Ep21. Philip Carr-Gomm - Stop Living the Provisional Life and Start Creating an Authentic One

Summary

In this engaging episode of 'The Meaningful Life,' Andrew G. Marshall welcomes Philip Carr-Gomm, a transpersonal psychologist and psychotherapist, to discuss how to stop living a provisional life and start embracing an authentic one. Carr-Gomm shares insights from his own life experiences, delving into the concept of the 'provisional life' where future goals overshadow present living. Through personal anecdotes and professional wisdom, the discussion reveals the balance between planning for the future and living fully in the present, proposing strategies like conscious goal setting and embracing moments of introspection and serendipity. Carr-Gomm emphasizes the importance of spiritual and psychological alignment and the enriching role of nature in fostering mindfulness and self-awareness.

Highlights

• Philip Carr-Gomm introduces the concept of the 'provisional life,' where one lives for future perfect moments instead of the present. 🔮
• Carr-Gomm recounts his own journey from a successful business to embracing his passion for spirituality and psychology. 🚀
• The discussion emphasizes engaging with challenges instead of avoiding them, using Carr-Gomm's metaphor: 'the way out is the way through.' 💪
• Practical advice on drafting life plans while enjoying every step of life as it is now – because life isn't waiting! 💼
• The importance of aligning one's psychological and spiritual paths for true meaning is explored. 🔗
• They discuss how nature can serve as a bridge to deeper self-awareness and personal growth. 🌿

Key Takeaways

• Life is happening now! Don't wait for a 'golden moment' to start living authentically. 🌟
• Goals are great, but they're not a substitute for living fully in the present. Plan wisely and enjoy the journey. 🗺️
• Engage deeply with life's challenges – sometimes the way out is through. 🚪
• Align your spiritual and psychological selves for a truly meaningful life. 🧘‍♂️
• Reconnecting with nature can bring profound clarity and grounding. 🌳

Overview

In this episode, Philip Carr-Gomm brings to light the profound concept of avoiding a 'provisional life.' He emphasizes the pitfalls of deferring happiness and meaningful living to future events, advocating instead for a balance between goal-setting and savoring the present. It’s a call to action for listeners to introspect and reassess their life’s direction.

Carr-Gomm shares his personal escapade from a successful but unfulfilling career. His turning point – a realization that his true passion lay in psychology and spirituality – serves as a compelling narrative demonstrating that success is not just about material accomplishments but also about soulful satisfaction.

The dialogue weaves through the importance of harmony between spiritual and psychological well-being, encouraging listeners to find their grounding in nature. By adopting a mindful engagement with the present and aligning their spiritual paths, listeners can hope to imbue their lives with authentic joy and fulfillment.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to The Meaningful Life Podcast The chapter introduces "The Meaningful Life Podcast" hosted by Andrew G. Marshall, who is a marital therapist, author, and communications trainer. The podcast focuses on exploring the concept of meaning in life, as desire for meaning drives people, while its absence causes suffering. In this introduction, Andrew G. Marshall sets the stage for discussions with various guests about what constitutes a meaningful life.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Guest Introduction: Philip Carr-Gomm The chapter opens with a compelling question: 'Are you living the life you truly want or just waiting for a future moment to begin your real life?' The guest, Philip Carr-Gomm, is introduced as a transpersonal psychologist and psychotherapist. He is also noted for his previous role as the leader of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. The discussion hints at themes of mindfulness and purposeful living.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Understanding Provisional Life The chapter titled 'Understanding Provisional Life' discusses the work and background of an individual who has authored multiple books, including one on druid beliefs, and has spent over 30 years associated with the Institute of Psychosynthesis, where he still serves as a non-executive director. The chapter explains psychosynthesis as an approach that merges psychology and spirituality, aligning with the podcast's mission. Additionally, the individual is credited as a founder of the Sophology Institute, known for teaching a relaxation technique that both calms and energizes. He resides in Sussex.
• 06:00 - 09:00: The Process of Change and Personal Growth The chapter introduces the concept of 'The Provisional Life.' This is described as an internal state where individuals tell themselves that they will begin truly living or be genuinely happy at some indeterminate future point. The conversation appears to explore the barriers to living fully in the present and emphasizes the importance of creating a desired life rather than waiting for it to happen.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Real-Life Examples of Provisional Living The chapter titled 'Real-Life Examples of Provisional Living' discusses the concept of delaying or postponing life satisfaction or major life changes until a future event or condition is met. This mindset often involves waiting for a specific change, such as getting married, divorced, obtaining or leaving a job, or relocating to another country, with the belief that these will mark the beginning of one's real life or accomplish something significant. The transcript suggests that this anticipation of a future event can be seen as a way of justifying postponement of current fulfillment or the pursuit of important personal goals.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Embracing Change and Setting Goals In this chapter titled 'Embracing Change and Setting Goals,' the speaker reflects on the importance of planning and setting goals. They emphasize that, while the future is uncertain, having a clear set of objectives is crucial for progress. Through personal introspection and observation, the speaker notes the significance of tackling personal ambitions. They describe themselves as ambitious, with a penchant for planning, evidenced by their habit of making lists and maintaining a detailed daybook to organize their tasks and objectives.
• 15:00 - 18:00: On Spiritual Development and Ego vs. Soul Needs The chapter begins with an exploration of the human inclination towards planning and progress, illustrated through a personal anecdote. The author reflects on a family tradition of making lists and finding satisfaction in completing them. This behavior is humorously linked to an elderly relative's persistence in progress despite her advanced age. The narrative delves into the dichotomy between spiritual development and the satisfaction of ego-driven goals, suggesting that while forward thinking is natural, it may not always align with soulful needs.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Druidry as a Path to Spiritual and Personal Growth The chapter delves into the concept of druidry as a means of fostering spiritual and personal growth. It discusses the dual nature of motivation: while it can drive us to pursue our goals, it can also lead to an 'arrival fallacy,' where happiness and fulfillment are anticipated only upon reaching certain milestones. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about their first marriage as an example of such a moment that was initially perceived as a 'golden moment' but turned out to be challenging.
• 21:00 - 25:00: Enhancing Connection with Nature and Self The chapter explores the common experience of living a provisional life, exemplified by the author's first marriage. The narrator describes the feeling of fulfilling obligations and waiting for the right moment to leave, planning to stay only until their son grows up to be a teenager. This waiting period is portrayed as a time when they stumbled upon a new profession. The narrative highlights the theme of searching for personal fulfillment while balancing familial responsibilities.
• 25:00 - 30:00: The Interconnection of Inner and Outer Worlds The chapter titled 'The Interconnection of Inner and Outer Worlds' explores the personal journey of an individual who, from an early age, has been fascinated with spirituality despite thriving in a successful career in the travel industry. Initially taking a holiday job in a travel company, the individual abandoned university to pursue this career full-time and eventually started their own successful company. The protagonist grapples with a conflict between their financial success and their deeper interests in spirituality, spending 14 years trying to reconcile or escape this dichotomy between their outer achievements and inner aspirations.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Balancing Personal Desires and Relationships This chapter discusses the struggle of balancing personal desires with existing relationships, particularly focusing on how talents and abilities can sometimes lead individuals in a direction that is not aligned with their true passion or calling. The speaker shares a personal story of spending many years in a line of work that didn't fulfill their true interests or desires, despite being good at it. A reference to a line by poet Robert Frost highlights the internal conflict and discovery path towards finding one's true direction.
• 35:00 - 40:00: Managing Long-Distance Relationships The chapter 'Managing Long-Distance Relationships' discusses the challenges and personal experiences faced in maintaining relationships over long distances. The speaker reflects on their 10-year journey of trying to distance themselves from running a company and the unexpected offers made to dinner guests to take over the company. The speaker humorously mentions offering a travel company for just 20, illustrating a sense of readiness to move on from their current role. The narrative highlights the emotional and practical struggles of managing one's responsibilities and desires in both personal and professional realms.
• 40:00 - 45:00: Creative Listening and Communication in Relationships The chapter discusses the concept of 'Creative Listening and Communication in Relationships.' It highlights a personal anecdote about attempting to offload a business for over a decade. The speaker experienced a revelation that instead of trying to exit the business, it would be more beneficial to fully engage with it. By doing so, they could potentially enhance its value and sell it more successfully. The narrative describes the various steps and efforts required, such as obtaining licenses and securing a building lease, indicating the challenges and processes involved in business development and transition.
• 45:00 - 50:00: The Conclusion and Reflections on Meaningful Life The chapter discusses the process of building up a company over several years to increase its value, and then successfully exiting by selling it to a multinational corporation. The narrative also explores applying the concept of 'the way out is through' in non-business contexts, particularly emotional experiences. It reflects on how engagement and persistence in facing challenges can lead to progress and resolution.

Ep21. Philip Carr-Gomm - Stop Living the Provisional Life and Start Creating an Authentic One Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] we are creatures of desire what we most desire is meaning what makes us suffer most is a lack of meaning the meaningful life with andrew g marshall marital therapist author and communications trainer andrew g marshall invites guests from all walks of life to discuss what makes life meaningful hello i'm andrew g marshall welcome to
• 00:30 - 01:00 the meaningful life today i want to start by asking an important question perhaps the most important one you'll be asked today are you living the life you truly want or just filling in time until some golden moment in the future when your real life will begin my witness on the meaningful life is philip carl gom who is a trans personal psychologist and psychotherapist he used to be the leader of the order of bards ovates and druids
• 01:00 - 01:30 and is the author of several books on the topic including what did druids believe he trained at the institute of psychosynthesis over 30 years ago and is still a non-executive director there what is psychosynthesis it's an approach which combines psychology and spirituality which is the mission of this podcast he's also one of the founders of the sophology institute which teaches a relaxation technique which both calms and energizes he lives in sussex near the
• 01:30 - 02:00 sussex downs which is where i used to live so i think we're going to have quite a bit in common our topic today is stop living the provisional life and create the life you truly want to live hello philip i think we should sort of start off by explaining what is the provisional life yes hello andrew so the provisional life is really the statement that exists internally i think where we say i'm really going to start living i'm really going to be happy my life is
• 02:00 - 02:30 really going to be what it's supposed to be when the dot dot dot and then you fill in the blanks and the blanks are when i get married when i get divorced when i get that job when i quit that job when i move to another country something in the future that we tell ourselves will mean the starting point of our true lives i don't think it even needs to be the true lives it could be something that is actually really important for us or something we've always wanted to do but
• 02:30 - 03:00 we're going to do it at some point in the future well exactly and this is where it gets tricky because of course we need to have goals and we need to plan i mean i suppose i became aware of the sort of importance of tackling this issue purely through sort of introspection and observing my own life and my own process psychologically is you know i'm i'm quite ambitious and i plan a lot and you know i make lists i have a kind of day book of endless
• 03:00 - 03:30 lists and then i take great pleasure in crossing off the items and so on i can see i might have inherited it from my mother who's 98 who when i go and see her in the nursing home she says things to me like well i think i'm making progress and and i restrain myself from saying progress towards what you know but it's very sweet and touching and it sort of keeps her alive in a way so so on the one hand this human the natural need for us to plan and to think forwards is is what
• 03:30 - 04:00 motivates us keeps us going and is necessary in many ways on the other hand it's also a tendency that can introduce the idea and feeling that when you reach a particular point then you'll be happy or then then you'll be fulfilled or whatever it is can you give us an example from your own life of something that you were thinking oh that will be the golden moment oh yes absolutely my first marriage was very difficult i
• 04:00 - 04:30 went through that process which i'm sure is quite common of thinking well when my son's grown up you know when he's a teenager then i'll leave i'll sort of fulfill my obligations to the family and then i'll leave so in that first marriage i was living a provisional life waiting to sort of get out of it that was one strong example during that time i had stumbled upon a a profession as it were
• 04:30 - 05:00 of of running a travel company i was always from an early age fascinated by spirituality and in a sort of holiday job i got a holiday job in a travel company and it ended up being my full-time job when i dropped out of university and i started my own company and it became very successful so i spent 14 years trying to escape my sort of success i was making lots of money the company was growing very fast but i always was interested in
• 05:00 - 05:30 psychology and spirituality and that was where my heart lay so i spent 14 years telling myself you know when i can sell this company when i can get out of this and it's amazing how many talents we have that will lead us in the wrong direction you know there you were good at running a company but just because you were good at it it didn't necessarily mean that's what you should be doing with your life yes exactly and it was reading a a sort of line from robert frost the poet who said that it was just the way out is the
• 05:30 - 06:00 way through and it just hit me at the right time say that again the way out is the way through so unpack that for me well yes i had spent by that time i'd probably spent about 10 years trying to get out of running this company so dinner guests would always be surprised when i offered them the company i'd say look you know would you like to run a travel company you know just give me 20 or something and i'll be quite happy with that and would you like the travel company or coffee yes yes and absolutely so i spent about
• 06:00 - 06:30 10 years trying to sort of slip out the back door i suppose trying to sort of offload this company and then this realization dawned on me that the way out is the way through and that what i should do is i should embrace it and completely engage in it and basically build it up even more to a point where i could sell it successfully there are various hoops to go through of getting amateur licenses and ir to licenses and getting the kind of lease on a building where you know the
• 06:30 - 07:00 company becomes more valuable because it's got elite and so on so i i went through a process that took about three or four years of building it up in a specific way getting more engaged in it in order to then get out successfully which i did i sold it to a multinational at the end of that process so let's look at that idea with non-businessy sort of kind of things like emotional things how can the way out be through in that commonly
• 07:00 - 07:30 what we do when we're in a difficult relationship or a difficult exchange for many of us is to use the mechanism of denial so you know you just won't listen to the other person you won't take on board the attack or the perceived attack the criticism and dissociate in some ways and it's very hard to go against this because that's a very natural response to difficulty in interpersonal relationships but if one can actually engage
• 07:30 - 08:00 with the person with the problem and really listen and really take it on board and allow oneself to feel the pain that that might bring then i think the chances of coming through it or resolving it or if not resolving it it sort of almost becomes a joint decision that the relationship can't go any further if you've really talked it through both of you decide actually this is madness we're not going to make each
• 08:00 - 08:30 other happy rather than one person sort of unilaterally deciding it walking out the door and the other person is less saying hang on what happened why are you going and by going through and really engaging with the problem trying to solve it but you know trying to solve it you realize just how big the problem is and neither of you actually have got the energy or the desire to transform that relationship but you can decide together that maybe this isn't working exactly
• 08:30 - 09:00 and that process which we can talk about so easily together now is of course so difficult in reality one of the things that always intrigues me about when i'm hurt for instance say if my partner says something that is hurtful or conflictual in some ways my natural tendency to withdraw is so strong that i find myself in a situation of of saying to myself isn't it interesting that you can't even open your mouth to say something
• 09:00 - 09:30 and of course you learn various techniques like saying something what just happened there or you know can we just talk about what just happened or what happened yesterday or there are ways that we learn slowly of how to engage with it but i think we can do that if you take that sort of specific example of a particular exchange and some sometimes how hard it is even to take that first step you know i've found that i can say things like i'm finding it really difficult to even say
• 09:30 - 10:00 but this now you know anything just to get to get conversation going if one can imagine that sort of process extending to a whole life and in its extreme i think many people are stuck in a situation where that sort of thing is happening all the time at work where they can't even begin to express the dissatisfaction they're having all the problems they're having in with their work and interpersonal relations in work or just with their work in general and so on then extend that out to the family relationships in the family with i can
• 10:00 - 10:30 see how taking one small interaction so for example my partner i had a row literally just before this podcast started and the tendency would be to put that to one side and try and brush it away because let's be honest nobody wants to stick with a nasty argument but what you're saying is that actually if we really go through that and get that one solved
• 10:30 - 11:00 it could open up other things that need to be talked about because nearly always arguments are connected to a whole range of other things as well and you can begin to deal with the bigger picture but you start with it you go through in a little keyhole rather than trying to put a big lorry through the issue which is our sort of tendency we want to sort of drive a lorry through it get it solved once and for all and probably the keyhole is the most that we can manage well exactly and of course isn't it
• 11:00 - 11:30 interesting that we can take one interaction like this or a relationship you know it gets really quite complex because of course although it's the case at least in my experience the case that often engaging with an issue and finding a way to talk about it can help sometimes it doesn't help and you could actually i suppose play with robert frost's idea and say the way out is sometimes the way around i mean sometimes you know because the risk of course is that it then becomes a confrontation
• 11:30 - 12:00 and it becomes bigger than it needs to be so it's almost like in these situations i find that the challenge is well the question is is this a moment in which the way out is the way through and i need to bring up this issue and say hey look can we talk about this because what you just said i found really difficult or is this actually a moment where it's best to just leave it because it's like the weather and the cloud is going to go and it will be better talking about it tomorrow or whatever so we're always
• 12:00 - 12:30 looking for sort of rules and it's never quite as simple as that because it's a constantly changing picture so sometimes way round is better than the way through how do you decide which is which i've given up trying to work out what the rules are so with my partner for instance we've been together uh we we met when we were 17. we fell in love when we were 17. it's a long time over 50 years ago we were almost too compatible you know we had we just sort of clicked immediately and
• 12:30 - 13:00 it's almost as if we needed as young people to have a more difficult life strangely enough and so we might we we you know because i want a more difficult life yes i think yes more challenges more sort of grist to the mill and we both married two capricorns almost exactly the same age and we both married two virgos you know if one believes this astrology stuff apparently incompatible with capricorns and we both married the two two virgos
• 13:00 - 13:30 after being together for a few years and we were in marriages long-term marriages that were very difficult and then we met each other again in our mid-30s and we thought why have we put ourselves through all this grief you know let's get together and so we both got divorced and teamed up together that was either 20 30 years ago or something and we have a strong relationship but it's also volatile because we're not afraid to engage with each other so we tell each other to f off if we want to and sometimes you know there's thunder and lightning and i used to
• 13:30 - 14:00 try to work out when it was best to confront and say oy can we talk about this and when it was best to ignore and i now just kind of work intuitively or if you're going to be cynical you could say randomly but it's not random i think it's intuitive i just get a sort of sense is this a time to say come on let's talk about this or is this a time to just go for a walk and forget it because often
• 14:00 - 14:30 it just seems to blow away and we're back on an even keel so i think perhaps i will give some examples of when i have been living the provisional life because things that i thought always i would do one day you know in the meantime i was still living a pretty good life actually turned out to be things that were really important so i always told myself that someday i would get a dog and actually getting a dog helped me
• 14:30 - 15:00 through a bereavement and for the last 20 years i've had a dog and it is something that has really enriched my life i also thought that one day i would like to live in another country and it took me until i was almost 60 to do that and i now live in berlin rather than down the road from you that has it really enriched my life and the other thing that i put off doing was asking what is the meaning of life and trying to answer the big spiritual
• 15:00 - 15:30 questions i always thought well i was far too busy to ask what is the meaning of life and is there life after death and what's the purpose of life and all these other questions and i always thought i would do it one day in the future i mean have i answered those questions well no but at least i've made a start and i think my life is richer for it i suppose what i'm saying is often we have all these things that we want to do it doesn't stop us from having a good life today but actually something inside us or something is
• 15:30 - 16:00 telling us these are areas that could be fruitful to investigate but often we don't because you know what am i going to do with the dog when i'm going to go on holiday and what am i going to do about my pension if i go to live in another country and where in a woman will start with the question of is the life after death where do you start with that and so you put off doing it how do you think we can actually stop ourselves from putting off doing these things
• 16:00 - 16:30 and confront our fears and just sort of start down the road funnily enough i think the answer for me again rather like the way out is the way through in terms of confronting the issue of provisional living rather than simply saying oh gosh yes that's a trap i don't want to fall into that trap of thinking when i move to berlin then my life will be great when i get a dog and so on to actually engage in into the conscious planning of your life so in other words to say okay these various things i want to do with my life that i think would be great and let me
• 16:30 - 17:00 plan my life and develop some goals and develop strategies for achieving them and then you see then because you've done it consciously because you've said okay within the next five years i'd like to be living in another country say then you can work towards it you can give the sort of goal setting and be taking the various steps towards achieving that goal you can give them the attention they deserve without
• 17:00 - 17:30 falling into the trap that your life hasn't started yet you see i think provisional living in its sort of most extreme form is one where you're not really living because you're believing your life will start when so it's not that it's saying no i'm having a great life now i'm doing what i want to do and one of the things i want to do is work towards i mean i'll give you an example of that which is towards the end of the last century i was invited to new zealand to go on a speaking tour and i had a fantastic time giving talks in wellington and christchurch and all
• 17:30 - 18:00 the rest of it and had one day off from not giving talks and we sat in a place called cable bay beautiful bay in the south island and i went canoeing for the first time in my life i was probably in my 50s then i suppose and had a picnic with friends and they said why don't you spend some time living in new zealand take a year off and live in new zealand they said look you could rent a house like this there was a house on the on the bay beautiful and i did a summer on the back of an envelope i said how much would it cost to rent that hat and i basically worked out you know how
• 18:00 - 18:30 much does it cost of electricity and food and already but if we rented our house in lewis and sussex we could live off the house rental because the difference in those days was you know in new zealand everything was about a third cheaper so i set that up as a plan and it took about three years to achieve and after three years we went and spent a year in new zealand and it was utterly magical and then we set up another plan which was to live permanently there because we loved it so much and that took probably about eight years of working
• 18:30 - 19:00 towards the goal of living in new zealand and then that never actually happened so you see what i mean we were working towards goals and every so often i would fall into a trap of thinking life will be great when this happens but because i was aware of this provisional living trap i think being aware of it is really helpful because you can just tell yourself hey come on you're here now and you know enjoy life now as it is because you never really know what's going to happen in the future now what about people that actually
• 19:00 - 19:30 don't know what they want to do you and i we've got all these plans which is brilliant what if you're aware that you're just sort of marking time and you're not really even certain what you're marking time until and so it's a provisional life but you've got no idea what the way out of it is well sure in fact you know at the time that we're recording this podcast we're going through the second or third i've lost track now of lockdowns that's happening with the
• 19:30 - 20:00 pandemic and this is a sort of an interesting process that in a way the world is going through of nobody being quite certain and finding it hard to make plans because they don't know what's going to happen it's very disconcerting and the particular way that i favor is taking it on as a project of saying to oneself allocating a period of time say you'll spend an evening where you'll think about what would you really like to do and i think there's ways you can trigger this one is to say if you had all the time in the world
• 20:00 - 20:30 what would you really like to do with your life and what would you like to achieve and then just write whatever comes up you know travel to china you know get a degree in nuclear physics whatever it is just try and get it out and be as wild you know allow yourself the freedom to write anything you like however outrageous because you can always go back and prune it then you can try a question of if i only had six months left to live if i only had a year left to live see if that these are just ways to try and generate
• 20:30 - 21:00 material see if that generates material and then to organize those into long-term goals mid-term goals and short-term goals so a midterm goal might be to say to learn a language a short-term goal might be to you know repaint your bedroom and a long-term goal would be to get a degree or move to another country so you start off by mind mapping in other words just allowing yourself to brainstorm as many different ideas as possible you then
• 21:00 - 21:30 get linear and logical about it and prune it and choose a few in each category or one in each category and then you work out the steps to achieve that i'm sure when you went decided you wanted to move to another country there were very steps you had to do and then i think what i'd add to that that's really important is also allowing for serendipity and for however much you plan something serendipity can come along and either apparently derail you in a different
• 21:30 - 22:00 direction or suddenly introduce a new opportunity which you had no idea you were going to go for i don't think we should get stuck in this over planning now here's a thought that i read that spoke to me i wonder if it speaks to you and the idea is if you've got no purpose in your life you've got no plan you're probably leading somebody else's plan by that you're probably leading the life your
• 22:00 - 22:30 parents wanted or the life that your partner wants or your teachers thought or society thinks or even your children want what do you think of that idea if you've got no plan you're probably leading somebody else's plan totally no i really agree with that and i think the very interesting way of looking at it is with the concept of inner directedness versus outer directedness and you know to put in this terribly simple way you can sort of divide the population into people who believe that fundamentally
• 22:30 - 23:00 they have no control over their lives so that their lives are at the mercy of the weather politics economics genes their parents and so on and there are people who believe that they are responsible for their lives that they have inner direction and of course the reality is that you know of course politics and economics and the weather affect us and so on but it seems to me that ideas of personal development and spiritual development are around helping you to develop a
• 23:00 - 23:30 sense of inner direction sorry i mean that's a huge topic but i think it's hugely important and that's always interested me is how can i write my own script or be open to a script if you get into the sort of the spiritual end of the scale then it's not about your ego's script it's about something beyond the eager the transpersonal it's funny that we've got to exactly the same point in exactly the same moment because i was going to say there's a difference between what your ego wants
• 23:30 - 24:00 and let's define ego and that's the sort of i want i want fast cars i want security i want i want a piece of cake please and what your soul needs we're beginning to get into as you say trans personal material there what do you mean by transpersonal okay well exactly as you say there's the ego you know without going into sort of specific definitions we could say in esoteric terms sometimes people talk about the desire body
• 24:00 - 24:30 or there's that whole cluster of urges and desires that you might have as you say for more cake whiskey and wild wild women uh you know whatever whatever it is they're the needs of the the ego the the personality the everyday self but i think as you take the path of spiritual development or personal development you discover a real sense of fulfillment a sort of deeper sense of happiness if you like and comes from a different place which some people call the soul
• 24:30 - 25:00 some people call the transpersonal some people call the self as opposed to the personality or uh the different ways of talking about it you might even say it comes from the heart as opposed to the mind but however you conceive of it i think we've all had that experience of satisfying our desires at the level of the personality or the ego and finding that we're still not satisfied i mean i believe that the only true satisfaction comes from that level
• 25:00 - 25:30 of the soul you know that satisfaction that comes essentially from love i think in the final analysis you know when you you love people and you're helpful and kind and generous and where you have a sense of of meaning and purpose and you try to live a life of integrity and you know where the values you hold dear are in place i think we're talking about that really so we're on to sort of spiritual matters and you're a druid which from my
• 25:30 - 26:00 understanding can be a religion it can be a philosophy and it can be a personal development path so let's sort of find out a bit about druids what do druids believe what does this what is this exactly because there's an old joke in the druid community and i'm sure that lots of other people use this joke as well which is you know you ask 10 druids for their opinion and you'll get 11 answers so it's just this druid but i think the reason why druidry interests me so much and why i've
• 26:00 - 26:30 pursued it for so many years i helped to lead a druid group for 32 years and developed as a distance learning program in druidry that brought in the insights of trans personal psychology and sort of methods into true tree what i think the times call for is our love of nature and our respect and need to venerate nature and really look after our home and of course this is common knowledge now thanks to greta thundberg and david attenborough and so on so we know this now but very often people can pursue a spiritual path of
• 26:30 - 27:00 self-development and personal development and spiritual development in a sort of dissociated way where at its extreme you're trying to get away from the earth so there are certain interpretations i'm not saying these the correct interpretations but there are ways in which people interpret say the dharmic traditions of buddhism and so on as ways of getting away avoiding being reincarnated again avoiding the sufferings on earth and so on and so you develop a kind of dissociation
• 27:00 - 27:30 and the same thing can happen in the abrahamic religions where you're seeing the main aim is salvation and of going to heaven and life is a bridge pass over it but do not build your house on it and so on and the problem with that is that dissociated approach is that it leads to essentially not taking care of the earth and of the natural world so druidry is a spirituality that is what you might call an embodied spirituality where it doesn't take this dualistic
• 27:30 - 28:00 approach where consciousness is not separated from the body so that it's an idealistic philosophy or spirituality idealistic in the technical sense of the term which is an approach that believes that consciousness is everything and that matter is a distillation of consciousness the opposite approach is materialism which sees consciousness as an epi phenomenon of the brain it sees it as what we call consciousness is just the result of electrical activity amongst cells we say that's
• 28:00 - 28:30 consciousness but that the only reality is physical matter there's one approach materialism the opposite approach idealism which says no no it's all consciousness and then matter just exists within consciousness as a sort of manifestation of consciousness so that's the approach that druidry adopts or this druid adopts certainly and within that we take our experience of our bodies and of the natural world as extremely important
• 28:30 - 29:00 and as the sort of center of our lives and so i think druidry tends to when you say you know what adrian's believe i think they believe not only in the importance of revering the natural world and looking after it but they find that their experiences of spirituality and of connection probably come the most when they're out in the natural world when they're in beautiful surroundings when they're relating to trees into forests into the mountains and so on so how can we all deepen our
• 29:00 - 29:30 relationship with nature because it is a wonderful resource that we have hopefully on our doorstep i mean there's the obvious answer which is sort of getting out there more and falling in love with nature again but here's another idea that i'd like to suggest which is why i'm interested in cephology which is that it's very easy for us to see nature as out there so there's the natural world out there so we say let's get out and be with trees and mountains and so on but of course we are an integral
• 29:30 - 30:00 part of nature there's no separation and our bodies are part of nature and so developing a relationship with our bodies is hugely important so six or seven years ago i became interested in a type of therapy which is called sephorology so i've been doing talking therapy for 30 years psychosynthesis mainly and i wanted to bring the body in more so i came across sophrology which was developed by neuropsychiatrist about 60 years ago and it works with breathing and with
• 30:00 - 30:30 exercises physical exercises and it's a kind of very detailed sort of enriched form of mindfulness you know mindfulness involves doing body scans i don't know if you're familiar with this but sort of scanning the body allowing one's awareness of the body to grow in one's consciousness and sophology goes into this in great depth and brings in physical exercise too and posture and movement and so on the answers are out there all the answers are in there
• 30:30 - 31:00 to these questions so you know what is the purpose of my life are the answers out there or in there well i think that's the interesting thing because in the end that question dissolves because the deeper in you go the further out you go as well that's one of the most extraordinary right i think we're going to have to say that again because this is something we're going to have to think about this one say that again okay the deeper in you go the further out you go what i mean by that is you know those wonderful visual representations
• 31:00 - 31:30 of the molecular and cellular levels where you go down into the atomic and subatomic regions and it starts to look like outer space and there's an experience that you can have in meditation where you go inside down down down in in and you find that you're in outer space it's like a doorway the doorway the way out is the way through in in the same sort of strange way
• 31:30 - 32:00 there's a doctrine of what's called the macrocosm and the microcosm which is the idea that the universe is inside us which is an old idea that i'm not sure when it first started you find it in the kabbalah that ancient jewish mystical system and i think it's in the vedanta as well the ancient hindu idea too i think so and in jainism this wonderful old dharmic religion of jainism you have this idea that it's within there's this a primal figure of of a human being and within them is the entire cosmos
• 32:00 - 32:30 all of reality and it sounds a little unbelievable perhaps or hard to understand if one hasn't experienced it but i think it's an extremely profound experience and it resolves the dichotomy between inner and outer completely so what if you go in and you discover these answers and actually they're probably not going to be very acceptable to other people you know you want to move to another country but the rest of your family
• 32:30 - 33:00 wants to stay where they are thank you i mean what do you do it's interesting you you mentioned that as an example because we both share this thing of moving to another country you successfully moved as it were because you're there and we unsuccessfully didn't move if you see what i mean but that in a way was an example of of how i think there's a moment where you have to push and there's a moment when you have to surrender martial arts are sort of good at this and the whole taoist thing of yin and yang and so on and i think knowing and in relationships i think
• 33:00 - 33:30 this is so important knowing when to push right back to the beginning of our conversation in a way knowing when to push and to confront and to say hey come on can we look at this and knowing when to just let things be because that's the best way to do it you know we spent years gradually getting our residency from new zealand uh we bought a house in new zealand i was going to and fro i had to live for another year in new zealand on my own in batches of time to secure our residency found schools for our kids worked out our job thing when our oldest daughter reached
• 33:30 - 34:00 18 she said for my 18th birthday we were due to move she said i'd just like a ticket to new zealand just to make sure that i want to do this and she went out there and she had a video call with us a couple of weeks later saying look you know i love it out here but there's no way i'm moving i'm not coming to live in new zealand and then our 16 year old daughter said no i'm not moving either you know she had a boyfriend at that time so they rebelled they said we're not going and so we had this crisis and i had kidded myself for those eight
• 34:00 - 34:30 or so years that i'd been planning this that i was holding this lightly but of course emotionally i was really clinging to this in a provisional living kind of way although i wasn't allowing myself to think that i was doing that you know but after all we bought a house we planned everything and i think it's the closest i felt to having a breakdown the house at the time was filled with people there were friends and guests and relatives and photocopier repairmen and the house was just full of people and i i said to stephanie i said i think i'm going nuts i can't handle this because everything was crumbling and i
• 34:30 - 35:00 did something i'd never done before i said let's just get out of here and go and stay in a hotel for a couple of days just to sort of process what's happening picked a hotel at random about an hour away drove there and spent two days there just talked about it went for long walks and sort of cried and just let this dream disappear because there was no way we were going to go if our two daughters weren't coming with us and just surrendered to it and here was the magic on our way home we stopped at a restaurant which looked like a new zealand restaurant
• 35:00 - 35:30 particular style kiwi restaurant we went inside no customers in there it was a fish restaurant looked great we ordered a meal it turned out that it was run by a new zealand chef celebrity chef who'd come back from new zealand he came out and asked us how we were finding the food we said it's fabulous and he said do you mind if i sit down and he started talking to us and he said why are you here what are you doing and we told him the story and he was like an angel he was sort of somebody sent from the other one he said your daughters have made the right decision i lived in new zealand
• 35:30 - 36:00 for 10 years i was born in britain i came out i lived there for 10 years i became a celebrity chef i had my own tv show but seven years would have been enough it was too long he gave reasons why new zealand didn't work for him and he just reassured us whether or not he was telling the truth or not whether it was the truth wasn't the question he he was just the right person at the right time he said you know your daughter's at that stage in their life they need a bigger theater to be in there's a kind of richness in europe that you can't find in new zealand it's
• 36:00 - 36:30 a small world it's a lovely world but it's limited and he gave us just the right kind of message and we came home and we sold the house in new zealand and we've been here for the next 20 years and it was the right decision so the moral of the tale i think is just knowing when to let go and knowing when to hold on we keep coming back round to that it's sort of when to push when to go round i think what i'm hearing is it takes time to discover that and we try to run away from either going
• 36:30 - 37:00 through or going round surrendering or pushing and we just need to give ourselves just a bit more time to take it a bit slower stay in the crucible of conflict for a bit longer as i put it yes and i think perhaps to be good to ourselves that doesn't i was going to say gentle but it's not necessarily gentle you know we can get so worried about making a mistake making the wrong decision i had a little sort of epiphany when i was driving up highway 1 in new zealand which goes from wellington up to auckland it's one of my favorite drives
• 37:00 - 37:30 through the mountain desert road which is just lovely and i've been wrestling with should we shouldn't we should we live in new zealand should we live in england what's the right thing to do and i just suddenly thought it's not about that you know both are fine it's just a question of just allowing what's to be to be in a way and just not working oneself up about whether it's right to confront or right to yield whether it's right to do this you know maybe it comes from way back of being a kid where the teachers are telling us there's a right answer the wrong answer maybe that's not
• 37:30 - 38:00 a helpful way to look at things both answers were great living in in new zealand was great and living in sussex is great as well absolutely absolutely so we're going to just pause for a second before we look at a letter that's been sent in to us to discuss which i think is going to fit into this whole subject of the provisional life and if you'd like to be part of this project be a supporter of it and be able to get
• 38:00 - 38:30 the full conversation that philip and i are having to be able to write in and other benefits as well here is a little bit of information that might be helpful to you the meaningful life with andrew g marshall please follow us on twitter like us on facebook and visit our website andrewjmarshall.com forward slash podcast where you can join our supporters club and unlock bonus material and other benefits
• 38:30 - 39:00 clint's do find out about becoming one of our supporters because at higher levels of support you can join in our ask me anything discussions that happen on a regular basis and of course you can get the benefits of the regular level and you can send in a letter like this one we live in two different countries i'm in the usa and my partner is in poland in normal times we see each other about every six weeks and of course we spend
• 39:00 - 39:30 holidays together like christmas and easter it's been two years now and we're beginning to think about a future together however although we love each other there are a lot of misunderstandings he says he understands what i'm saying but sometimes i wonder if we're on the same page i want to settle down and have a family i'm in my late 30s and i thought we were agreed on starting a family perhaps it is culture perhaps it's language perhaps he's getting cold feet but he's talking about someday and i think we need to make plans and put
• 39:30 - 40:00 our family first i have a good job in the us and he has an okay job in poland but he's worried about finding a job here and becoming dependent on me money is a bit of an issue because he wants to go half on everything and that sometimes means not going somewhere because he can't afford it but he won't let me be the person giving the treats i feel we're marking time but when i try and talk we end up fighting what do i do so i think we have a sort of provisional life here and actually knowing if this is
• 40:00 - 40:30 the right life or the right life with the right person is a very difficult question to answer so what are your thoughts philip gosh yes well it's very relevant to what we've been talking about isn't it it's of course completely natural that we make plans and that we have visions for a future life you know won't be wonderful when we're together and it would be unnatural to try and stop oneself thinking in that way
• 40:30 - 41:00 the only thing that i can suggest perhaps is that perhaps the answer is to create special times in which rather than thinking these thoughts randomly when they come to one during the day would be to allocate a time in which you you say okay now i'm going to think about our future life together and you spend whatever it is 20 minutes half an hour whether that's on your own or in conversation with your partner the rest of the time you try to be in
• 41:00 - 41:30 the now and to really enjoy your life as it is now i learned a technique of play therapy for children which i read a book called dibs by virginia axley which is a small paperback it's the only book i've ever bought a dozen copies of and just given to my friends the normal approach in play therapy prior to her coming up with this i believe was kind of analytical therapy where when you're working with a child and the child picks up a doll and starts whacking it on the table you would say oh you're very cross with
• 41:30 - 42:00 mummy aren't you which she said is invasive and inappropriate and instead what you do is you simply mirror the child you say you're hitting the doll on the table you're hitting the doll on the table you're just with the child and so i trained in this form of therapy it's very powerful and the dibs book talks about this but it's a sort of book that anyone can read even if they're not interested in kids or play therapy it's just a wonderful book the way it transfers into family life is you know when you have kids they can be so demanding but it's very natural to constantly be kind of shrugging them off and kind of
• 42:00 - 42:30 saying oh look at your ipad for 20 minutes while i do this and what it says no no just spend some time and ring fences say for the next hour i am with you we used to have a set frame for the next hour or for the next half an hour i'm completely with you and you're totally focused on the child and what they're doing and then you mirror them by doing what they're doing by copying them by mirroring back that thought and this has the effect of giving the child loads of attention when the hour's over you say our time's up now you know daddy's going to go and do some work in his office you're on your own that sort of thing
• 42:30 - 43:00 and you satisfy that need we have for attention so this is applying the same idea and satisfying our mind and hearts need to think about our future life but you ring fence it you say okay i'm going to think about our future life this evening at six o'clock for an hour or half an hour but what i'm going to do now is i'm just going to live my life as if this is it this isn't a rehearsal this is my life now and i'm going to live it to the maximum even if i'm not with my partner or the person that i love and so by actually not looking at it
• 43:00 - 43:30 deliberately not attending to it for a certain amount of time i think it would be certainly worth trying that when you are actually talking about it together really stay with your partner's thoughts rather than trying to knock them down our tendency is if somebody says well i'm having second thoughts about abc you don't actually stay with that and say tell me more about it you tend to try and argue them down and then the two of you just go round and round
• 43:30 - 44:00 in circles but this is possibly back to you can go through to get out of the issue so you know you really look at those fears about the job for example and you stay with those rather than trying to push them away exactly the doctor she was a gp in london who taught me the play therapy technique was very interested in what she called creative listening and she was a quaker as well as a doctor and she developed a whole bunch of techniques for interpersonal work and one of them
• 44:00 - 44:30 which is really good is where you agree to have a conversation where you will not respond it's very counter-intuitive this but you say i know you've got various concerns about our plans for the future what i'd like you to do is please voice them and i'm just going to really listen and i'm not going to respond we'll finish the conversation i'll say thank you at the end and we'll finish the call i'm not going to try and answer you in any way i'm just going to completely receive what you're saying so that's great because that removes
• 44:30 - 45:00 precisely the the barrier that you were talking about where we have a tendency to even as the person is talking we're formulating our response and countering them and that means we don't really hear them we don't really hear them so you say i'm going to really hear you and i'm not going to try and defend myself or counter argue argue about this i'm just going to listen so you can say whatever you like and radically rachel arpini the doctor said this i've never quite been able to do but her radical thing was you don't come back to them the next day or a week later with the counter
• 45:00 - 45:30 arguments it's very hard to do that but they might come back to you themselves with the counter arguments well exactly just getting it out may shift things there's another technique that's harder to do but it's very powerful as well which is where you say i think you're really concerned about this issue and i'm now going to talk as if i'm you and i'm going to say what i think it is that's on your mind please just hear it and we'll finish the
• 45:30 - 46:00 conversation and then we'll talk about it tomorrow you know then i would say i would imagine in this lady's case and i'd imagine i'm her partner and i'd say i'm really worried about coming to the states because i don't think i'll get a job and actually i'm rather getting into the job i'm doing in poland now and i'm quite enjoying it and i've started to get cold feet about the movie so you act as if you're the partner and that can yield some really quite interesting material and then you know the next day or the next week the partner can come back and say well
• 46:00 - 46:30 actually thank you that's exactly how i've been feeling or no i wasn't feeling that way at all actually but you actually separate the time out so you don't do it directly after the other person has spoken yes just to give space to that yeah rather than it then becoming ping pong backs and forwards yeah exactly well we've had a an awful lot what have i actually learned from today i think the thing i'm going to take away from is definitely going through to go out our tendency is to
• 46:30 - 47:00 just dissociate or just nip out the door when nobody's looking and actually often the answer is to go through more often than going round i suspect i think our natural tendency is to go round or to skip out the door yes yes but actually if in doubt go through so i think that's what i've learned from this conversation today we'll find out what you've learned from this conversation today in our supporters club but you've been
• 47:00 - 47:30 here as the witness for what makes life meaningful so we have to ask you what makes your life meaningful ah well my family my children the natural world we have a lovely garden here the natural world and coming to accept my primary interests i used to tell myself for years that i was interested in lots of things and then i realized that actually my focus is on a specific thing which is quite big in a way which
• 47:30 - 48:00 is the overlap between psychology and spirituality where the two overlap and meet that's my prime interest i'm a sort of geek in a way of that particular area and that's the subject that really interests me and that's where your life is the most meaningful when spiritual matters coincide with psychological matters and i think our profession rather tends to put one the spiritual belongs with the vicar over there and we're just doing the
• 48:00 - 48:30 psychological and actually that's really just not possible in the same way the vicar can't leave the psychological with us but the two things are sort of interlocked absolutely and you know the kind of conversation you and i have had today is exactly the sort of thing that i love i'd love talking about this area and it's funny i thought that i would love talking to you and i was right great thank you very much for being my guest on the meaningful life now if you
• 48:30 - 49:00 join our supporters club details about how to do that in a moment you'll be able to hear the rest of this conversation you'll be able to unlock the three things that philip knows to be true really true and there's all sorts of other benefits as well so go to wwe forward slash podcasts so for the time being phillip thank you very much thank you it's been a pleasure talking with you andrew you've been listening to the meaningful life with andrew g marshall
• 49:00 - 49:30 you can follow andrew on twitter like him on facebook and please leave a review wherever you consume your podcasts making editing and distributing the meaningful life comes with substantial costs and we'd like to ask for your help visit our website andrew gmarshall.com forward slash podcast where you can join our supporters club and unlock bonus material for every program send in a letter to be discussed by andrew and his guests and join a community of other people seeking to make their life meaningful at the gold level you get
• 49:30 - 50:00 even more benefits production of the meaningful life with andrew g marshall is by michael dooney social media by madeleine healey sound engineering and theme tune by sebastian de la luz mendoza and i'm susie kolick please tell your friends and spread the word thank you