Latest / UK Column Radio / Claire Salerno (Part 1 of 3) | A Thousand Words

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Claire Salerno (Part 1 of 3) | A Thousand Words · UK Column Radio

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I think it's really important to do that, to think
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: critically now more than ever. This isn't the worst of times.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I think we've had worse times. However, these are really
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: important times. This is designed to do this, to keep
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: us malleable, to keep us divide and conquer. Is it
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the whole point? No, not necessarily. Was it designed by
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: one person? person or a cabal of people you know
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: these masterminds in a room and because you are allowed
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to evolve and grow in your thought process and you
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: are allowed to put things down and every time an
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: empire fades we sort of go thank god that that
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: empire is crushed and it's down and then we create
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: it again and then and then we have these these
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: wonderful beautiful really interesting confusing texts that you really do
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: sort of have to read lots of times lots of times.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Hello hello all right what are you doing there i
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: don't know where do you come from what am i
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: doing here Well, that's the question, isn't it? That is
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: a very good question. What we're doing here. Gosh.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: The biggest question of all time.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Thanks for coming. You're welcome. I'm quite excited because
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I've been binge watching your stuff. Well, perhaps you should
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: just explain how you would describe yourself because a lot
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of the people watching might not know your work.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Have you got a little kind of brief... I was trying.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: To think about this on the way here.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you probably haven't had to, really. No, no,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: not at all.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Because I've only started my YouTube channel in late February.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So this is all quite new to me.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: And we're in October now, so eight months or so.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not very long at all. And I'm landing on
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the job. I really am landing on the job. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it's been a bit of a roller coaster. It's fun,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: but it's daunting at the same time. So a little
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: bit about me. My work particularly, I just felt I
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: was watching everything that was happening in the world. And
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I felt helpless and powerless. Right. And I thought there
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: has to be, there's got to be another way. And
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I really, in a lot of the work that I've done,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you know, in my corporate life and charitable, you know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: third sector stuff, I'm always looking at how we can improve,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: how we can improve. How can we improve society, communities?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: How can we improve as people, as individuals, as groups,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: as corporations, as cultures? Yeah. And so I've always done
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of systems thinking anyway. I've always looked at systems.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: What can we do better? What needs to change? What
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: are some of the issues? And I'm also a really
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: deep thinker and overthinker.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: You think you're an overthinker? Oh, I don't think I know.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: I know I'm an overthinker.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And I thought I need to be able to put
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: this to good use. I need to be able to
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: channel this in a way that is helpful to me
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: and hopefully helpful to others too. Yeah. Because I felt
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: on my own, but I knew I wasn't on my own,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. I think people are becoming really
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: tired of the polarisation that they see. Okay. And I thought, okay,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: how can I change the world? I'm just one person. Yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: How can I change the world? And not saying I'm
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: perfect because I absolutely know I'm not.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: But that's what, you know, that's what we ask when
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: we're 15, 13, 10, 8 even, you know, whatever. Well,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: you have those questions, don't you? But they kind of
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: get smashed out of you. You think, well, they're not
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: the kind of, but actually that is really the only question,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: isn't it? How do we make the world a better place?
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's our drive, isn't it? Surely like this
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: whole conversation, everything that everyone's engaged in is basically the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: root cause is, Well, we're trying to make the world
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: a better place.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It's very complex.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I think so. I hope so. I think some people
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: are driven by other needs and wants. And I'm not
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: arguing for or against that. Me personally, I think I've
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: always had this, always actually. I mean, I can go
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: back to 1980 listening to Imagine. Right.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And I can remember seeing the video. It's a black
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and white video, isn't it? It's all very.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Piano, with him at the piano.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I absolutely loved that song. And I cried,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: used to cry at that song all the time. I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: still do cry at the song. In fact, when I
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: used to go to my son's school and the headmaster
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: was really into music and would, you know, rather than...
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: like hymns, they would sing.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: You know, retro and cool music.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And they would sing Imagine. And I'd be one of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the parents in the back row singing along going, and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: just sobbing.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Because that, I think, is what I believe. I think
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we can imagine a world like that. And I think
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the majority of people would like a world like that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: We've been conditioned to see things in a different way
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and to behave in a different way.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I'm tempted to go off on a little, take that
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: imagine thing on a little, let's, okay, let's try it.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So I completely agree, but within the kind of conspiracy circles,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Even something like that, so there'll be a lot of
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: people listening going, oh, yeah, but Lenin was, you know,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: that's the anthem of the New World Order because it's,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: you know, no countries and all this stuff. And I
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: totally disagree.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: But I've had this conversation with a lot of people. And, well,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: we can park that. We don't have to go down
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: that road because there's so much that you've said that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: we should explore. But what it does point to is
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: how complicated things are at the moment.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: For me, what is basically a simple message of unity
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: and not being attached to material possessions and all this
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Yeah, okay, some of the language might,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: you know, it could trigger a couple of people if
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: you read too much into it. But the message is
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: pretty clear.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about the very essence of a five-year-old child
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: listening to someone sing. Imagine, imagine there's, you know, we
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: love each other.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And that's the simplest message. Yeah, I understand, you know,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: people will take John Lennon and this and that and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: you can read anything you want to read into anything.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: But I'm talking about the real innocence of a five-year-old
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: child saying, even then, thinking, that would be amazing and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: feeling really tearful about it. Yeah. So, you know, what's
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that about? I had no, by that time, I probably
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: had a little bit of conditioning, but I hadn't, nobody
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: telling me that the world was wrong or this or
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: any other. Something I felt even then. Wouldn't that be
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: that utopia? I don't even want to say utopia, but
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: You just know.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just know. And that's gnosis. That's really feeling
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: something in your body. You've embodied something. And you could say, well,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: you've embodied that from a five-year-old's experience. Yes, perhaps I have,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: but actually that's... I'm not afraid of being naive sometimes and,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and I've been for the best, wishing for the best. No.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: And I think, I think there's a lot of wisdom
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: in that, that you've, those feelings that you have as
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: a child, they shouldn't be dismissed. I think they are
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: adult feelings. I think, you know, personally, I think we
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: probably come as souls, you know, so, but we don't
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: necessarily have the, um, practical experience to express things on
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: or you know and that's that's the journey isn't it
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: i mean god there's so much we could talk about
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: why do we forget you know why do we get
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: put set set back almost yeah yeah so you felt
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: that at an early age this kind of yeah longing
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: for this sense of something that was wrong something off.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah something wasn't quite right yeah and um and i
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: used to spend i mean i i have three older
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: sisters right I'm the youngest of four girls and they
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: would be off out doing their stuff because they were
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: older than me, much more mature than me. And I
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: would be out in the garden. And I remember this,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you know, and you remember images of things. We had
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: this tire hung from a tree that we would go
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: in and we'd spin each other around and we just
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: let off. So I was either outside in the garden
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: doing that. and, or I was, um, I remember my
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: dad was having some building done and so there was
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: some sand at the back. So I used to sit
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: there making houses for, for mice. So I think that
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: always wanting to create, always loving being out in the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: garden and unless I had to do gardening, because then
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't like it at all but yeah just being
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: quite earthy I suppose and then of course as you
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: get older you you know the world starts to shape
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you you have different experiences different things happen to you
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and it's really easy to to allow all of those experiences,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: some good, some bad, to shape who you are and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: change who you are. And I think there's been a
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: core of me which has sort of remained, which is,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and I don't know whether this is an ego thing
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: or what, or, you know, what makes me think I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: can change the world, but there's been this mission, this
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: purpose that's been... in everything I've done, regardless of what
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I've done. So, you know, I studied law initially. I
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't very good at it. I'm just going to put
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that out. I'm not particularly compliant. At the time, studying
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a lot wasn't my thing. I thought it was something
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I should do, have a good career. It's something I'd
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: wanted to do since I was about eight, actually, because, again,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted to change the world through law. of course,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and then you get into.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Law in your life. Well, it's logical, isn't it?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: As a child.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's, you know, when you're at school, oh,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the headmaster said this, so this has got to be,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: you know, you still, not every child, but, you know,
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: that is the kind of childlike mindset, isn't it?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: That adults know what, they know something that you don't.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I, yeah, and I want to help people
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: through the law. Yeah. Make the world a better place. Yeah.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I know I'm sounding like a Michael Jackson song. Yeah. But,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And then I've gone into different careers
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and sort of fell into learning and development and consultancy
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: work and all sorts of things. But again, the core
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: has always been to help.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: That has felt like my mission.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Or purpose. And sometimes to my detriment, I would say.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And then I left the corporate world a couple of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: years ago. And I actually had the chance to start
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: thinking about how I wanted to think about things. Okay. Um,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: rather than, you know, when you, when you work in organisations,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you're sort of towing the party line. And I, I
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: was doing that, but not very well because I don't
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: like injustice.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: And what you were seeing it in the workplace.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think like, I, I, um, I suppose
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: what's the word? Um, I have, um, is it polymath
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: tendencies where just like yeah just.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Like looking at lots of different lots of different things yeah.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And um and i look for patterns too right and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: when when you're in a corporate world and you've got
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: your you know your people in charge and you have
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: your various layers i don't get me wrong i was
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: fairly close to you know i was in the senior
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: senior leadership team so i had influence okay which was
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: great yeah and i'd worked really hard to get that
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: influence but you are still sort of beholden to someone
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: else telling you, no, we're going to do it this way.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And even though you've got it in your gut and
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: you can see the patterns because you've seen it all before, because,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm 51, I've been around the block a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: little bit, that you, I would feel like I was
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: banging my head against a brick wall because I was like,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: this is obvious to me. Why isn't it obvious to you?
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: This is really obvious to me. And, you know, you'd
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: run and you'd do this and they had their reasons
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and their rationale and they had their orders from above
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: and you know, and it could get really, really difficult
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and it would have an impact. It can have an
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: impact on the people that I would work with. And those, those,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that's who I cared about.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Because when you work in organisations, you're working with hopefully
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a group of really passionate, intelligent, um, knowledgeable specialists within
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: their area what's the company oh i don't know if
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: i can say anybody who looks me up you'll find
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: it okay um and uh you you i i you
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: know i really cared about people i still really care
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: about people yeah yeah and when i i see them
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: struggling or i see them you know um overworked and,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: you know, these amazing creative people and they're sort of
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: dropping like flies or they're leaving or, you know, they're
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: just really despondent and therefore they're not able to be
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: their pure creative selves. I, you know, I find that
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: really difficult. And I do believe if you are in
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a position of influence, you should use that influence.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: You can't just stay quiet. And so, and I've never
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: been able to stand injustice. And I've got in trouble
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: for it before when I was younger and at school,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you know, not all the time because I'm relatively compliant,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: but not. And I would have to say something. And
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: sometimes it would be my guts telling me this isn't right.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: This is right. And I would struggle to find the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: words to articulate why. Because and, you know, this is
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: this is that whole logic heart gut thing. this communication
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: you know system that i've i'm still working.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Through yeah yeah i i came across you basically you've
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: got a youtube channel yes where you talk for between
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: 10 20 minutes usually in this short very digestible or
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: some of them actually less digestible as i was saying
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: like a little bit longer the ones ones the ones
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: where you you get into some of the esoteric Or
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: the myths. I've struggled to follow some of them because
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I haven't got the knowledge. But they're the few and
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: far between. The majority are very easily digestible. It feels
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: like you're exploring reality. You're trying to understand. You said
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: at the start that you felt powerless. What it seems
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: you're doing in your videos is trying to make sense
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: of the world. by looking at myth, religion, maybe not
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: so much religion, but more of what lies beneath religion, maybe. Politics, history, philosophy,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: all of these things. I mean, if people dip into your...
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: You've got some great playlists. I love all the stuff
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: about the Gnostics, what underlies Christianity. I think that's really
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: important at the moment because... A lot of people are
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: turning to Christianity.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: For me, it seems like a bit of a trap
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: as it's expressed in itself. And yet I interviewed Matt Glamour,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: you might not know him, at the last.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, I did watch that.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Did you watch that? Okay. He's got a much more
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: accepting stance on it. He says, you know, there's so
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: much good in it that we just accept perhaps some
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: of the... The negative aspects of it.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Some of the crappy stuff.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I sort of, it's something in me which feels like
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: we should aim for purity and like dogma, any kind
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: of dogma, any kind of belief system for me feels
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: like it's going to undo the good work that any
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: of the beliefs themselves might.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: So it's a bit of a complex way of putting it,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: but you talk a lot about the Gnostics and I
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: think why it's important. I think it's really important for
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: people who are, engaging with Christianity at whatever level, whether
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: they call themselves Christian or whether they're just trying to
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: understand it, to really look at it in an objective,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: critical way, where it comes from, what's being said.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Why it's being said.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Why it's being said. And that's the key to it,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: isn't it?
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's why I like to explore it. So
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I was brought up sort of half Roman Catholic and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: half Protestant. So mum's a proddy, but she wouldn't accept
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that she's a proddy. She's much more spiritual. And my
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: dad and my dad's family, because of the Maltese side,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: is Catholic. So the first school I went to was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: a Catholic school. And, you know, back in the day,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you would go to morning assembly and you'd say the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Lord's Prayer and you'd sing some hymns, which I really liked. Actually,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I always liked singing in the hymns and stuff. And
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I remember one of my earliest memories being in the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: classroom and the teacher asking me, who's the leader of
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the church? And I knew the answer.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It's Gary Glitter, isn't it?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Wrong. I'll say what he said. But yeah, and I
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was like, I knew the answer. But because the way
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: she'd asked me, it petrified me. So I just stayed still.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And she's like, it's the Pope. It's the Pope. And
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, okay, okay. And, you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in the Catholic religion, you're taught to feel guilt and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: you're taught to feel shame and you've caught all these
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: really horrible, completely useless... expressions. And that was the only
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Catholic school I went to because then, you know, my
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: parents divorced and I ended up going to just a
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: normal sort of church finger school.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: But I've got the Maltese Catholic side. Every year I'd
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: go to Malta, you know, the churches and everything else.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I had godparents, so I'd go to Sunday school on,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you know, not Sunday school, I'd go to church on
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a Sunday with my godparents.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And what I really loved was the ritual.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: You did?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask, that's interesting you said that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, you know, all the ritual at the time.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: So you didn't, Because for me, with the Catholic stuff,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: you know, when I was younger, I found it's quite dark.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Like there's a heaviness there.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Did you not?
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: No. And I can still go into a church and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: cry now.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And I don't know why. Okay. I think it's because
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it's a place that holds so many emotions. I think
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that's what I pick up on. So I probably wasn't
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the best at learning the Bible or anything like that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And didn't really take religion too seriously, even at school,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: you know, did R.S. And so you learn, just learn
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: a bit of this, a little bit of that.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Doss lesson.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, you learn about all these other
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: different religions and you learn that when the teacher writes
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: in green, it's empathy, you know, all of this sort
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of stuff.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: And then left school and studied classics at college.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Why did you choose classics?
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I think, Um, it's really ridiculous reason. So go around college,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you know, on your open days, the people in the
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: classics class were going around with the, with the drum
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and they, and I was having so much fun. That
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: looks fun. And I thought, ah, that looks really interesting.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And I, you know, I love history. I love, um, um,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: architecture and I love, you know, the old stories about things.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So I thought, and my mum was a big, my
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: mum is a huge influence on me. I don't know
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: if you can tell, but, um, She was like, oh,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: you must do classics. Oh, it looks so interesting.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, you must do classics.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Go on. So off I go to do classics. I'm
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: doing classics and I'm doing theatre studies, of course. Can
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you tell? And English, English language. And then I think
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I did French for business or something along those lines.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And we had to, you know, I think one of
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the things I wrote about recently in The Absence of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Love was about ISIS. or asset and um and learning
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: about isis in my classics made me question everything i'd
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: been taught all that indoctrination all the dogma all of
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it and also i think when i was growing up
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: remember i was growing up in 70s and 80s we
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: had lots of stuff going on with the troubles and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: you would hear a lot of that stuff on the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: news and i could never really understand that that um again,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: this issue with religion. And so when I started to
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: learn about ancient classical civilisation, ancient Roman Greece, the gods,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the goddesses, the Iliad, Odyssey, all of this sort of stuff,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: learning about where some of these religions originated from, it
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: made me question everything that I thought I knew. And
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I was really... I can still remember, I was 16, 17,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and I felt really angry that I'd been misled in
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: such a way. And how being misled in such a way,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: and how the world had been misled in such a way,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that it was causing all these issues around the world. So, yeah,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I suppose that sort of started that journey of discovery.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And I've always loved.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Paganism and witchcraft. So when I said about the ritual,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I loved the ritual in church. Now, when I go
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: back to church for any particular reason, maybe a family
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: gathering or something like that, and I see the ritual,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, gosh, that's taken so much from paganism. That's
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: taken so much from this. That's taken so much from that.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And so I can... I can accept it. I can
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: bear it. I burn sage in my home every full
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: moon and on the first of the month and I
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: blow cinnamon into my house. These are my own personal rituals.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: And whether they work or not, it's just something that
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: resets my mind, my heart. So, yeah, I think classics
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: is really interesting as a starter, but I've never been
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a very good... Never been very good at organised religion.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I don't particularly like it, which is the dogma, which
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: is you must behave this way. And this is why.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: From what your previous guest said, I completely understand. It
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is about when I look at it, when I look
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: at the Bible, read the Bible, look at any of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: these texts, I try and think, what were they trying
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to say? What was the essence of it? Just as
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you would in law. What was the purpose of that law?
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: What were they trying to get to? So it is
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: looking at it with a critical mind. Now, people can
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: read it quite literally to their own end. People can
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: read it slightly differently to their own end. When I
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: look at it, I like to look at it from
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: lots of different angles. What was happening at the time
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: it was written? What was happening environmentally, from a societal perspective?
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: What was going on in their minds? What were they
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: fighting against? What were they trying to achieve? What did
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: they want to achieve from writing these things down? What's
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the history? And what can we take from it now?
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Because what's the saying? History doesn't repeat, it rhymes.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: So.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you can, I'm fascinated, still absolutely fascinated by, when I
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: look in the Gnostic texts, I look at what was
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: happening at the time. I look at who the emperors were.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I look at what was happening in the society, how
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: people were being suppressed and how the Gnostics or the,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you know, the writings, the Gnosticism writings were trying to
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: explain what was happening at the time, sometimes in a
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: coded way and sometimes in a language that The language...
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: The only language they had to express themselves at the time.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so I don't necessarily like to look at
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: it as a literal. I like to look at it
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: as more rounded than... More rounded than that.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So who was Jesus then, in your mind? Who
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: was Jesus in my mind? Because, I mean, we're talking
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: about the Gnostics. So, I mean, the Gnostics weren't just...
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Didn't come out of the blue.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: No, they didn't come out of the blue. And I think, yeah, there's...
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: there is a historical character there. And I think there
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: were teachings. But I think what's more important is, regardless
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of whether the person existed or not, what is the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: purpose of the writings? What are the teachings? and I think, again,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: this is probably what your guest was getting at, is
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: that there is goodness in there. There is moral code
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in there. Not law, moral code. Doing what's right. And
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's what we sort of need to do.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: And I know I mentioned that in the Anarchy video.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: It's about not necessarily having, not saying there shouldn't be
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: rules and laws and things like that, but Doing what
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: you feel is morally right as a person, as, you know,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a bon homme or bon femme, you know, good man
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: or woman. And that's the key, isn't it? Yeah. In
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: its simplicity. You don't go out of your way to
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: hurt someone. If you're doing something in your life and
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: it's not hurting anyone.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Crack on.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Crack on. Simple. You know, you don't take what belongs
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to you.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: What belongs to... What doesn't belong to you.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, sorry.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what doesn't belong to you.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Or what belongs to you. However you feel. But there
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: is a simplicity in here. We've built these layers and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: layers of systems. But the essence of some of those
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: teachings and some of the other teachings are, you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: about just having a... having a good heart, and I
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: understand that's subjective to some people. It's not subjective to me,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: but I get it is subjective to others.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: So... Yeah.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It's been made more complex, hasn't it?
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And this is the root of it.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: But the laws were created to protect property first and foremost.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: And they still do. And, you know, you hear about
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: all of these sort of, things now where property is
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: still more important than people and to me it's just
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: shocking yeah I still can't quite get my head around
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: it yeah I'm And I'm doing my best to try
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and understand. And one of the things about my videos
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: is I'm not saying I know everything. I'm not at all.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I'll wake up with a thought and I'll be like, oh,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. I wonder what that could be about. Let
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: me do some research. Yeah. I'll start doing some research. Yeah.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: And then I go down a rabbit hole and I'm like, okay,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: but what's the other side of that? Where's the balance
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: in that? And okay, this is my gut feel. Why
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: do I feel that? Where have I got that from?
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And that's really important. Whenever I think something, where have
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I got that from? Have I learnt that? Have I
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: been conditioned to think that? Has the environment told me that?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: What's the evidence of that? I know that's very logic.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: That's very logos. But I think it's really important to
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: do that, to think critically now more than ever. This
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: isn't the worst of times. I think we've had worse times. However,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: these are really important times. And I really do feel
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: in my gut and my heart that we have got
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the potential to shift, to change. Yeah. Um, and I'm hopeful, so,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: you know, bottom of Pandora's box is hope and I'm
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: living it. Yeah.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think, well, I said to you before we
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: started that, um, when I came across your videos and
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I totally recommend them to anyone who's interested in any
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: of these topics, um, what really struck me and what
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: is increasingly rare, I think is your, um, flexibility. lack
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of dogma. You're not, like I said to you, you're
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: not trying to sell anything. You're not selling a belief system.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: You're not selling a religion. You're not selling a product.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Not that there's anything wrong with, you know, making money,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: but there's no agenda there. You're just exploring what is.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: And that.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: And hoping people come along on the journey too. Yeah.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: And you do interact quite, Vicky said this, she loves
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the way that you interact with your, I was going
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: to say watchers.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: The watchers.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Because you talk about the watchers. Yeah. But your audience.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Because we're thinking along together.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I struggle with this. I struggle with gurus, full stop.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: I think we're continuously learning. We know it's not humanly
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: possible to know everything. Of course we can't. I can't.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I can maybe empathise with you. I can say, okay,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I can imagine what that may have felt like. I
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: can draw upon my own experiences or reflections within that.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: But I don't know everything. And, you know, things are
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: becoming unveiled and we're learning things all the time. So
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: you are allowed to have a view, an opinion or
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a belief or whatever it is, something that you hold,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and you are allowed to change your mind. Because as
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: new information comes on or new information or new communication
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: with someone or somebody else could say something, you go,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: you know what, I hadn't even thought of that. That
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: hadn't even entered my psyche. And that's really important. I get,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I don't like the, not that I'm wishy-washy because I'm not,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: but what I suppose I don't like or I'm less
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: inclined towards is, A certainty. But it's this. Quite clearly,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: it's this. Okay. Sorry, how do you know? Particularly with
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the mythical, biblical, you know, how do you really know? Now,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: you might have a belief. You might have faith, which
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: is beautiful. You know, you have your belief. You do you.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: That's absolutely fine. But again, it's a very simple thing
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of just, But just because that's something that you hold
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: to be true doesn't mean to say that somebody else does.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This is the root of dogma and its hold
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: on people. Any kind of cult operates on this trick, really.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: It tricks the believer into thinking that their experience is
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: analogous to everyone else's experience. Because something is good for them,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: it's good for the world. And that can only lead to...
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: a sort of a mild form of fascism really, because
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: you're prescribing, you're prescribing onto consciousness. I mean that you,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: that you're not, like you say, you don't know, you
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: don't actually know. Cause what do we mean by no?
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: When we know something, I mean, a bit like in science,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: there's no proof in science. Right. And, and that's, you
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: can't get away from that in a way. We only
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: know what we experience. Like, And I can say, I
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: know you're sitting there. You know, a logician could come
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: in and argue that. It's like, yeah, okay, we could
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: talk about, you know, the matrix and simulation theory, all
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. So at the end of the day,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: you can get wrapped up in a whole load of gum.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I know you're sitting there. As far as it means
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: anything to say, I know you're sitting there. If the
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: word no becomes so kind of nebulous that it becomes meaningless,
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: then yeah, I don't know you're sitting there. But to
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: all intents and purposes, I know you're sitting there. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I've had this with friends where they go into a
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: kind of dogmatic belief system and they prescribe it to you.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: They act as if they know you're in a world.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: And just because it's powerful to them, I mean, we
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: know how powerful hallucinogenics can be, you know, but no
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: one would, you know, if you saw someone tripping, you
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: wouldn't go, yeah, you know, they kind of convince you
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you can jump out the window on the third floor,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: you know, you'd be like, oh, you really believe it.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: You're really like, you seem like in a good place.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: You seem like really happy and full of, you know,
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: I'm really going to really consider your opinion. You don't,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: obviously you go, well, Yeah, in your experience, whatever you're experiencing.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: And that's not to say it's not real. Psychedelics, I
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: do believe they are pointing to a reality. Nothing is separate.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: So everything is connected to the one. There are ways
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: of getting in and seeing things, but it doesn't mean
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: that they're consistent. If that makes sense. So I think
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: this is the problem I have with, and which is
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: one of the reasons why going back to the Gnostics
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: and the kind of the core beliefs or the origins
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: of religion, why I, you know, I don't want to
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: come across like, I feel like it's a mission. But
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: then going back to what you were saying, we all
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: have a desire for truth and for truth to be seen,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: you know, and also I think It does concern us
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: when we see people who we think, and it is
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: a think, but we think are trapped to some extent
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: in a misconception.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But what can you do about that?
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Well, dialogue.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: That's all it is, isn't it, really?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think it's meeting people on... Sometimes you
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: need to meet people from where they're standing as well.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: You need to be able to understand... As much as
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: you can, their experience and why they're thinking in that way.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Because that's really what it's all about, is that, you know,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: building that connection, understanding someone's perspective. You don't have to
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: agree with it to understand it. You can still sit
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in your opinion if that's what, you know. Yeah. And
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you can still sit in your righteousness if you, you know.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: so inclined but yeah i think it's about um i
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: politically with everything that's going on at the moment with
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: the polarization that we're seeing here and across the water
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: um it you could argue from a system's perspective right
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: that uh this polarization serves a purpose okay yeah you
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: could sit on the thing of this is designed to
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: keep us malleable to keep us divide and conquer I
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: think there is an element of that absolutely within there
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: is it the whole point no not necessarily was it
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: designed by one person or a cabal of people you
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: know these masterminds in a room not necessarily I think
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the system has sort of landed the way it's landed
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and people have made use of it and so The
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: key points for me are always, and it's a good
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: question to ask yourself, regardless of what you believe, who
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: benefits if I believe this? And in what way? And
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: as I said earlier, why do I think this? Where
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: does that come from? And is it still true to me?
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Because we grow up with certain values. And I used
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: to do this when I used to do leadership development
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: and things like that. So I'd get people to look
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: at their values and say, right, what are your values?
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Are these still your current values? Have you done Have
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: you reflected on your values? Where did they come from?
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: From your parents, your friends, from TV, from whatever. Do
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you still hold these to be true? Because you are
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: allowed to evolve and grow in your thought process. And
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: you are allowed to put things down. You don't have
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: to carry everything that you were told that you needed
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: to carry. You can put things down.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: So.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: This polarised world, you can look at it, right, okay,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you know, with the Gnostics, it's the Archons. You've got
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: this Demiurge. You've got this false god, this Demiurge. You've got...
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: So Gnosticism wasn't just one group of people. It's lots
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: of different collections of different thoughts. And I think that's
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: really important to understand. There's no sort of mainstream. Even
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: in the Pistis Sophia, you've got contradictions.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: What's the Pistis Sophia? Because that.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Something that people might not know.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Too much about. Yeah, so we've got, there's lots of
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: various Gnostic texts. Some have been unearthed at different times.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Some in the late 1800s, some in 1945, 1947. So
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: you've got probably the most well-known of the Nag Hammadi texts,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: which were found in Nag Hammadi, which is just up
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: or down from Cairo. And they were unearthed by a farmer. Yeah.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: So what's the Dead Sea Scrolls then?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Dead Sea Scrolls are more around, yeah, they're about Enoch,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch, or the Books of Enoch.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Almost exclusively, are they?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, are they? Yeah.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And then you've got the Berlin Codex, the Askew Codex,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and they're named after where they were or who found
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: them or who sold them and da-da-da. And you have
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: the Pistis Sophia, which is four books. And the story
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: is that you have the pleroma, which is the completeness.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: We would say heaven, but they would say it's the pleroma.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: It's the completeness. It's the vastness. It's where the ineffable is.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: It's the thing that we can't describe because we don't
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: know the language. And I really like that because I
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: totally believe that our challenges are The challenges that we
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: have in society are because we can't think outside the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: box of what we've lived for so long. We're almost
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: conditioned to thinking, oh, it has to be this way.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: And every time an empire fades, we sort of go,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: thank God that empire is crushed and it's down. And
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: then we create it again. And I think it's because
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: perhaps we just don't have the ability to be able
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to think further afield of an alternative.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Right. So.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Going back to the pleroma. So this pleroma is this
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: space and it's indescribable and the monad is indescribable. And
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: in various texts, it is described as ineffable, undescribable. We
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: don't have words to it. And they actually explain it
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: in negatives. It is not this.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: It is not that. It's not this. So this is.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: This idea of the unexplainable, the ineffable is something that
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: is recurring in all traditions and, and individual sort of
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: consciousness expansion experiences, isn't it?
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: So this isn't just like a theory that someone's come
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: up with.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: No, this runs through quite, quite a lot, which I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: find really interesting.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Even in, Unconnected societies or cultures.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: There is this need for us to look for something
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: outside to explain.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Whatever that looks like. Uh-huh. And because we're just trying
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to make sense of the world that we're in.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And we do it with whatever technology is available to
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: us at the time. Yeah. So now we look at
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: it through data and systems and before it would have
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: been through cosmology. It would have been through the spheres.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: It would have been what they could see in the sky.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: So the monad has a thought and creates the forethought
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and all of these different eons.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Is that monad as in one? Yeah, monad.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Like the same root of the word. The ineffable, yeah. Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: From him and part of him, because it is all
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: just aspects of, I say him.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: It's him, yeah, I was going to pick you up
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the one source. You
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: don't say it, does it? It doesn't say.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: No, it doesn't, yeah. From this being.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I think all of these emanations were created. And then
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: you have the eons. Yeah. And that I find really
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: interesting because they're syzygies. They're in pairs.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: They're what?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Syzygies.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Syzygies. Yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: S-Y-Z-G-I-E-S. Okay.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know that word. Yeah.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: And they're in pairs. And I don't think... Now, people
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: could read that and go, oh, you see, male and female.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: That's the order of the world. Not necessarily. They're The
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: whole piece of it is the higher you go towards pleroma,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: the less there is around gender. That's one part. But
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: also in the translations, when people were translating from what
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: was a neutral language into a language that uses masculine
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: and feminine, the people that were translating it had to
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: use something. And because they were men, they used male.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: You know, you look at the word spirit, spiritus, that's
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: a masculine word, whereas before, from the neutral, it wouldn't
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: have been.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So there is all of this aspect to it as well.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: And so these eons, they work in synergies. They work together.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: And the way, in my mind, and I'm sure other
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: people may disagree, and of course they absolutely can, I
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: look at them as being one thing on the spectrum.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: on one spectrum. A bit like how you have light,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: you have infrared light on one and you have ultraviolet
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: on the other. It's still light. Infrared, you might see
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: the darker side and ultraviolet, you might see the lighter
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: side of things, but it's still light. It's still one thing.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: And these syzygies, as they were created, were just really
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: interesting pairings. And basically, it comes from the word yoke.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: They were yoked together.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: And the pairings themselves are really interesting. And I think
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: even just looking at the pairings is a really good
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: mindfulness thing. What could they be thinking about? Why did
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: they pair those? So I talk a lot about Anthropos
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and Ecclesia, the human and the assembly. It's possibly my
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: favourite one. Because to me, that is us right now. Right.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: We are the human, the individual, and we are the community.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: And they are on the same spectrum. We're one. Yeah.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And we talk about that, don't we? We say, you know,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: we're one. We're one with this greater mind that we have,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: this connected mind. And, yeah, so.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: So for me, though, the syzygies, the pairings, the yoke
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: together are really interesting as a concept. So you have
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: these emanations, they're called the aeons, and then you have
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: this particular aeon, Sophia, who acts without her partner. In
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: one book, sorry, in the Apocrypha of Phineas and John,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: she acts without her partner. In the Pistis, Sophia... She
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: is looking up to this great treasury of light and
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: she's saying, oh, this is so beautiful, you know, and
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: she's singing. She's always singing. Sophia's always singing. And she
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: wants to be with the lights. And she's in the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: 13th aeon, like this level. It's really interesting how they
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: describe the different levels of the Pleroma in heaven and
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the structure. It's a hierarchy. It's like a little corporate hierarchy.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: building in my mind. I just find it really interesting.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: And what do you think they were building this on?
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: So they were looking at the sky. The science they
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: had at the time was astrology.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Right, okay.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: And so they were looking at what they could see
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: with their naked eye, which is why a lot of
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: the numbers you'll see are seven because that was the
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: seven planets, the seven spheres.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Right, okay.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: So Seven also in Judaism and... and mythic Christian religions
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: means completeness in whole.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: And so she... She sees this light. I'll go with
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the pistis because it's quite a cool story. She sees
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: this light. She's like, oh, it's a beautiful light, beautiful light.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And then she's got this level of co-workers below her
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: in the 12th year. One of them is called Orthodes,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: and he's the self-willed one. And he's like, who the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: hell does she think she is? She wants to go
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: with the light. She's not doing her job properly. I'm
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: going to teach her a lesson. So he creates this
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: counterfeit light. And he casts it down into chaos. And Sophia,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you know, she's just innocent. And, you know, she's just like, oh,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to, you know, go towards the light.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: It sounds like poltergeist, doesn't it? Yeah. Going towards the light.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: So she goes towards the light, but she ends up
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: in chaos. And in chaos, all of these entities in
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Archon start stripping her of her light, all of this divine,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: beautiful light, and they take it from her. Right. And
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: she's stripped bare. And part of her matter is taken
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: to create Yaldabaoth.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Hang on, say that again.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Yaldabaoth. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Because these are all the things that I'm... Now I'm
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: a bit more familiar with the names, but still, they're
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: quite alien.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: So Yaldabaoth is also known as the Demioche.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Right, okay. Probably more people are familiar with that term.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Demioche. And so... This false god, effectively. So
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: in the Apocrypha of John, there's a slightly different story
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: about how it happens, that she creates the Yaldabaoth and
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: then she casts it out, the Pleroma, and it thinks
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: it's the only one. There is no god but me,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: he says, and it says. And then it creates the
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: material world that we live in, which is a false world.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And I just find all of that really interesting. So
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: what could possibly have been going on in these people's
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: minds for them to need to interpret it in this way?
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: They were trying to make sense of the world. They
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: were trying to make sense of the good, the bad,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: the ugly, of power. They were, I think, taking into
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: account nature and the cycles of nature. They were looking
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: at the heavens and the skies and they were seeing
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: these planets and they were influenced by other religions, you know,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt, for example, and sort of taking a
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: little bit of this and taking a little bit of
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: that and then morphing it. And then we have these wonderful, beautiful,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: really interesting, confusing... Texts that you really do sort of
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: have to read.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Lots of times.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Lots of times.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: So with the Pistis Sophia, she goes down into chaos
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: and she appeals. She has a metanoia. She has a
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: change of mind. She realises what's happened.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: What's happened, yeah.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: That she followed a counterfeit spirit. And that's Violet McDermott's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: translation of a counterfeit spirit, a counterfeit light that she followed.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: believing it to be the pure light. And she goes down,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: she's stripped of her power, she ends up creating Yadavayuf.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: These archons and these emanations are suppressing her, they're stealing
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: her light, and she sings and she calls and she
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: appeals and she says, you know, I realise what I've done,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: this is awful, come and help me. And she does
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: it 13 times.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And then... Jesus, he doesn't intervene straight away. He creates
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: this light and he sends down the archangels to help her.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: And he tells them, but don't let her feet touch
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the ground. Carry her, but don't let her feet touch
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: the ground because I don't want her to have to
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: stand on this sort of horribleness. And they give a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: little bit of her light. And so you look at
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: that and you think, And I think I read that
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: and I was like, what are they trying to say here?
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: You could read that. You could read it quite literally
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and you could read it from a biblical sense. You
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: could read it as though it actually happened. You could
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: read it as what message are they trying to tell us?
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: What are they trying to explain about society? What's happening
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: with politics? And I actually think that's a much more
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: interesting read because then we start to look back at
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: history way, way, way back and go, what was going on?
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: And actually, what are the synergies that we can have
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that we see today? Yeah. And what can we learn
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: from it? Yeah. We have all been deceived and we
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: have all played the deceiver. Back in the day when
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Christianity started, it was very grassroots. But what you're seeing
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: is a divine goddess that is in so many different
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: religions and traditions and myths that has effectively been dampened.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: The biggest money makers on these algorithms is revelation stories.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: We all want to know something that's been hidden. I do.