Ep 125: Ray Posch ~ Guest Host ~ Exploring Consciousness, Energy, and Spirituality

Ever felt disconnected or out of sync with your mind, body, and spirit? Guest host Ray Posch guides our conversation, illuminating the interplay between consciousness, energy and spirituality. 

We'll demystify the way our mind, body, and spirit intertwine and why that's essential for our holistic growth. A powerful tool in this exploration is energy. We explore how tuning into our energy can help us understand ourselves better and lead to awakening experiences. The concept of energy healing is also brought to the fore, offering insights on how we can tap into a realm beyond our own.

Our journey then veers towards the intriguing concept of Pellowah Energy Technique. We discuss its transformative effects on consciousness and how it can lead to profound shifts in our awareness. We also delve into universal consciousness and its role in phenomena like telepathy. To round off, we'll discuss the often under-appreciated power of curiosity and dance in personal growth and self-realisation. So join us, and unlock the secrets of consciousness, energy, and spirituality in an engaging conversation, guest hosted by Ray Posch.

You can find Ray's wonderful podcast Our Spiritual Life here:
https://yourspirituallife.buzzsprout.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 125. I recently had the pleasure and privilege of joining Ray Posh on his wonderful podcast Our Spiritual Life, which I highly recommend and there will be a link in the show notes to the podcast and Ray and I discussed it and decided it would be fantastic to actually share our conversation on Truth and Transcendence. So here is Ray hosting a conversation with me about elevating our consciousness. I hope you enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Welcome to the Our Spiritual Life podcast, in which I and others discuss how we, individually and collectively, can live more fulfilling, creative and powerful lives through spiritual growth and awakening. I'm Rayman Posh, your host, and I want these conversations to support and empower our spiritual life together. I'm a spiritual teacher and folk singer. To learn more, see raymanposhcom. Well, hello everyone. Welcome again to another show of Our Spiritual Life. I have wonderful guests on this program. For all of those of you who are regular listeners, you know that there's always something new that we're talking about, and the same is probably going to be true today. My guest is Catherine Llewellyn. Welcome, catherine.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Thank you, ray. Thank you so much for having me on one of my favorite topics.

Speaker 2: 2:12

Very good. Yes, we're going to talk about consciousness and spirituality and many, many other things, I'm sure, in the course of the conversation. You have a very interesting background. I've read your story, but I'm looking at your picture on your website and it says that you're a transformation catalyst, humanistic psychologist, writer, podcaster, free thinker, intuitive healer, conscious dance facilitator. Yes, and I'm not sure about this next word palawa. Is that right? Yep, yep Palawa? Teacher, mentor, organizational transformation strategist and a cat lover. And, by the way, my wife and I rescue animals too. We have cats and dogs, and so I can always relate to you cat lovers or dog lovers. But welcome, welcome, welcome. How?

Speaker 1: 3:24

are you today? Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I've had quite a week, a lot going on, and I've come to the end of the week and this is a really lovely way to top off the week. It's Friday afternoon right now where I am, so what a lovely way to end the week talking about spirituality and consciousness.

Speaker 2: 3:46

Yes, you can tell from her accent that she's in England.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Well, wales, wales, wales.

Speaker 2: 3:55

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh yes, that's a different part of the.

Speaker 1: 3:57

UK. So don't ever stand in the middle of Wales and say that you think you're in England. You could end up in serious trouble.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Yeah, we're seven or eight hours apart. I'm in Denver, colorado. But let's get started, catherine. Go ahead and tell the audience your story and what brings you to the point that you are, in your life, doing what you're doing, and given that background so they can relate.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I will do my best. Please stop me if I'm taking too long, because we've got a significant number of decades involved in the question. So I think the the the significant thing at the beginning of my life was that my parents were highly nonconformist and they would have described themselves as bohemian. So they were kind of arty, free thinkers, questioning and nonconformist. He was actually shortly after I was born. Actually he retrained as a naturopath and osteopath, so that's in the 1950s in rural England. So in those days you might as well just put which doctor on your head, on your forehead. You know everyone just thought this guy's just completely bonkers and possibly dangerous.

Speaker 2: 5:26

You know what I mean, but. But meanwhile people were coming to him and saying look, the medical establishment has written me off.

Speaker 1: 5:33

They said there's no cure for what's wrong with me and he would kind of help and sort themselves out using I don't know, diet, herbs, salt, whatever. So that was a very interesting thing in my background straight away, very unusual, and already put me in a different group from everybody else I knew. So that was an interesting challenge for me in terms of connecting in with what felt kind of truthful and trustworthy, which what he was saying did seem that way to me, was at the same time my need to belong and relate and socialize, so that that, right from the beginning, was a theme and which, of course, over over my life, I've learned a lot about that and I've encountered that in all sorts of different applications in my own life and with clients. Meanwhile, my mother was actually an artist from originally an aristocratic family which she'd sort of left in disgust because she was, you know, brought up by nannies and there was a lot of money but not much compassion, it seems, you know, at cold. So very, very interesting couple, my parents. So right from the beginning I had an unusual upbringing. So as I went through life after that, I was always very interested in what is it that's most important as humans? How are we happy, how do the things feel meaningful for us? And I went through various incarnations of trying this out or the other.

Speaker 1: 7:06

I worked in computers for a while. I went to the Enlightenment Intensive Weekend, which completely blew my mind. I went to the Enlightenment Intensive Weekend, which completely blew my mind, you know. I went and worked with some people who had no money. Starting a company ended up doing behavioral type training, communication skills, voice work, body work, somatic work, and it kind of evolved through one way and the other until at the end I was a very experienced facilitator, coach, trainer type person, went independent in 1998 and set up my own practice and alongside all that kind of work I was experimenting with conscious dance, which you mentioned, energy healing work for my own interest to begin with, my own enlivening and flourishing, and then of course I trained in those things as well so I could then train other people.

Speaker 1: 8:13

So now you mentioned elevation of consciousness. That's really my umbrella, everything I'm doing and I work with people in a variety of ways. And some people say, look, I want all of it. Catherine, can we just do some body staff and some energy staff and some mentoring staff and let's do all of it. And some people are more drawn to one aspect or the other, but they all feed each other and they all work on their own, so I'm actually having a really great life. I've managed to build a life where I get paid to do what I love. Yes, everything I do is a growth experience for me as well, so I feel very, very fortunate.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Very good, yes. Well, thank you for telling us your story. It sounds like you've been doing what you love for a long time. I've been a spiritual explorer, let's say for a long long time too, and you were able to move that into a way of producing some income, and doing that full time. That's wonderful.

Speaker 1: 9:32

It's interesting because I met some people when I was still with the company, that the people I met through the Enlightenment Intensive. We started a company and when I was still with that company we did quite a lot of work for large corporates who wanted something different. And they looked at us and said, well, we don't understand these people, but we can see that they're different. So, that ticks that box.

Speaker 2: 9:55

Let's at least have a meeting and then when?

Speaker 1: 9:57

I left that organization. A lot of those people wanted to keep working with me, but more privately, and they were saying, catherine, why we invited you in was because we knew we needed something different. That's not in the books and that's not offered in Harvard Business Review and it's not offered by our management college, and you are definitely different. So we thought we'd give it and we thought we could trust you, because you seem like a good person. So we thought we'd trust you on a day or two to begin with, and then maybe in a couple of months. You know, make sure that you don't actually infect us with some weird new page woo, woo thing. In fact, one guy he actually he was the chairman of the board in a very large organization over here, many tens of thousands of people, and he one day he said right, some, you're going to see someone walking around the building soon. Some of you are probably going to be working with her.

Speaker 1: 11:00

I've worked with her already. She looks a bit like a gypsy and what he meant was I was in like full length serice floaty stuff which I was wearing intentionally as a message which says you do not have to come to work in gray. It's not necessarily the case. So it was interesting that it was a niche. You know, people who wanted to do something really different and who were a bit bold, you know, had enough trust in themselves that they wouldn't get sucked into something terrible.

Speaker 2: 11:34

So. So when did you begin to focus in on the study and working with consciousness?

Speaker 1: 11:44

I would say that that's been present my whole life.

Speaker 2: 11:49

Wow.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Because my father who nowadays, how he brought us up, would probably be illegal he would actually have us. He would be talking to us about philosophy and stuff. When it seems we could talk, we like say, yeah, I'm five, and he would say what's your point? To him it was completely fine to say things like do you realise you could have just literally popped into existence in this moment? What do you mean? How could I? I've got all these memories. And he would say, yeah, you could have popped into existence with the memories already implanted. What do you think about that? Wow, that's an interesting idea. He was constantly helping us to disengage from the apparent way of looking at everything and question right from the very beginning. So that was there from the very beginning. I would say.

Speaker 2: 12:52

That's incredible. That's so different than my parents. My parents are very focused on making a living. Making a living. My dad was a farmer. They were very religious, very traditional, etc. So not that free thinking stuff that you're describing there. I discovered that much later in my own life.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Some people say we choose our parents, don't they? Some people say that we choose the parents that we need for our particular growth, and I will say having free thinking parents does carry challenges with it, because it doesn't necessarily make you popular at school or with the teachers. So there are frozen cons.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Yeah, and I believe that I believe that we do choose our own parents. I've not totally figured out how I chose mine, but I'm sure there's some important logic to it. There's somewhere, but or maybe it's not even logical at all. It might be something else, but I noticed that you take a pretty holistic approach to life and everything that you do. Talk a little bit about the importance of the holistic approach. A lot of people get wrapped up in philosophy and still in the mind and thinking about all these spiritual concepts and neglect their body and other aspects of themselves. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about Holism.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Yeah, I think it was when we went into the age of reason, wasn't it, that we started to prioritize the mind and thinking things through and philosophy and so on, which, of course, was great, because it meant we could develop that aspect of ourselves in a way that we hadn't done before.

Speaker 1: 15:00

But I think something we humans often tend to do and I've certainly done this in my own life is when we get a new idea of something that we think is worth exploring, we can get a bit obsessive with it, and then we can forget about all the other great things. And I think one of the things that we've done in the West certainly, I think, less so in East is to start to believe that the mind, the heart, the soul, the spirit, the body, all those things are in fact separate.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Whereas in fact, they are all one thing, and we know that because we wake up in the morning and we're awake, we gradually wake up, we have what, we do it, but it's not like we go. Okay, I'm awake, so right. Is my mind awake? Is my heart awake? Are my legs awake?

Speaker 1: 15:54

No it's all part of the same thing, it's all connected and, of course, the analytical mindset is useful if you want to kind of tune in and go okay, I've broken my leg Right, I need to fix my broken leg. Sitting and meditating may probably is not the thing to do at the moment, or dance, whatever it is Right. But in terms of living, in terms of connecting with our inner self, I feel it's important to keep in mind all those aspects, because if we miss one of those out, then what happens is an aspect of ourselves is being neglected. It can start to suffer, and then other aspects can start to suffer in turn. It's a bit I kind of think of it a bit like if we've got five children, we must take care of all of the children. Now, some children need different kinds of care from the other, or different kinds of attention from the other, so we need to pay attention to all of them and look after all of them, and when we do that we have a family that is thriving, right.

Speaker 1: 17:03

But if we don't, then we don't, and we know this when we think of things outside of us, but when we think about ourselves as individuals, we don't necessarily see ourselves in that way, in that sort of caretaking kind of a way.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yes, and it's so interesting that one of the things that really has had an impact on me over the last year Now, I have always been a very logical thinker type, very wanting to understand the concepts, figure it out, and it's been over the years that I've learned to tune in a little more to intuition and other things.

Speaker 2: 17:53

But I've had a number of guests on my show who are energy healers and they've talked and focused very strongly on energy and not so much the concepts, not that business, and so I've been learning over time that energy is probably a much more important thing to think about or to understand or appreciate or learn from than I had realized. I just I kind of thought well, those people are different. I don't quite understand it, but you know, but once we tune into our energy, more it is. It does give us an ability to be more aware of those aspects and you know we can. We probably spend a bunch of time talking about awareness. Awareness is, you know, I've really come to believe being self-aware and more aware of the world is one of the most important things we can do.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Yeah, I agree. And, in fact, something I've learned is that we can't really be aware of what's going on outside of us until we're aware of what's going on within. Because if we're not, fully aware of what's going on within, then that's colouring. That's unconsciously colouring our perception of what's going on without us, outside of us, which means we've got an inaccurate perception. And so I've often had people say Catherine, how can I understand other people better? Well, start by understanding yourself. And they say, oh God, do I have to do that?

Speaker 2: 19:34

I really have to do that?

Speaker 1: 19:36

Oh, it does focus on everybody else. I hear you, you know, but, yeah, and actually you know, I've been doing energy healing work for years as well, and one of the things I love about it is it does what it does Because of the energy of the recipient, or the client, if you like, and their relationship with the energy. So, in other words, something much more interesting and magical happens than anything that I would, as an individual, have been able to create. So I'm sort of an agent of something which is much, much bigger than I am, which means the client can get a much, much bigger outcome than if it was simply limited to what I could think of or come up with.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Yes, and we are energy beings. You know, even the physicists and even the materialists have learned to understand that everything is energy. But when you approach it more from a very spiritual not spiritual personal basis, you know what is my energy. How can I get in touch with my own energy or feel that more than I do? Because I think I've learned to feel more than I used to, and it can be quite powerful.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Absolutely, we've all got the equipment to notice it. It's just, you know, practicing. Anyone can learn to tune into their energy if they just practice.

Speaker 2: 21:24

Yeah, and you're reminding me of something I once heard about the body being like you're. I can't remember the exact words, but like your laboratory, it gives us a way to get in touch with the world in a more powerful way, absolutely, in fact, funny.

Speaker 1: 21:47

You should say that I actually released an episode last week saying exactly that. The art of tuning into the body, because you're absolutely right, you know when we just the body is the most extraordinary system of picking up information. And then what it does with the information and how that that affects us and what it may trigger in us, and how we interpret it and what we learn from it, is just phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Yes, you know even if you just sit. I've had situations where I've just asked a group of people to sit in a circle and just be silent with their eyes closed for five minutes and just observe what's going on in their mind and in their body, and often people assume nothing's going to happen, right? And then after five minutes they open their eyes and I say, well, did anything happen? Oh my God, I can't believe how many sensations and thoughts and feelings and what my energy was doing, and I think I could sense other people in the circle. You know, it's astonishing what's there if we just shut up.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Yes, and just you know, and it's amazing that so few people you know take five minutes of quietness and going within and paying attention. You know, we're so wrapped up in our minds and our minds are telling us this story.

Speaker 1: 23:15

You know that we're how we're interpreting life in good ways or bad ways and you're absolutely but I think you May I just say good for you actually practicing tuning into your energy, because that can be quite a challenging thing to do. That when we start doing it, you know, it's because we find stuff out, don't we?

Speaker 2: 23:37

Yes.

Speaker 1: 23:38

But we can then feel very vulnerable, perhaps, or we might feel a bit wobbly, or it might be a bit intense, it also might be very, very joyful, you know. So it is, I think, tuning into our energy. I think is, and of itself I think is, a spiritual act.

Speaker 2: 23:57

And there are a number of teachers these days that talk about quantum energy, and so I've kind of explored with some of my guests. You know just what do you mean when you say quantum energy. You know, Because energy is arising from quanta in the physical world or in the quantum field. But people have different interpretations of what that word means. But you know what? I've been impressed with a couple of people who have focused in on the understanding that our cells in our body, in a way, are far more intelligent and therefore important than we've ever really previously understood, and energy that's operating at the cellular level can be described as quantum energy, and it can be defined in many other ways. But so do you talk about that?

Speaker 1: 25:07

I don't use the word quantum when I'm talking about energy. I tend to try and keep it more conversational when I'm talking about it with people.

Speaker 1: 25:19

I mean when I'm doing energy work. So you mentioned Pellewa when you were reading out. That's actually an energy technique. It means radical shift in consciousness. So I actually run workshops for that where people can get Pellewa attunements and they can again give treatments and so on. So when I'm doing that, I use the language that goes with the Pellewa work, because that's someone else's body of material and I'm following the formula and the symbology and the language that goes with that particular thing. Or if I'm doing Reiki work with somebody, let's say I'll use the Reiki language and everything else that goes with that. But otherwise what I'm usually trying to do is to help people tune into what is true for them, and so I'm more trying to use more conversational, simple language in a way that helps people to go within and find what's inside them. And very often people come up with their own words. People often invent their own words to describe what they discover with their own energy. And that's when I get very excited. I get very excited when people do that.

Speaker 2: 26:35

That makes a lot of sense and I like what you just said there. What is true for them? Because I think that's important in many ways and people might ask what do you mean by what is true? But I think you mean what they're experiencing. What is the real experience that they're having right?

Speaker 1: 27:01

It's what they're experiencing and sometimes it is also something that feels like a truth. So sometimes I find, when people really connect with their energy, sometimes they actually receive insights. Now, whether those insights come from their higher self or their subconscious, or from the cosmos or from God, who knows, whatever they think it comes from, that's okay with me, but that's what they're receiving. Sometimes it's literally what they're experiencing and sometimes it's more than that Sometimes insights, and sometimes people get images and symbols and whatever it is. I always think that was just waiting to come through and it was just in. This moment was the right moment for that to come through for them.

Speaker 2: 27:54

Well, I love your approach of the way you work with clients, but let's back up just a moment and talk just a little bit more about Pell-A-Law, because I think that's probably something that a lot of people in the US may not have heard about. Is that an Australian word?

Speaker 1: 28:11

Yes, it is. Okay, that's right. So it means radical shift in consciousness. Okay, it was the founder who originally channeled Pellawar channeled it 15 or 20 years ago now in Australia and to begin with she was only teaching it in Australia. And then a very good friend of mine who I think is dual nationality, british and Australian, or she might be Australian but she can come to England, I don't fully understand it she kind of disappeared for 15 years back to Australia, came back to the UK and I met her and another friend for lunch and said what, what, what have you been doing for 15 years? And she said Pellawar. I'm now running Pellawar workshops. I said what's that? She said radical shift in consciousness. I went I want to do it. It was one of those instant, instant things that people get sometimes. And I did the workshop the following week and then I was a practitioner and then I trained as a teacher five years later, last year.

Speaker 2: 29:22

So it, but is the the techniques that are involved? Are they energy based?

Speaker 1: 29:29

Yes, it's an energy technique. So Pellawar energy comes straight from source. It's a very high frequency energy. It comes straight from source to the recipient. There is no directing or interpreting or intervening in the energy by the practitioner, so it's it's like it's almost like the, the. It's almost like the client has like a direct conversation with the Pellawar energy, with no one else involved, and the Pellawar energy actually guides the practitioner to move or be still or whatever. That. The practitioner doesn't actually touch the client, they are away from the client. So it's a very interesting experience because, as a practitioner, what's going on is a mystery. You do not know what's going on. You don't know why your body is moving the way that it is. You just know that you're being guided and you just trust that. The consciousness of the client is, you know, contracting with the Pellawar energy to give the client whatever it is that they need, which you, the practitioner, don't know what that is.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Yeah, but somehow the practitioner does guide the client to be more in touch with the source energy, right? No, they don't.

Speaker 1: 30:54

All the all the practitioner does with Pellawar is they they open, they call in the Pellawar energy and all Pellawar is an interesting thing, because with Pellawar you, you don't sell it, you don't tell people it would be good for them to do. You don't ever try and persuade somebody.

Speaker 1: 31:16

You put it out and you let people know it exists, and then people just know if it's the right thing for them. If it's the right thing for them, wow, sometimes they might call up and ask more questions, and then they just know. But it's a because it's about consciousness, you see right.

Speaker 1: 31:33

But like if I was giving you a treatment to do with consciousness, energy, energy for your consciousness. I can't interfere with that. You know, who the hell am I to interfere with that? Your consciousness is your own, sovereign, sacred piece of soul, piece of existence, you know. So the way it would work is that you might say Catherine, I want to come on your workshop, or Catherine, would you give me a treatment, and we'll arrange, set up a time for it, whether remotely or in person. And at the beginning of that time I'll say right, I'm about to begin, I call in the Pellawar energy, and then it's you and the Pellawar that's doing it. You're asleep or dozing, or awake or whatever. You don't know what's happening, so I'm not guiding it, but the Pellawar is using me to amplify it. It's causing me to move around, but I'm not deciding. My ego and my will are left at the door.

Speaker 2: 32:33

Yes, Well, this is fascinating. I'd love to learn more about this, but, you know, I think we can talk about some other things as well. But when you say radical shift in consciousness, is that like a radical awakening that people experienced, or are they feeling mostly shifts in something very deep, you know, which could be described as energy or consciousness?

Speaker 1: 33:08

It's highly variable, again, because it's relating with the client's consciousness. Pellawar always responds to the client's consciousness with whatever it is that that person actually needs at that time, which will be different for everybody so and will be different on a different day. So I've had multiple Pellawar experiences and I've had multiple different experiences with that. So, for example, for one person it could be that the shift that they need is to let go, just let go, right, and they might fall asleep perhaps, and stay asleep for three hours after the treatment.

Speaker 2: 33:48

And they might wake up and go.

Speaker 1: 33:49

Oh my God, I feel like I've been reborn.

Speaker 2: 33:51

You know, because what they had to do is let go.

Speaker 1: 33:53

Right For someone else. Maybe what they need is to wake up, or maybe someone else needs to get over themselves, or, you know, it's completely different. And I think we've all experienced shifts in consciousness throughout our lives, some of which have been quite sudden and some of which have taken place over a long period of time. And if we track back over our lives, we'll notice that those shifts are all. There may be a theme running through some of them, but often they're all different.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Like you know a shift could be something like suddenly waking up in touch with love more so than ever before, or in touch with courage, or in touch with humility or peace, whatever it is, and it's very, very fast because this energy is very strong. It's much, much quicker than doing it through, let's say, meditating or coaching or any of those things, because it's like a very highly direct thing. Yes, it's quick.

Speaker 2: 35:07

Amazing. Yes, glad we talked about it. You can see why I like it. Yes, I see why. Yes, it sounds very powerful. I like the. You know what. You may have heard the word quickening. Yes, it's been used recently. There's a quickening in the conscious human consciousness. That is taking place, at least among some people, and I hope it spreads. But anything that puts us more in touch with consciousness, I think is and in more direct ways, is good. That's what we need.

Speaker 1: 35:53

I absolutely agree with you. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:56

When I was an atheist for many, many years and I had this event happen and it put me into a mode of being more tuned in to the fact that I had a lot to learn about the universe and I needed to wake up a little more to what's happening. And I did a lot of spiritual exploration and the key thing that I kind of came away with a number of years later was the most central thing is that there is one universal consciousness and everything arises out of that. And you know, and once you understand, that everything is consciousness, it can explain a lot of things about hell. See, what's it called? Telepathy works, those kind of things, but much, much more than that, I mean, and that's what you've been talking about all along.

Speaker 1: 37:07

Yes, it's a wonderful journey, and I think everyone who does what you've been describing, what self-doing, is part of the solution. It's part of the evolution of mankind, in my opinion, yes. So thank you very much for doing that, because that will have helped me as well as everyone else.

Speaker 2: 37:28

Well, and I agree a lot Over the last several years I've had conversations and shows talking about awakening and evolution of consciousness and of course they're very well connected there, because awakening is kind of the individual view of evolution of consciousness and you know, I believe that we need evolution of consciousness so much in the world right now. I mean all of the negativity people complain about. You know how bad they feel when they listen to the news, you know, and I would say, well, don't listen to the news. But it has to do with humanity not quite being at the level of consciousness that we would like to be yet, and so we need to participate in that elevation, or awakening, or ascension, or whatever we choose to call it.

Speaker 1: 38:33

Yeah, and I think we are doing that collectively and it's a journey.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Exactly, I agree. And yeah, I've been diving into so many different resources related to consciousness and awakening and evolution and it's you know. You hear so many different perspectives and people talk about it in different ways and different terminology, but we can learn from all of it and the more we directly experience it instead of just talking about it is a key, and I can tell that you completely agree with that.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Absolutely right. Yeah, I have friends sometimes who try to understand what energy is about.

Speaker 2: 39:25

And.

Speaker 1: 39:25

I've sometimes spent hours trying to explain it and then eventually I've said look, I can't explain it in a way that you can understand. Either you experience it or you won't understand it.

Speaker 2: 39:39

And that's not my fault, right, right, right. Everyone's coming from a different place and we all operate in different ways and learn in different ways. So all of the variations are important in a way, in what people are doing these days. So you talk about bridging the gap between inner growth, work and personal achievement, kind of the outer world. Talk about that a little bit and how you work with people on that topic.

Speaker 1: 40:19

Yeah, it's an interesting one because, again, I think it's less true now, but certainly back in the 80s and 90s, when I was working with a lot of corporate clients, everyone seemed to believe that you could either be working on your achievement or you could be working on your growth, and it was a conflict and I remember first of all thinking, well, obviously that's not true, but that's not very helpful comment. So I thought so how can I help people to actually understand the synergy? So I started doing a process where I would work with people, where they would come and spend like a whole day with me once a month over a period of time.

Speaker 1: 41:12

And each time we got together, we would talk about what was happening in their work and in their lives. We would pick out an aspect of their own growth that they wanted to do and we would pick out a very important aspect of their achievement that was important to them for the next month. And then we would come up with a plan where it would help them achieve the achievement in a way which would help them to learn the growth thing and it would help them to do the piece of growth and learning in a way that would help the piece of achievement. In other words, we would come up with like an integrated theme plan, if you like. And so, for example, it'd be like okay, how many meetings have you got Excellent meetings? Okay, in each meeting, use it as an opportunity to practice this piece of learning.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Or there'd be a piece of learning they wanted to do about, I don't know, tuning into people's energy. Let's say I'd say great. So you want to learn to tune into people's energy? What opportunities do you have when you're going to be around people in a different variety of ways? Well, I've got my family. I've got wandering through the building. I've got my golf club.

Speaker 1: 42:31

I've got this and that. Okay, so each day at the end of the day, make a note about what you noticed about energy in the humans that you were with that day and make a note of the opportunities you want to tune into the following day and make a note of any questions arising for you out of that. So I don't understand what this thing I picked up, what does that mean? Write it down and then, once a week, send me those journal writings and the next time we get together we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2: 43:03

These are just examples right. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:06

And over time. When they first started coming to me, they felt like they were taking your day away from work. They were losing a day of work, right. Eventually, they'd show up and they'd go Catherine, I get more useful work done in these days with you than I do at any other time, even though I'm not actually working because they would come out with such insights and learning. They would get so much more bang for their buck, if you like, from their activities. Right, because they were learning to integrate it. Yes, and it was delightful to see it, wonderful to see it.

Speaker 2: 43:46

Yes, and the way you began there talking about achievement versus inner growth. If you were to look at my website, I've got a little blurb on the homepage there. I didn't talk about it in those terms but I talk about. So. Many people think that there's this big division between the practical world and achievement, et cetera, and spirituality or inner work. And if you really dig into it you come to realize the more you change through inner work, it percolates out into your external world for one thing, but you can approach that in a good way of working towards integration. I think that's very valuable.

Speaker 1: 44:50

There are many, many ways to do it. I do a program now which is simply called Reflections, where someone just shows up on a regular basis for a session and there's no plan. We just talk about whatever is there to be talked about. We reflect on it and it sounds really unstructured and like nothing much is going to happen. But over a period of three months.

Speaker 1: 45:18

Extraordinary things happen because that person is they're using their mind to help them to tune in to their emotional realm, their energetic realm, and to reflect on everything that's happening in their lives. Yes, and so they can repeat what's working really well, they can build on it more, they can learn from it more. It's delightful to see what people do with that.

Speaker 2: 45:45

Yes, one of the things that I learned I think it was probably from either Barbara Mock's, hubbard or whoever it was talked about that you can learn to become more aware more of the time in the state of awareness, which is at a higher level than any mental state, where you're wrapped up in your thinking, and I often say the mind is a tool for the being that we are, the spiritual being, and the body is a tool as well.

Speaker 2: 46:27

But we can learn to use the mind in a more powerful way, kind of going in and out of mental activity, and that's exactly what you're describing there, and I've learned that that is very powerful. You can, for example, you can kind of go into a meditative state and think about certain things that you are trying to understand in yourself and then stop and journal for a while and kind of switch back and forth. But, yeah, very, very powerful. One of the things that I saw in your bio somewhere I think it was you talked about conscious dance, yes, and I think that sounds like something that I love, but tell us what that means to you.

Speaker 1: 47:29

Well, I was trying to explain this to a neighbour of mine who was a rock musician Okay, long hair, leather jacket, jeans, you know, and I was. He said tell me what this is, because I was running classes locally at the time and so I tried to explain it. He said, ah, he said right, so you can dance yourself into oblivion or you can dance yourself into awareness. I said that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 47:59

Wow, very cool, I love it.

Speaker 1: 48:05

I said I'm going to use that quote forever. He said, Dave, you know, knock yourself out. So yeah, there's no alcohol. It's often done in the daytime. I always do it in the daytime. A lot of people do it in the evening. There's music playing, there's no steps to learn and there's no obligation to dance with a partner. So you might be dancing by yourself, you know, in a group you might be just dancing with everybody. You might be dancing with one person or with two people, or with three people. You might just move in and out of all of that, depending on what feels right for you. Or the facilitator may actually make a suggestion and say look, could you take a partner just the next bit, If they want to just kind of mix it up a little bit. When I do, I tend to just let people just flow with whatever they're going to do. It's like a meditation but you're dancing and you can't get.

Speaker 1: 49:10

I actually trained. I don't know if you've heard of someone called Gabrielle Roth Five Rhythms Dance. Have you heard of that?

Speaker 2: 49:18

No, I haven't, but he's quite well known.

Speaker 1: 49:22

Some of your listeners will have heard of her. I actually trained with her in her particular modality, five Rhythms Dance and I taught that for a while, because when you're working with people, with the body and dancing and there's music playing, you want to make sure you're not going to actually damage anybody. Right right, you know, whether psychically or physically you've got to make sure you're doing. So that's why I took myself off and, you know, paid a lot of money and learned at the foot of a master. She was a master. She's passed now.

Speaker 2: 49:53

Well, you made me think of Sufis. You've heard about Sufi dances, the whirling, dervish kind of dance, and you could really get into it.

Speaker 1: 50:03

Absolutely yeah, and I'm not very familiar with the Sufi dance.

Speaker 2: 50:07

I'm not either, really, but we're running out of time here. You mentioned one other thing that I would like to ask about, because I think it's so powerful, and that is the power of curiosity and inquiry. I take it that you probably use that in your client work and in my life and in your life.

Speaker 1: 50:38

Yes, it's one of the wonderful faculties we have, I think, as humans curiosity. And unfortunately a lot of us had it sort of kicked out of us as children, because it can be very annoying If someone keeps asking you why, why, why, why, why. But curiosity is just the most wonderful thing because very often our curiosity is actually showing us a direction of where we should be looking next. And if we follow our curiosity, it's extraordinary what we can find out, because the truth is we can't find out about absolutely everything. We don't have the capacity for that. So how do we know what to find out about? And our own curiosity comes from somewhere and very often when we have a question. Interestingly, on the workshop I did last weekend, someone was asking a lot of questions.

Speaker 1: 51:33

And I said and she said I'm asking a lot of questions. I know I asked far too many questions and I said no, it's absolutely fine. Where are the questions coming from?

Speaker 1: 51:43

And that's when she went into a place of inquiry. What I would call an inquiry is when people start asking where are my questions coming from? What's the hunger in me that's giving rise to these particular questions? What can I understand about myself from the questions I'm asking, and how can I follow that inquiry and use it to guide me into the areas where I want to find out more, whether it's about myself, about somebody else, about a relationship, about a body of work, about a philosophy, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1: 52:22

So it's a fantastic high leverage faculty that we have, and there's a term I use which I call Spirit of Inquiry. And to me, spirit of Inquiry is something I was taught years ago by a very wise teacher who said absolutely any and every experience is an opportunity for learning, including when the delivery man leaves the thing in the wrong place, including when the cat throws up on the carpet, including when somebody doesn't call you back, including when all of the small things in life are an opportunity for learning If you're in a Spirit of Inquiry, because when you're in a Spirit of Inquiry, you notice everything about how you're reacting, what your mind is doing, what your feelings and energy are doing, and you get these extraordinary insights.

Speaker 2: 53:18

Yes, Well, thank you for pointing that out. I think that's so valuable. I mean, curiosity is a very powerful tool for coaching, but it's also, as you say, a very powerful tool for self-learning coaching yourself, if you will and to explore. You made me think of. I was waking up in the middle of the night last night and I was thinking about something in my past and I was wondering where was this coming from? Yes, I should have asked some more questions to keep digging into that.

Speaker 1: 54:03

The thing with inquiry is it keeps running under the surface and pops back out when you need it. It doesn't always have to be unconscious level.

Speaker 2: 54:13

Well, I think that Spirit of Inquiry and bringing that to the surface as a tool that we can use, I think that's kind of a good place to come to an ending here. So thank you for being here with us today and sharing everything you've shared. Certainly final words you'd like to share with the audience.

Speaker 1: 54:37

Thank you Just to say I've so enjoyed this conversation with you, ray. It's been delightful Having a conversation with a fellow explorer is always just a delight and I just want to say my best wishes to your listeners.

Speaker 2: 54:50

Well, thank you. Thank you. Would you like to give them your website or information where they can learn more about you?

Speaker 1: 54:59

Thank you so much. I would love them to come and tune into my podcast, which is called Truth and Transcendence, and I have guests and I also do solo episodes and it's in all the usual places and really people are coming on and talking about their journey of finding their own truth and how that's helped them transcend and all kinds of themes around that. So it's I really like it. So I'd love your listeners to come check it out.

Speaker 2: 55:32

Okay, yeah, and your website is beingspacecom.

Speaker 1: 55:37

Beingspaceworldworld.

Speaker 2: 55:39

Yes, thank you. Yes, and I didn't ask you about that. I assume that it's about holding space for yourself and transformation.

Speaker 1: 55:51

Yeah, I'm helping people to create space to be for themselves, which then also translates naturally into space for transformation.

Speaker 2: 56:03

Yes, lovely Well. Thank you again, and to you and to my listening audience have a great day and a great life. Thank you for listening to the Our Spiritual Life podcast. I send you my love because together we can grow, awaken and evolve to make a positive difference in the world. Learn more about what I do at RaymondPoshcom. And Posh is spelled P-O-S-C-H. May you awaken, grow in consciousness and experience many blessings.

Speaker 1: 56:49

Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on BeingSpaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.