
25:38
his mathematical brilliance.
25:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
25:42
But I think it's in the relate, in the, in the possibility to relate to others.
25:46
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
25:49
Right.
25:49
So the, the professional context not being enough, even if you're
25:54
surrounded by your fellow nerds.
25:56
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
25:57
Yes.
25:58
And, and, and if you look at so I think we've all along been
26:02
looking for the same thing, but my approach is completely different.
26:06
I think when,
26:10
when I would try to explain any of what empathic, inter being would be.
26:17
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
26:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's not, it's not being psychic, it's not reading
26:23
something, it's not interpreting someone.
26:26
It is for a moment fully with all senses, experience the
26:34
other one's reality from within.
26:37
And that can only happen if I am available to the same extent for the other one.
26:45
Rupert Isaacson: So feeling gotten
26:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
26:47
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
26:47
Feeling seen.
26:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
26:49
So I exist in you and you exist in me, and I think that is
26:54
probably our original context.
26:57
Mm.
26:59
And when we lose that.
27:03
We begin to experience some sort of alienation that is
27:10
harder for some than others.
27:12
But I would say that a lot of states of being that is normal
27:18
in, in modern human life is maybe a symptom of lack of empathic
27:25
inter being and not normal at all.
27:27
I I, I've heard you talk sometimes and you seem to often mention
27:31
that joy is a natural state.
27:34
I would agree.
27:35
And so what every other species that I've met so far.
27:37
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
27:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: So why do we have so little joy?
27:41
And, and, and why does it disappear in such an early, why do we stop
27:46
playing earlier and earlier?
27:48
We do.
27:48
Rupert Isaacson: I think, I think we're told to, I think we're conditioned.
27:51
Yeah.
27:51
But in our, in our natural state, I don't think we do.
27:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
27:54
So, so there are lots of things that we take for granted as a normal maturing of
28:00
a human being that might not be at all.
28:03
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
28:04
Yeah.
28:04
There's, well, I put away childish things.
28:07
I'm like, fuck that.
28:08
I mean, really, honestly I'm just thinking as, you know, I'm, I'm
28:11
just imagining, I'm projecting in my imagination your father as being, say
28:17
in the Kalahari or, you know, east Africa or Paleolithic, even Neolithic
28:25
Europe, you know, and I'm imagining him.
28:29
Organizing the construction of a stone circle
28:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: Exactly that, you know,
28:35
Rupert Isaacson: and so those are my questions, you know, it's like, okay,
28:38
who built those ancient observatories that now we realize go back way
28:44
further than we thought they did?
28:46
You know, with the new findings that Gobekli Tepi and earlier archeological
28:51
things that are, that are now rewriting the whole human history thing from when
28:56
I was an archeologist and historian at university, which is, you know,
29:00
starts with the Sumer 6,000 years ago.
29:02
It's mm-hmm.
29:02
You know, Goli, Tepi, they now know is 6,000 years older than that, and they
29:08
just found another one close and there's this new one in Indonesia that's older
29:11
and these were being organized by people.
29:13
And you could say, well, yeah, he was doing that at the university in Goberg.
29:17
Yeah.
29:18
But not in a way, but in a way that was isolated.
29:21
Okay, you must sit here in this department of mathematics or
29:24
this department of physics at the end of this corridor in a box.
29:29
And you, and now do your equations.
29:31
Put them in a box.
29:33
Yeah, exactly.
29:34
Rather than.
29:36
Observe the heavens.
29:38
Mm-hmm.
29:38
Show us how to observe the heavens.
29:40
Exactly.
29:41
Be our mad, beautiful druid who emanates love.
29:45
Yes, we will absolutely make sure that there's venison for you because
29:49
we need to understand why that strange light in the sky is coming.
29:52
We need you to make those calculations for us please.
29:55
And we realize that that's gonna take you, you know, five months of
29:58
just sort of more or less sitting in your heart while we bring you things
30:02
and we are going to work on healing you and we are going to love you.
30:05
Exactly.
30:06
And let you be.
30:08
Emelie Cajsdotter: That would've worked is my, that would've
30:09
Rupert Isaacson: worked.
30:09
Yeah.
30:10
Yeah, yeah.
30:11
No, I get it.
30:11
I get it.
30:12
I get it.
30:13
Because, you know, he must have had a great joy like I could
30:15
imagine when he was in flow and he was in the zone with his Oh,
30:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
30:18
When he was flow, flow, he would gallop around in the living room
30:21
and jump up and down and make little noises which was hilarious to watch.
30:26
Okay.
30:28
So he, he did express himself, but not, not the way you would
30:33
expect an adult man of his age to.
30:36
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
30:36
So he was playing among the fractals and the fib sequence
30:40
and the beauty of creation.
30:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
30:42
Rupert Isaacson: But unable to
30:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: gallop on the spot like a horse.
30:45
Fantastic.
30:46
Something
30:48
Rupert Isaacson: autistic behaviors.
30:49
Yeah.
30:49
No, a, a amazing.
30:51
Okay.
30:51
Okay.
30:52
So he leaves.
30:54
Mm-hmm.
30:55
You are there when that happens.
30:57
You are five.
30:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
30:58
Rupert Isaacson: Let's go on from there.
31:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, the thing is you might think, think that lots
31:04
of things happened after, but I would say that a lot of things also happened
31:07
before, and, and I know that they happened before because this is such a
31:11
cut in my timeline, so I know how old I am depending on if he's alive or not.
31:17
So I know that before the age of five I have this obsessive, I
31:23
would call it obsessive fascination with the end of consciousness.
31:30
So my thought that I can't let go of to the point of having panic
31:36
attacks and not being able to sleep is is the universe expanding or not?
31:42
This is what I think about constantly.
31:45
But I can't really phrase it because I'm too young.
31:47
But this is, this is on.
31:48
Why
31:49
Rupert Isaacson: would that have mattered to you?
31:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I have no idea.
31:52
But it did, I mean, it was a matter of life and death.
31:55
I could not stop thinking about it.
31:56
And, and I still find it fascinating.
31:58
Rupert Isaacson: Did you ask your dad, did you ask those adults around you because
32:02
they seem to have been the people who would've also thought of such questions?
32:06
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
32:06
Maybe we did, did discuss some of it.
32:08
I don't know.
32:09
But what I do remember is this constant thought and finally
32:14
coming to the conclusion that maybe the universe is expanding.
32:18
I think I came to that conclusion because that was the easier for my mind.
32:23
So I.
32:24
If it was expanding, it would have an edge because otherwise there wouldn't be
32:30
a sort of something that would expand.
32:32
Expand.
32:33
And if you come to the edge, if you come to the edge, how can you get past the
32:39
edge and remain aware of that happening?
32:43
How can you cross the boundary into what is non-existent and still exist beyond it?
32:50
And then I, I would go to that point and then I would sit and tell
32:55
myself the word eternity, eternity, eternity, until I got so dizzy and,
33:01
and would hyperventilate and panic.
33:04
And then I, and then I had this pile of Donald Duck magazines.
33:10
'cause I learned to read when I was really young.
33:12
Sort of, I remember sort of instant.
33:14
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
33:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah, yeah.
33:15
And, and I would turn on the light, look at Donald Duck for some reason.
33:19
Donald Duck.
33:20
My mind would calm down and, and, and understand exactly what I was looking at.
33:24
Then I would close the lamp and I would start all over again.
33:27
And I would've nightmares and, and, and scream and cry.
33:31
And, but I could not, I was so drawn to, to that Okay.
33:37
Sort of far end of the, of, of what was still accessible to my mind.
33:43
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
33:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: And I still is yes, I'm still extremely fascinated of what
33:50
happens when we expand ourselves beyond what is possible for the, for the mind.
33:57
I st I still find that very fascinating, but maybe not to this or maybe
34:03
I still do get anxiety from it.
34:04
I don't know actually, but I did when I was young.
34:07
So that was before he died.
34:09
You would think that you would have all these existential thoughts because you
34:12
experience death, but that started before.
34:18
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
34:19
So you are dealing with the idea of the limits of consciousness very, very young.
34:26
Then your father does die.
34:29
Yeah.
34:29
Can you take us through the rest of your childhood now go into
34:32
your childhood, into adolescence.
34:34
Take us on that journey.
34:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: After my father died, I, I had a real fear.
34:43
I mean.
34:45
Existential anxiety is something because you choose it somehow.
34:48
But this was real fear because I knew that I was left with my mother, whom
34:52
I was terrified of because she really had these temper tantrums and fits
34:58
that was completely unpredictable.
35:00
Okay.
35:02
So I was really really afraid of being home, of going home alone.
35:09
And because I grew up in this neighborhood where it was this sort of high rise
35:15
buildings is usually for people who for some reason don't have a lot
35:19
of money or they have other issues.
35:21
So there would be quite a lot of alcoholics and drug addicts
35:24
and other broken families.
35:25
Even
35:25
Rupert Isaacson: though your dad had a good job at the university and so on.
35:27
Yeah.
35:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
35:29
Rupert Isaacson: Could he have afforded something different or,
35:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: I don't know.
35:32
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
35:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: Interesting questions
35:34
Rupert Isaacson: because yeah.
35:34
You associate university professors with living in nicer neighborhoods and things
35:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: like that.
35:39
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, yeah.
35:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
35:41
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
35:42
That was never explained to you?
35:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
35:44
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
35:44
But okay.
35:45
You're in a slightly depressed neighborhood and
35:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
35:48
Which means that there are lots of other kids with broken homes.
35:52
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
35:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: And we find each other and form some sort of family of our own.
35:58
So, that I would say was quite helpful.
36:02
Okay.
36:03
And I could explain to them that I don't dare to go home by myself.
36:06
My mother threatened to kill herself and because to me that was a real threat.
36:10
It could happen.
36:11
Yeah.
36:11
I didn't want to find her dead, so I made sure I always had a friend coming
36:14
with me if I was going home after school.
36:17
Okay.
36:17
And from the age of seven, I started to ride in a riding school.
36:22
Rupert Isaacson: Why, how did that happen?
36:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: I just wanted to be near animals.
36:27
I always wanted to be near animals, but my why
36:29
Rupert Isaacson: riding?
36:29
Why ponies?
36:30
Why horses?
36:31
Why not dogs?
36:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: I didn't really care about riding.
36:33
It was just a pool.
36:35
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
36:37
And who organized that for you?
36:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: I think it was my grandmother.
36:41
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
36:44
Emelie Cajsdotter: She was behind a lot of those sort of doesn't,
36:46
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
36:46
It doesn't sound like a decision your mom would've made at that
36:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: point.
36:48
No.
36:49
No.
36:49
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
36:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: And because we're in the city and the stable
36:52
is in the city, so I cycle there.
36:54
So I cycle to the stable almost every day.
36:57
And I'm with a friend in another high rise building and her mother is working
37:02
as a, she doesn't know who her father is.
37:05
So she lives alone with her mother.
37:06
And her mother is a waitress in a bar that at that time started to have drag shows.
37:13
And this was new in the time.
37:14
Right.
37:16
And I, I still love drag shows after this.
37:19
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
37:19
How can you not?
37:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
37:21
Rupert Isaacson: He doesn't love a good drag show.
37:23
Much of
37:23
Emelie Cajsdotter: everything, right?
37:24
Yeah,
37:24
Rupert Isaacson: yeah, yeah.
37:25
Emelie Cajsdotter: But anyway, joy.
37:26
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
37:27
As you know, if you followed any of my work, I'm an autism dad and we have
37:32
a whole career before this podcast in helping people with neurodivergence,
37:39
either who are professionals in the field.
37:41
Are you a therapist?
37:42
Are you a caregiver?
37:44
Are you a parent?
37:46
Or are you somebody with neurodivergence?
37:49
When my son, Rowan, was diagnosed with autism in 2004,
37:54
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37:56
So I reached out for mentorship, and I found it through an amazing adult
38:01
autistic woman who's very famous, Dr.
38:04
Temple Grandin.
38:05
And she told me what to do.
38:07
And it's been working so amazingly for the last 20 years.
38:11
That not only is my son basically independent, but we've helped
38:16
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38:20
Working in schools, working at home, working in therapy settings.
38:25
If you would like to learn this cutting edge, neuroscience backed
38:30
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38:33
You can learn it online, you can learn it very, very simply.
38:36
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38:39
The important thing is to begin.
38:43
Let yourself be mentored as I was by Dr.
38:46
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38:50
Go to this website, newtrailslearning.
38:55
com Sign up as a gold member.
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Take the online movement method course.
39:02
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39:04
Let us know how it goes for you.
39:06
We really want to know.
39:07
We really want to help people like me, people like you, out there
39:12
live their best life, to live free, ride free, see what happens.
39:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: Since I couldn't really go home most of the time
39:18
and she didn't have a father and she was working nights, um mm-hmm.
39:22
My friend's mother would take both my friend and me with her to her work.
39:28
Ah.
39:28
So we would hide behind this huge velvet, courteous and look at these big guys when
39:33
they were putting on loose tits and Yeah.
39:36
Makeup and glittery dresses and yeah.
39:40
I, I, I love that.
39:40
I still love the feeling of sort of, because we knew that we
39:43
were a bit too young to be there
39:44
Rupert Isaacson: shapeshifting and role play.
39:46
Yes.
39:47
Interesting.
39:48
Yes, yes.
39:48
That shamanic process of transformation.
39:50
Yes.
39:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: And I loved it.
39:51
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
39:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: And there was some, there was something in there and they
39:55
were happy and they were friendly and and sort of courageous in their own way.
40:01
Yeah.
40:01
Rupert Isaacson: Non-judgmental, absolutely.
40:02
Supportive of each other.
40:03
It
40:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: was amazing.
40:04
I didn't know that that world existed.
40:07
Rupert Isaacson: How old are you now at this point?
40:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm probably like 7, 8, 9 years old.
40:12
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
40:13
Emelie Cajsdotter: That sort of thing.
40:13
Rupert Isaacson: And you, you found you're cycling to a.
40:16
When you're not going to drag shows and at school you are, you're
40:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
40:20
Drag shows or, and writing school
40:23
Rupert Isaacson: brings, brings drag hunting the idea of drag.
40:26
Yeah.
40:27
Yeah.
40:27
And when you are exposed to the ponies at this point, are you talking to them?
40:33
Are they talking to you?
40:33
Or does this come later?
40:34
Well,
40:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: this, this begins this begins I to begin.
40:40
Do you
40:40
Rupert Isaacson: remember the first time?
40:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, definitely.
40:42
Please,
40:42
Rupert Isaacson: please tell us.
40:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
40:44
This is a riding school that is an image of civilization.
40:50
This is in the middle of the city.
40:52
All the horses are tied up in stalls.
40:55
There are almost no fields.
40:57
They're in a very traditional regime.
41:00
This riding school has changed now to something totally different, but back
41:04
then a regime that is based on obedience.
41:08
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
41:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: Like you do as you're told, or you will be sold or killed.
41:12
Yeah.
41:13
And, and the horses that come naturally, they come to this riding school with
41:18
quite a lot of energy or vital force, although a lot of them come through
41:23
horse tradesmen and they've had a troublesome past before they end.
41:26
Well, you know how it is.
41:28
Rupert Isaacson: I do.
41:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: And then they get broken down quite quickly.
41:32
You, you see how they start with this natural.
41:36
Playfulness taking initiative, making contact, all of these things.
41:41
And you see that fall off them as they stay on this writing school.
41:46
And then eventually they will develop some sort of physical lameness or
41:50
other issue, or they will become really aggressive and then they're gone.
41:55
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
41:56
Emelie Cajsdotter: This was, this was the situation.
41:57
And so one day this pony comes to this writing school and she's small pony, a
42:03
chestnut mare, really, really aggressive.
42:08
And in the world of linear hierarchy it's very important.
42:13
Who's the boss?
42:13
The whole idea is about that.
42:16
So a horse that makes you frightened needs to know whose boss basically,
42:22
so to deal with her aggression, she's met with more aggression.
42:28
Sure.
42:29
And usually that will make one part give up.
42:33
And usually that part is the horse because they have a very bad starting
42:38
point because they were slave in the slave trade to begin with.
42:42
So, but this pony doesn't give up.
42:44
She attacks back and she really attacks back.
42:48
And if people keep beating her to the point that she's not attacking back
42:53
anymore, she just freezes and waits.
42:56
She never submits, she never shows any sign of submission.
43:02
So then people start to, and this is the writing school teachers, they
43:05
start to try to give her sweetss.
43:07
This is around the time when, when horses were given sugar cubes.
43:11
So they would put out their hands and give her sugar cubes and she would
43:15
bite the hand, refuse the sugar cube, making a statement of that and leaving.
43:22
So this horse begins to really fascinate me.
43:27
Because for me, yes, I do have a good time at the drag shows and
43:32
I love being with my friends, but inside this, I am, I am breaking,
43:41
because I'm terrified of my mother.
43:43
I'm terrified of being home.
43:45
I feel no sense of value whatsoever.
43:48
I have this unnameable grief over my father that I can't understand or phrase.
43:54
I anyway have all these existential thoughts that can't stop
43:57
because my mind is racing just like on all my ancestry lines.
44:01
So it's very hard to be me.
44:05
So
44:08
I'm beginning to, I would say, lose myself at this time.
44:12
Mm-hmm.
44:12
And I also begin to feel that may be dying is the only way out.
44:19
'cause I know that dying is a way out.
44:21
It's present.
44:22
Yeah,
44:23
Rupert Isaacson: you've observed it.
44:23
Yeah.
44:23
Yeah.
44:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: So, and I'm not really afraid of that.
44:31
As much as I have no bloody clue how to live in this society.
44:38
So when I see this pony who obviously is impossible to break
44:42
down, it makes me very curious.
44:44
What, what is her strength?
44:47
What is her motivation?
44:49
Why, why is she, because for most of us, it's like the lack
44:53
of punishment becomes the reward.
44:55
Is that Sure.
44:55
Is she all
44:55
Rupert Isaacson: right with a child on her back?
44:57
Like it does she, that's
44:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: what throw She throws them off.
44:59
Rupert Isaacson: She throws them off.
45:00
Okay.
45:00
So, and 'cause that was gonna be my question too, about some of these ponies
45:04
that come, okay, they're not having a nice time in the writing school, but do they.
45:08
Enjoy to some degree the relationship with the children that come.
45:13
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm sure some do.
45:14
Mm-hmm.
45:14
I mean, some horses that I meet in riding schools now and, and I definitely would
45:19
say that there are riding schools doing a fabulous job of merging these worlds.
45:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
45:25
Emelie Cajsdotter: And when I meet riding school horses that are really content
45:29
in the setting, they're in, I would say they always describe that they have
45:33
this group of students that they really relate to and they feel that they totally
45:38
matter in how these individuals evolve.
45:41
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
45:42
Would be very similar.
45:43
Exactly.
45:44
They're generous.
45:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
45:45
They're generous.
45:46
Okay.
45:46
Rupert Isaacson: But this is not the case with this pony.
45:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
45:48
And this is not the case, the way that place is being run at that time.
45:53
Rupert Isaacson: So you become fascinated with this pony.
45:56
What Then
45:56
Emelie Cajsdotter: I become fascinated because what is it that
45:59
she has that nobody else have?
46:01
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
46:01
Emelie Cajsdotter: How, how, why is she not breaking down and
46:05
how can she be so courageous?
46:06
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
46:07
Mm-hmm.
46:08
' Emelie Cajsdotter: cause she knows that she's going to be bitten and treated
46:10
horribly, but somehow for her, it's worth it rather than losing herself.
46:16
Mm-hmm.
46:17
So.
46:18
Why does she like picks this, this fight?
46:21
Mm-hmm.
46:22
So I go down to her stable and I don't dare to go in
46:26
because they're tied in stalls.
46:27
And what she does is that she looks at these people with her ears forward, and
46:31
then when they go in, she kicks them into the wall and don't let them out.
46:35
And sometimes she bites people's stomachs and she don't let go.
46:38
And, and I've seen that happen and they sort of scream and many
46:41
people have to go in and take them out and it's quite terrifying.
46:44
So I don't dare to go in, but I'm totally fascinated and I think that
46:50
this original genuine fascination without an agenda might be one of
46:58
the keys to what's gonna happen next.
47:01
Because basically my question to her is, who are you?
47:08
It's not, can you please change?
47:10
Why are you doing this?
47:11
Why can't you behave?
47:13
It's who I really want to know who she is.
47:16
And now when the horse is here years later, have started a school
47:21
in empathic into being for humans, this is the question that we work
47:25
with the most, the curiosity to really meet the essence of another
47:32
living, being without any other want.
47:37
Not because I want something of you, not because I want it to lead
47:40
to anywhere, just because I want.
47:43
To be where, where you are somehow.
47:47
So this is what I feel when I stand outside of her stable.
47:51
And then something happens that I would say is grace.
47:59
And, and maybe because I was so ready to give up.
48:06
I mean, I wanted to die anyway, so I don't really have a lot to lose
48:10
in having my image of the world torn down as I probably would have
48:17
if I was in a really good place.
48:22
Because what happens is that this invisible plexiglass wall that is
48:27
usually between each one of us in this type of society, meaning that I can see
48:33
you and I can relate to you, I can hear what you're saying, and I can to some
48:39
extent, through my biological design.
48:42
Also I do have mirror neurons.
48:45
So if you were sad, I would be sad, but I wouldn't know what it's like to be you.
48:50
It would always be how I feel when something happens to you and how I
48:56
interpret what happens to me when something happens to you, right?
49:02
In this case, this, this rule is taken off.
49:06
So.
49:08
Instantly and without any warning or preparation, I know
49:15
exactly how it is to be her.
49:19
It doesn't mean that I forget that I'm also Emily.
49:24
I know that I'm standing on the stable floor and, and observing her, but so
49:29
I know what is me and I know what is her, but all of a sudden I'm in her
49:35
and I'm also in her observing me.
49:38
So it's like I do feel exactly how it is to be her, but she also
49:44
feels exactly how it is to be me.
49:47
And all of these things are happening simultaneously without
49:52
any stress of comprehending all of that at the same time.
49:56
But what I do find, and I'm 11 at this time.
49:59
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
50:01
Emelie Cajsdotter: What is frightening to me is that all of a sudden, my
50:06
entire foundation of how I've built, my way of looking at reality is gone.
50:12
It literally feels like someone pulls the carpet and you're standing
50:17
on a completely different floor.
50:19
And what is inside of her is this intense sadness and feeling of
50:28
being completely misunderstood.
50:32
And regardless of how high you scream and how strongly you
50:37
express yourself, no one hears you.
50:40
It, it, it, it's, it's like screaming inside of, you know, one
50:44
of those little boxes that has is soundproof so nothing comes out.
50:50
And that sense of extreme powerlessness was really overwhelming to me.
50:59
Now, when her feeling of extreme powerlessness hits me, it hits me in a
51:05
spot where I am forced to see myself.
51:09
Because if I, if I am completely experiencing you, I also have to have
51:14
this complete honesty in experiencing me, because now I'm being seen with
51:20
the same eyes from, from the other one.
51:23
Mm-hmm.
51:24
So I'm also faced with my own inner state unmasked my own desperation
51:33
feeling of never fitting in and not knowing how to live this life.
51:36
All of this is coming crashing in at exactly the same time.
51:40
And, and I, I realized what is what you would think that there is a
51:45
emerging, but it isn't because that will be a projection and this is not
51:50
so, and then she has this image of.
51:56
A big barn type building.
51:59
And I would never know if this building existed for real or if it is symbolic.
52:03
I can't tell.
52:04
But there is an image of a barn and a low wooden door.
52:08
I would say that any old Swedish wooden barn could look a bit like that.
52:12
And in this image, she is being forced to go in through this small narrow
52:18
door with some sort of whip or cane, or there is something long and narrow
52:24
and the feeling is to refuse to go into something that will diminish you.
52:33
And, and I'll never forget that feeling for as long as I live.
52:36
I think which answered my question.
52:40
Who, who are you?
52:41
Why are you so strong?
52:43
Well, this is her strength.
52:44
She refuses to adapt herself to a destructive
52:49
circumstance, and she never did
52:51
Rupert Isaacson: what happened to her in the end.
52:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: What happened to her in the end was that she got COPD,
52:56
which is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was going to be put down.
53:03
My grandmother realized that if this pony dies, maybe so will my granddaughter.
53:07
So, okay.
53:08
Rupert Isaacson: So you build a relationship with this pony?
53:10
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
53:10
Yes.
53:11
Because after this event, this, this happened, I don't know
53:15
for how long this went on.
53:16
Probably not very long in linear time, is my guess.
53:20
Not that anyone on the outside would notice.
53:22
You would just see a girl standing in a stable and a horse eating hay.
53:25
Right.
53:26
And it's completely life altering forever.
53:29
And, and I realized that there is another way I realized that there is something,
53:39
there is a way outta this isolation.
53:43
Rupert Isaacson: You go and tell your grandmother this,
53:44
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
53:45
Rupert Isaacson: Immediately.
53:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Not immediately, I think, but at some point
53:49
Rupert Isaacson: soon-ish.
53:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
53:51
Rupert Isaacson: Say, Hey granny, I've had this kind of Yes, yes.
53:52
And that
53:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: I feel this.
53:54
Exactly.
53:55
And then she would say, oh, well that's normal, and continue
53:58
with whatever she's doing.
53:59
Okay.
54:00
Usually what motor?
54:03
Okay,
54:03
Rupert Isaacson: so, so the, the horse develops a chronic ailment.
54:06
It's heading for a bullet job.
54:07
Probably.
54:08
Emelie Cajsdotter: I, I become her groom.
54:10
You know how it is in writing schools?
54:11
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
54:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: I realized that this pony holds a key and in my Presumably she
54:17
Rupert Isaacson: doesn't pin you against the wall and rip your guts out.
54:19
She
54:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: does.
54:20
She does.
54:20
She does.
54:21
Yes, she does.
54:21
Every
54:21
Rupert Isaacson: time.
54:22
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
54:22
Almost.
54:23
This, this, this is also an interesting part and an important part.
54:26
Rupert Isaacson: How do you survive?
54:29
Emelie Cajsdotter: Lots of bruises.
54:32
She, I feel that she holds the key outta this reality, so I can't let go of her.
54:40
I understand that.
54:40
What she shows me is that that key is equally in me as it is in her.
54:44
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
54:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: But with my linear mind, I need her to not
54:50
lose myself is my beginning point.
54:52
So I clinging on to this pony.
54:55
And the way to do that is to be her groom.
54:58
She hates being groomed.
55:00
Okay.
55:00
And I hang onto her like a drowning man to, you know, this sort of life vest.
55:08
And she begins to test me.
55:10
And I think that from a linear perspective, we tend to see
55:14
testing as a, as a power game.
55:17
Like you test someone until you know who's boss and then that sorted.
55:21
But what if the test is about who are you?
55:25
Do you know at all what you're made of?
55:27
What if that is the test?
55:29
And it's not about power at all, because if we remove the
55:32
hierarchy it's good for everyone.
55:36
Like literally everyone on the planet that I am the sort of utmost
55:42
honest, complete version of myself because that is my gift to this life.
55:48
And, and I'm broken and, and, and I want to die.
55:51
And I'm terrified of everything.
55:53
And, and I'm not in a good state.
55:55
Mm-hmm.
55:56
So this pony doesn't want to be groomed.
55:58
She doesn't want me to clinging on for emotional support.
56:01
She can't give any of that.
56:03
She knows that.
56:04
I have to find that in me.
56:07
So she brings me to this difficult test where most people sell their
56:11
horses, which is the test of endurance.
56:16
It's like, okay, so now you had a glimpse of what's possible?
56:19
Are you prepared to do the work?
56:22
So am I trustworthy to her?
56:24
Am I trustworthy to myself?
56:26
How do I deal with fear?
56:28
All of these things.
56:29
I go to her stable every day.
56:31
She bites and kicks me almost every day.
56:34
And after a year and a half and, and I begin to develop this love for her and I
56:41
begin to realize that that sort of love doesn't need any confirmation whatsoever.
56:49
And after a year and a half, she puts her muscle on my shoulder for two minutes.
56:57
And I'll never forget that either because I didn't.
57:00
Go there every day for a year and a half for her to do that.
57:05
She, she never needed to give me anything back.
57:09
And that was extremely helpful.
57:12
If, if I didn't go through those years with her, I would never work with animals
57:16
that has PTSD or go through these healing processes that takes 5, 6, 7, 10 years.
57:23
Maybe the first five without any results that you could see.
57:29
Rupert Isaacson: So, okay.
57:30
After she puts her muzzle on your, on your shoulder, what, what happens
57:34
then to her, to you, to you both
57:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: Quite shortly after that, she gets sick.
57:41
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
57:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: And you could easily see how a horse would develop
57:46
a lung disease in an environment that is almost only indoors.
57:49
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, totally.
57:50
I mean, it's, it's a known thing with overly stable horses.
57:54
Yeah.
57:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: And you could also maybe add an element of Chinese medicine
57:59
into the equation where lung diseases is considered, in some cases relating
58:06
to inherent fear and deep grief.
58:10
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
58:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: So, and what I saw was also a horse that constantly fought
58:18
for her integrity and she preserved that.
58:21
Hmm.
58:21
But that also means that during all the time that you do that,
58:24
because you're in a war I.
58:26
Hmm.
58:27
You don't do all these other things.
58:29
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
58:29
That's exhaust.
58:30
Yeah.
58:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: And, and you don't live your life.
58:33
Right.
58:34
You don't thrive.
58:35
You don't develop your your qualities and talents.
58:38
You don't make friends, you survive.
58:40
You do every whatever it takes to survive, but you emotionally depleted.
58:46
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
58:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: And exhausted.
58:48
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
58:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: So she's going to be put down for this.
58:52
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
58:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: My grandmother interferes and buys this horse,
58:56
and at this point I'm 14 years old.
58:58
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
58:59
Have you been riding her?
59:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
59:01
That works.
59:02
She's not throwing
59:02
Rupert Isaacson: you off?
59:03
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, she's not throwing me off.
59:04
She's brilliant.
59:04
She runs really fast, you know, she, she takes the bit and just
59:08
takes off and, and I love it.
59:09
Rupert Isaacson: So by then, you guys have worked out a
59:11
relationship of riding together too?
59:13
Yeah.
59:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
59:15
That was the sort of easy part, I would say.
59:17
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
59:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: it was.
59:18
And she
59:18
Rupert Isaacson: was chucking other people off before, right?
59:20
Yes.
59:20
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, she was.
59:21
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
59:21
Okay.
59:23
But by now, she's, she's accepted you and you guys are cool together to what?
59:28
Yes.
59:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: We're even doing dressage together.
59:30
We are doing some sort of, you know, when there is this Christmas or Easter
59:33
or whatever, we are doing little things, you know, doing the quad
59:35
Rupert Isaacson: drills and the display and that.
59:37
Okay.
59:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: Like these sort of mirror things when one tiny, because she
59:42
was very small, she's doing all these things and another big horse with the same
59:46
color is doing the same thing and Yeah.
59:48
Rupert Isaacson: Part the, yeah, yeah,
59:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah.
59:50
That's the name.
59:51
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, cool.
59:52
So you guys work out some harmonious mm-hmm.
59:57
We do.
59:57
Relationship that she carries you, she agrees to carry you.
1:00:00
Yep.
1:00:00
Then she gets sick And your, your grandmother buys the pony.
1:00:03
Okay.
1:00:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: She buys the pony and I am over the moon because now I
1:00:08
think that it's all solved and over.
1:00:11
Right?
1:00:12
Yeah.
1:00:13
'cause I have no idea what you're in for.
1:00:14
When an animal decides to become your teacher, it's never over.
1:00:19
Right?
1:00:20
So she's being taken from the riding school and put in the
1:00:24
stable in the countryside where she can be outside all the time.
1:00:28
It's this open, stable, she can go in and out.
1:00:31
All the stress is taken away.
1:00:32
So in my world, all that's gonna happen next is that she's gonna
1:00:36
be well and everyone is will in
1:00:38
Rupert Isaacson: after.
1:00:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: She gets much worse because at that point, I don't know that
1:00:45
when you have a stress related disease of some sort, and you come to a place where
1:00:50
you are safe, everything comes crushing up to the surface at the same time.
1:00:56
Now, this is what I tell people when I'm out working and this happens to
1:00:59
them now I can be supportive of that.
1:01:02
But this is the first time it happens to me, so I have no idea.
1:01:07
So I try everything because now the old desperation is back.
1:01:10
If she dies, my life is over.
1:01:12
There is no opening to the world of non isolation.
1:01:17
And, and in the meantime, this door that opened between us in our first meeting
1:01:24
never really closed because it's like this double swinging door that is like this.
1:01:29
So if I'm with near an animal that isn't feeling well, all of
1:01:33
a sudden I turn into that animal.
1:01:35
This, I, I can't control this going in and out.
1:01:38
Rupert Isaacson: This is happening to you?
1:01:40
Yes.
1:01:40
From this point on with other animals?
1:01:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:01:42
Yes.
1:01:43
Yeah.
1:01:43
Particularly animals that are not feeling well, that, that's
1:01:46
the only pattern I can see.
1:01:48
Mm-hmm.
1:01:48
I'm terrified of it and I don't really talk about it.
1:01:51
Yeah.
1:01:52
And then I try every treatment under the sun to heal this pony, like
1:02:00
alternative treatment, vet medicine.
1:02:02
Any other vet that someone heard of and Well, you know.
1:02:06
You go through it a lot because you're terrified.
1:02:09
And
1:02:09
Rupert Isaacson: well, it's also the quest you're called to you, you,
1:02:12
you, you are, you have to in a way.
1:02:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:02:14
Yes, yes.
1:02:15
Yeah, yeah.
1:02:16
And she responds to absolutely nothing.
1:02:18
And to me it's incomprehensible.
1:02:21
Why can't she get better from anything at all?
1:02:25
Then there is divine interference.
1:02:28
Divine interference comes in a form of a short notice in the local newspaper.
1:02:34
And it's my mother who spots it.
1:02:36
I mean, we really don't have much contact and it doesn't work very well.
1:02:40
But she, she spots this notice in the newspaper that says a veterinarian
1:02:47
from New Zealand is coming to Sweden to give a series of lectures in the
1:02:52
subject chronic pulmonary diseases in horses and alternative treatments
1:02:58
of, I mean, that is not happening.
1:03:01
That's too precise.
1:03:03
So my mother says, maybe you should go to this.
1:03:06
And yeah, I'm going to that lecture.
1:03:08
I don't listen to the lecture at all because my only focus is I need to
1:03:12
get this man to come and see the pony.
1:03:14
So directly after the lecture, I run to this old man and, and saying, you,
1:03:18
you have to come and see my pony.
1:03:21
And he says, yes, fine.
1:03:22
We can go tomorrow.
1:03:23
I can borrow a car.
1:03:24
And we go and see your pony because she's in the outskirts
1:03:26
of, she's now outside of the city.
1:03:28
And I take a bus out every day and cycle every day.
1:03:31
So two hours traveling every day to go to this pony.
1:03:34
It's still, the test of endurance is on, right?
1:03:38
And so we are supposed to meet the following day in a cafe.
1:03:43
And yeah, I go to the cafe and he says, well, the car broke
1:03:47
down so we can't go to your pony.
1:03:50
But now you have a choice.
1:03:52
Either you go back to school and make your teachers happy.
1:03:55
I wasn't too keen on school.
1:03:58
So it wasn't hard for me to skip.
1:04:01
Or you stay here and I will tell you about what I do.
1:04:06
And I didn't realize that this was one of these crossroads that really
1:04:11
matters because I was just desperate wanting the pony to get better.
1:04:14
So I thought, I don't want to lose connection to this guy.
1:04:17
So I stay.
1:04:19
And this man spent a full day talking to this kid about what he's doing,
1:04:25
which includes healing Chinese medicine, homeopathy all sorts of
1:04:33
energetically based treatments basically.
1:04:36
And during this whole day when we sit in this cafe, I begin to.
1:04:41
Remember something because somehow none of this is new to me.
1:04:46
This is something that some part of me already know, and all of
1:04:52
a sudden I understand that I am meant to do something similar.
1:05:00
This is why I get drawn in and out of animals because I'm meant
1:05:06
to be able to do something.
1:05:10
So, and it was such a huge relief to find that foundation
1:05:14
in me already at the age of 14.
1:05:22
Rupert Isaacson: Dot, dot, dot.
1:05:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:05:24
So, then the next day, the car is fixed.
1:05:28
So he says, now we can go to the pony, because now the car works.
1:05:31
And she responds like clockwork to the treatment.
1:05:34
Rupert Isaacson: What does he do?
1:05:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: He puts needles he gives acupuncture and gives her a mixture
1:05:40
of herbs amongst them I know is Chili pepper because I have to go and buy it.
1:05:45
And she just immediately responds to that.
1:05:49
What was the
1:05:49
Rupert Isaacson: name of this bat?
1:05:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: Sorry, what was his name?
1:05:53
Tony Frith.
1:05:54
I'm, I'm, I don't know if he's still alive.
1:05:56
Rupert Isaacson: Tony Frith.
1:05:57
I might look him up later.
1:05:59
Emelie Cajsdotter: He, he is in New Zealand.
1:06:02
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, cool.
1:06:04
Please go on.
1:06:05
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:06:06
And and he stays for another one or two weeks in Sweden.
1:06:09
So I follow him as an assistant.
1:06:11
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:06:12
'cause
1:06:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: I really want to learn as much as possible, and he's
1:06:14
very kind in taking this kid on.
1:06:17
And I also realized that being such her name was period means the tiny one was
1:06:23
such a great teacher that the timing of healing, she's not sick because of me.
1:06:29
She's not sacrificing herself for my teaching, but the timing of
1:06:34
her disease and what I have to learn is absolutely brilliant.
1:06:40
And somehow she knows that because she doesn't have that fear that I
1:06:44
have, she has completely given herself to her destiny in a way that is at
1:06:51
that point, still unknown to me.
1:06:55
I mean, I struggle to keep everything together.
1:06:58
And then he, this, this vet, he leaves me with a bunch of acupuncture needles,
1:07:03
flies back to the other side of the world and says, now the rest is up to you.
1:07:09
And, and around the same time, my mother says the same thing.
1:07:13
My mother, who at that point suffers from a great depression.
1:07:19
She can't get outta bed.
1:07:20
I remember neighbors having to come in to sort of lift her around.
1:07:23
She was in a really bad state.
1:07:24
She was in a destructive relationship.
1:07:26
Plenty of those.
1:07:28
But this one may be a bit more particular.
1:07:31
And she tells me this is without anger.
1:07:33
She just says, I, I can't look after you.
1:07:36
Which, which is obvious.
1:07:37
I, I, I will give you a bank account card and the money, the grant you
1:07:42
get from the government each month for having a kid, which is about $80,
1:07:49
it's like you will get that amount of money that I would get for you.
1:07:52
And you just have to, you, you have to find a way.
1:07:55
Rupert Isaacson: And grandmother, is it still around at this point?
1:07:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: She's still around, but she is not really
1:08:00
feeling very well in herself either.
1:08:03
So I get more or less financially independent at that age.
1:08:08
Rupert Isaacson: This is what, nineteen eighty two, eighty three?
1:08:11
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm born 74.
1:08:12
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:08:13
It's a bit later then it's like Yeah.
1:08:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's like late eighties.
1:08:16
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:08:17
Okay.
1:08:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: And then and I have one talent that I don't have
1:08:22
to work for, and that is painting.
1:08:25
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:08:26
Emelie Cajsdotter: So I become a portrait painter and financially
1:08:31
support me and this pony mm-hmm.
1:08:34
By painting portraits from that day on.
1:08:38
Okay.
1:08:38
Which I continued to do until.
1:08:40
I started to do this as a full-time living.
1:08:45
I mean, I don't have time to paint now, but hopefully I will go hide
1:08:49
somewhere at some point and continue.
1:08:52
Rupert Isaacson: Bit like me in writing.
1:08:53
Yeah.
1:08:53
Yes.
1:08:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Okay.
1:08:55
Time.
1:08:56
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:08:56
So you are now 15, 16.
1:08:59
Emelie Cajsdotter: 14.
1:09:01
Rupert Isaacson: 14.
1:09:01
This happens at 14?
1:09:02
Yeah.
1:09:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:09:03
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:09:03
And meanwhile, adolescence has happened.
1:09:05
Puberty's happened.
1:09:06
Yeah.
1:09:06
And has that further opened up any kind of portals in your
1:09:12
perception, or has that changed any?
1:09:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:09:16
That door I, I'm, I'm calmer with it because now I understand
1:09:20
that it has a context.
1:09:22
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
1:09:23
Emelie Cajsdotter: But what happens in, in adolescence is that it becomes
1:09:29
messier meaning messies, maybe not, confusing is maybe a better word
1:09:35
because it's never, I never had, I had one really frightening experience,
1:09:41
but, and I brought that on myself.
1:09:44
We could do that one too.
1:09:46
It's a short one, but, but all good boys.
1:09:49
Yeah.
1:09:49
All my experiences with, with ancestors, with other species with.
1:09:56
It always comes from a source that has kindness.
1:10:00
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:10:01
Emelie Cajsdotter: I, I've, I've never had an encounter with Ill intent
1:10:07
Rupert Isaacson: except for one you say?
1:10:08
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, except for one.
1:10:10
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:10:10
Tell us that one.
1:10:11
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:10:12
It was in this time when all of a sudden I could sit on the tram and
1:10:16
I would be in a different place.
1:10:19
I would see people that would be deceased or in amongst other people.
1:10:23
It, it, it was, it is like many doors going like this as adolescents is, even
1:10:29
if you don't add spirituality to it.
1:10:31
Right.
1:10:32
So, and, and I realized that I have to do something about this and, and, and
1:10:38
this only one bad event I have is when I have decided to not listen to any of it.
1:10:46
I have this short period, very short, maybe a few days
1:10:52
when I decide to be normal.
1:10:55
Get an education, get a proper job get myself a, you know, secure
1:11:00
foundation, not based on all these other things that no one can see or feel.
1:11:05
And and, and I decide to, you know, cut your hair and go and
1:11:09
get a job, that sort of thing.
1:11:13
So I, I decide to be normal and stop this bullshit nonsense.
1:11:18
And and at night when I'm just about to go to sleep and the room
1:11:23
is dark, I see this headless figure coming close, closer to the bed.
1:11:30
And it's really scary because it's just, it's just moving and I
1:11:32
can't, I can't communicate with it and I can't stop it from moving.
1:11:37
And any sort of prayer or way to try to get to a a center point doesn't work.
1:11:45
And I turn on the lamp and it doesn't work.
1:11:47
This, this, this being is just moving close.
1:11:49
I get sort of heart palpitations when I speak about it.
1:11:51
Now it's getting to here when I realize that, wait a minute, this
1:11:57
figure that I'm looking at, this headless figure is me, it's my body.
1:12:02
I am, I'm, I'm killing myself.
1:12:06
Okay?
1:12:07
Because the feeling was that this, this individual would come and suffocate me.
1:12:10
Hmm.
1:12:11
It's like, and ever since that experience, it is like, okay, I
1:12:16
promise I will never do anything normal and secure in my whole life.
1:12:25
So, and the
1:12:26
Rupert Isaacson: figure, when you have that realization,
1:12:27
the figure sort of evaporates.
1:12:29
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:12:29
Yeah.
1:12:29
They just wasn't there anymore.
1:12:31
Rupert Isaacson: So.
1:12:31
Interesting.
1:12:33
Are you still 14 or are you a bit older at this point?
1:12:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm around that like 15.
1:12:39
Rupert Isaacson: Are you having relationships at this point
1:12:40
or are you very much a loner?
1:12:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm a loner at this point, and I am slightly
1:12:47
uninterested in romantic relationships because my friends who has that, they
1:12:52
become slightly boring in my eyes.
1:12:54
Right.
1:12:55
They, they start to sort of sit inside and hold hands and
1:12:58
they're not out on adventures.
1:12:59
And and
1:13:00
Rupert Isaacson: are people, are people observing you, other
1:13:04
types of relationship too?
1:13:05
So are people observing, you say doing acupuncture on your pony, which
1:13:08
back then would've been something very new and so, and are people
1:13:12
now asking you to do similar things or are you kind of in isolation?
1:13:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm, I'm in isolation in the sense that
1:13:19
I'm, I'm just doing this for me.
1:13:21
Mm-hmm.
1:13:22
The things I do for others is portrait painting.
1:13:25
Okay.
1:13:27
But I've always had friends.
1:13:32
And still do always lots and lots of friends.
1:13:36
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:13:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: And so you're not
1:13:37
Rupert Isaacson: isolated in that regard.
1:13:38
You are having relationships just not romantic.
1:13:40
Yeah.
1:13:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:13:41
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:13:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: And then I moved school, this is like now I'm probably 16.
1:13:48
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:13:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: And now, now the pony is back on track.
1:13:51
I mean, she's healed from her disease.
1:13:53
And, and I know what I'm meant to be doing.
1:13:57
So now it's climbed up from this, there is no way for me,
1:14:00
I need to die sort of thing.
1:14:01
I'm not there.
1:14:02
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:14:03
Emelie Cajsdotter: But in this awakening, I become very provocative.
1:14:13
Because all of a sudden I don't need to conform.
1:14:16
Right?
1:14:16
This whole story of you have to go to school, otherwise you will end up a tramp.
1:14:23
That doesn't work for me anymore because I know what I'm meant to be doing.
1:14:26
So I know that there is a way.
1:14:28
So all this obey or you shall be doomed has no effect.
1:14:33
And because I'm stronger I dare to sort of test my surroundings.
1:14:39
So, so now I, I turn into a much more sort of feisty type of person.
1:14:47
And I begin to study Dao de Ching.
1:14:50
For some reason, I find this tiny little Dao de Ching book written translated
1:14:55
by a guy called Steven Mitchell.
1:14:57
And I still read this book because I love that particular translation.
1:15:01
And I begin to question every single thing around me and I go to this
1:15:09
school because you change school at that age in Sweden, and I want to
1:15:13
focus on biology because I think that maybe that would make sense to me.
1:15:19
I, I realized that I will need typewriting biology and English.
1:15:23
So I, this is before you have computer science in school.
1:15:27
And, and this is true.
1:15:28
These are the only things that I ever needed and eventually not,
1:15:32
maybe not biology in the same as much as English and typewriting.
1:15:37
And I find like-minded friends that are questioning society in a very.
1:15:44
Non-aggressive way.
1:15:47
It's like we will protest against the traffic in the inner city of Gothenburg
1:15:51
by dancing samba in the middle of the street so no one can pass us.
1:15:55
It's a lot of playfulness.
1:15:57
It's not that sort of hatred driven protesting.
1:16:01
And amongst those friends is a person that I really owe gratitude to.
1:16:08
And that is a guy who is a musician in the Samba band.
1:16:13
It's lots of samba dancing.
1:16:15
And he, the
1:16:16
Rupert Isaacson: samba is so Swedish.
1:16:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, yeah.
1:16:19
No, but you know, it was the military coup in what was his name?
1:16:24
Pinochet.
1:16:26
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, yeah,
1:16:26
Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah.
1:16:26
Those refugees.
1:16:28
The kids born in that flight from Chile.
1:16:33
From Chile would be about my age.
1:16:34
These, that's the samba squad.
1:16:37
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:16:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: And anyway, and this is the first time since my
1:16:41
father that I meet an absolute person.
1:16:45
This, this samba musician is completely in a world of his own.
1:16:48
We never really spoke because you couldn't he always had these headphones
1:16:53
on and he was always playing samba on everything on the table, on his body,
1:16:58
on his teeth, on his bag on the lessons outside of the lessons in the canteen.
1:17:05
And what I noticed with him doing that was that obviously
1:17:10
he was 100% true to himself.
1:17:13
Mm-hmm.
1:17:13
He wasn't playing samba.
1:17:15
He was samba.
1:17:17
Got it.
1:17:17
And because he was it, no one could have an opinion about that.
1:17:22
He just was who he is.
1:17:26
Mm.
1:17:26
So no one ever asked him to stop.
1:17:28
No one told him that your life is doomed and you should all be a sort of in poverty
1:17:32
and hell unless you start listening to your teachers, they let him be.
1:17:38
So, I, I noticed his way through the world in school and that Okay, if
1:17:45
he can do that, I can do that too.
1:17:48
I'm not meant to play samba.
1:17:50
I'm meant to do something completely different.
1:17:52
I'm meant to do empathic into being with other species and, and if I'm 100% true
1:17:58
to that, without making any excuses, the world is not going to stop me.
1:18:05
This was so incredibly helpful that I actually found this guy's phone number
1:18:11
a couple of years ago and, and, and wrote him a text to say thank you.
1:18:15
And he said, oh I didn't realize that that would affect anyone else,
1:18:19
but, but he had come to exactly the same conclusions for himself.
1:18:24
He just,
1:18:24
Rupert Isaacson: what, what have he got on to do by the way, out of interest?
1:18:26
Emelie Cajsdotter: He, he is still a samba musician.
1:18:28
He is in some really good orchestras playing with some really good sort
1:18:33
of well-known Swedish musician.
1:18:35
He can make a living out of it.
1:18:36
Mm-hmm.
1:18:36
And he has a samba school in Rio.
1:18:38
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
1:18:42
Okay.
1:18:42
So, you are now heading for college?
1:18:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:18:47
This is sort of college, I suppose.
1:18:48
College.
1:18:49
Okay.
1:18:49
When, when you are sort of 16 to 19, kind of what's
1:18:51
Rupert Isaacson: interesting to me so far is that with the possible exception
1:18:55
of the pony, and I presume you are trail riding the pony in the forest.
1:18:59
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:19:00
Rupert Isaacson: So far the forest has not entered the story.
1:19:03
And I remember when I went to Sweden at 12 years old, I was taken that I,
1:19:08
I was in a choir and the choir went on tour in Sweden for, for some reason.
1:19:14
And so I found myself there and I remember thinking, oh my God, this
1:19:19
is such a beautiful place and.
1:19:25
The forest, of course, being everywhere.
1:19:26
And so I remember going to Gothenburg.
1:19:29
Mm-hmm.
1:19:29
Because I think that's actually, that was our entry point now that
1:19:31
I think, yeah, we, we went on the boat and we entered at Gothenburg.
1:19:34
I don't care.
1:19:35
Gothenburg was a city, but I was coming from London.
1:19:36
It's like it's not a
1:19:37
Emelie Cajsdotter: city.
1:19:37
Yeah.
1:19:37
No, it's not a city, it's a town.
1:19:39
Rupert Isaacson: And so you know, the forest is like there, you know,
1:19:42
every, like, it's not like London where you'd have to, you know, cycle
1:19:45
for half a day to get to the city.
1:19:47
It's like, no, the forest, it's there.
1:19:49
So even if you're in a high rise in Gothenburg, the forest is accessible.
1:19:54
It's close.
1:19:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:19:56
No, the forest is actually in it all along because me.
1:19:59
Okay.
1:19:59
So, so just dial us
1:20:00
Rupert Isaacson: back to the forest.
1:20:01
When does the forest enter your life and how
1:20:05
Emelie Cajsdotter: it starts with these big beach trees?
1:20:07
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:20:08
Emelie Cajsdotter: It definitely does.
1:20:09
And a constant feeling of the forest being home.
1:20:15
Right.
1:20:17
And I would say that that's still the nature type that, well, I love
1:20:24
all nature types not right, but it's, it's ecosystem, but is really close
1:20:27
Rupert Isaacson: that you grew up in.
1:20:28
Absolutely, yes.
1:20:29
And,
1:20:30
Emelie Cajsdotter: and I remember also seeing these big floaty
1:20:34
almost whiteish, big round things floating between the trees.
1:20:38
I, I, I still am to this day, don't know what that is, but
1:20:41
like some sort of forest spirits.
1:20:45
They wouldn't be there all the time, but the times that I had seen
1:20:48
them I, I just love that feeling.
1:20:52
So did they ever
1:20:53
Rupert Isaacson: talk to you?
1:20:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, those never did.
1:20:55
It was just a presence.
1:20:57
Okay.
1:20:57
But I also began to see what we in Sweden called little people like small
1:21:05
forest spirits or nature spirits.
1:21:07
Rupert Isaacson: At what, at, at what age do you see them and how does
1:21:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: around this 14, 15, 16.
1:21:15
Around the time when, yeah.
1:21:18
Rupert Isaacson: As you may know, if you've been following my work,
1:21:20
we are also horsey folk here.
1:21:23
And we have been training horses for many, many years in the manner of
1:21:27
the old classical dressage masters.
1:21:31
This is something which is often very confusing for people.
1:21:34
We shine a light on that murky, difficult stuff and make it crystal clear.
1:21:39
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1:21:52
and begin to take the Helios Harmony course, which will take you from zero
1:21:57
to the Piaf, where the horse is dancing on the spot in hand on the ground.
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com to unlock the secrets of the old masters.
1:22:13
Okay.
1:22:13
That's interesting to me.
1:22:14
Not younger because, you know, I think, I think no, but I was never really young
1:22:17
kids report seeing things like this.
1:22:19
But then it, they stopped seeing them usually at adolescents?
1:22:22
No,
1:22:22
Emelie Cajsdotter: I was in the city.
1:22:23
I saw mainly dead relatives and,
1:22:27
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
1:22:28
So, so you, when you were a kid, dead relatives, and then as
1:22:32
soon as you, you managed to get out to the country with this?
1:22:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:22:35
Rupert Isaacson: You began little people.
1:22:36
Yes.
1:22:37
Did the little people talk to you?
1:22:38
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:22:39
Rupert Isaacson: What do they say?
1:22:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, it's a lot about healing generosity,
1:22:44
how to help nature, I would say.
1:22:46
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:22:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: Like an embodiment of helping nature the way I Can you, can you
1:22:50
Rupert Isaacson: remember, do certain conversations or interactions stand out?
1:22:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
1:22:54
Not really, but I, I remember like learning about different plants and.
1:23:00
These sort of things.
1:23:00
So when I realized that I no longer need to be obedient and I was almost
1:23:05
never in school anymore except a few days a week to get inspired by samba
1:23:11
friends, then I would be out in the forest looking for forest spirits.
1:23:15
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:23:16
Would you always find them?
1:23:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
1:23:18
And that wasn't really the point.
1:23:19
I think the point was that it was such an, it just felt like a quest that made sense
1:23:25
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
1:23:26
When, when you found them
1:23:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:23:28
Rupert Isaacson: How did you find, like, what was, I think they
1:23:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: find you,
1:23:32
Rupert Isaacson: how they'd appear.
1:23:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: They, they would just appear as, as sort of almost
1:23:38
like being one with a stone or a tree or, and they would sort of come out
1:23:46
Rupert Isaacson: and say, Hey, how's it going?
1:23:47
Or what would, what would the initial,
1:23:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: I would feel respect for them because they're sort of, they're
1:23:54
tough and a bit sharp and, and I wouldn't sort of, if I would, would see them, it
1:24:03
would feel like a huge sort of thing.
1:24:06
And I would never dare to sort of ask anything more than having got the chance.
1:24:11
Would you
1:24:11
Rupert Isaacson: greet them?
1:24:12
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, I, I would greet them.
1:24:14
Rupert Isaacson: And how would you greet them?
1:24:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: I would greet them, like I would greet
1:24:16
anything like, I, I see you.
1:24:18
Rupert Isaacson: And to which they would say
1:24:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: sort of noticing me wordless
1:24:22
Rupert Isaacson: and then saying, alright, I.
1:24:25
Emily, we've got something to teach you.
1:24:27
I'm gonna teach you about this plant now.
1:24:28
Yes.
1:24:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:24:28
It could be like that.
1:24:29
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:24:30
Okay.
1:24:31
Any physical interaction?
1:24:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: No,
1:24:36
not except sort of things disappearing and moving and those sort of things,
1:24:39
Rupert Isaacson: but not physically touching you.
1:24:41
No.
1:24:42
And then talk to us about the variety.
1:24:45
What do they look like?
1:24:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: They look like an embodiment of, like a
1:24:50
personalized embodiment of nature.
1:24:52
They don't really look like humans, but
1:24:56
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:24:56
So you're not seeing a little, because we say little people,
1:24:59
one thinks of a small person.
1:25:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:25:01
But I think we make them more human.
1:25:05
Rupert Isaacson: Would you see them as human through your mind's eye?
1:25:07
Is that how you
1:25:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, but they would have similar shapes to humans, meaning
1:25:12
that they could have arms and legs.
1:25:13
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:25:14
Arms, legs, eyes, mouth.
1:25:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:25:17
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:25:18
And always small.
1:25:22
Emelie Cajsdotter: Those types.
1:25:23
Always small.
1:25:25
Rupert Isaacson: What other types were they?
1:25:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, but other types, like more, more fairy types that
1:25:30
would be more transparent and bigger.
1:25:34
Rupert Isaacson: Talk to us about those.
1:25:35
How do you, how they appear, how do you interact with them?
1:25:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: I am.
1:25:40
So it feels like always feels disrespectful to talk
1:25:43
about them, but I will try
1:25:44
Rupert Isaacson: indeed.
1:25:45
But I think people need, people need these conversations.
1:25:48
I
1:25:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: know.
1:25:49
Rupert Isaacson: If we don't talk about it, then it's also bullshit, right.
1:25:52
Because either we're relegating it to fantasy.
1:25:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:25:55
No, I, we're,
1:25:56
Rupert Isaacson: we're, we're, we're bringing this kind of superstitious Awe.
1:26:00
Yeah.
1:26:00
Which is often around the sort of fairy thing that, that you're not
1:26:03
allowed to refer to them directly.
1:26:04
The good people.
1:26:05
The, yeah.
1:26:06
This people that you know, and therefore they're sort of slightly threatening as
1:26:10
like, what about just talking about them?
1:26:13
Because we need, by
1:26:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: the little ones the, the small people fee are sharp.
1:26:18
I think they need to be sharp with humans because we tend to
1:26:22
not really stick to our word
1:26:27
Rupert Isaacson: well because we, we, we, yeah.
1:26:27
We, we bulldoze their environments and create,
1:26:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: if they decide to go into really helping you, yes.
1:26:36
They, they probably want to make sure that you're actually going to turn up.
1:26:40
Okay.
1:26:41
We, we have a class here where the entire content comes from them in
1:26:46
relating to plant medicine from a completely different perspective.
1:26:50
Actually not using the plants like we think about using plants and
1:26:54
they teach much more about in the relationship with the plant already
1:26:58
there is a healing sort of Right.
1:27:01
And, and there it's very important to actually show up,
1:27:04
to come on time to come on all.
1:27:07
The different classes and not just sort of seeing it as a,
1:27:10
Rupert Isaacson: did you, did you meet the same entities as
1:27:12
individuals often, or was it always a different individual every time?
1:27:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: In this particular class, it's the same one.
1:27:18
Rupert Isaacson: No, but I'm talking about back you in, in the forest.
1:27:20
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, some would be repetitively similar,
1:27:22
the same and some would be new.
1:27:24
Rupert Isaacson: So there would be definitely relationships that Yes.
1:27:27
Carried over.
1:27:27
You knew the same entity.
1:27:29
Yes.
1:27:29
Over time.
1:27:31
What was the longest running relationship that you had there?
1:27:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: That would've been for a number of years?
1:27:37
When for as long as this pony was in the same area, though, I would
1:27:42
be around the, in the same forests.
1:27:44
Rupert Isaacson: I'm talking about a particular individual being
1:27:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:27:48
Yes.
1:27:48
Can
1:27:48
Rupert Isaacson: can, can you talk to us about a particular individual being that
1:27:51
you related to over a number of years and what the course of that relationship was?
1:28:01
Because I think, let's say in, in like a fairy story, the idea is you, you might
1:28:05
have an encounter in the forest with a supernatural being and it's usually
1:28:11
either a one-off or with some sort of test involved or some sort of relationship
1:28:19
with some sort of wish granting or showing you a quest and then gone.
1:28:23
But very rarely do you read about Cinderella just going open around
1:28:27
for a cup of tea, you know, with.
1:28:29
The nature spirits, you know, for the next 30 years.
1:28:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:28:32
'cause the important test isn't such a interesting story maybe.
1:28:36
Rupert Isaacson: Right, exactly.
1:28:36
So, but so, so I'm more interested, yeah.
1:28:38
I'm interested in the relationship.
1:28:39
I want to know,
1:28:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm thinking about one that I would consider male in, in
1:28:47
the energy that would be helpful in the, in the time where when Ude was
1:28:53
directly, when her healing started after the vet and stuff that would
1:28:58
sort of show himself on and off.
1:29:00
And the subject, and I'm, I'm really trying to think about it now, was a
1:29:05
lot about healing and helping animals.
1:29:08
And the same here, I'm thinking about one, there's also male type in a specific
1:29:18
place where there are refer trees.
1:29:20
And I don't know the number of years on that one because
1:29:24
I've been here for long now.
1:29:26
And then the woman type one that is designing the course for us,
1:29:33
that's for a year and a half.
1:29:34
That's a shorter one.
1:29:37
Rupert Isaacson: The male ones.
1:29:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm-hmm.
1:29:41
Rupert Isaacson: Were coming out of stones, trees,
1:29:44
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
1:29:45
Rupert Isaacson: But which,
1:29:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mainly trees.
1:29:48
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:29:49
Do you remember which tree?
1:29:50
Which type of tree?
1:29:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: Oh.
1:29:52
And then there was the one who helped with clar, like making it more open
1:29:56
in this in the empathic communication.
1:29:58
That was a juniper tree.
1:30:00
Okay.
1:30:01
Rupert Isaacson: Male or female
1:30:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: trees?
1:30:03
Male fur trees juniper trees.
1:30:07
Pine trees.
1:30:09
Rupert Isaacson: And they could be male or female?
1:30:10
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:30:12
Okay.
1:30:14
Rupert Isaacson: Spirits of water?
1:30:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:30:17
Yes.
1:30:18
Rupert Isaacson: Talk to us about them.
1:30:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: Like really playful and
1:30:24
Like a sense of sort of water fairies.
1:30:27
Rupert Isaacson: Male, female?
1:30:28
Both.
1:30:29
Emelie Cajsdotter: Both.
1:30:30
A actually less of a gender
1:30:33
Rupert Isaacson: and
1:30:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: me.
1:30:34
Rupert Isaacson: What would the lesson normally be or the teaching
1:30:37
or the interaction be with the water.
1:30:41
I,
1:30:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: I think there, there are all these lessons that are with
1:30:49
and through water as memory carrier.
1:30:53
Rupert Isaacson: Memory carrier, ah, liquid intelligence, right?
1:30:55
Yeah.
1:30:56
Emelie Cajsdotter: But that wouldn't be them, that would be the water.
1:30:59
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:31:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: I think in a way
1:31:04
they, they're so close to us.
1:31:07
It's just like
1:31:10
another dimension and a slightly different intention maybe.
1:31:15
They seem to be somehow less dense than us, and their time
1:31:17
seems slightly different.
1:31:20
But I think not always when you meet them, you are sort of targeted as their focus.
1:31:27
It's like sometimes they would come out and, and, and teach and share something
1:31:32
because I would be worried about a sick animal and I wouldn't know what to do
1:31:37
and they would maybe know what to do.
1:31:40
But it could also just be that we, we we're both living here, they're
1:31:47
living in the same stream that I'm also living close to, and sometimes for
1:31:52
some reason, we can interact and meet.
1:31:56
But it doesn't necessarily involve tests or quests or teachings.
1:32:01
It, it can do.
1:32:02
But I think more than that, it's like, it's just, they're just there because they
1:32:08
live their lives there just like we do.
1:32:11
For some reason we, we've cut them out of our way of experiencing reality.
1:32:18
But, but maybe that's because we relate to just one segment of time.
1:32:29
Of time, space.
1:32:30
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:32:31
I'm, I'm So when you were, when you were roaming around the forest as a young woman
1:32:37
did you encounter other people who also saw and interacted with these entities?
1:32:42
Or were you the only one?
1:32:44
No,
1:32:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: I, I would be the only one until I met
1:32:47
Maori people in New Zealand.
1:32:49
I would be quite alone on that
1:32:51
Rupert Isaacson: because, 'cause quite a lot of people in Scandinavia
1:32:53
are still quite connected to the land and the forest.
1:32:57
Why do you think you, you were isolated in that, that there weren't like
1:33:02
a small community of people, like, oh, you see them too, type thing.
1:33:08
Emelie Cajsdotter: Maybe more people saw them, but we didn't
1:33:09
speak about it for some reason, or because my life was so much
1:33:17
in the city.
1:33:18
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
1:33:20
Who was the first person you confided to that you were having these interactions?
1:33:24
Your grandmother?
1:33:25
Emelie Cajsdotter: My grandmother, yes.
1:33:26
Rupert Isaacson: And she went, oh yeah, that's totally normal.
1:33:29
Yeah, I see.
1:33:29
I see him all the time.
1:33:30
Okay.
1:33:30
So you had some sort of moral support, some sort of validation with that?
1:33:33
Yes.
1:33:34
Did you tell your mother?
1:33:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
1:33:36
Okay.
1:33:37
We, we almost didn't speak I ran away from home at the age of 1516.
1:33:42
We, we didn't communicate
1:33:43
Rupert Isaacson: right.
1:33:44
Got it.
1:33:44
I'm so, but the grandmother there.
1:33:46
And then what about friends?
1:33:48
Did you tell them.
1:33:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, probably did.
1:33:50
Yes.
1:33:51
Rupert Isaacson: And what did they say?
1:33:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: They didn't make a thing out of it,
1:33:55
Rupert Isaacson: did some say?
1:33:56
Please can introduce, I mean, I would've been like, please introduce me.
1:33:59
I'm, I'm, I would like,
1:34:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: no, I can't, I can't remember anyone saying that.
1:34:04
Rupert Isaacson: I can't imagine saying anything else.
1:34:06
You know?
1:34:06
I mean, it's like
1:34:07
Emelie Cajsdotter: there is a, a great interest in them now actually.
1:34:11
Yeah.
1:34:11
But it hasn't really been until now,
1:34:15
Rupert Isaacson: you know, as I remember being acutely aware of
1:34:20
all sorts of energies around me or through childhood and adolescent
1:34:24
and occasionally glimpsing things.
1:34:27
No, no sorts of interactions as you've described, but glimpses and then, and
1:34:32
feelings and emotions and feeling that I should now go over there and, you
1:34:38
know, indeed there would be something over there, but not an entity if
1:34:43
you like, an experience perhaps.
1:34:45
But then it wasn't until I became obviously drawn in with the sun and the
1:34:51
bushman and all of that, that I got shown certain things and but usually, but always
1:34:57
through the intercession of a shaman.
1:34:59
I'm just trying to think if I've, I've had interactions with what I
1:35:04
would imagine would be mischievous ghosts and sprites and things.
1:35:09
Mm-hmm.
1:35:09
A bit, but not, particularly in Ireland, but not
1:35:13
Emelie Cajsdotter: I'm not surprised about that
1:35:14
Rupert Isaacson: and a couple of us, but you know what I mean?
1:35:16
So we all have, but it, it would've been intriguing to me to say, if, you
1:35:20
know, and I'm, I'm lucky enough, I know I am gonna go into the forest with you
1:35:24
in, in, in a, in a matter of weeks.
1:35:26
So, fantastic.
1:35:28
And I would like to be introduced in whatever way, please.
1:35:30
Mm-hmm.
1:35:31
Because my feeling is that it's time to have these conversations openly.
1:35:37
I think we're, we're finally at a juncture in our society where a conversation
1:35:44
like this is not either dismissed as fancy or delusion or psychosis.
1:35:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, true.
1:35:54
However,
1:35:55
Rupert Isaacson: psychosis is, I think, a ne a necessary and natural
1:36:01
part of looking at reality in order to see beyond linear dimension.
1:36:08
The difficulty is how you, that we, but now, you know, and now with people
1:36:13
using psychoactive plants in our society and that sort of thing, suddenly,
1:36:16
suddenly people are allowed to have these conversations because they're now
1:36:20
seeing the same sorts of entities that, oh, I did Ira and I saw that one too.
1:36:23
And but, and this is now suddenly post covid kind of entered the
1:36:26
mainstream, but it's very recent.
1:36:28
But I do feel that the, that's why I'm asking these.
1:36:32
Very direct sort of question.
1:36:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, no, I, I like the direct question and I don't
1:36:35
Rupert Isaacson: want to waste my time with it.
1:36:36
Do you think it's real?
1:36:38
I want to know what they said, what they look like, what the intention is.
1:36:45
Here's a question.
1:36:45
Do you think more of them are showing themselves now?
1:36:49
Do you think that there's a, obviously we've been destroying nature for
1:36:54
a long time, but not quite on the level that we are currently.
1:36:59
Yeah.
1:36:59
Do they have an agenda?
1:37:00
Do they have a, would they be fine if we cut the forest down anyway?
1:37:06
No.
1:37:07
Emelie Cajsdotter: They wouldn't be fine if we cut it down anyway.
1:37:09
But it wouldn't make them give up.
1:37:11
Rupert Isaacson: Would they, would they cease to exist?
1:37:13
If, if, if you're a furry spirit and you cut the fur tree
1:37:15
down, do you cease to exist?
1:37:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
1:37:17
You don't cease to exist.
1:37:19
You might not live, have that place as a base, but your intention to help
1:37:26
restoring nature would be enhanced almost.
1:37:30
Rupert Isaacson: Why do they care about nature?
1:37:31
I mean, you could say, okay, well, they live in it.
1:37:33
They are it, but I think why do they give a shit?
1:37:35
I mean, if, if we destroy ourselves in nature, presumably
1:37:38
nature will come back and
1:37:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: if they can't do anything else,
1:37:42
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
1:37:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's, it's like,
1:37:48
Rupert Isaacson: like a mother's love.
1:37:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:37:49
It seems like the source of this life, if you.
1:37:53
Of any story from any animal plant forest spirit ancestor it
1:38:00
seems like whoever created this did do it with a loving intent.
1:38:11
That was gonna be
1:38:11
Rupert Isaacson: my question.
1:38:12
It are they manifestations of love?
1:38:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:38:17
In a way, I think it seems like the intent is love.
1:38:22
And if we are connected to that source, that intent is living through us,
1:38:31
regardless if I am a human or a dog or a fairy or the furry or whatever.
1:38:38
And then it seems like whatever goes against these care for the living
1:38:46
space, it's like, it seems like we, in a linear society, we, we care so much
1:38:55
about development that we're going to develop spiritually, and then we
1:38:59
will get more enlightened, and then eventually we will never be reborn again.
1:39:03
And whatsoever you never hear those stories from, from anyone else.
1:39:07
What you hear is that the miracle.
1:39:11
That life is even possible is the meaning.
1:39:13
So you don't need anything beyond life.
1:39:17
So to help create and uphold the living space is like the most
1:39:23
sacred thing you could ever do.
1:39:25
And to not do that just doesn't make sense at all.
1:39:29
So if, if, if a human somehow goes against maybe with an immature version
1:39:37
of a creative potential we start to destroy things around us instead
1:39:42
then they don't hate us for that.
1:39:46
But obviously we are in great need of help because if we are preventing living
1:39:53
space from expanding and, and for life to be lived in its own fullness, then.
1:40:03
Then maybe we are the ones to reach out to.
1:40:06
And, and, and with our hierarchical way of seeing ourselves as the sort of
1:40:11
crown of creation we might think that every, everyone else who is alive has no
1:40:17
consciousness, no awareness of anything, and all in the end, aspire to be human.
1:40:22
And, and I like to differ.
1:40:24
They don't judge us, but they also don't praise us.
1:40:27
But we obviously we are a bit lost and we need all the help
1:40:33
we can get in being included.
1:40:34
Again,
1:40:36
Rupert Isaacson: are these entities ageless or do they like us?
1:40:39
Do they live and die?
1:40:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: They, they seem to live and die but maybe in a
1:40:43
slightly different time span of things
1:40:46
Rupert Isaacson: give us like
1:40:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: maybe aging slower.
1:40:51
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:40:52
But is there a point at which, say for example, they
1:40:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: can, they look like the same age forever, but I
1:40:56
can still see that some of them look old and some of them look young
1:40:59
Rupert Isaacson: and do some, do they say, do some of them say, I'm about to pass?
1:41:02
Or do others say, I've only just got here?
1:41:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: Hmm.
1:41:06
I never asked.
1:41:07
Rupert Isaacson: Would you?
1:41:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:41:09
Could I know,
1:41:11
Rupert Isaacson: you know, I, in this podcast, I want to get through your bio
1:41:15
and we haven't even gotten to, I know that, you know, you spent time in the
1:41:18
Middle East and, and, and then come back.
1:41:20
Yeah.
1:41:22
Emelie Cajsdotter: Sequence,
1:41:23
Rupert Isaacson: right.
1:41:23
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold the fairies for now.
1:41:27
I'm gonna request that we do a separate podcast, just about that.
1:41:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:41:33
' Rupert Isaacson: cause that's its own universe and there's a lot of
1:41:35
things I would like to add and share.
1:41:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm-hmm.
1:41:41
Rupert Isaacson: Particularly in terms of time, things in the
1:41:42
Kalahari and so on and so on.
1:41:45
Curious
1:41:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: about that.
1:41:46
Rupert Isaacson: I think if we do that, that's gonna be the entire
1:41:48
podcast and it should actually.
1:41:50
Mm-hmm.
1:41:50
And I'm intrigued.
1:41:51
I want to do one on ferry so bad.
1:41:53
Please.
1:41:53
Can we?
1:41:54
Yes, we can.
1:41:55
Okay.
1:41:55
Alright.
1:41:56
So, okay.
1:41:58
You're talking to, oh, one last thing, it Scandinavia.
1:42:04
And I've, I've gotta ask trolls.
1:42:07
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:42:07
Not, not the sort of fairytale trolls I would never have seen,
1:42:12
Rupert Isaacson: but would you say that there's a troll thing
1:42:14
that's different to the other entities that you're talking about?
1:42:16
Yes.
1:42:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:42:17
But not, not, it wouldn't be bad.
1:42:19
It would just be sort of big and more,
1:42:22
Rupert Isaacson: more mountainy.
1:42:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:42:25
Rupert Isaacson: Not ancestral memories passed down by farming people
1:42:30
of hunter gatherers who were there beforehand and perhaps wiped out or
1:42:34
consigned to the forest, who then become the troll in the imagination.
1:42:38
The troll actually is the nature spirit.
1:42:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, I would believe both are possible.
1:42:43
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:42:44
So perhaps some amalgamation of the two?
1:42:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:42:47
I, I think a lot of things are, especially when they're being told about
1:42:50
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
1:42:52
Emelie Cajsdotter: because, because with the empathic into being,
1:42:54
you experience something and then you pass it on and in the past
1:42:59
Rupert Isaacson: and imagine things.
1:43:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:43:01
And, and in the passing on it will go through my entire conditioning.
1:43:05
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:43:05
Got it.
1:43:06
Emelie Cajsdotter: Whether I like it or not, and I can try to be as true as I
1:43:09
can to the source, but I also have to respect that I am also my genetic self.
1:43:15
Right.
1:43:15
Rupert Isaacson: And I, I guess if everything is light and everything is
1:43:18
love, and everything is energy, then we're going to see that through the prism of
1:43:23
the lens that we are, which means that we'll interpret it to look like this
1:43:26
or to look like that, or to say this,
1:43:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes, they have.
1:43:29
And how they keep, keep telling their stories.
1:43:35
Rupert Isaacson: I am so tempted to just go down this rabbit hole right now.
1:43:38
Troll.
1:43:40
I'm, I'm sorry.
1:43:41
It's, I really wanna talk about you, but now it's like, well,
1:43:43
I wanna talk about trolls.
1:43:46
What are their stories quickly before we go back to you.
1:43:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, but I think as humans, we always
1:43:52
think that we hold the sort of centerpiece of, of, of the stories.
1:43:56
And, and well, we are
1:43:57
Rupert Isaacson: the storytelling ape, right?
1:43:58
That is us.
1:43:59
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:43:59
And, and we are the sort of we interpret everything else, but we hold the sort
1:44:04
of facts, and we don't, I mean, they would have their ancestry lines and
1:44:09
stories on how they got to earth and, and the role that they're playing
1:44:14
and what they tell their children.
1:44:16
Right.
1:44:16
Which would affect,
1:44:18
Rupert Isaacson: we've got to revisit this 'cause everything you say.
1:44:21
Then I say, well, what are they telling their children?
1:44:23
What are their stories?
1:44:23
How did they get to earth?
1:44:25
What do they think about aliens?
1:44:26
You know?
1:44:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, I think it's like we, we live a, a modern human being.
1:44:35
We have a very very limited experience of time.
1:44:39
I mean, we stick to one version and I mean, it's difficult enough,
1:44:43
so you can easily see how that would feel a full lifetime.
1:44:46
But I still think we're,
1:44:50
I Yeah.
1:44:51
No,
1:44:51
Rupert Isaacson: I, I, I agree.
1:44:52
I'm, I, I, I'm loving, privileged to live with people a bit who
1:44:56
are absolutely of the place.
1:44:59
Who do not see themselves as the top of a hierarchy in nature.
1:45:02
Who that I do know that that's the authentic human way to be.
1:45:07
And that's honestly the only way to be happy.
1:45:09
Because to be inauthentic is to be unhappy.
1:45:11
Right.
1:45:12
And we know that in our culture, we are desperately unhappy.
1:45:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: We are.
1:45:16
Rupert Isaacson: Is, is why aren't these, why aren't these entities
1:45:19
showing themselves to everybody?
1:45:21
Wouldn't it just be easier if they just showed up in the living
1:45:23
room constantly and like, boy lads out there, plant a tree.
1:45:26
Come on.
1:45:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: But maybe they do.
1:45:28
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:45:29
Emelie Cajsdotter: I mean, maybe it's not they, do they,
1:45:31
Rupert Isaacson: like, do they walk around your living room or do you have
1:45:32
to go into the forest to see them?
1:45:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: I wouldn't say that they tend to be in the living room.
1:45:36
They tend to be in nature.
1:45:38
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:45:39
Quite close.
1:45:39
But your, your living room is not far from nature.
1:45:41
Right.
1:45:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: Exactly.
1:45:42
Exactly.
1:45:42
So they, they would be around,
1:45:44
Rupert Isaacson: is there anyone around you right now?
1:45:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Mm, no.
1:45:47
Not in here.
1:45:48
No.
1:45:50
Rupert Isaacson: If there was a,
1:45:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: in the, around the barn Just before
1:45:53
Rupert Isaacson: there were,
1:45:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah.
1:45:55
Rupert Isaacson: What did they say?
1:45:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: They, they were helping out with chickens.
1:45:58
Rupert Isaacson: What were they doing with the chickens?
1:46:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: It seems like a lot of things that we think is happening
1:46:03
by themselves, like leaves moving
1:46:07
cleaning, helping water it's, it's like all these things that
1:46:11
we think is just sort of randomly happening, like in a machinery.
1:46:15
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:46:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: They seem to be involved in
1:46:17
Rupert Isaacson: What were they doing with the chickens specifically?
1:46:20
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, the chicken barn is, is just about to be cleansed.
1:46:23
So they were just around some chickens that are a little
1:46:26
bit weaker and sort of moving
1:46:30
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:46:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: Things around accordingly.
1:46:32
Rupert Isaacson: Man, I gotta, we, we gotta revisit this.
1:46:35
We've gotta revisit this a lot.
1:46:37
Okay.
1:46:38
Listeners, we are going to, I'm not gonna let Emily get away with not talking to
1:46:45
us in depth about fairies and trolls and these 'cause I mean, the thought of having
1:46:51
to live without that is just too painful.
1:46:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, I know.
1:46:54
But let's,
1:46:54
Rupert Isaacson: let's just move on now in your life so you're dancing
1:46:58
samba, you're talking to fairies, you're giving acupuncture to your
1:47:01
horse, you're becoming a biologist
1:47:06
Emelie Cajsdotter: horse.
1:47:06
Why not?
1:47:09
Yeah.
1:47:09
Rupert Isaacson: What happens next?
1:47:11
Now, you're a young woman.
1:47:12
You head out into the world and
1:47:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:47:15
Rupert Isaacson: The pony retires, by the way, dies.
1:47:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, no.
1:47:18
The pony is there.
1:47:19
The pony lives until the age of 36.
1:47:21
Perfect.
1:47:22
And may And, and, and, and is the one who is founding this
1:47:26
whole sanctuary before she dies.
1:47:27
Okay, got it.
1:47:28
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:47:29
So she,
1:47:29
Emelie Cajsdotter: so her, her dream is fulfilled when she dies.
1:47:32
She is very content.
1:47:35
Rupert Isaacson: Super.
1:47:35
Okay, so, so take us now.
1:47:40
You're at university, what happens next?
1:47:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: Not university.
1:47:43
It's like a college thing.
1:47:45
Rupert Isaacson: Alright.
1:47:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: I realize that university will say
1:47:47
Rupert Isaacson: potato.
1:47:47
Yeah.
1:47:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: Because the subjects I'm into is not there, so.
1:47:50
Okay.
1:47:51
And I'm not really very good at sitting still indoors.
1:47:54
It totally actually does not work at all.
1:47:58
What happens is that or the next thing I guess that happens is
1:48:02
that my grandmother kills herself.
1:48:05
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:48:06
Emelie Cajsdotter: When, no, at some point since I was very young I
1:48:14
always felt that I I couldn't really recognize myself in the mirror.
1:48:19
It was a bit confusing.
1:48:21
I should be, have red or black hair and it didn't make sense that I was
1:48:25
blonde at that time and I knew that I had some sort of connection to Ireland,
1:48:30
so I knew that I had to go there.
1:48:33
Rupert Isaacson: How did you know that?
1:48:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: I just knew
1:48:35
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:48:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: That it's there.
1:48:37
There is something about Ireland that I have to visit.
1:48:41
So my grandmother would naturally say, oh, maybe you have a past
1:48:43
life there, so could be normal.
1:48:45
Well,
1:48:45
Rupert Isaacson: also from my point of view, actually, I mean, we know that
1:48:48
all of us living between the North Sea, the Baltic, the Irish Sea, the
1:48:52
Northwest Atlantic, we're basically all the same tribal folk who've been,
1:48:56
Emelie Cajsdotter: we are
1:48:57
Rupert Isaacson: going back and forth and back and forth.
1:48:58
So you think, oh, I'm from Sweden.
1:48:59
That's so far from Ireland.
1:49:00
It's like, no, it's not, you know?
1:49:02
Yeah.
1:49:02
It, it, people were traveling back and forth and we're all
1:49:04
Viking Kelts sort of thing.
1:49:06
So pre presume.
1:49:07
Okay, so let's say it's in your ancestry.
1:49:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:49:10
Somehow it's in my ancestry and I go to Ireland and, and hitchhike
1:49:15
around Ireland at, I think I'm 16.
1:49:18
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:49:19
Or
1:49:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: 17 maximum 16 maybe.
1:49:23
And that is a very good experience because I begin to realize that
1:49:28
I can trust my own feet sort of.
1:49:30
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:49:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: And maybe that is what my grandmother is picking up on because
1:49:35
she has made a promise to my father to look after me, and maybe she feels that
1:49:40
she doesn't have to look after me anymore.
1:49:42
I dunno.
1:49:42
But she tries to kill herself after an argument with my grandfather.
1:49:49
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:49:51
Emelie Cajsdotter: That I think deeply puts her in a situation of
1:49:54
questioning her whole life and.
1:49:59
Again, if we look at the women in that side of the family, they are upper middle
1:50:04
class, highly intelligent, and have no area to express themselves at all.
1:50:14
They are housewives and they hate it.
1:50:18
Her mother was the first woman in Sweden who studied to become a doctor then.
1:50:23
Not a nurse, but a doctor.
1:50:24
Then she married someone and well, she was in the class where the first
1:50:30
two in women, so there would be a few.
1:50:32
And then her husband, she got married, her husband forbade her to continue the
1:50:37
studies, and she was then left with this husband, no education, lots of kids.
1:50:44
And eventually she divorced in a time when no one did that.
1:50:48
Rupert Isaacson: This is your great-grandmother?
1:50:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:50:50
So her dream is unfulfilled in a way, and that is passed on to my
1:50:55
grandmother's dream who is unfulfilled.
1:50:57
And she ends up in the same situation.
1:50:59
The only story that is possible to embody is the housewife outline.
1:51:08
And although she's doing this healing and all these other things, she,
1:51:12
she has other dreams and she has this growing bitterness, I would
1:51:16
say, that I could feel from her.
1:51:18
And she puts her entire effort into her family.
1:51:22
And
1:51:22
Rupert Isaacson: what was her husband?
1:51:23
What did your grandfather do?
1:51:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: He was an introvert professionally.
1:51:27
Yeah.
1:51:27
He was some sort of, yeah.
1:51:29
He was a professional introvert.
1:51:30
He was a, in, in a, he was some sort of lawyer.
1:51:34
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:51:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: All in the head.
1:51:36
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:51:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: And he was a really good at playing the violin.
1:51:41
Now, in, in an argument my grandmother forbade him to play violin, so
1:51:45
he bought a cottage up in the mountains outside of Gothenburg
1:51:49
where he would go and play violin.
1:51:51
And then why would
1:51:52
Rupert Isaacson: she forbid him from playing violin?
1:51:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, there are so many questions.
1:51:56
I guess when you begin to not live your story, you
1:52:03
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:52:03
Want other people.
1:52:03
Do I prevent
1:52:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: others from doing the same?
1:52:05
It's my, maybe my only
1:52:07
Rupert Isaacson: Did he prevent her from having a career or anything,
1:52:10
or was it just that she felt,
1:52:11
Emelie Cajsdotter: I don't know.
1:52:12
I, I don't know if he personally did or if it was just a patriarchal
1:52:16
society and he became a face of that.
1:52:20
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:52:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: I would've been too young to 'cause by,
1:52:23
Rupert Isaacson: by the sort of 1960s when your grandmother would've been in, say,
1:52:29
her sixties or fifties, surely that was breaking apart post World War ii, and,
1:52:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: but I think it's all these other things, our self image
1:52:40
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
1:52:40
Our
1:52:41
Emelie Cajsdotter: ancestral stories that continue until they don't.
1:52:44
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:52:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: All of these things.
1:52:48
An argument.
1:52:49
It turned out that my grandfather, she put all her efforts into the family.
1:52:54
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:52:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: Trying to create a meaning.
1:52:57
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:52:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: Somehow is my conclusion.
1:53:00
And it turned out that he had a love affair years back.
1:53:03
Mm-hmm.
1:53:05
And somehow that, although that wasn't such a big thing, it wouldn't be
1:53:09
such a big thing by my standards, but somehow it cracked a hole and made
1:53:18
everything just lose its value for her.
1:53:23
Rupert Isaacson: Even at that age.
1:53:23
Even at that, even
1:53:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: at that age, she was 81 when she killed herself.
1:53:28
So she did a full attempt and my grandfather found her.
1:53:33
He, she made him promise not to save her, but he couldn't keep that promise.
1:53:36
So she survived and she was naturally she was in the hospital being
1:53:42
guarded by a nurse because they considered her so suicidal that
1:53:48
they didn't dare to leave her alone.
1:53:50
And all she wanted was to die.
1:53:54
And me, my mother and grandfather was called to her bed and the
1:53:59
doctor said, you have to make a decision as her closest kin.
1:54:03
We can keep guarding her for as long as she lives.
1:54:08
But that would mean that we force her to live.
1:54:11
If we let her out from here, most likely she will try again,
1:54:15
and maybe she will succeed.
1:54:17
And the choice has to be yours.
1:54:19
And without even looking at each other, and I mean, we are not people
1:54:23
that would communicate the rest of the time, so it's not that we get on.
1:54:27
But we all simultaneously, I'm 17 at the time say that we have to let her loose.
1:54:32
We can't force her to live.
1:54:34
It's undignified, it's impossible.
1:54:37
So it wasn't that many months after that she succeeded in killing herself.
1:54:44
Rupert Isaacson: And your grandfather then lived alone for the rest of his life.
1:54:46
My
1:54:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: grandfather, after this happened, also being blamed for
1:54:50
the whole thing in a letter became blind only days after she died and was
1:54:57
taken to an old people's home where he sadly ended up starving to death
1:55:02
because he couldn't live with himself after this event and also was not in a
1:55:06
position of being able to kill himself.
1:55:08
So he died very slowly in a state of deep suffering.
1:55:13
Rupert Isaacson: He just stopped eating.
1:55:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
1:55:15
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:55:16
Course.
1:55:17
So poor people.
1:55:18
Gosh.
1:55:18
Yes.
1:55:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: It
1:55:19
Rupert Isaacson: just seems so unnecessary to
1:55:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's unnecessary.
1:55:22
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:55:22
Around when you could just be in the forest talking to the little people.
1:55:25
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah, I know, I know.
1:55:25
It is unnecessary.
1:55:26
This, this whole.
1:55:29
Belief in suffering.
1:55:32
Pain I believe we all have in our lives.
1:55:35
And, and it, it's also even helpful as much as we don't feel it at the time.
1:55:40
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:55:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: But suffering, I would say something totally different.
1:55:44
Yeah.
1:55:45
In suffering, we have choices.
1:55:47
We might not, so it seems to be a
1:55:49
Rupert Isaacson: blindness, a blindness to the, the, the, as you
1:55:52
said, the joy of creation of if, if, if those nature entities are there,
1:55:57
trying to draw our attention back to it constantly and saying, you know,
1:56:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: there is another way.
1:56:02
It's like this constantly saying, there is another way.
1:56:04
It will make you a little happier.
1:56:06
Rupert Isaacson: Everything doesn't better personal.
1:56:08
Yeah.
1:56:08
It's like, why, why is it wanting to be about me?
1:56:11
Yeah.
1:56:13
But it's hard if Yeah.
1:56:14
Little people are not talking to you.
1:56:15
But although it seems that they sort of were to your grandmother, so,
1:56:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
1:56:21
And did you see this Exactly, this reasoning is what came to me after her
1:56:25
death e except of course, this huge grief.
1:56:28
But how could she have all that?
1:56:31
And it still wasn't possible to live in herself.
1:56:36
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:56:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: Does that mean that everything she said was wrong?
1:56:39
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:56:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: Or is life just a lot more complex?
1:56:43
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:56:44
Yeah.
1:56:44
It's 'cause it would seem, it would seem, if you had your eyes open to
1:56:47
those dimensions of reality, that it would be hard to remain bitter because.
1:56:53
Just too interesting.
1:56:54
You know?
1:56:54
I mean, it's like, yeah, you might, but I, it's also though,
1:56:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: it's also a constant, you know, all of these spiritual
1:57:03
traditions where you have constant, like in, in, in Islam and in the
1:57:08
surface they have thicker and you have meditation and this remembrance, you
1:57:12
know, we have to constantly work on remembering the source because, so
1:57:17
Rupert Isaacson: shamanic rituals,
1:57:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
1:57:18
Without the meaning.
1:57:19
We don't, we are overwhelmed, again, with the reality around us.
1:57:23
So I think it's not really enough to feel it once and then it's there.
1:57:30
It, it's helpful to feel it once, because then it's easier
1:57:33
to find it the second time.
1:57:34
And if we find it the second time, it's easier the third time.
1:57:37
But we still have to live with this person that we are with a genetic story
1:57:44
that is up to me to transform as I play my part in my little chunk of time.
1:57:52
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:57:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: And, and she has given me a huge freedom.
1:57:59
So, although her story is tragic in very many ways, she also, maybe
1:58:08
she couldn't open those doors for her, but she could open them for me.
1:58:12
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:58:13
Okay.
1:58:14
Okay.
1:58:15
So she does that.
1:58:17
You go and then you go to Ireland shortly after.
1:58:20
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:58:20
I go to Ireland and I start to work and live in Ireland on and off.
1:58:25
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:58:26
And what do you do?
1:58:26
What do you do in Ireland?
1:58:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: I start by by riding young Kura pos in the middle of Kura.
1:58:33
Rupert Isaacson: Perfect.
1:58:33
In the, on the Baren?
1:58:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
1:58:35
On in the, like, yeah.
1:58:37
In, in county Galway Kamara in a place called Cael.
1:58:41
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, I know, I know what that is.
1:58:43
Yeah.
1:58:43
Okay.
1:58:43
And that's to know
1:58:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: an old Celtic woman in county Mayo, near a small town called
1:58:50
Anne who she doesn't live anymore.
1:58:52
Her name was Bina McLaughlin, and she was a fierce thing.
1:58:57
Celtic speaking herb, woman shepherd original human being.
1:59:03
And we became friends.
1:59:05
A very stormy type of friendship because I think that would be the only way you could
1:59:08
have a friendship with such a character.
1:59:10
But I became her sort of friend and student on and off for
1:59:13
years as well of on and off.
1:59:16
Yeah.
1:59:16
I would travel on and off too, the student of of the Celtic traditions
1:59:20
of herbs and nature, spirits and any other, everything she did.
1:59:27
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:59:27
Mm-hmm.
1:59:28
Emelie Cajsdotter: And it was mind blowing to meet.
1:59:30
I, I'm, I mean, I'm 17 and.
1:59:33
I know that I'm meant to be doing this, and I've seen that it's
1:59:36
possible to follow your path, but to see someone elderly, she was in her
1:59:40
seventies when I got to know her.
1:59:42
Really doing that and sort of standing up for it and being completely outcast,
1:59:47
but still, yeah, it's possible.
1:59:51
I mean, she, yes, she really showed me it's possible.
1:59:55
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:59:55
And you would sort of come and go from her homestead meanwhile,
1:59:58
her job breaking training horses.
2:00:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, and, and I also, I mean, I'm still supposed
2:00:05
to be in school in Sweden and I have the pony to look after.
2:00:08
Okay.
2:00:09
So I'm sort of circling around these things.
2:00:13
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:00:13
And where do you go from that point?
2:00:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: From that point, there is one experience that is so
2:00:22
important that it has to be thrown in.
2:00:25
At this point, you know, I'm protesting against everything in, in a sort of.
2:00:30
Not angry way, but I'm dancing constantly.
2:00:33
I'm always at some sort of party drinking tons of alcohol.
2:00:37
Ne never taking any drugs because I figured out two things.
2:00:42
If I find a drug that soothes my inner pain, I will be on it forever.
2:00:46
So someone like me, it cannot try heroin.
2:00:50
It's, no, it would, yeah.
2:00:52
' Rupert Isaacson: cause the problem is it works.
2:00:53
Yeah.
2:00:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, it works.
2:00:54
And I realized that it would work brilliantly on me, so I can't take it.
2:00:58
Yeah.
2:00:59
And I would not be strong enough to come off it.
2:01:02
Yeah.
2:01:02
And number two, if I would take any other drug, it would be like disrespecting all
2:01:07
these experiences that I'm already having.
2:01:10
Mm-hmm.
2:01:10
So no drugs but a lot of dancing and drinking and not much sleep.
2:01:17
Very, very intense living because I explore all these areas at the same time.
2:01:22
Rupert Isaacson: Oh.
2:01:23
Emelie Cajsdotter: And then for some reason, and I'm also, I have
2:01:26
this istic story in my family, you know, of all these women trying
2:01:31
to find a way and unsuccessfully living very unfulfilled lives.
2:01:37
So this is also a topic that is constantly with me.
2:01:39
So one day I decide to start to live in celibacy
2:01:47
and it's not for moral reasons and it's not with a timeframe.
2:01:52
It's not a sort of vow but I want to try it.
2:01:57
So I decide, I think I'm 18, maybe I decide to live in celibacy and why this is
2:02:02
so important because I think it is about identity and what prevents us from finding
2:02:07
our dreams could be all sorts of things.
2:02:10
And so I'm out in a bar, drinking and dancing as usual, and I'm
2:02:14
being chatted up by some guy, and I tell him halfway through the
2:02:18
conversation that, oops, wait a minute.
2:02:20
He probably thinks that we are gonna go back after this to his place.
2:02:24
I need to tell him that I'm in celibacy not to disappoint him.
2:02:27
So I say, by the way, nothing more is gonna happen tonight
2:02:30
because I'm in celibacy.
2:02:32
And the change in his face all of it, it was like watching the
2:02:37
sort of arm of a clock just shift.
2:02:40
And I became a person.
2:02:44
We, we became friends for years after that until I left Gothenburg, actually.
2:02:50
And I remember walking outta that pub in the middle of the night, in the
2:02:53
middle of Gothenburg City Center, seeing all these advertisements, you know,
2:02:58
all these newspapers and films and half naked women all looking the same.
2:03:03
And realized with full insight that this is not my story.
2:03:08
This, this total freedom of not belonging to having to fulfill that story
2:03:15
Rupert Isaacson: mm-hmm.
2:03:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Is one of maybe the most important things
2:03:18
that ever happened to me.
2:03:19
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:03:20
Mm-hmm.
2:03:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: Because somehow I, I, I got out of not only my, my
2:03:27
family's story of the women's roles, but that whole cultural expectation
2:03:35
and it never really came back.
2:03:37
Rupert Isaacson: Did you stay in celibacy for the rest of your life?
2:03:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, I stayed in celibacy for maybe six months.
2:03:42
I can't even, it wasn't even a big thing to break it, it was
2:03:45
just that I eventually met someone that I wanted to break it with.
2:03:48
Right, right.
2:03:49
But that wasn't the point.
2:03:51
Yeah.
2:03:52
I see what the point was that I realized that it's my choice.
2:03:56
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:03:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: And, and it totally changes the way people perceive me.
2:04:04
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
2:04:05
It's,
2:04:08
it's interesting that, as you say, to go out and see all the advertising and
2:04:13
the, you know, now it would be even more
2:04:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
2:04:17
Intense with social media.
2:04:19
You are bombarded by them, you know?
2:04:21
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, you are, you are.
2:04:24
Okay.
2:04:25
So
2:04:26
Emelie Cajsdotter: I think that makes sense in all the other stories.
2:04:29
Rupert Isaacson: So you are liberated.
2:04:30
You, you have this kind of, wow, I don't have to be.
2:04:34
Shackled to those expectations?
2:04:36
No.
2:04:36
It's,
2:04:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: it's got nothing to do with me.
2:04:38
Rupert Isaacson: What happens next?
2:04:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: What happens next?
2:04:41
Is that school is finishing.
2:04:45
And I have honestly not spent much time in it, but I'm so happy when
2:04:49
it's over because I know that I'm never going to be in a building again.
2:04:53
And, and my feeling throughout school, the later years is that I
2:05:01
understand what the teachers want.
2:05:04
I understand what I need to give them to get good grades, but if I
2:05:09
do that for reasons I can't explain.
2:05:13
If I do that, I'm going to lose something else.
2:05:17
And what I will lose is going to prevent me from doing what I'm meant to be doing.
2:05:23
So I'm resisting every possible attempt to
2:05:30
Rupert Isaacson: colonize you?
2:05:31
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:05:31
Yes.
2:05:32
And, and to me, it's a fight for my life.
2:05:35
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:05:36
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's, I begin to understand the ponies
2:05:39
fight in the writing scheme.
2:05:40
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:05:40
Yeah.
2:05:40
That's exactly what I was thinking of.
2:05:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's a, it's a real fight.
2:05:44
You, it's, and it's constant, it's daily to not be drawn into a reality that
2:05:49
I might never be able to get out of.
2:05:52
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:05:53
So you leave school?
2:05:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: I leave school.
2:05:56
And as we leave school, which in Sweden, you finish school around in June.
2:06:01
Earlier that spring, two friends of mine are going to Greenland.
2:06:06
They're going to Greenland fishing and hunting and camping and just being
2:06:09
there for like two, three months.
2:06:12
And for some reason they ask me if I want to come with them, which
2:06:15
of course I, I always found it very hard to resist an adventure.
2:06:19
Rupert Isaacson: Irresistible.
2:06:19
Okay.
2:06:20
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, it's irresistible.
2:06:21
So, so I go to Greenland with them, and that is life altering again,
2:06:29
because we are hunting and fishing and camping and out in nature without
2:06:33
seeing traces of humans for weeks.
2:06:36
And finally I begin to feel good like this underlying pain that has
2:06:44
always followed me through life is not there when I'm in the wilderness.
2:06:50
So I finally realized that maybe nothing is wrong with me, maybe
2:06:55
I'm just in the wrong environment.
2:07:01
Rupert Isaacson: How long are you out in Greenland for?
2:07:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, first we are there for like two months, and then
2:07:05
they start working in a fish factory.
2:07:07
So they stay for a year, but I know that I have to go back to this pony
2:07:10
and I know I want to study acupuncture.
2:07:12
And so I traveled by myself for the last month and hitchhiking with a cargo ship.
2:07:19
To the north of Greenland and camping then by myself, which is even better from
2:07:25
this wilderness experience perspective.
2:07:29
And also meeting amazing people like the people on the cargo ship.
2:07:33
There was a moment when the cargo ship left shore and I realized that
2:07:36
I'm the only woman, woman aboard, and there are no mobile phones.
2:07:41
This is before all of that.
2:07:44
Not sure they would work there anyway.
2:07:45
And Hmm.
2:07:46
Was this really such a smart idea?
2:07:52
But it was a smart idea because there were amazing people.
2:07:56
Rupert Isaacson: Were they Greenlanders or were they, was it mixed?
2:07:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: They were a mixed crew of Danish and Greenlandic in wheat.
2:08:04
Rupert Isaacson: When you're camping up by yourself in the north of Greenland,
2:08:10
what are the, what, who do, what are the nature entities that you meet?
2:08:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: Well, first I think with Greenland is the vastness.
2:08:23
It's so huge.
2:08:26
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:08:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: And so all of a sudden, your human perspective
2:08:31
is put in the right place.
2:08:33
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:08:34
Emelie Cajsdotter: You are tiny.
2:08:35
You are surrounded by species that were there for so long before you.
2:08:40
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:08:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: That it's just, that is sort of calming and, and the nature
2:08:49
spirits would be, except that there are no trees, but there would be similar
2:08:55
beings coming out of the nature there.
2:08:59
Definitely.
2:09:00
Rupert Isaacson: Anyone that sticks in your memory in particular?
2:09:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: No actually not because the whole thing was
2:09:10
Rupert Isaacson: Did they come and converse with you and show you things
2:09:12
or not in the same way that you'd encountered them in the forest in Sweden?
2:09:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: No.
2:09:18
It would be similar.
2:09:20
And it's helping sort of where to find water, how to find, you know, they
2:09:26
know the land, but they know everyone.
2:09:31
Rupert Isaacson: And they're friendly to you.
2:09:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:09:36
They're sort of harsh and friendly.
2:09:38
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:09:39
Sort of like Scandinavians.
2:09:41
Yes.
2:09:42
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:09:45
Rupert Isaacson: Were the Irish fairies different?
2:09:46
I mean, I've gone back to the, I can't stop it.
2:09:48
I've got
2:09:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: no, I I, I would agree that there is a remarkable
2:09:53
sense of cheekiness on the Irish side.
2:09:56
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, we got it.
2:09:58
We gotta go back to this.
2:09:59
Alright.
2:09:59
Alright.
2:10:00
I'm gonna force myself to stick to the timeline.
2:10:02
Now you, you, you have this, you, you go deeply into the wilderness in Greenland.
2:10:08
This is amazing.
2:10:09
Yes.
2:10:10
You go, but then you go back, you wanna study acupuncture, you wanna,
2:10:13
Emelie Cajsdotter: yeah.
2:10:13
Then I go back and as I fly back to Gothenburg in only four hours as it takes,
2:10:21
the shock for the system to go back into a city is the final sort of, alright.
2:10:27
And now Emily, you are out of the city for everything that this place has given you.
2:10:32
And as correct that it was probably in the preciseness exactly how it should be.
2:10:36
This is the end of city life forever.
2:10:41
And it was,
2:10:43
Rupert Isaacson: where'd you go then?
2:10:44
Emelie Cajsdotter: Oh, I did some sort of odd jobs here and there working in
2:10:47
stables and barns and with cows and horses and whatever to, and then I
2:10:51
went to the place where I live now.
2:10:53
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:10:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: So I was 21 when I moved to where I am now.
2:10:57
And decided to.
2:11:02
Sorry, because I failed so completely in that.
2:11:05
My idea was to hide from the world.
2:11:08
Rupert Isaacson: Well done.
2:11:09
Yes,
2:11:09
Emelie Cajsdotter: well done.
2:11:12
And, and really grow potatoes, be, you know, self-sufficient, live
2:11:18
in a sort of cyclic, harmonious relationship with nature and never
2:11:22
be seen again, sort of thing.
2:11:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:11:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: And some of those things went really well, but the never
2:11:26
seen again, part went totally bad.
2:11:29
Rupert Isaacson: Why did that go bad?
2:11:30
Why did that not happen?
2:11:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: Because that's not what I really wanted.
2:11:34
And that's not what I It's
2:11:37
Rupert Isaacson: also not, it's not human.
2:11:38
Yeah.
2:11:38
Really.
2:11:39
Emelie Cajsdotter: Oh, no, it's, I think what it was is that when you
2:11:43
have an awakening of any kind as a human being, especially if it is
2:11:48
empathically and you realize what we've done to this planet, I mean, we
2:11:52
can't really make any excuses for that.
2:11:56
I mean, we have done a lot of destructive things.
2:11:59
I think one way of looking at it is if I go into hiding and try to
2:12:05
interfere as little as possible, I will reverse some of that harm.
2:12:11
But then when you communicate with other species, that's not what they say.
2:12:16
They constantly convey that the way for humans is to step back in.
2:12:22
Yeah.
2:12:22
It's, we're not, we're not supposed to be less involved.
2:12:25
We're already shut off to, as much as is doable that's not the way forward, the
2:12:31
way forward seem to interact, step back in somehow live and, and, and share this
2:12:38
life with everyone else who is here.
2:12:40
Rupert Isaacson: How does that evolve though, that, that you go from
2:12:46
this sort of lone, a hippie girl open to things that other people don't seem to
2:12:54
opening up to offer other people courses in how to do this?
2:13:00
Also running this big animal rescue it's afer old jump.
2:13:07
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:13:08
But the, the essence has always remained, I'm still in the same
2:13:12
sort of tiny shoebox house, and there is nothing glamorous about it.
2:13:18
It's not a huge profit.
2:13:20
So people are employed.
2:13:21
It's volunteers.
2:13:22
No, but what
2:13:22
Rupert Isaacson: I, what I mean is it's, it sort of, it's a big jump to go to
2:13:28
saying, yeah.
2:13:29
Reaching out to your fellow man and saying, I can show you how to do this.
2:13:32
I can show you how to.
2:13:33
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's, it's huge.
2:13:34
And if it was to relate this way, how, how
2:13:36
Rupert Isaacson: did that happen?
2:13:37
Emelie Cajsdotter: It was the horses that started it.
2:13:38
I blame them.
2:13:39
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:13:40
Emelie Cajsdotter: But what, what really happened is maybe we, we
2:13:43
need another podcast for that too.
2:13:45
Rupert Isaacson: We certainly need another podcast.
2:13:46
Yes.
2:13:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: But that was when I began to dream.
2:13:51
The more you spend time with other species reality, you realize that
2:13:56
the human linear hierarchy and domination is like a disease.
2:14:03
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
2:14:03
Emelie Cajsdotter: So if that is the only way to interact with
2:14:07
domesticated animals, then I have to stop living with domesticated animals.
2:14:13
And since I love all these animals that live here, and I can't really
2:14:17
let them loose in the forest because that's not the society we are in, then
2:14:22
I'm desperate to find another way.
2:14:25
So I put the question out to the universe basically saying is domination
2:14:31
necessary in the handling of animals?
2:14:32
Because I really, really need to know.
2:14:36
And then I begin to dream.
2:14:38
I begin to dream about New Zealand and go to the Maori people.
2:14:43
I dream about Jordan and end up with the, with the Hashemite royal horses in
2:14:48
Jordan and other parts of the world to.
2:14:52
That eventually becomes a story of what, what is, when there is no hierarchy
2:15:00
and domination, what actually could be.
2:15:03
And as that happens I think, and I think that would maybe be
2:15:07
another podcast as well to maybe dive into some of those events.
2:15:13
Then you realize that you don't get such an adventure given to
2:15:18
you just to keep it for yourself.
2:15:22
It doesn't mean that you're on a mission.
2:15:24
It doesn't mean that I believe that I'm right and, and others are wrong.
2:15:28
It's, it's none of that.
2:15:30
It's not a missionary thing.
2:15:32
But it would be wrong not to make it available then.
2:15:38
I wouldn't have done my part.
2:15:40
Rupert Isaacson: So anyone who's listened this far is gonna go, what happened in
2:15:44
Jordan and what happened with Amari.
2:15:46
Alright, ready?
2:15:49
Emelie Cajsdotter: We'll get to that.
2:15:49
We'll get to that.
2:15:49
Well, we're
2:15:50
Rupert Isaacson: somewhat over the two hour mark.
2:15:51
My Yeah.
2:15:51
What I think we should do is, I think we should pause.
2:15:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:15:55
Rupert Isaacson: But I'm gonna pause with a couple of questions and I
2:15:57
promise every listener provided Emily agrees, which I'm gonna force it to
2:16:02
'cause I'm guilt people 'cause I'm hot.
2:16:04
Emelie Cajsdotter: I owe you anyway for bringing me back into humanity.
2:16:06
Rupert Isaacson: Well.
2:16:07
Yeah.
2:16:12
Dunno if that's necessarily a good thing, but
2:16:14
Emelie Cajsdotter: it's a good thing.
2:16:15
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:16:16
We
2:16:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: have to believe,
2:16:19
Rupert Isaacson: you know, questions come to mind.
2:16:20
Like you end up in Jordan with the king's horses, blah, blah.
2:16:24
But I mean, that's hierarchical and
2:16:27
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, exactly.
2:16:28
And that's sort of divine sense of humor,
2:16:31
Rupert Isaacson: right.
2:16:31
And you end up with a novel you never
2:16:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: thought you would find a warrior
2:16:34
Rupert Isaacson: society.
2:16:35
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:16:35
Rupert Isaacson: Also hierarchical.
2:16:37
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:16:37
Very.
2:16:38
Rupert Isaacson: So there's gonna be questions, clearly
2:16:42
there's some paradoxical interesting stuff there, right?
2:16:45
Yes.
2:16:45
So here's what I want to do.
2:16:49
I want to pause and formulate the questions, and I want to soon Bri
2:16:57
get to the next phase of the story.
2:16:59
So part two.
2:17:00
Yeah.
2:17:01
And also to listeners after that, after I've nailed her down on the, the, those
2:17:11
travels and then what she learned then how she's brought that back to Sweden and
2:17:15
what the classes are that you can attend.
2:17:19
For example I'm going to be following Emily onto a sacred mountain and.
2:17:24
Talk to the mountain with her.
2:17:26
Yes.
2:17:26
This June, 2025.
2:17:28
And I think we, I think we're full.
2:17:31
Are we not with it
2:17:32
Emelie Cajsdotter: seems like we're a bit over full, but you never know.
2:17:35
Rupert Isaacson: Well, what I'm, what I'm thinking is I
2:17:36
think we'll do it again, right?
2:17:38
Yeah.
2:17:39
So, those of you who'd like to follow Emily onto a sacred mountain in Western
2:17:47
Sweden, I dunno how you could resist.
2:17:50
There will be, there will be more.
2:17:52
Alright.
2:17:53
In the meantime, like how that stuff,
2:17:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: and I'm also, I'm double checking with everyone
2:17:57
who is booked onto this one to make sure that they're coming.
2:18:00
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:18:00
And, and if there are any, if there are any cancellations
2:18:03
or I will let everybody know.
2:18:04
But given that we are going to reconvene, people will just from here want to
2:18:10
know how they can contact you now.
2:18:12
So can you just please give everyone your contact info?
2:18:15
Like how, how do people?
2:18:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:18:17
Or
2:18:18
Rupert Isaacson: more or less,
2:18:19
Emelie Cajsdotter: We have two websites that has quite a lot on them.
2:18:23
The reason there is two is that because one is related to the sanctuary and
2:18:28
the nonprofit organization and one is related to how I also the, the
2:18:34
courses and the classes and the school, because that is taxed differently.
2:18:38
So because of the tax department, we have two,
2:18:43
Rupert Isaacson: but if people want to
2:18:45
Emelie Cajsdotter: interline, so one is if somebody wants
2:18:46
Rupert Isaacson: to do a course with you on.
2:18:48
Emelie Cajsdotter: Then it is the how the fuck
2:18:50
Rupert Isaacson: to talk to the mountain, let alone the plants and the horses.
2:18:53
What, yes.
2:18:54
What's that website?
2:18:55
Emelie Cajsdotter: That website is miyo the way of compassion.com.
2:19:01
Rupert Isaacson: One more time.
2:19:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: MIO miyo.
2:19:04
The way.
2:19:05
Rupert Isaacson: MIO miyo.
2:19:05
The
2:19:06
Emelie Cajsdotter: way of compassion.
2:19:08
Rupert Isaacson: The way of compassion.com.
2:19:11
MIO, the way of compassion.com.
2:19:14
Okay.
2:19:14
Yes.
2:19:14
Mio was, and your emails on there, right?
2:19:16
Horse?
2:19:17
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:19:17
Mio was a horse that really put things into practice how non-hierarchical
2:19:22
system can be put into practice.
2:19:24
So, okay.
2:19:25
And then the nonprofit and where you sort of learn about the
2:19:30
sanctuary and storytelling and these things is friends of miyo.com,
2:19:36
friends
2:19:36
Rupert Isaacson: of miyo, MIO Yeah.
2:19:38
Dot com All
2:19:49
man.
2:19:49
I can't wait to get there.
2:19:53
Mm-hmm.
2:19:53
What an extraordinary, what an extraordinary human you are.
2:19:58
Alright.
2:19:59
I'm going to go
2:20:00
Emelie Cajsdotter: see how all these things that are in one way
2:20:03
really negative and hard, they really also play a part, you know?
2:20:08
Rupert Isaacson: Well, sure.
2:20:09
And I mean, it's.
2:20:13
To me, what, what comes across is that the tragedy is not that difficult.
2:20:17
Things happen.
2:20:19
The tragedy is that life is not lived as life should be lived.
2:20:24
Emelie Cajsdotter: Exactly.
2:20:25
Exactly.
2:20:26
Rupert Isaacson: So that, that deep joy, you know, it just goes back to that,
2:20:34
that image of your, your grandfa of your father rather if he had
2:20:40
lived in the authentic human pre agricultural perhaps way mm-hmm.
2:20:50
Imagining him mapping out, you know, a stone circle
2:20:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
2:20:54
With
2:20:55
Rupert Isaacson: it for the ex with the excited participation
2:20:57
of the whole community.
2:20:58
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:20:59
And, and, and the tragedy in that he's one of so many, it's not that,
2:21:07
it's sort of a few Yeah, no, exactly.
2:21:10
That, that falls out.
2:21:11
It, it's the majority that actually we've managed to create
2:21:17
a system where almost no one
2:21:19
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
2:21:21
And we're, we're supposed to be not only in relationship to
2:21:24
each other because we're of the planet, we're of the ecosystem.
2:21:26
We're supposed to be in constant interspecies relation with about
2:21:30
300, 400 species surrounding us.
2:21:32
We're supposed to be in constant relation with That's just animal species.
2:21:35
Yes.
2:21:35
Yes.
2:21:36
In constant relation with.
2:21:38
Our environment and we're not, and we are grief stricken.
2:21:41
I think we're, I don't see how it's possible to not be mentally ill.
2:21:44
I consider myself mentally ill.
2:21:46
Mentally.
2:21:46
Yes,
2:21:47
Emelie Cajsdotter: yes.
2:21:47
No, definitely
2:21:48
Rupert Isaacson: to because of just the reaction to the extreme
2:21:52
pain of having to live that way.
2:21:57
And I'm lucky, I mean, I was on my horses in the forest earlier
2:22:00
today looking at road air.
2:22:02
Yeah.
2:22:03
And even with that, you know, there's the limitations that are involved, you know?
2:22:07
Yep.
2:22:08
So, and this thing of non-hierarchical is so interesting because while it is
2:22:13
true that while I'm riding my horse, I actually very much would like them
2:22:15
to go the way I need them to go.
2:22:16
And, you know, when there's a car coming on the road, you know, not wander out into
2:22:20
the middle of the road, get, it doesn't
2:22:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: exclude that because what exactly,
2:22:23
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it doesn't
2:22:23
Emelie Cajsdotter: exclude that, it,
2:22:24
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's that feeling of okay, do, do we feel that we both
2:22:29
kind of want to do this together?
2:22:30
Exactly.
2:22:30
If we do, then okay, let's work out just as if I'm gonna follow you up a mountain.
2:22:34
Yeah.
2:22:35
Your gaff, it's your hood, you know that mountain.
2:22:37
I'm following you.
2:22:38
We've agreed.
2:22:38
Because it would be just absurd for me to try and lead that mountain.
2:22:42
'cause I dunno, the mountain, you know, similarly, if, if you're walking in
2:22:45
my hood on the way to the supermarket, I'll probably show you the way
2:22:48
just 'cause I want to know the way.
2:22:49
But, but
2:22:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: in balance of hierarchy comes when we put a different value on it.
2:22:53
Rupert Isaacson: Exactly.
2:22:53
Well it's, it's deferring to expertise.
2:22:56
It's deferring to, experience, it's saying, well, you know, okay, I,
2:23:01
I need to learn about this thing.
2:23:02
Let's say it's acupuncture, you know?
2:23:04
Okay.
2:23:04
I dunno from it, and Emily does, but I'm gonna defer to her expertise.
2:23:08
That's just common sense.
2:23:10
And of course, as people get older, you know, one wants to defer to
2:23:14
elders because they know more.
2:23:16
And we, and all of that is gone.
2:23:18
You know, we don't, we put our old people in, old people parking, and
2:23:21
I know, it's just, it's just like we couldn't get it more wrong.
2:23:27
And obviously, you know, many people have said this over the
2:23:30
generations, we're not the first.
2:23:31
But it, it is so interesting when you bring it into the focus
2:23:34
of a life, you know, and you talk about your grandparents and
2:23:38
even up there
2:23:42
on the edge of civilization, which, you know, Sweden is mm-hmm.
2:23:47
Because there is a point like Canada, there's a point
2:23:49
beyond which it sort of stops.
2:23:51
Mm-hmm.
2:23:52
Even there.
2:23:58
Well, you know, so I think what we would, what I'd like to revisit Okay.
2:24:05
In episode two is obviously the rest of the story, and then how
2:24:11
from your travels, you get the sanctuary going and what you do there.
2:24:17
And then I promise, promise, promise listeners, we are going to do a
2:24:21
set, a series, a little series on fairies, nids, dryads, trolls.
2:24:27
Yes.
2:24:28
And we're gonna go down that rabbit hole time and we're gonna do it unashamedly.
2:24:35
And we're goingly and I don't give a shit whether or not
2:24:39
anyone thinks it's real or not.
2:24:40
I couldn't give a flying monkeys because I not,
2:24:43
Emelie Cajsdotter: neither can I, I I just enjoy, enjoy, I think,
2:24:48
Rupert Isaacson: oh, it's such a relief to me that one can
2:24:51
actually have that conversation.
2:24:53
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:24:55
No, if it was up to what people I, if
2:24:56
Rupert Isaacson: you think we're away with a fair, wouldn't even have begun.
2:24:57
We're, yeah.
2:25:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:25:03
And we're not hiding it, so
2:25:08
go listen to something else.
2:25:10
You know, it's like when people want to make animals here more obedient or
2:25:14
whatever, if they're on a class, it's like, no, you can go to any farm all
2:25:18
over the world and people and animals will do exactly what you want them to do.
2:25:21
Now you are in the one place when that's not gonna happen.
2:25:24
Just don't be here.
2:25:26
It's not that hard.
2:25:29
Woo.
2:25:32
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
2:25:32
And, and you know, in, in terms of the safe functionality, again, like there I am
2:25:37
teaching somebody some dressage, or there I am serving an autistic kid on my horse.
2:25:41
Yeah, sure.
2:25:42
I need, I absolutely need that full buy-in from my client partner.
2:25:46
Yes.
2:25:47
However, I don't want to be his boss.
2:25:51
I am completely uninterested in being anybody's boss,
2:25:54
Emelie Cajsdotter: and I'm sure he's perfectly happy to be part of that team
2:25:58
a a lot easier when you do it together.
2:26:00
Rupert Isaacson: One thing that is really interesting with this is I have
2:26:03
learned to hear when a horse is saying no, and at first I thought that that
2:26:10
was not something you would be allowed to respect, or if you did, there'd
2:26:13
be this unraveling of everything and
2:26:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: Exactly.
2:26:16
Chaos
2:26:16
Rupert Isaacson: and people would be killed.
2:26:17
And then I was absolutely not.
2:26:19
Absolutely not.
2:26:20
Absolutely not.
2:26:20
No.
2:26:21
Is not no forever any more than if you say to me, Rupert, do you
2:26:24
wanna walk the dog right now?
2:26:25
Or Rupert, do you wanna cup of tea right now?
2:26:27
I might say yes, or I might say no, but if I say no, it doesn't
2:26:30
mean I never want a cup of tea.
2:26:32
You know, it just means a particular moment.
2:26:36
Right.
2:26:37
And, and to learn to discern in, in, in, in that way.
2:26:40
And of course in the hunter gathering context, the animals do have that
2:26:43
autonomy, but in agriculture they don't.
2:26:46
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes, exactly.
2:26:47
There's something happening in that shift.
2:26:50
Rupert Isaacson: And so, you know, if we can be now able to sort of
2:26:53
post agriculture, be able to bring ourselves back into that relationship.
2:26:59
But not only as hunters
2:27:01
Emelie Cajsdotter: No, exactly.
2:27:02
Rupert Isaacson: Or as medicine, but just in interaction.
2:27:06
But that doesn't also have to be an extreme thing.
2:27:09
Oh, now we're not allowed to ride the horses anymore.
2:27:11
Even put a bit in your mouth.
2:27:15
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's not that it's not that easy,
2:27:17
Rupert Isaacson: too extreme
2:27:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: or it's, it's, it's changing your intention.
2:27:20
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:27:21
Emelie Cajsdotter: It's not so much changing the outer circumstance
2:27:24
as you might first think.
2:27:26
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
2:27:27
But it's very rare to have a conversation like this in which
2:27:31
that type of discernment is made.
2:27:33
Usually when one has a conversation like this, it's one
2:27:36
extreme or the other extreme.
2:27:37
Yes.
2:27:38
Yes.
2:27:38
It's so incredibly refreshing, Emily, to be able to talk about stuff
2:27:45
that sounds completely nuts from an absolutely common sensical point of view.
2:27:50
So that then one can get to, well, is it okay to ride my
2:27:54
horse or is it okay to Yes.
2:27:56
You know, for us all to be setting these flexible boundaries
2:28:01
with each other mm-hmm.
2:28:02
Species.
2:28:04
And I think, you know, where I was at the beginning of this, where I was
2:28:07
saying, you know, when people say I'm an animal communicator or whatever,
2:28:10
and I'm always so skeptical because it always seems I personal to that human.
2:28:14
It's like, is it really?
2:28:15
You know
2:28:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: what,
2:28:18
Rupert Isaacson: to me?
2:28:18
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
2:28:19
And, and I think maybe.
2:28:21
What you are unaware of or what people are unaware of is that maybe
2:28:26
the actual contact point was real.
2:28:29
But the minute my brain picks up on what I'm experiencing,
2:28:33
my interpretation starts.
2:28:35
And if I'm unaware of that, I will believe in my interpretation.
2:28:38
So I will actually think that the horse is really saying that because my brain
2:28:44
is so fast in experiencing everything as real, whether it's true or not,
2:28:52
Rupert Isaacson: you know, I was just having a conversation, actually, oddly
2:28:54
enough, with another Swedish friend who I'm gonna be doing a podcast
2:28:57
with, and her autistic daughter, who I've known for many, many years.
2:29:01
And, and Lena, her daughter is a Helena, is, is is her mother.
2:29:05
They live in New York, but they're Swedes non-speaking.
2:29:08
Mm-hmm.
2:29:09
A lot of people listening will be aware of the current thing going
2:29:12
wrong called the telepathy tapes.
2:29:13
I dunno if you've come across those, but
2:29:16
Emelie Cajsdotter: heard about them.
2:29:17
Rupert Isaacson: Very, very worth listening to.
2:29:18
Massively.
2:29:19
But basically yes, people not speaking, it turns out seeming to be able to
2:29:24
do it on a, on a telepathic level.
2:29:27
Okay.
2:29:28
And then speaking through people they love, parents trusted, but then realizing
2:29:36
that sometimes what the p the as the P.
2:29:40
People pick up and become a filter then exactly what you said, the
2:29:45
interpretation and thoughts of the person who's then the filter begin to cloud.
2:29:50
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yep.
2:29:50
Rupert Isaacson: What's said and then what ends up being said might or might
2:29:52
not be what the original person was.
2:29:54
Yeah.
2:29:55
People are learning how to navigate this.
2:29:57
Mm-hmm.
2:29:58
Fascinating.
2:29:59
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yeah.
2:29:59
Rupert Isaacson: That we could do the same with animals.
2:30:02
Emelie Cajsdotter: Definitely.
2:30:07
Rupert Isaacson: Alright, well, okay.
2:30:09
We better make another date, haven't we?
2:30:11
Emelie Cajsdotter: Yes.
2:30:11
Rupert Isaacson: In that case, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit the end recording button.
2:30:17
So, listeners just know this is only the first one.
2:30:20
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2:30:24
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2:30:28
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2:30:38
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2:31:34
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