Initiation & The Nervous System - Bruce Lyon

I want to quickly tell you about the next facilitator training I'm holding. It's called the field facilitator training, and in it, I'll be teaching the foundational embodiment and relational practices that I use to facilitate group fields. It's a one week training, October 19-25 in Sweden. You can learn more at the-field.com/facilitatortraining. Welcome back to In Presence We Trust. This episode is with Bruce Lyon, and before we start, I want to offer a little context. We initially recorded and released this conversation at the end of 2025 as the last episode of season two. It turned out that even having this conversation with Bruce was controversial enough for some people that we decided to hit pause. After a few months of reflection, I've now decided to move forward with releasing it because I believe there's real value in what was explored here. Bruce is someone whose work has had a profound impact on many people. He's also someone who evokes really strong reactions. There are people who credit his work with changing their lives, and there are others who have spoken about experiences of harm and raised serious concerns about his methods, ethics, and approach. I want to clearly acknowledge that reality from the outset. We are living in a time where conversations about power, leadership, and accountability are becoming increasingly important, and I think that's a really good thing. I believe it's important that we listen carefully to stories of harm and continue to evolve our understanding of consent, responsibility, and power dynamics inside transformational group spaces. I also believe that human beings are complex. My experience has been that people, teachings, communities, and movements rarely fit neatly into categories of "holy good" or "holy bad." Life asks something way more challenging of us. It asks us to cultivate discernment, to listen deeply, to think critically, and to stay connected to our own knowing. That does not mean I agree with everything Bruce has ever said or done. It doesn't mean I'm recommending his work to everyone, and it doesn't mean that I wish to dismiss or invalidate the experiences of those who have been hurt or who hold concerns about him and his work. What it does mean is that I found this conversation meaningful. I found it thought-provoking and incredibly alive. And rather than deciding for you what to think, I want to trust you with the conversation. If you choose to explore Bruce's work further after listening, I encourage you to do so thoughtfully. Listen broadly, seek multiple perspectives, stay connected to your body, your values, your intuition, and your inner discernment. For some people, his work may be deeply supportive. For others, it may not be the right fit at all. My intention here is to create a space for inquiry, to explore ideas, engage with complexity, and to trust that each of us has the capacity to meet what we hear with wisdom, responsibility, and discernment. With that, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bruce Lyon. You're listening to In Presence We Trust, the Facilitation Podcast. So I want to start talking about a recent writing that you shared that has really touched me, and I think a lot of people in the field of group work and transformation and initiation, which is the polarity between trauma-informed culture and initiatory culture. And I'd love to just invite you to describe in your own words a little bit of the essence of this post for anyone who hasn't read it, but who's listening. I think it's just trying to get beyond the polarity between initiatory practices, which have often been quite traumatizing in the sense of the nervous system as like bringing in a lot of energy to break the old sense of self so that a new sense of self can form, and the trauma-informed titration mode of making sure that our energy systems are just stretching, not breaking. And so often there's a polarity. I often call this the way of fire and the way of water. And they lead into each other. The way of water is surrendering to what is, and accepting what is, and taking the path of least resistance and allowing emergence. And the way of fire is to bring in elements that burn away the old wood and allow you green shoots. And so often they get into a polarity. It's very similar to the masculine film and polarity of like, you know, accept everything the way that it is. Or you could do better. Change. There's an invincible spirit inside you. So these paths should be like a healthy, you know, it marriage. They shouldn't be balancing each other. But there can also be a tendency to overuse one over the other. And I know for me, personally, I've walked the path of fire and taught the path of fire a lot in my world, partly because that's who I am, partly because that's what my perception of where the world is. And I think that, in the recent years, the trauma and form movement has come because the fire is also needing to be deeply integrated with our nervous systems. And a lot of learning has come around that. And so the paper was to try to get beyond that polarity, which is kind of instinctual and see how in future initiatory fields, these energies deeply need to work together so that we are growing in maximally efficient ways for everybody. Beautiful, beautifully summarized. When did you first recognize this polarity between these two sides? Like, what was the process of your how the awareness came that led you to writing the paper? I think it's been a result of recent years of some of the pressures that I've been in and making me re-evaluate my own journey. Because I think like many people, my deep opening into spirit came from trauma. And so, so in those places where the system can't cope with whatever it is that's experiencing, something deeper emerged to hold me. And that deeper emergence was deeper dimensions of my own being that showed up to hold my psyche and hold my being in times of incredible stress. So, so that path of breaking open to spirit then meant that I could hold that for others. But it also meant there was unprocessed trauma underneath that then had to slowly be worked through over decades, really. And so, as I've come to bring those together in my own being, then I've like, and also as I've seen the result of sometimes the path of fire pushing people beyond limits that are comfortable or right for them, then it's led into a much deeper appreciation of how to integrate that with with the trauma work. There's something about you naming your own trauma, like your own initiation through your own trauma that has somehow just really already touched me. And I think I didn't know that about you or I've never heard you say that. And maybe there's like a part of me that feels like part of me I'm accepting more through your reflection of that. And also just my heart is opening to imagine whatever that was because there's a depth that you carry that I'm so touched by. I can see you more clearly now. Beautiful. Yeah, well, it's also, I think it's a tender place because when you've walked a path, a particular path, and you know the way home that way, you want other people to go home, sometimes it's hard to see that there are other ways. And in my case, you know, incredible trauma produced like an incredible anchoring in something that was was home, you know, and from then on I had hung. And but it doesn't mean that you have to go through trauma to have that experience. But actually in my generation, a lot of that was a lot of how people did awaken. And so then I became at six years old, you know, a spiritual teacher in my world, whether I wanted to or not, you know, whether I had that name or not, I now have and anchor point inside me that really no healthy six year old should have to have, but that's the way that spirit has come into a world. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for the humaneness of that revelation. And so what I'm curious about now is you've as you've said like intensity and fire has really been your way in your path. And I'm curious like what is transforming or changing around the way that you are going to hold intensity in your groups going forward. Well, I think I'm at the stage of like moving into eldership in my world and you know if I go back to my beginning, I didn't really, I felt like I had species shame. You know, like I tried to jump a ship. I tried to jump ship to dolphins and whales on something else, you know, because my first love was the natural world. And, and, and I, you know, I still find humans to be quite scary. Like that's my sixth year all I find humans to be, to be beautifully terrible. And, and the truth for me was I was kind of ashamed of what humans are. And so part of my fire was also my activism, you know, which is like no, I actually don't accept us the way that we are. I don't accept Gaza. I don't accept what we're doing to the environment. I don't accept the heartbreak of what passes for a human being. So I was, I felt like I was, I was more in the human potential movement. It was easier for me to love the potential of humans rather than that was actually presenting in my face. There's maybe most humans like I'm afraid of like some department is just goes into fear and contraction. So I walked a path of fire partly as my path of activism of trying to change the world rather than just love it and accept it the way that it is. And I feel like there's a need for that too. Like that there has been a beautiful need. Like my life has been about providing what I felt was missing for me when I was a young man, which was I wanted the mystery schools. And I wanted the places that saw my soul and recognized who I was and tried to help me bring what I had my gifts into the world. They weren't there. And so I help create them. So that's been my path of fire to to call forth something that is latent in the human spirit that's deep in the human spirit that wants to come forth. And I think what's happening to me now is as that, you know, I got to 2025 that was some part of me always like felt that this was the time when that fire could could complete. And now I get to, you know, move into well to ship, which is like, I'm now so much into the into the Dow like I've a burned out star. The supernova that has been my soul work has started to collapse and I'm just becoming the black hole and letting other suns burst into into flaying around me. And I'm much more in the part of order now like I'm much more able to just accept the love everything as it is rather than like want to change it to something better. So I think as that's happening in me, it's also flowing through into the fields that I've been responsible for. And how do you see like, okay, so on one hand on the knowledge this first, you're you're also recent writing on eldership really touched my heart. I think that was another piece that led me to reaching out to you again. It felt so raw and honest and responsible and also deeply missing from our culture. And and in that you speak about the cost of leadership, especially the cost on your personal life. And so I'm curious as you've been in this reflection and your you've announced you're getting ready to come back and teach again this next year, what what would you what do you think will remain and what is going to be different. I think the truth is being for me that my soul mission has been so strong that I've overridden my personal in that journey, which is also meant that in some of the fields that I've been in the personal has been under under emphasized. And part of that for me has been a healthy reason I feel like the world that we live in is kind of dominated by the personal desires and so to bring the trans person has been industry and important. And I think that's a lot of the profit in my life has been at the cost of my personal you know like the soul mission has been so strong in my nucleate force of my soul wanting to express has been so powerful that it hasn't always integrated my personal I'm kind of dragged that along and then you know it's been willing. And that's also been part of part of the traumatic part of my journey is like okay well my obviously not here to have a personal life I'm here for a soul life early and so you know that's what I've emphasized as I feel the consequences of that you know and as I get to drop into more my personal being. And to integrate that more and I'm also I think in my fields that I'm working in i'm much more open and willing to embrace people's personal selves rather than my hold on we're here for the soul not for your personal self so I'm much more willing to to feel that we can hold the personal self and unfold the soul rather than they put a wall up to the personal self. So that the soul can arrive and you know I think historically in grounding a place like hide and because the personal world is so strong sometimes you need strong boundaries to say well this is not that this is something that has been like not not celebrated in the world and needs its own place and then and then it's easier to open to integration and say and yes it might be so first but it's not at the exclusion of the personal self the personal self is well. Transcendent include rather than transcendent repress so I think that that's probably the move and you know like between you and I like i'm coming back to teach but i'm not coming back to lead i'm coming back to co teach with others that I also respect and i'm feeling the relief of actually being able to be held and my plan actually for the training afterwards as I want to go on as a participant you know because i spent my life creating these places because they were missing for me and you know a culmination to me would be to be able to go and trust that actually i could be held in these places in some of the personal pieces that that want to then you know move and heal me so so i feel like i'm coming full circle and and actually i'm trusting enough to be able to bring my human vulnerability into the equation now rather than having to put it aside because often in leadership you know your vulnerability no matter what you say even though it's changing but no matter what you say sometimes in the past actually when people can't see you as a human they only see you as an archetype or as a as a transmission of something that is awakening in them it can be very dangerous or feel very dangerous sometimes to bring in your tenderest pieces so i feel like that's a development in me and it's a development in the field that i'm able to do that now this this summer i led some i held a pretty big festival and i was such a soul driven mission for me and it was so easy to completely put my personal self to the side in fact like Rachel wasn't even like Rachel has left the building Rachel was not here i didn't even know i had needs or what they were i wouldn't have even have known how to express them i could barely relate relationally with people on that personal level i was holding the field and there were so many people who were really challenged by that and and it was it was quite challenging for me as well to receive that reflection and the projections and it's something i've been integrating and and and sorting through and sifting through and looking on a lot so this piece coming from you now is really medicine for me and and that we're reckoning with it at the same time and going like yes and both yes and both yeah and also to understand that sometimes there is a requirement to put aside it's not just you're not just denying the personal self like i i know in my life i had to go and get a agreement from my six year old from my traumatized one from my personal self like i'm not going to override you but are you willing to like carry some of these pieces that and and my personal self has been willing and you know you know, if you are measuring the nervous system of a fire, and going into the burning buildings in 9/11, it would not register that this was a good thing to be doing. And so sometimes you have to override because there are more important priorities. So it's one thing to override because you're like in denial. It's another thing to choose and get the consent of parts of you. You know, because actually sometimes for my personal self to be present when I'm holding something big is more of a weight for it than not being present. Because if you're getting all of these projections and in the middle your personal self is in there trying to get its needs met in a field that can feel like really re-traumatizing to that piece. And sometimes it's better to say, "Okay, I'll just take the projections and I'll deal with my personal integration at the end." Or, "Collapse into a heap and integrate them." And that's okay. It's not ideal, but it's okay. No, totally. Yes, I was just thinking to you of your analogy of the firefighter in 9/11 being like, "My personal needs aren't being met right now." Right. It would be ridiculous. Well, just that the way of water, when you don't have enough fire, there's a way of water that is emotionally self-indulgent. And you know it in all of these fields. Like, yes, I want to have a better orgasm and I want to have a better life and be abundant and live in Bali and had everything wonderful. Yeah, there's a way of water, but often there's just a way of indulging personal desires on a planet that can't afford for that to happen. So, balancing water and fire feels like it's really important and having both in the transformational spaces is also important. Yeah. And I just want to hit one more time. I'm curious around you spoke that you really feared about stopping long enough to meet your personal self because the momentum might never return. Right. And I'm curious like what has happened in this year as you've stopped and felt? Yeah. Well, I mean, a number of things have happened. One is because I feel like the mission that I've been on is complete. My soul mission is complete. So therefore I can't use that as an excuse to override the personal anymore. So, like, and the personal had been willing, you know, while the soul mission was so important. But now it's like, okay, but then now we're into an integration phase. So it's been, it's been beautiful to feel both the self worth and the self love to come back to my own integration. And also to notice the places where I have, you know, avoided some of those pieces because of the the the soul work. And so, yeah, it's like, it's like in some ways coming back from a battle, you know, like worry is having to come back and they don't know how to do peace. You know, it's a part of me is like, I do, I do I have personal desires. I don't remember what they were. I don't remember what I want, you know, like as a personal self. So it's been both beautiful and also a little scary to realize, wow, there's whole pieces of me that there might be opportunities to like explore now. Mm-hmm. And that's what you're saying that you want to do is, is you want to kind of come in, be in a part of another round of the height and temple training and then transition into a more participant role. Well, yeah, just in terms of height and I feel like the being has landed. So it exists and that like incredible tension at the start of things when you're when you're when you're like in the process of trying to make things exist, requires a lot of will and a lot of tension, a lot of effort. And now I feel like I want to be in the relaxation and for me, I feel like I've spent my life reaching towards a world that's not here yet. And now I want to live the world that is here that has always been here underneath everything. I want to just live that world rather than like be holding for it to come. And that brings a deep relaxation and joy and and transmission of enjoyment. And that's the enjoyment that comes from not doing your purpose, the enjoyment that comes from being on the other side. And that's the eldership piece. I think there's so few elders because so few people have had actually burned themselves out with what they came to do so that they can rest back at the end. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. From this place of eldership, what would you say to the people who felt minimized or misunderstood or harmed by your tough love approach? I'd say I'm sorry. You know, I'm saying I'd say that the that anybody who's coming to any field and felt marginalized or recognized or that their process has not been taken seriously or I say I'm sorry, anyone who's coming to any field and felt harmed as a result. Then yeah, I not only am I sorry that that's happened, but I also just want to recognize that that that's a valid experience. You know, and I think one of the things that's been difficult is to realize is to to be with, but so many people have loved it and had great experiences and so on, you know, as if it's a polarity instead of accepting. Yeah, a lot of people may have had great experiences and some did not and those that did not want to listen, want to hear and want to reflect about how that could be different. And see that as part of growing better and better fields rather than as an existential crisis of like should this exist or not is this polarized a good thing or a bad thing and say look, it's a learning field. It's an environment. I know I haven't been perfect. I know the fields that I have created have carried some of my own shadow in them as well as other people's. And it's still I'm fully in that it's been worth doing and that I'm glad that I've done it, but I'm also much more willing to be learning and to be in a place of learning rather than being in a place of like, but you don't understand what this takes, you know, so I would I would say I'm sorry we're listening to fields are growing generations are coming in with less trauma with more codes for the future. I'm growing they are evolving. So I you know, because I feel like for me, it's much easier to forgive my own trauma if I know that the world is growing into a place where others won't have to go through the same experiences or not as bad. And so yeah, part of it is like care and listening and part of it is and here's how what's happened to you has changed the fields for the better for the future. Yeah, staying on this topic, I want to continue to just acknowledge some of the the heat that's come in around particularly height in right now. And you've been at the center of some really intense scrutiny around the portrayal of the temple around claims of harm and I'm curious what this time has required of you. Yeah, well, I mean the most difficult thing I think has been like that in go of some of the last pieces of manayity, you know, because I my dream is always being look if you sit in deep temple space with others when you if you unveil and allow the beauty of what lives at the core of a human being to meet that your your you're not going to forget that. You know, that that's something that that people who build the whole temples are are united on and I kind of expect for temples to come under pressure from the outside because they always have and always will whenever you're trying to do something that's a little bit ahead of mainstream is going to be tension. But when they when they fall from the inside when when when the the conflict starts to happen inside these spaces then it feels heartbreaking to me because I feel like if we're if we're teaching about love and we can't demonstrate love amongst ourselves then what are we teaching you know like if we're not living the principles that we teach and so. For me the most difficult thing has been to just keep opening my heart to stay in to stay in acceptance of what is and and to stay open and listen rather than move into you know because there's so many things that my mind could like say about about you know what's going on and yet and yet none of that really helps what helps is to is to find a deeper level of love and acceptance and to. Keep holding true to what I know is pure at the core of this work and keep. willing to purify and listen and receive and open and I just don't think there's any other way. So the hardest thing for me is being like, okay, I'm accepting this as medicine. This is my medicine. You know, like if things don't happen randomly, they all have your name on them. So this is the medicine I'm drinking and I want to come out of it and more loving being able to like meet the world with less defenses and more open heart and less illusions and and and and then you know the field will become more loving. So that's been the journey and it has not been easy journey. Like I took this year off as sabbatical thinking, okay, I've got to take a break. But actually I've done so much in a work and and I'm really grateful for it as I come to the end of the year but but yeah, it's been intense. I bet I bet the path of fire fire meets fire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you when you see the stories circulating about Hyden, what what feels like truth and what feels misrepresented? Yeah, well there's so many stories from so many different people and I and I think you know the underlying thing I would say is that I do think that the world wants what is being growing in these kind of nurseries and but but the way it's trying to get where it wants is through like testing and I think that that's that's normal, you know, if somebody says they are like loving you then you often everything that you have not experienced has loved comes up to be tested. So I feel like some of those stories, you know, the truth of some of those stories are that what we've already covered, sometimes the personal has been overridden and the name of like anchoring a place for soul and and the pressure to be in soul and not to be in personal has left some people feeling like well some parts of them are welcome there. Integration has always been difficult and always has because you know someone said like being well adjusted to a dysfunctional society is not a sign of mental health and if you if you are helping people come into a deeper connection with their core and with their soul and then they're going back into the world and they're like okay but but actually my armor was helpful in making a living and getting on and so on and now I feel like vulnerable and I'm exposed and how do I actually bring this into a world that is not often friendly always to the deep work of the soul. So integration, you know, sometimes people have said well it's about it's better not to open if you then can't integrate that experience and maybe it's sometimes as like is it better to love and and lose or you know so that's slowly changing as there is a greater field of people that have been through these experiences and being in the world and having to graded it and are available to help others and but with all pioneering work it's very hard you don't have the ambulances and the paved roads and you're just hacking through the bush with a machete and like sometimes sometimes it's it's it's you just don't have the resources so I think there are some things that are true and most of those things are around the the push rather than the like inclusion and around how to help people integrate the experiences they're having back into the world those things are true and then there's a lot of stuff that I think is yeah is is got many other motives involved and I that I really want to go into those right now. Yeah yeah we're just to kind of maybe touch on it in a different way what do you feel is most misunderstood about Hiden? I think the thing that's most misunderstood is this projection of cult you know that that somehow where a cult or a sex cult or and and that tells me more about the world than about Hiden it tells me that people are still deeply preoccupied with their sexual repression in the world when Hiden has so little to do with sex it's just that we don't exclude it we include it as part of the being a human but it becomes big in the world because that's that's important to people and it's sensational and and the cult thing is I think the world is dealing with power in a big way whether it's the power about politicians or our legal systems or our religions or but Hiden has lesser cult than ordinary mainstream world but most those cults try to like stop you leaving or like indoctrinate you or whereas Hiden actually has freedom at its core like but it's so hard to be a free human being you have to like go to your own noses and know who you are and what your choices are and take responsibility for them freedom is just so hard as a human being it's so much easier to have governments tell us what to do or someone outside of us you know but but the opposite of a cult is is helping human beings claim what is truly their own path that comes from no one else but comes from them but to listen to that to open up your core noses and trust that and take responsibility for the consequences of that well that's a really brave and courageous path and I think it's a lot easier for people to just label that as a cult rather than to to encounter their own lack of freedom and their own you know need to have people you know the systems and structures to support them because they don't really know how to support themselves from their own core. I'm thinking of this I think it this was you I'm not sure but I heard I haven't been to Hiden in a while but I heard there's been a sign posted at the entrance that says you chose this. Was that your was that you're doing? Well I'll tell you about that one because one of my one of my major teachers at Hiden has been my groundsman Wayne who's been there for like 30 years he takes care of the property you know and and it's it's often said in you know in any kind of organization that you can never complain down you can only complain up you know so so a lot of my work you know at Hiden has been to receive people's complaints about things that aren't working or aren't working or are working or they'd like to work better or and I've got no one to complain to really if the way I used to complain to my groundsman you know I'd go out and you'd be mowing the lawns and I'd be like you know what he's like how's it going and I like well it's a bit tough you know and there's always his comment was well just remember you chose this so that's wisdom from the groundskeeper at Hiden and I've actually said could you put it on the sign at the gate you know because so it's also a sign that that wisdom comes from all everywhere you know in in the field that's amazing I'm so glad I asked because it means even more now that the wisdom was originally for you yeah exactly I was seeing it I was seeing it for the people arriving but it's it's brilliant and that's a great piece for me to take also that similarly I chose this because it's it's hard it's not easy it is hard you receive a lot people have a very romantic idea of what it means to be a leader and a facilitator and they think it's all bougie, fluff and celebration and praise and ego stroking and it couldn't be further from the truth and it's it's it's very freeing to remember that I'm also choosing this and I also think that you know that's part of what I said before about eldership I think it's a difficult thing to remember why you came as a soul and to re-choose why you came you know that's like it's uh but there's no piece without it there really isn't any piece and the piece comes when you are willing to choose what you're already chose but this time with both hands with a full heart accepting the consequences of it then you're then you're actually in incarnation as a kind of spiritual adult because you remember and you you you perform and you express who you are and why your purpose is on the why why you're on the planet and that's peaceful but not easy and also when you do that I think you also accept all of the consequences that come from that and and and then you you're engaging in a deep learning process because I really feel like earth is a school it's a it's a school for souls and we learn by both from remembering and being brave enough to remember why we came and then to enact that and accept the consequences of that and learn as a result and I'm really touched again right here around your your journey into eldership and I'm having a real time right now with my own journey with my family members who are in eldership and who are more in the feeling that I'm living the end of their life in the hell realms because they're not in exceptions with the life that they've lived and they're still in such a fight that they can't receive the life that they've lived and the beauty and the that next stage. And I'm just really wishing that there's more people who get to live from the place where you're at right now because I'm closer connected to the pain, the pain in the heartbreak. - Yeah, and I feel you and I wanna say something about trauma and that was old, because in my generation and before life was basically about survival, get a job or whatever, and at the end of your life, you just retirement in a nice place where you could begin to do some of your soul work. And then regret that had to wait till the end of your life and now there isn't much left. Whereas the generations that are coming as if their soul work comes early, then by the time they get to eldership that they've had a fulfilling life, they haven't had this emptiness at the end that says, "But I never lived, I never fucking lived." Which is so heartbreaking. And so when we talk about trauma, a lot of the time we're talking about the trauma that happens in our nervous system when we are not, or we're not loved, we're not held down, that is not changed, we're not, you know, like, you know, loved by parents who don't know how to do that. But I think there's soul trauma and that soul trauma is greater in many respects, which is the trauma of not being seen and recognized as who we are and who's arrived in this beautiful baby in this, and that that person has an inherent beauty and great gifts and most people have lived their life with nobody seeing that. And so when nobody sees it from the outside, they don't even know that it matters. They don't know that what they're carrying matters more than them, you know, surviving and getting a good job and, you know, doing all of the things that the generations before did so that we can have the soul awakening. But yeah, I want the trauma of the soul being recognized equally with the trauma of the body mind. And the trauma of the soul is that mostly people have led lives of quiet desperation because who they really are is not seen. - Yeah. Thank you. I'm gonna take that one with me 'cause that will help me re-approach some of the people in my life in a different way. Ooh, okay. I wanna make a little shift now into cosmology and the planetary initiation that we're in. And you wrote a book maybe last year or this year, but it came out this year, our dark divinity. And you describe humanity entering a planetary initiation, which is this personal, the transition from the personal identity to the planetary and even the cosmic identity. And I'm curious how you feel about that initiation unfolding right now. - Yeah, well, I feel like we are, I've just been in Hawaii watching the surface, and I think the whole of Earth's humanity is about to go big waves surfing. (laughing) The waves, I know we talk about fields and one of the beautiful things I love about your work, Rachel, is that you emphasize the field and we've lived in a culture that's been so pointless. The point is important and even relationship is relationship between points. But it's actually the field that gives rise to the points. And modern quantum thinking is that points and particles and atoms and humans are really just standing waves in a field. And the field is the thing, not the points. So if we apply that, not just in the human field, it's been in greater fields, we have, I'm gonna go really weird on you now. So you snuck me if I'm going to weird with you. The word are the better. - Okay, so here's where I think that Earth humanity is about to go belly to belly with cosmic forces. So just as a human being needs to regulate, it's nervous system with another human being in order to create healing. And you know, in fields when you have people in the field and you're working with emergence and you're waiting to see like what, the whole that's greater than the sum of its parts can bring healing to the people within that field and emerge of properties come out of the field. Well, humanity itself is a field and our species, that's what I said at the beginning, I have species shame because our species has been really insular and you know, looking what our species is doing to the planet. So that species has to start to correlate with other fields. And if we look at just what's happening with like in Gaza, you know, that is quite obviously connected to what happened in Nazi Germany, which is quite obviously connected to a global trauma in humanity, there's not gonna be solved by everybody doing their trauma work around it because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So how does trauma of humanity shift? Well, it shifts by engaging greater fields that it finds itself in just like a human might come to your workshop or mine and find themselves in a greater field for healing. I think the human consciousness and the consciousness of earth has to locate itself within these greater fields so that we can heal the collective traumas that are not gonna be healed by the cumulative result of everybody doing their own work. They are going to be healed by the greater fields that allow them to move. So that's what I mean about big waves surfing that there are these cosmic waves that are bathing the earth, to go to field dynamics, even just the solar flares that produce the northern and southern lights. That's a greater field that the earth is living in, producing effect on the electromagnetic field of earth. So this is just like a human coming into a workshop, the more solar energy that you have, the more things come up to be healed and if they're handled wisely, then you can have major transformation. So I think earth as a being is on the edge of that. And whether you wanna go to the age of disclosure and alien crafts or whether you wanna go to channeling the acturians or whether you wanna go to cosmic rays coming in from super-noves, it doesn't really matter whether you go to scientific route, the metaphysical route or but we are locating ourselves in much greater fields of intelligence and consciousness that are having major effects. And I don't think it's easy for us to see that in our own little frames. But collectively, I think we all feel it as earth is going through this place, as humanity is going through this change, that pressure has been felt. And a lot of what we're feeling is not personal, it's transpersonal. And so learning how to integrate the person on the transpersonals so that these collective transformations and our personal transformations are linked, I think is gonna be part of big wave surfing in the time ahead. - Wow, that is fascinatingly weird, but also I get a little excited. (laughs) I'm like, what is it gonna look like? - Yeah, well, I think part of the fire and water thing and that relates to facilitation is that, part of facilitation is like allowing the field to reveal itself, like just connecting people, allowing them to breathe together, allowing their souls to start dancing together, produces itself, quite a lot of healing. But then if you start to bring in other fields, so if you start to resonate that field with greater collective fields, so maybe the soul of your training, with the soul of the world, with the soul of Cosmos, now you're starting to create bridging energy between fields. And when one field has energy that enters another field, it tries to charge that field and then train it with a different energy. And so this is too much of that, too much fire and the field like burns out, but not enough of that, and it becomes self-indulgent. So all of these fields, like the Earth's magnetic field, it keeps too much sun out, because if it came, too much came in, would be a desert. But if not enough comes in, then we don't have enough psychosynthesis. And if you look at climate change, You could say that that's part of the earth becoming our hot house. You know, we are creating an effect that's trapping more of the sun's rays within Earth. And so when you had mystery school containers, they're like hot house nurseries. They allow the opening of the petals of the flower to open faster than it would be if it's just out in normal garden. So I think Earth itself as a metaphor is about to undergo a hot house process of change. And that that requires a connection between us all. And you can say, AI is coming and it's positive aspect for that. However, you see the changes that are upon us, whether it's climate change or AI or whether it's the mental health issues or whatever it is, it's quite obvious that we are in a time of intense collective change. So for me, all of my life's work has been to get to this point, you know, to have enough places and people that are attuned to the change that's coming to help it be as effective and positive as possible rather than the kind of changes that that happen when you don't do your spiritual work, which is mat-truck kind of changes, you know, because we know the difference between like, oh, I'm at a point of crisis and I need to open and shutting down and waiting until something external forces us. So here we are back in that balance between my personal need to grow at the speed that is right for me and for my nervous system and and being caught up in something that is not of my choice, that is going to overwhelm me whether I want to or not and it's not going to stop just because my nervous system's overwhelmed. So how do we balance both those realities that everybody is in their own transformational path and there are things happening that are going to sweep us all on a journey that is that we can't even foresee from this place. Yeah, I was going to ask you too. I know you've been really in the AI conversation and I was going to ask how how you're seeing or imagining that AI plays into this unfolding. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, of course, you can you can look at AI from many different perspectives, but the way that in terms of this conversation, I'm looking at it as a field. It's a connecting field that is global and that intelligence, whoever you describe that intelligence, that is networked intelligence. And so that has enormous effects on human beings and I think it's going to make human beings go to the next level. And that next level is we have to remember ourselves as soul. Like what is the thing that AI can't do for us? If it can do all of the things that we used to get self validation from doing like having clever minds and you know, like figuring out problems and so on and we're obsolete. Then what is the value of the human being? And I think it touches back on the very thing that you're talking about with some of the elderly people around. It's like if the value of the human being is their soul, if it's the love and the beauty and the radiance is at the core of the human, then we have to find that and figure out what its value is to each other and to the environment and to the world that we live in. And I think AI can really help us do that by taking away the things that we used to get validation from. So we have to discover inside ourselves the deeper dimensions of what it is to be human. That's my favorite answer that I've heard so far. You also speak about the soul as a star that must supernova before collapsing into a black hole. And I'm curious also how this statement relates to the state that the world is in right now. Yeah, well, it's interesting that I just was listening to Josh's podcast from the Emerald and he was he was talking about the carrying the weight and being a collapsed star. I would say that the earth itself hasn't even hasn't got to the star stage. The reason I use these cosmological terms is because they're present in every religion and spiritual tradition. But if we're going to have a global understanding of fields and soul and spirit, we need to break them out of the boxes of the different religious traditions and pathways. And I think that just understanding the way cosmos is with planets within solar systems within galaxies within universes helps us all have a language that both science understands and metaphysics understands, which is that we live within fields and these fields have effect. And so in a human, the earth or the planet is like your personal body mind and it lives within the star, which is the sun, which lives within the galaxy, which is your monad or your spiritual essence. So if we are shifting and most of the work done at Hyde and then in mystery schools is to help people stably shift from their body mind into soul and then include their body mind. There is also a shift later on if you are living your life according to the unfoldment of initiation where you do supernova and you can tell when somebody moves into soul and so many young people are in this place, their desire to contribute is far greater than their desire to like get something back. They're not in the trade and exchange world of the personality. They're in the if I don't live this thing that's bursting out of me, if I don't like let this nuclear explosion that's happening in my heart express in the world, then it means nothing. So they're in soul trying to bring the gift that they've brought like the star does. It has a nuclear fusion in its heart and it's interesting that earth as a planet is we're trying to understand cold fusion now. We had a fission a hundred years ago and now we're in the fusion. So we're trying to figure out how to run our power systems from the system that runs the song. But the next stage is the star eventually uses up its fuel and the dark night of the soul is when a soul has burned out its fuel, has given its gift, has supernovaed into the world and express the thing that it's come to do and then it starts to collapse and that core collapse can produce the supernova and it also can collapse into a black hole. But the black hole is its own form of beauty and power and gravity and magnetism and and as we begin to understand you know what our gravitational waves what is the quantum world. All of these are giving us clues about how our own development as beings takes place. So at the particular stage I am which is that collapsing stage there is there is often like a last flinging of the stars you know matter into the world and that's how we have all of these heavy metals inside us as they come from supernovas. So you know when when we no longer need our soul the field we give it away and and that that becomes an incredibly exciting thing because when you give it away and part of writing books and everything else is a way of giving away the things that you know so that you can fall into a deeper dimension and a deeper part of yourself and I know for me I'm I'm really looking forward to that stage ahead of me and I want to play much more in the cosmic game with earth and cosmos rather than with humans. I feel like I've sat I've sat for 30 years in circles I've heard just about everything that's possible to come out of a human's mouth in terms of transformation in 50 different countries and all of different cultures and religions like I'd loved that experience of like being with human beings stripping away to reveal what's at their core but also I'm I'm now interested in well what is the human species doing in cosmos and how how does earth and cosmos relate in such a way that is not so much with the human and their transformational path in the center but with cosmos itself in the center in your cosmology you suggest that love is not gentle but that it's gravitational and initiatory and world-shaking how how does this understanding of love shape the way that you relate? Yeah well I think it's I don't know I got lots of that on so many different levels but but let me just take that that first comment which is that love is you know a much more terrifying force than our you know romantic heart would like to believe because that real love is trying to reveal to you that you are love. That's what love is trying to do. And as long as we're looking for it or seeking it or wanting to be loved or even loving ourselves, which is a kind of schizophrenic behavior, if we strip away down to our core, which is a terrifying process of becoming absolutely naked before reality, then reality is trying to reveal to us that actually right at our core is love itself. That the abyss that we are so afraid of is actually our connection to the deep love that underlies everything. And once we know ourselves as that, then the game ends, the game of seeking love ends and the game of being love begins. But that's not a, it doesn't matter how many times you tell that to people that there's still going looking for love. It's like trying to tell people about money. There's a part that just listens to, well, how do I make money? But I think the way that that changes my relating is that gradually it feels more like I become a field in which relationship happens rather than someone in relationship. So instead of being the person who was in relationship with other people and they're forming a shipper and container and they're having agreements and all of the things that happen in relationship, it's like I feel like when you're stable in loving, then you're not seeking that love or to grow that love within containers. You're in a field, you're in a field of love and relating happens within that field, but you're not one of the players in that field trying to relate to someone else. And that can feel quite disorientating at first, but you know, because I have nostalgia for the parts that I want to be in containers. But I also know that that's part of actually the stage that I'm in now is like I'm wanting to be able to rest in that field and experience that field and stay connected to that field rather than like going on the relationship journey. Popping back a little bit more to one more time, I just want to ask one more question, which is around Hyden and in the vision that you've held for Hyden and that you continue to hold. How does it fit into this larger planetary architecture that you've been speaking of? Yeah. Well, there's two ways for me. One is, you know, the more personal piece. Like I said, I think you give to the world what was missing for you. And that's one of the ways that people are looking for their life purpose is see what breaks your heart the most. And that's what you're for, you know, like, and what broke my heart when I went to university is like, I knew that I needed another kind of education. And it broke my heart that it wasn't there. And so I want generations to come to to have places where they can go and have their souls seen and recognized and supported into flowering into the world. So that's the, that's it's social application. But then from a cosmological point of view, what mystery schools are, is they're like acupuncture points where, where deeper levels of energy, you know, like if we're doing tumulture work, for example, you're working with Kundalini energy personally and you're working with your, your super conscious and so on. But on the planet, these places of sacred ground where the energies of earth and the energies of cosmos and these greater fields can come and dance and play because it's, it's dedicated to something more than somebody owning a bit of property and making a living from whatever it's, it's dedicated land and dedicated humans to this process of connecting heaven and earth through a mystery school. So they become like naughty points or chakra points, which can also serve the, the fields that they're in and the global fields by circulating energy as, as we all are going through the change as earth is going through its change. So I see them as having a role for humans, which is at places where humans can come and accelerate and awaken to who they are and a role for humanity. Because there are places where these energies can be worked with and road tested and things that actually work then flower out into the into the wider community. Beautiful. You spoke about what broke your heart being in university and I'm curious what is breaking your heart open right now. I think like, you know, one of the things that Wales taught me, I told you I went with cetaceans and Wales taught me that that the incredible suffering of the world is situated within the ecstasy of cosmos. So they like, they like broke my heart into the possibility that I could hold all of the suffering that felt so overwhelming by extending my heart past that suffering to the ecstasy that it's all floating in. And I feel like that's what's mainly breaking my heart these days is, is recognizing that there are powers and there are support, you know, for us as a human species that are way beyond, you know, our politicians trying to figure things out and like create the next good thing or our tech grows like trying to create that there are cosmic intelligences and forces and ecstatic life that is that is like all come to witness. There's great birth that the human species is in and and we don't we don't see them. We don't know that they're there. We don't reach for them. And so we fall back onto our own resources of shutting down or numbing or trying to do it ourselves or trying to make some small piece of change in our political structures or something when when there are these huge forces that can sweep through and produce the changes. It's a bit like, yeah, it's a bit like watching a human being fiddle with their their stock portfolio when when when life and death is going on inside their soul and they don't know what to do with it. So I feel like it breaks my heart to know how much help is for is there for us from this beautiful planet, you know, but it keeps pumping them no matter what the the oceans and the the the beings that we are living within, they're trying to help us. They're trying to like process out all of the pollution. They're trying to like the trees are still pumping oxygen like all of this is like coming from the planet and all of this is coming from cosmos to say, look, you got here that you just have to like open now. Open your hearts. Open your bodies like allow the changes. You don't have to do it by yourself. There's just so much support for you. It's like that breaks my heart. Like I don't know how to to I've spent my life trying to help people understand that there is support because I found that support in my own world because I needed to because I had to I don't know how that humans get that without having to go through intense crisis. Like I don't know I don't know whether whether that crisis is necessary and that's part of just, you know, my ownership is just accepting. Okay. Maybe maybe this is what needs to happen. It's all part of a great plan. But as a human that has been blessed with contact that have that have made my life so rich and guided my life in such powerful and deep ways, I breaks my heart to to to not know other than what I have done how to communicate that to my brothers and sisters so that their lives are easier and more beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. But what do you like other than this communication right now, which is beautiful and heart opening? Like what could we actually do to open to receive more of that? Like what does that literally look like people doing different tomorrow? Well, I think I think like the biggest thing that that I have found that I can do is hold up a permission slip, you know, which because I feel like so many humans don't feel like they matter enough that what lives at the core of their heart, the love that they are, the knowing that they have inside them, they're so afraid that if if they bring that out and live that that they'll get rejected, they'll get ridiculed, they'll get hurt, they'll get attacked. It's not true. Like the so many people emerging all over the planet, there's so much love that's welling up in human beings that's trying to come out and trying to express. So yeah, that permission. Like to have the kind of courage and self-value as a soul to know that those feelings that you have deep inside you, that the little bit of pressure that's there in the heart, the longing for things to be different, that it could be like just speaking up at your family dinner table at Thanksgiving and making one little comment that breaks your heart open, or it could be like standing up in the wall for the things that break your heart, but to realize that there is something that we can do and it's through our being, through being willing to be naked with each other, to be willing to open and express and emerge, like, come out, like I think it was anything that my life has been about, it's like I've had this horn, and I'm blowing this horn, just saying, "Come out, just come out." Like it's okay, if we all come out together, then we'll change the world, you know? And so I think that's the simple thing, is be aware that there is the things that you are quiet inside you that are precious, that they matter and that the world needs them. And you can be messy and you can make mistakes and you can still come out and help change the world. And how do we take the next step towards, as you said, belly to belly or co-regulation with these larger cosmic forces? Yeah, well, you know, part of one of the ways is like opening the body, like as we begin to open the body to more and more different qualities of energy, qualities of Kundalini, and so on, the body begins to vibrate. And then frequency, everything is resonance and frequency, right? So we start to like vibrate with the frequency that these greater fields are around us, opening the heart so that the heart, you know, has resources through what's very core. When we stop seeking love and we stop being loved, we then we access more deeply into these fields of love, which is surrounding us. Through consciousness, through meditation, through becoming hollow bones, through opening ourselves, you know, like to imagine that there are these energies around us. So if we just take the ETs and the alien things and so on, so much of our preoccupation, like with the three-eye Atlas or whatever it is, is with technology, you know, but this is consciousness. So consciousness can be accessed by consciousness. You can expand your consciousness to communicate with and talk to other consciousnesses, you know. And in a way that's grounded and stable, that if you just start to open your awareness to the possible presence of support in the universe, then that awareness can come in. I mean, that's where ideas come from. That's where the whole stupidity of intellectual property, you know, when the universe is flooded with intelligence and consciousness and human beings are just like antennas receiving it, we receive one good idea, we want a trademark and make our life about it instead of just letting it go, and letting a hundred more, a thousand million more come in. So allowing the consciousness to, like, open and stay open to help and support. And that comes through in the form of, like, creative ideas and, you know, like deep impressions about who you are and how you can support and how you can serve and expands your mind into cosmos. And I think, you know, like, I'm sign said, contemplate, well, I don't know, I'd be sitting normal, I sure am. I'm just, I probably said it. Every day that is that, is that no contemplation of infinity, like to contemplate infinity, like to actually allow some space in your mind and heart and body, that's not just about you and getting your things done and, and getting your cradle to grave work or earth, or going, but to contemplate the great mystery that we all live in in our part of and actually are in our core. You've given us so much, you've given me and us so much goodness and just as we're kind of bringing it to a close here, if there's anything else you really want people to feel from you right now in this particular moment of your life. Yeah, I feel for me like I want, I want to shift my gift, you know, that from what I can do and achieve and my will, which I've used strongly in my world into just being, you know, like, I've tried to figure out what is, what is this like golden age part of my life. And I feel like I'm trying to shift into knowing that being and being with the beauty of the earth, you know, like, I would say that when I, when I had to contemplate what we're doing to the earth, I had to do something about that. But now I just want to be with the beauty of it, like I want to stop and be with what there is and that still is and that is underneath everything that is so magnificent and so beautiful and so radium, like death by beauty is my favorite form of death. And I just want to just be someone who can be here and appreciate and play with the beautiful world that we're in. And so I guess what I'm, I'm claiming for myself and I'm transmitting and I'm asking, you know, it's part of actually going and being a student in my own mysteries is I'm also asking to be let go of in terms of some of the leadership roles that I've been in some of the points that I've held for some time. And so I've held for so many people and to be celebrated in that shift of a different kind of work now kind of work that feels like it's no less powerful, but it is actually very different. So I guess, yeah, this is as I'm coming out of sabbatical, like, and this is the first thing that I'm doing, I'm, I'm wanting to both say and claim like the difference, the transition that I'm in and the celebration of that and hopefully in terms of my communications into the world, there'll be more of that flavor in what I have to say in the years ahead. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We are produced, edited and mixed by Charlie Garcia. Our artwork was designed by Oana Sherbana. Our theme music was composed by Charlie Garcia and I'm your host, Rachel Rickerts. For more information on Bruce Lion or Heiden Temple, see the show notes. Thanks for listening and see you soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]