Just having a listen now, loving it. Emergence is one of my favourite words. It always suggests something being created, changing, metamorphosis. Like a delicious cheesecake emerging from the ingredients, the mixing bowl and then the oven.
I wrote a poem once about the emergence that comes from emergency. How emergency requires focus and attention, and a certain level of letting go into the moment.
How do we respond to the emergency, what naturally comes out of us, and what wants to emerge in the moment to settle the farm. And be born.
It seems to me that the directionality of our response depends on our capacities for integrity, reciprocity and complementarity (or our selfishness and control). Here's to more attuned responses!
It seems that psychedelic or religious experiences can either lead you to greater freedom and new ways of relating.
Or it can be hijacked and attached to the ego and the need for control. Aka gurus, tech bros and woo woo girlies, new coke / new Jesus, UFO gods, all current religions etc
Psychedelic experiences I feel create their own emergency and emergence.
The self is literally fucked for a time 🤦🏻♂️. All that’s left is what is emerging out of the brain, the nervous system or the body’s natural movements or expressions.
Like severe illness or a moment of natural or man made disaster, everything else falls away and all you can do is respond, and relax. Or resist and attempt to ride it out with gritted teeth.
Either way, things are going to happen, the illusion of control collapses and something new will emerge. A death, an injury, or a new understanding and a new way of being, which can be used to make things better
The scientific term is "neural entropy." The good news is that there is continuity as well as emergence. Thankfully, the brain continues to do all the things that make you you. :)
I haven't listened to you for quite some time (been busy, nothing personal), and I must say, the difference is refreshing! Don't get me wrong. Never have I ever disagreed with anything you have ever said. Well, hardly never. We share the same outlook, which we have probably shared since birth. I always thought of myself as an optimistic fatalist. Your warnings were dire (and needed to be). I read postdoom.com back then inside out, watched every video, believed every word. (Science based, not culty so belief was OK). Then, there was that sinking feeling of helplessness. Everything good that happened got squashed. Perp 1 breaks a law. (We all shout Boo! Bad President!!) Gets sued. Loses. (We all shout YAY!). That decision gets overturned by the Supreme Court. (Boo!) Over and over ad finitum.But the years of scary predictions (based on science, of course) were thankfully heard and digested by some, and so it spreads.... and EMERGES. It certainly was slow going at first. However. FINALLY.... I think this is a major major shift I am seeing, what with the monks and Artemis and that ice skater with the wedding cake hair and Big Bunny, and finally, SARAH WILSON IS TALKING ABOUT EMERGENCE. THE CORNER HAS FINALLY BEEN TURNED. (We all shout YAY!)
hahaha! I sense a lot of us are emerging in similar directions, there is a loving, aching impatience to move onto the "what comes next". For me it was just a theoretical idea as I wrote my book etc. But then I really began to feel it moving through me. Sounds woo-woo, but it's how it's playing out for me and others I'm talking to...there's a momentum building...perhaps that's what I mean.
Consurgence: The act or process of rising together simultaneously; a concurrent upwelling or surge of multiple elements, forces, or phenomena toward a common point or in a unified movement.
Lovely interview. Lots of the ideas and thoughts explained remind me of what Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass talks of. If you own land plant a tree; you’ll look at everything in nature differently. How the bee becomes important because of the relationship to that tree and how they coexist.
I cannot express how watching you and Samantha just now has just saved my life. This is fact, not melodrama. The tears of grief and frustration are now tears of relief: big happy, cleansing sobs complete with snotty nose. Finally, someone who can verbalise how I have felt all my life and knowing now it was not my fault I didn't feel like I belonged to the current society. I'm not the odd one. It is such a relief, even physically, that i am so back to being the real me: dynamic, exciting, happy, strong. I'm dorky dancing with so much energy that I can now funnel into action and purpose, that comes with the satisfaction of doing .. not just knowing. I've always been a listener to the messages, and laughed knowingly when I finished listening to you both when the first song on my random playlist was Florence belting out How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful!!
I cant thank you enough, Sarah, for introducing me to Samantha. And to Samantha, thank you for being amazing and giving me the words to now communicate more effectively with my community. Talk about Emergence! I've just burst out of the shackles feeling like the Rising Horse symbolising the year ahead. Thank you with all my heart! 🫶 🦄 🦋
Kylie, I really appreciate your heart-drenched feedback. I know the relief you feel. I'm grateful I get an outlet for connecting like this. You must read Samantha's book now!
Kylie, SOOO good to hear and feel you, body and soul! YOU GO! Your love is medicine. Seriously - brining authentic, whole-self, soul-trusting creativity to the table is one of the best ways to shift the course of things.
I felt an overwhelming feeling of gratitude as I listened to this. Thank you.
I find the subtleness of life such a hard place to back myself from, it can seem too easy or natural (which is the point) the walk in nature, meditating, the simple things that I know are powerful but still as times I doubt myself.
I do. I find, too, ,myself using words like "compassion" and "community" and "the collective", which I formally found too...nebulous and soft, but now feel are the most powerful words I can draw on.
@Fiona, this is POTENT. It turns out that enough is really enough, and that connection is really connection, and that nature is really OUR nature... together or bust.
Did the division all start from farming? I see references to this in anthropology etc. it fits with this notion of 'my land' and then the need to protect it as a food source... and then it all stems from there, building walls to create a safe home, just for me (us), build a wall to protect the farm and our food source - don't give to the neighbours, it's ours, we worked that land and grew that food etc.
Do we ultimately return to foraging? that's a loooooong leap back in time. But ultimately, if we live inside of a dwelling with a lockable door and windows etc... we are always seeking some form of 'protection' from anything outside that might harm us and this is being alone ... maybe?
I don't think we can return to foraging. The earth is far too degraded -- and there are too many of us -- for that. We need to find FAR better ways to manage what Luke Kemp calls "Goliath food," ie. the things that can be hoarded and fought over. I think the keys lie in reciprocity and democracy -- in living in ways that reveal that we are better, more resilient and more secure together. Audrey Tang has revealed to the world that "unlikely consensus" is possible at scale. We have the ability to do real democracy like never before, which inevitably reveals that shared strength is greater than dominance heirarchies. We have to have the political forsight and will to get there!
Does this form of living also remove the idea of personal privacy, which is another barrier that is fought over. If we all truly share and reciprocate, we shouldn’t need privacy of space?
Reposting this from above: Consurgence: The act or process of rising together simultaneously; a concurrent upwelling or surge of multiple elements, forces, or phenomena toward a common point or in a unified movement.
WE are the possibility of consurgence. Every act is a stitch in the social fabric that shifts initial conditions.
Adding this to my lexicon! Thank you, loved this conversation. I remember you from Nora Bateson’s training last year, it’s great to learn more about your work 🌀
I loved this conversation, and I was thinking about how both you and Samantha discuss how dance helps--it really does. Last night I went to an event called Earlybirds Club "A Dance Party for Ladies Who Have Sh*t to do in the Morning". These events are happening in cities all over the US, it's become a movement in the last few months. It was a simply joyous evening, all 80s and 90s tracks and women of all age groups but mostly middle-aged, feeling safe and free, shaking off all of the everything. An easy night for the security guards at the venue, for sure!
I am new to substack and just LOVE these conversations! I feel like its the only place that is actually talking about people doing something about this crazy world. As a mother, I feel so much of this deeply. Growth can be so much richer when we all stop looking in the same direction.
Honestly I've been struggling to find the right word for awhile. I agree its good to distinguish between growth and progress but there's also the depth from growing internally (getting back to your core essence and the other way you can grow by just being able to notice the world around you more). Atunement has been the closest way to describe it I guess.
@Cait I think it's always important not to get tangled in semantics. I think the growth Sarah was speaking of was in the zone of GDP. I sense she would resonate with what you named about internal growth. :)
Thank you! I caught up with this yesterday - god I love your podcast - so glad to have it back in my ears. (Substack is great but sticky - I find it so much harder to listen in the app than my podcast app). Thank you Samantha - you both gave me the finishing piece I needed for my cartoon and post this week xo
Sure - although you will have to click through to my latest post to see it “BREAKING: L’il Bean tries to fence the news”, Substack won’t let me put a link in the comments :) My pub is Spark in the Dark. Enjoy:) Thank you for the inspiration.
As in Substack now does so many things that on my way to find your Substack chat I will get derailed by 10 other things loose half an hour and forget why I was coming in the first place - also, now I have locked Substack down so I can only access it 3 hours in the day, not conducive to catching chats on the run. Have you through about putting your substack chats on your podcast platform as well - unedited, just as they are? I would certainly listen there if I could - I usually get around to them on Substack but sometimes days or weeks later.
Great news, thanks for doing this Sarah. I first heard Samantha Sweetwater in conversation with Nate Hagens and found her fascinating and helpful. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to engage with her thinking again now that things have sped up the world has become catastrophically crazy! I’m shocked by how viscerally my sense of outrage at this illegal war of choice is effecting me. I have become fascinated with Persian history annd Iranian culture, in particular the more recent post revolution relationship between Iran and US. I find myself constantly seeking Iranian perspectives on what is happening and cheering on any resistance to the United States of Israel from other countries, while at the same time feeling absolutely exhausted by it all. 3am wake-up’s are the norm as I rake over events, working through my repertoire of breath work and vagal tone exercises to get back to sleep. It was wonderful to hear Samantha and feel calmed, affirmed and redirected back to nature and the normal every day. I know these things but it is just so good to hear them articulated. Thank you both for this from the bottom of my heart. I am so relieved Wild is back and you are seeking to help us move beyond the granular panic stage and contemplate preparation for a wholesome and sustainable ‘what’s next’.
Hi @Monique, I'm just now reading your words and wondering what's continued to metabolize with you. I fully resonate with the way in which you've responded to this utterly anti-human chain of events. For me, it has given new color to the gestures of compassion that seek to know and care for the ontologies of other peoples and cultures who are being villainized and harmed.
Dear Samantha, thank you for your reply, I found my usually robustly healthy self in ED with pneumonia in early May, so needed to shut down the world outside for a while and rest. The healing was profound in terms of deep rest and engaging with memories and summoning of important people who have died, all to a soundscape of soft Iranian and Persian jazz. I am mystified as to why I found this sound so healing! Eight weeks on I am much better but find myself deeply unsettled by the events of the world. I’m trying to focus on my important close human connections and nature, but find myself easily overwhelmed by our current predicament. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand but find my researcher mind starts burrowing down too intensely. I would love to find a way to be engaged without this overwhelm. Still seeking though! Warmly, Monique
Wonderful dialogue that has opened up a Pandora's box in my thoughts (as you always do Sarah). And as always I will leave my thoughts here... not to seek answers, this is a form of meditation in many ways, just letting the thoughts pass by like the clouds.
1. I hear the term 'getting back to being human' mentioned (not just here, but a lot of spaces around spirituality) but the 'time' thing or like forward / backward confuses me. What is 'back' to human ... as it seems to suggest we are not human in the present? But our humanity is what gets us to this here and now, always. Our ingenuity, our curiosity etc for example over the use of oil as an energy source, then discovering its use for plastics that solved alot of problems (and created lots more) ... such is the way with humans... and so on... previous to this we chopped down all the forests to use the wood for fuel and building homes and ships etc... (in Europe anyway) ... so... what is the 'back' bit referring to? An older time? A different form of humanity? Haven't we always just acted as human?
2. The relational human part, as mentioned in the conversation, is hard. We have become more separate - not just as individuals, but as little 'tribes' it's rife on social media this whole mantra of find your 'tribe' and stick with them... i.e. align yourself only with people that think like you and not people that might bring your energy down etc. But isn't this counter-intuitive to the relational human thing. For living in local smaller spaces and getting on with our neighbours, we need to be relational to all thoughts and people, not just those we seem to like who think like us... isn't that what gets us into these troubled times after all? Not being able to live alongside difference? That includes living alongside my neighbour who may be a tech bro, as well as my other neighbour who may believe in chemtrails and my other neighbour who is an atheist and the dude across the street who believes in UFO's. Samantha mentioned something I try hard to live by, that sort of visceral 'stay curious' mentality... paying attention to the little signs, but also pay attention and listen to fellow humans who may offer a completely different perspective on life and what 'human' is.
3. Linked to 2... Sarah you mentioned about humans only 'rising to the top of the food chain' (which you admitted was not a great turn of phrase) because of the ability to be relational - but is this something we want to pursue? Being at the top of the food chain still - if we are to be truly more at one with nature instead of 'above' nature. If we are to be with earth, not just on it. Being at the top suggests we still wish to pursue control over everything else, rather than being within the chaos of nature, just like the other animals and plants and microbes and all of the elements.
4. The idea of emergence and what now? question, still seems to be framed in a way that relates to a form of control too - what do we do? How do we do it? This in itself suggests a form of privilege that we are able to control these things when many do not hold such powers for example. We 'choose' to engage with local community or 'choose' to dance our way through the difficulty... but then this sort of gets flipped upside down in those ideas around sort of being guided by the 'local news' checking in with what's going on in your place, noticing, not choosing, but being with the life around us, the water, the clouds, the grass. But still, my mind is like in conflict with - if we have the ability to afford this time. But what about those that have to work and do jobs without choice, purely to keep food on the table etc. How do they 'emerge'? Who chooses who gets to be fed and who doesn't. Someone living in a high rise apartment in a polluted city for example with poor infrastructure or being bombed, what does emergence become for those humans?
5. Do we need to try less to extinguish the chaos and instead accept more chaos? Earth is chaos. History is chaos. Total wipeouts and extinctions in earth's history and so on. Human's are obsessed with controlling destiny and writing the future, through innovation, technology (the fire, the wheel, farming, oil, electricity and so on)... but the rest of the natural world lives largely in chaos, with unknowns but as humans we perceive this in a way of things being 'fragile' or about to break etc but isn't that always the way of nature... and all living things have to adapt, that in itself is the stability of the planet and life in many ways, on a grander scale. And it can all be rewritten with a volcanic eruption. So maybe this links a little to psychedelics and more of a feeling of like freedom from the constraints, opening up the mind to different forms of connection and wildness and less about control and choosing perhaps?
6. Does alcohol fit within the realm to psychadelics? I always remember reading about Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland which was one of my fave books as a child - about how he and others at the time used absinthe to open the mind and access new realms etc and how that became prohibited. Fascinated me at the time, how the establishment was threatened by the imagination... (my memory of this part of history could well be totally inaccurate though!).
Blimey. Some thinking. I need to be careful listening to these podcasts in the future. Argghh.
I'm blaming the mountains. Had a couple of child free days so we took the opportunity to go hike some of the Wainwrights in the Lake District and just as accurately as you are with regards to dance being instinctive, so too, I find, is walking. Especially walking high where you get that idea of perspective and the challenge of climbing, the vulnerability that you could fall off the edge and die with any wrong footing... it forces an appreciation of life, the flow of water, the moss... wow, I just love moss, I have a very weird connection to moss, I just have to touch it, photograph it, study it, could sit with moss for hours if I was able to. I once read about a French guy that studies mosses, think the study of moss is Bryology? and it blew my mind that his job is just spending time with these fascinating plants... ahh... the dream!
We were saying, shouldn't all 'peace talks' and delegation, politics etc, happen whilst going for a walk - or indeed, dancing... but being in nature... to have that visceral connection... and I don't mean on a golf course in Florida!
Such a wonderful conversation that resonated deeply. I particularly appreciated how you described the beautiful way in which psychedelics can open us up. “They can help make a deeper space for the grieving that needs to happen. They can make us feel safer to grieve together. One of the outcomes of the psychedelic state is to feel more safe feeling your feelings with other people.” That has definitely been my experience.
I loved that insight, too. I don't make a secret of my having played with psychedelics and I was...thrilled...with how they took me into a space where other people made so much sense.
It’s been a few years since my very intense experiences with psychedelics and I’m still integrating all of the layers of what came through.
The hugeness of what I re-lived, realised, and was able to re-parent myself through in those journeys was mind-boggling!
Samantha’s words around it allowing you to “feel more safe feeling your feelings with others” are just so spot on. I’d also say that they allow those other humans with you to hold you through what then emerges in that space which is extra special to experience. The way that I was held and cared for by beautiful humans in those times is something I’ll never forget.
Somehow a gentle and gruesome experience all wrapped up in one! Which for someone like me who loves a good dose of Both/And was perfect.
How wonderful to have you back and this conversation between you and Samantha was a balm, I and I suspect many people need. I found myself writing notes with little diagrams with ideas spilling onto the page. A long sigh.
I have just recently, with the slightly cooler mornings where I am living, slipped into a new morning practice of first light beach walks, observing and connecting with the changing energy, then heading into a meditation before I do anything else. I have always loved your idea Sarah of putting your exercise gear into a basket by the door so you don’t have to even think, just climb into them and off you go, brilliant.
The simple things emerging in my life once more are allowing the deep feelings of sadness and helplessness about ‘collapse’ to take some shape with ideas, the ability to take a deep breath again, to have some hope and desire to be part of the vision and regenerative process.
Wendy, I feel the deep feminine intelligence of how you're processing. I feel it in many of the shares here. We're living this with our bodies, our hearts, and our entangled, imperfect interbeing with the rest of this fraught and beautiful world.
Samantha will be here later today to answer questions!
Just having a listen now, loving it. Emergence is one of my favourite words. It always suggests something being created, changing, metamorphosis. Like a delicious cheesecake emerging from the ingredients, the mixing bowl and then the oven.
I wrote a poem once about the emergence that comes from emergency. How emergency requires focus and attention, and a certain level of letting go into the moment.
How do we respond to the emergency, what naturally comes out of us, and what wants to emerge in the moment to settle the farm. And be born.
It seems to me that the directionality of our response depends on our capacities for integrity, reciprocity and complementarity (or our selfishness and control). Here's to more attuned responses!
It is curious to watch the ego attach to spirit and harness it as a new tool.
Either in an established religion , or in the abundance of light workers and gurus emerging
Is it fundamentally our ability to trust the outside environment which dictates our response?
I have experienced in meditation the ego/brain almost literally sighing when I drop into trust and integrity.
Almost like, finally , I can relax and flow with life rather than figure it out alone
It comes back to the cycles also, emergency is found even in the movement from winter to spring.
That’s what I saw in Japan, both in the culture and the nature.
The blossoms bursting forth into the sun and the opportunity of spring and summer.
The work of people in Japan emerges from the tension of the self and the stillness of the culture and the environment.
Sitting and receiving tea in the Ryokan in Kyoto from a stranger offering hospitality.
The creation from connection and the tension in the discomfort of the in-between
I'm reading Christopher Bache's work on his studies with LSD in the 70s and he explains the above beautiful - check it out, Steve!
* beautifully
Oh wow, he looks really interesting 🤔
Started watching the biopic of Ann Lee (aka the female Jesus / Shakers guru).
Fascinated with what she discovered from dancing and kundalini shaking
The other stuff is a little off, but makes sense within the culture and times
It seems that psychedelic or religious experiences can either lead you to greater freedom and new ways of relating.
Or it can be hijacked and attached to the ego and the need for control. Aka gurus, tech bros and woo woo girlies, new coke / new Jesus, UFO gods, all current religions etc
I will 🙏🏼
Psychedelic experiences I feel create their own emergency and emergence.
The self is literally fucked for a time 🤦🏻♂️. All that’s left is what is emerging out of the brain, the nervous system or the body’s natural movements or expressions.
Like severe illness or a moment of natural or man made disaster, everything else falls away and all you can do is respond, and relax. Or resist and attempt to ride it out with gritted teeth.
Either way, things are going to happen, the illusion of control collapses and something new will emerge. A death, an injury, or a new understanding and a new way of being, which can be used to make things better
The scientific term is "neural entropy." The good news is that there is continuity as well as emergence. Thankfully, the brain continues to do all the things that make you you. :)
I haven't listened to you for quite some time (been busy, nothing personal), and I must say, the difference is refreshing! Don't get me wrong. Never have I ever disagreed with anything you have ever said. Well, hardly never. We share the same outlook, which we have probably shared since birth. I always thought of myself as an optimistic fatalist. Your warnings were dire (and needed to be). I read postdoom.com back then inside out, watched every video, believed every word. (Science based, not culty so belief was OK). Then, there was that sinking feeling of helplessness. Everything good that happened got squashed. Perp 1 breaks a law. (We all shout Boo! Bad President!!) Gets sued. Loses. (We all shout YAY!). That decision gets overturned by the Supreme Court. (Boo!) Over and over ad finitum.But the years of scary predictions (based on science, of course) were thankfully heard and digested by some, and so it spreads.... and EMERGES. It certainly was slow going at first. However. FINALLY.... I think this is a major major shift I am seeing, what with the monks and Artemis and that ice skater with the wedding cake hair and Big Bunny, and finally, SARAH WILSON IS TALKING ABOUT EMERGENCE. THE CORNER HAS FINALLY BEEN TURNED. (We all shout YAY!)
hahaha! I sense a lot of us are emerging in similar directions, there is a loving, aching impatience to move onto the "what comes next". For me it was just a theoretical idea as I wrote my book etc. But then I really began to feel it moving through me. Sounds woo-woo, but it's how it's playing out for me and others I'm talking to...there's a momentum building...perhaps that's what I mean.
Loving, aching impatience, indeed!
Consurgence: The act or process of rising together simultaneously; a concurrent upwelling or surge of multiple elements, forces, or phenomena toward a common point or in a unified movement.
Ask me about my turtle island painting.
It’s about damn time. I’ve been asked to leave three times. I declined all three times. I want to see this hot mess happen.
What a rich, thought provoking conversation between two beautiful & powerful women.
No questions currently just lots of ideas to play with.
Especially loved the devotional stuff, the local news & looking for signs of emergence. Thank you both 🙏
Lovely interview. Lots of the ideas and thoughts explained remind me of what Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass talks of. If you own land plant a tree; you’ll look at everything in nature differently. How the bee becomes important because of the relationship to that tree and how they coexist.
Robin may also be joining us on Wild!! Fingers crossed
I cannot express how watching you and Samantha just now has just saved my life. This is fact, not melodrama. The tears of grief and frustration are now tears of relief: big happy, cleansing sobs complete with snotty nose. Finally, someone who can verbalise how I have felt all my life and knowing now it was not my fault I didn't feel like I belonged to the current society. I'm not the odd one. It is such a relief, even physically, that i am so back to being the real me: dynamic, exciting, happy, strong. I'm dorky dancing with so much energy that I can now funnel into action and purpose, that comes with the satisfaction of doing .. not just knowing. I've always been a listener to the messages, and laughed knowingly when I finished listening to you both when the first song on my random playlist was Florence belting out How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful!!
I cant thank you enough, Sarah, for introducing me to Samantha. And to Samantha, thank you for being amazing and giving me the words to now communicate more effectively with my community. Talk about Emergence! I've just burst out of the shackles feeling like the Rising Horse symbolising the year ahead. Thank you with all my heart! 🫶 🦄 🦋
Florence gets it!
Kylie, I really appreciate your heart-drenched feedback. I know the relief you feel. I'm grateful I get an outlet for connecting like this. You must read Samantha's book now!
Kylie, SOOO good to hear and feel you, body and soul! YOU GO! Your love is medicine. Seriously - brining authentic, whole-self, soul-trusting creativity to the table is one of the best ways to shift the course of things.
I felt an overwhelming feeling of gratitude as I listened to this. Thank you.
I find the subtleness of life such a hard place to back myself from, it can seem too easy or natural (which is the point) the walk in nature, meditating, the simple things that I know are powerful but still as times I doubt myself.
Do either of you find this?
I do. I find, too, ,myself using words like "compassion" and "community" and "the collective", which I formally found too...nebulous and soft, but now feel are the most powerful words I can draw on.
Walking in nature...just...works. Our bodies know this, kids know this, our ancestors knew this...
What a relief, hey, to know the path has far more ease than we thought!
When we divide, we separate.
We build our walls
and make them strong.
Protection is the winning move.
Buy the titanium.
Create it well.
Make it people-proof.
I am nothing like you.
I am safer than you
I know better than you.
You’ll never hurt me.
Quickly close it all down.
Never let them in.
Don’t share.
Don’t love.
Don’t give.
Especially don’t give!
I’ll need it, you see.
To survive.
Alone - just me
On my own
Surviving
Lonely
On my own
Alone.
Unity will never come from division.
If we want unity, healing, love, belonging… we cannot get there by separating ourselves from others.
@Fiona, this is POTENT. It turns out that enough is really enough, and that connection is really connection, and that nature is really OUR nature... together or bust.
Great words.
Did the division all start from farming? I see references to this in anthropology etc. it fits with this notion of 'my land' and then the need to protect it as a food source... and then it all stems from there, building walls to create a safe home, just for me (us), build a wall to protect the farm and our food source - don't give to the neighbours, it's ours, we worked that land and grew that food etc.
Do we ultimately return to foraging? that's a loooooong leap back in time. But ultimately, if we live inside of a dwelling with a lockable door and windows etc... we are always seeking some form of 'protection' from anything outside that might harm us and this is being alone ... maybe?
I don't think we can return to foraging. The earth is far too degraded -- and there are too many of us -- for that. We need to find FAR better ways to manage what Luke Kemp calls "Goliath food," ie. the things that can be hoarded and fought over. I think the keys lie in reciprocity and democracy -- in living in ways that reveal that we are better, more resilient and more secure together. Audrey Tang has revealed to the world that "unlikely consensus" is possible at scale. We have the ability to do real democracy like never before, which inevitably reveals that shared strength is greater than dominance heirarchies. We have to have the political forsight and will to get there!
Does this form of living also remove the idea of personal privacy, which is another barrier that is fought over. If we all truly share and reciprocate, we shouldn’t need privacy of space?
What a beautiful and hopeful conversation. Thankyou.
There can still be emergence into beauty.
Reposting this from above: Consurgence: The act or process of rising together simultaneously; a concurrent upwelling or surge of multiple elements, forces, or phenomena toward a common point or in a unified movement.
WE are the possibility of consurgence. Every act is a stitch in the social fabric that shifts initial conditions.
Adding this to my lexicon! Thank you, loved this conversation. I remember you from Nora Bateson’s training last year, it’s great to learn more about your work 🌀
I truly believe so. Or feel so.
I loved this conversation, and I was thinking about how both you and Samantha discuss how dance helps--it really does. Last night I went to an event called Earlybirds Club "A Dance Party for Ladies Who Have Sh*t to do in the Morning". These events are happening in cities all over the US, it's become a movement in the last few months. It was a simply joyous evening, all 80s and 90s tracks and women of all age groups but mostly middle-aged, feeling safe and free, shaking off all of the everything. An easy night for the security guards at the venue, for sure!
There's one near me. I hope to go to the next one!
I am new to substack and just LOVE these conversations! I feel like its the only place that is actually talking about people doing something about this crazy world. As a mother, I feel so much of this deeply. Growth can be so much richer when we all stop looking in the same direction.
I think it's good to distinguish between growth and progress ...I'm pro progress, growth only when it serves goodness
Honestly I've been struggling to find the right word for awhile. I agree its good to distinguish between growth and progress but there's also the depth from growing internally (getting back to your core essence and the other way you can grow by just being able to notice the world around you more). Atunement has been the closest way to describe it I guess.
@Cait I think it's always important not to get tangled in semantics. I think the growth Sarah was speaking of was in the zone of GDP. I sense she would resonate with what you named about internal growth. :)
Here here!
Thank you! I caught up with this yesterday - god I love your podcast - so glad to have it back in my ears. (Substack is great but sticky - I find it so much harder to listen in the app than my podcast app). Thank you Samantha - you both gave me the finishing piece I needed for my cartoon and post this week xo
I'd love to see the cartoon! Will you please share it with me?
Sure - although you will have to click through to my latest post to see it “BREAKING: L’il Bean tries to fence the news”, Substack won’t let me put a link in the comments :) My pub is Spark in the Dark. Enjoy:) Thank you for the inspiration.
sticky... interesting. As in sound quality not great?
As in Substack now does so many things that on my way to find your Substack chat I will get derailed by 10 other things loose half an hour and forget why I was coming in the first place - also, now I have locked Substack down so I can only access it 3 hours in the day, not conducive to catching chats on the run. Have you through about putting your substack chats on your podcast platform as well - unedited, just as they are? I would certainly listen there if I could - I usually get around to them on Substack but sometimes days or weeks later.
Great news, thanks for doing this Sarah. I first heard Samantha Sweetwater in conversation with Nate Hagens and found her fascinating and helpful. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to engage with her thinking again now that things have sped up the world has become catastrophically crazy! I’m shocked by how viscerally my sense of outrage at this illegal war of choice is effecting me. I have become fascinated with Persian history annd Iranian culture, in particular the more recent post revolution relationship between Iran and US. I find myself constantly seeking Iranian perspectives on what is happening and cheering on any resistance to the United States of Israel from other countries, while at the same time feeling absolutely exhausted by it all. 3am wake-up’s are the norm as I rake over events, working through my repertoire of breath work and vagal tone exercises to get back to sleep. It was wonderful to hear Samantha and feel calmed, affirmed and redirected back to nature and the normal every day. I know these things but it is just so good to hear them articulated. Thank you both for this from the bottom of my heart. I am so relieved Wild is back and you are seeking to help us move beyond the granular panic stage and contemplate preparation for a wholesome and sustainable ‘what’s next’.
Hi @Monique, I'm just now reading your words and wondering what's continued to metabolize with you. I fully resonate with the way in which you've responded to this utterly anti-human chain of events. For me, it has given new color to the gestures of compassion that seek to know and care for the ontologies of other peoples and cultures who are being villainized and harmed.
Dear Samantha, thank you for your reply, I found my usually robustly healthy self in ED with pneumonia in early May, so needed to shut down the world outside for a while and rest. The healing was profound in terms of deep rest and engaging with memories and summoning of important people who have died, all to a soundscape of soft Iranian and Persian jazz. I am mystified as to why I found this sound so healing! Eight weeks on I am much better but find myself deeply unsettled by the events of the world. I’m trying to focus on my important close human connections and nature, but find myself easily overwhelmed by our current predicament. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand but find my researcher mind starts burrowing down too intensely. I would love to find a way to be engaged without this overwhelm. Still seeking though! Warmly, Monique
Wonderful dialogue that has opened up a Pandora's box in my thoughts (as you always do Sarah). And as always I will leave my thoughts here... not to seek answers, this is a form of meditation in many ways, just letting the thoughts pass by like the clouds.
1. I hear the term 'getting back to being human' mentioned (not just here, but a lot of spaces around spirituality) but the 'time' thing or like forward / backward confuses me. What is 'back' to human ... as it seems to suggest we are not human in the present? But our humanity is what gets us to this here and now, always. Our ingenuity, our curiosity etc for example over the use of oil as an energy source, then discovering its use for plastics that solved alot of problems (and created lots more) ... such is the way with humans... and so on... previous to this we chopped down all the forests to use the wood for fuel and building homes and ships etc... (in Europe anyway) ... so... what is the 'back' bit referring to? An older time? A different form of humanity? Haven't we always just acted as human?
2. The relational human part, as mentioned in the conversation, is hard. We have become more separate - not just as individuals, but as little 'tribes' it's rife on social media this whole mantra of find your 'tribe' and stick with them... i.e. align yourself only with people that think like you and not people that might bring your energy down etc. But isn't this counter-intuitive to the relational human thing. For living in local smaller spaces and getting on with our neighbours, we need to be relational to all thoughts and people, not just those we seem to like who think like us... isn't that what gets us into these troubled times after all? Not being able to live alongside difference? That includes living alongside my neighbour who may be a tech bro, as well as my other neighbour who may believe in chemtrails and my other neighbour who is an atheist and the dude across the street who believes in UFO's. Samantha mentioned something I try hard to live by, that sort of visceral 'stay curious' mentality... paying attention to the little signs, but also pay attention and listen to fellow humans who may offer a completely different perspective on life and what 'human' is.
3. Linked to 2... Sarah you mentioned about humans only 'rising to the top of the food chain' (which you admitted was not a great turn of phrase) because of the ability to be relational - but is this something we want to pursue? Being at the top of the food chain still - if we are to be truly more at one with nature instead of 'above' nature. If we are to be with earth, not just on it. Being at the top suggests we still wish to pursue control over everything else, rather than being within the chaos of nature, just like the other animals and plants and microbes and all of the elements.
4. The idea of emergence and what now? question, still seems to be framed in a way that relates to a form of control too - what do we do? How do we do it? This in itself suggests a form of privilege that we are able to control these things when many do not hold such powers for example. We 'choose' to engage with local community or 'choose' to dance our way through the difficulty... but then this sort of gets flipped upside down in those ideas around sort of being guided by the 'local news' checking in with what's going on in your place, noticing, not choosing, but being with the life around us, the water, the clouds, the grass. But still, my mind is like in conflict with - if we have the ability to afford this time. But what about those that have to work and do jobs without choice, purely to keep food on the table etc. How do they 'emerge'? Who chooses who gets to be fed and who doesn't. Someone living in a high rise apartment in a polluted city for example with poor infrastructure or being bombed, what does emergence become for those humans?
5. Do we need to try less to extinguish the chaos and instead accept more chaos? Earth is chaos. History is chaos. Total wipeouts and extinctions in earth's history and so on. Human's are obsessed with controlling destiny and writing the future, through innovation, technology (the fire, the wheel, farming, oil, electricity and so on)... but the rest of the natural world lives largely in chaos, with unknowns but as humans we perceive this in a way of things being 'fragile' or about to break etc but isn't that always the way of nature... and all living things have to adapt, that in itself is the stability of the planet and life in many ways, on a grander scale. And it can all be rewritten with a volcanic eruption. So maybe this links a little to psychedelics and more of a feeling of like freedom from the constraints, opening up the mind to different forms of connection and wildness and less about control and choosing perhaps?
6. Does alcohol fit within the realm to psychadelics? I always remember reading about Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland which was one of my fave books as a child - about how he and others at the time used absinthe to open the mind and access new realms etc and how that became prohibited. Fascinated me at the time, how the establishment was threatened by the imagination... (my memory of this part of history could well be totally inaccurate though!).
Blimey. Some thinking. I need to be careful listening to these podcasts in the future. Argghh.
I'm blaming the mountains. Had a couple of child free days so we took the opportunity to go hike some of the Wainwrights in the Lake District and just as accurately as you are with regards to dance being instinctive, so too, I find, is walking. Especially walking high where you get that idea of perspective and the challenge of climbing, the vulnerability that you could fall off the edge and die with any wrong footing... it forces an appreciation of life, the flow of water, the moss... wow, I just love moss, I have a very weird connection to moss, I just have to touch it, photograph it, study it, could sit with moss for hours if I was able to. I once read about a French guy that studies mosses, think the study of moss is Bryology? and it blew my mind that his job is just spending time with these fascinating plants... ahh... the dream!
We were saying, shouldn't all 'peace talks' and delegation, politics etc, happen whilst going for a walk - or indeed, dancing... but being in nature... to have that visceral connection... and I don't mean on a golf course in Florida!
What a beautiful, softening conversation. Thank you Sarah and Samantha. 💝
Such a wonderful conversation that resonated deeply. I particularly appreciated how you described the beautiful way in which psychedelics can open us up. “They can help make a deeper space for the grieving that needs to happen. They can make us feel safer to grieve together. One of the outcomes of the psychedelic state is to feel more safe feeling your feelings with other people.” That has definitely been my experience.
I loved that insight, too. I don't make a secret of my having played with psychedelics and I was...thrilled...with how they took me into a space where other people made so much sense.
It’s been a few years since my very intense experiences with psychedelics and I’m still integrating all of the layers of what came through.
The hugeness of what I re-lived, realised, and was able to re-parent myself through in those journeys was mind-boggling!
Samantha’s words around it allowing you to “feel more safe feeling your feelings with others” are just so spot on. I’d also say that they allow those other humans with you to hold you through what then emerges in that space which is extra special to experience. The way that I was held and cared for by beautiful humans in those times is something I’ll never forget.
Somehow a gentle and gruesome experience all wrapped up in one! Which for someone like me who loves a good dose of Both/And was perfect.
We often describe psychedelic work as "Class 2" fun - not fun in the hedonic sense, but decidedly life-y, honest, alive. Thank you for doing the work!
How wonderful to have you back and this conversation between you and Samantha was a balm, I and I suspect many people need. I found myself writing notes with little diagrams with ideas spilling onto the page. A long sigh.
I have just recently, with the slightly cooler mornings where I am living, slipped into a new morning practice of first light beach walks, observing and connecting with the changing energy, then heading into a meditation before I do anything else. I have always loved your idea Sarah of putting your exercise gear into a basket by the door so you don’t have to even think, just climb into them and off you go, brilliant.
The simple things emerging in my life once more are allowing the deep feelings of sadness and helplessness about ‘collapse’ to take some shape with ideas, the ability to take a deep breath again, to have some hope and desire to be part of the vision and regenerative process.
Heartfelt thank you to both of you
Wendy, I feel the deep feminine intelligence of how you're processing. I feel it in many of the shares here. We're living this with our bodies, our hearts, and our entangled, imperfect interbeing with the rest of this fraught and beautiful world.