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In part one of this two-part series, we begin with discussing Jordan Kirk’s spiritual path going from Ayahuasca to finding his teacher, His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Lama. We explore topics such as what it means to have a teacher or guru, phallic processions, and the value of crazy wisdom.Excerpts from this episode: "what happened is this I was having a spiritual crisis next to two missile range in California, where I had rented the tiniest cabin in the most desolate part of the desert near here, to try to work on a project and I was basically at the end of my rope...and I was just like, haunted by these absurd, just obsessive thoughts of hatred towards someone that I love very, very much. And I just couldn't- I was I was in a weird spiral of obsession and misery. And I went to this little bookstore. And as happens, as you know, this, this book fell off the shelf, which was this book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who you mentioned before, and I was like, okay, if a book falls off the shelf and it's a spiritual book and you're having a spiritual crisis, you got to buy the book.So I got this book in this little store and, and read it during this writing retreat, not a not a spiritual retreat, supposedly, you know, everything's a spiritual retreat, even during this horror fest that we're in right now. And I read this book, and I was like, I don't have a clue what this book is about. This book is backwards. This book makes no sense to me. Really, it's so interesting. I'm obsessed with it. And I have no idea what he's talking about. And he must be wrong about it. It just must be wrong. It just it. It's all it's all backwards. That was my experience of reading this book. And then and then a few months later, I was on an Ayahuasca retreat, where I met you at that retreat where we met and I remember he showed up in my Ayahuasca vision. And and he gave me a teaching in the, in the vision I kind of gestural, like, he kind of pointed towards something and showed me something. And was like, you can, you can read my books now."  About Jordan:Jordan Kirk is a writer who lives outside of Los Angeles. His first book, Medieval Nonsense: Signifying Nothing in Fourteenth-Century England, will appear from Fordham University Press in 2021. His current research is in the history and theory of metaphor; premodern contacts across Afro-Eurasia; medieval techniques of ecstasy; and homeopathic philosophy and materia medica. He is also a student in the Drikung Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He was a founding editor of and frequent contributor to Ich bin ein Junge, and his essays and reviews have appeared in Exemplaria, Glossator, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, and various edited collections. He studied comparative literature at New York University and Princeton University and teaches medieval literature at Pomona College. Support the show

In the second part of this two-part conversation, Ute Behrendt and Paulette Waltz continue talking about Ute's journey with plant medicines, specifically her experience with one lineage. The conversation continues with the exploration of the internal processes while in plant medicine ceremonies and the weaving of different healing modalities in ceremony and in life.Excerpt from this episode: "...to be seen and understood, you know, in times where it's a lot of confusion, because transformation also means confusion. Because when all this structure gets loose and shaken up, there are there are moments where you don't know who you are, you don't know what to do You don't know what is real and what is not real. And you don't know, do I have a perspective? Do I want to have a perspective? Do I want to have a view? Now? There's a lot of confusion in that times. It's important. Someone who understands.""And working with the same plants gave me like a space and somehow a connection where you know, I didn't change lineages. I didn't change plants. Let's say I had this energetic field where I'm held and I'm in a lineage. There so much I see in a way like memories stored of knowledge and of teachings and also being in the world from mainly one tree. I mean the tree was the world of the tree was and is holding me and all the teachings and all the washing cleansing through...  and the lineage were working with they are very very famous and well-known and well-respected and they had all their ancestors they were onayas and morayas onayas are the one who knows and the morayas are the highest as far as I know the highest spiritualists in the shipibo tradition they say they are not any more living here on Earth. So there through the Icaro through the work from my maestros, I think I was I was and I am held in a very safe energetic field. And this is what is guiding me what is protecting me what is in interaction with me all the time."Support the show

In the first part of this two-part conversation, Ute Behrendt and Paulette Waltz discuss Ute's journey with plant medicines. The conversation begins with marijuana and the interaction with Ayahuasca, talk about the need for wisdom-keepers especially in the formative ages, and how Ute found her Shipibo maestros and the lineage and tree which she has committed to working with. Excerpt from this episode: "And I mean, what I feel is really missed in our societies, is the wisdom keepers who teach us as teenagers, you know, if we would have like, parents, or teachers or someone in every school, or in every village, or in general and society, who writes what you can read the newspapers, where it's like, where we, where we receive teachings, how to use plants. How can we use it where the risk when we don't use it in the right way? What can happen? And I think I mean, this is the missing link. Yes. Because we are I mean, I don't know how it was for you. But for me, I was so curious consciousness. I was so curious to explore the new there's so much more, but I didn't had a teacher and then they had a wisdom keeper.""I think I never committed to something else before. And also, you know, when I when this happened in after this first dieta in the Arkana ceremony in the last ceremony of the dieta. I mean, I don't know if I was aware about what do I really commit, but it just happened, it just happened....and I was so grateful. Also to meet these wisdom keepers, because I told you as a teenager, I always missed with my mushrooms experience and other psychedelic experiences I experienced things were new, it's true. And I know I was always a little kind of alone with it. I mean, I had my friends, really lovely people, lovely friends, big connections, good friendships. But with my experience, I felt often, okay, I'm figuring that out by myself. And when I met the Shipibo, since 2015, the first time and when I met 2016, my maestros. And I knew after this first year with this tree, I knew this is the lineage and this is the tree. So I had like this, it's like a little bit like something what always was missed, but I was not really aware that I missed it. It got filled, and it was like wow, something inside of me was longing for that wisdom keepers, for these shamans, for these people who know how to work with these subtle energies and connecting you to this world of a tree, which is like this different dimension. They call it also 'palo volador,' it's like a 'flying medicine world' translated." Ute Behrendt has been dedicated to learning and studying long-term masterplant diets with a well-known and respected Shipibo Healer lineage in the Ucayali region in Peru. She sees herself as a bridge between ancestral wisdom and western understanding of life. She organizes and hosts masterplant retreats and diets and provides psycho-spiritual inquiry sessions and mentoring.You can find more about Ute and her work with retreats and integration at www.true-journey.netSupport the show

Today’s guest is Zarah Windy, who is an energy healer, mentor, and coach. In this conversation, we talk about her spiritual path, how she overcame many challenges in opening the first healing center of its kind in Cebu, Philippines, and the importance of trust, whether it’s facing free-diving, dancing Bachata, or the uncertainties of life.Main topics and timestamps: 0:58 Windy's background2:10 The process of bringing healing techniques to Cebu, Philippines07:44 How to be spiritual and receive money through it10:14 Trust is the other side of the shadow work.17:35 Windy's call to continue her work in the Philippines 20:40 Connecting to the land both in the Andes and the Philippines26:32 What is Windy encountering on her own journey presently?29:04 Free-diving and the beginner's mind35:32 Learning to let go of control through dancing bachata37:50 Napping your way to successExcerpts from this episode: "Absolutely trust for me, is that the other side of the shadow work, right? Because if we're in this in this type of work that we're doing, where we're healers, where we're light workers, we're pioneers and breaking down old paradigms, the people who did this before us, they suffered so much, you know, abuse and torture and violence. So, of course, the the Trust has to be rebuilt, right, because of all the trauma that that the killers have had to suffer for generations. So that's why I keep talking about that, that release and and facing those fears and acknowledging that they're there that acknowledging that we have wounds to heal personally, collectively on a family level on a relationship level. And and only then can we relax into that trust that you're talking about that is so important for the flow for synchronicity, because for any project, you know, it works out better when we're fully trusting and in that flow...""...But definitely, I think that our relationship to the land is reflective of our relationship for ourselves, actually. And here in the Philippines, people have, they've really cut off their relationship to the land...And that disregard is also how they interact sometimes, with themselves and each other. So as we heal our relationship to the land, we feel everything else also,  it's so deeply related."Zarah Windy is an energy healer, mentor and coach. She started her journey with Reiki in 2015 and her yoga certification the following year. She ran a wellness studio in the Philippines from 2017-2019 where she taught and gave sessions using different energy healing tools, bodywork, and tarot, and introduced Cacao ceremony to the community in 2018. By 2020 she started offering most of her work online, where she continues to mentor and teach to people across the globe who are ready to receive her transmission.You can find Zarah Windy at https://www.zarahwindy.com/Support the show

In this episode, we talk about using forgiveness as a tool to let go of past or present difficulties in our lives in order to experience peace. We do a practice on forgiveness to give over our current perceived blocks to the spirit. Excerpt from this episode: "I think for a lot of people, the biggest work or whatever things that people do, they naturally gravitate towards things that are an attempt to solve a problem. And in her case, her being a clown was probably this attempt to, in a way heal what she was feeling inside, if you watch the movie, the letters, and it's all about Mother Teresa and her journey and how the letters that she wrote, revealed that actually she was terrified of dying of dying alone. And so a lot of her work was alleviating a lot of people in that situation of dying alone. And she did amazing work. She helped a lot of people through it. But in a way, all of that work that Dharma, her work in her life was very much connected with her purpose. And her purpose was in a way, I think, to get over that fear of dying alone, and realizing that it's probably not even about the form in terms of people but knowing that we're not really alone, and that we're always connected with God. In the end of her life, she wasn't alone. She had tons of people around her. And I think it's also a way that we can look at our own lives and see, what is it that we're trying to solve? What is it that we're in a way, avoiding or not directly addressing? And is there something that we can do, to forgive, to let go to learn the lessons that we need?"This is the final episode of Season 1. Thank you so much for joining this season!Support the show

We explore some important aspects regarding manifesting and some tips to open up to the experience you want, realizing that dreams and manifestation can be a fun way to tune into your creative potential.The dreamer of the dream, how we limit ourselves in our minds and how to go beyond our limitations, and a manifestation exercise are some of the highlights of this episode.Excerpt from this episode: "Sometimes the dreams we have hold us back. What on Earth do I mean about that? I'm going to explain so one of the realizations that I had about dreaming. If we don't finish or complete certain goals in our minds, and we're kind of like waiting, and always kind of leaving that as 'Oh, that's something I would love to do. But that's never going to happen', then in a way that limits us. I call those placeholder dreams. And they just hold a space in your mind thinking that it's helping you to dream bigger, but actually, sometimes it holds us back from dreaming even larger from there, because if we have it in our heads that, 'Oh, this is something that's not really that possible', then we kind of get stuck there. And sometimes the key to finishing something, or reaching a goal or dream is actually by dreaming even bigger or further. And sometimes you can't even possibly imagine what is available to us if we have a limited perception of what we think that our possibilities are. So as an example, if anybody runs so let's say you're doing a one-mile run, you know that you're just doing one mile, it feels different than if you were to do, say, a half marathon- that one mile suddenly feels very small. I'm going to share what made me realize..."Support the show

This episode talks about dreaming, some tips on how to remember your dreams, and how we can use our dreams to point to what our subconscious mind is telling us. We also play "the cube game" where we get to explore our imagination to see what it's telling us about how we see ourselves and our lives.Excerpt from this episode: "... I like interpreting other people's dreams and helping them to find out what it really means for them. So how do you work with dreams and interpret them? It's a good question. So for me, it's really about tapping into the subconscious or the unconscious mind and what is already there. And it's about understanding that the way that our brain interprets dreams, real experiences, imagination, memories, it all gets recalled from the same place when we're thinking about it in a way. Our brains don't really know the difference between our dream world life, our waking world life, our daydreaming, imagination, life, and memories, because they all essentially get stored in the same place. I find that tapping into our dreams can be a way a tool to tap into our subconscious mind. And if we realize that we have an emotional reaction to things in waking life, it can be the same thing in our sleeping life. Like those same trigger points, they come up because there's some unresolved places in our minds, and basically, our brains and our minds are trying to problem solve, even in our sleep is trying to sort things out and make sense of things and also brings up maybe some unresolved things in our lives that in our day to day we might push it away. But sometimes..."Support the show

We talk about how letting go of thinking that you know can actually bring you to greater wisdom. Simple as a concept and more difficult as practice, integrating this concept can allow you to gain wisdom, trust in the next steps of your life, and also free your mind of judging others. "...the more that you accept that you don't know so much, the more that you actually will know. And there's actually a quote that comes from Star Trek, which is, knowing that you don't know is the first step to wisdom. It's come up so many times in different situations, like if somebody's stuck in a problem, or I'm doing a healing session, and there comes an, 'I don't know,' I see that as a really good sign. I see that as you've come to the point where you recognize that you don't know. And that means that you're willing to see something else you're willing to take a leap of faith into, into knowing something that you hadn't known before. Because sometimes we get in this comfort zone of what we know and we feel so confident in, in that we know so much. It almost takes a vulnerability to admit that we don't know to the ego it can be really scary to think that you don't know it's uncomfortable. "Support the show

In this episode, we deepen into the topic of projection and talk about several tools to be able to use projection for your own healing. We talk about how both positive and negative projection reflects the data that we carry, separating fact versus interpretation, Byron Katie's The Work, and how this life is like navigating through a maze of mirrors. Transcript from the first few minutes: Today we're talking about projection part two. Today we're going to talk about some more tools that you can use to be able to use projection, and we're going to talk about what to do when someone is projecting onto you. Starting with this topic of what do you do when someone else is projecting onto you and this is common, I had mentioned this in the previous episode that I found in different spiritual communities, you just overhear different people saying like you're projecting it comes up where people talk about how other people project onto them, and it causes distress. Honestly, this happens in a lot of spiritual communities but also just in daily life, we perceive that it's somebody else doing something to us, or that we perceive that they are doing something, and we're judging it, especially in this time where the topics of racism and politics are getting really heated, where everyone is pointing fingers. And that's projection, it's projection if it's causing you any sort of upset, and if you're perceiving that it's something or somebody outside of you that is making you feel that way. It doesn't mean that it's not happening. It doesn't mean that somebody else didn't do something or say something, but the point is that we have the ability to be able to bring it back to ourselves. And in that sense, then we're not the victim and we can actually transcend and release all of the upset that we're holding on to. We also have to accept that no individual on Earth, only gets positive feedback. Think of all the people that you admire, someone always has something negative to say about them. Part of mastery is being able to not take what other people say personally. just recognize that what other people are saying about you both positive and negative is just information; it's just data. It doesn't mean to shut yourself off from what other people are saying, it doesn't mean don't take compliments, but just to be able to come from a place where you're not dependent on how other people perceive you. And so it doesn't mean to shut yourself off from what people are saying, but to be able to see a couple of steps back, that it's not about you, both the positive and the negative. A lot of people get caught up in the idea that everything should be positive, but that's ridiculous that's in this dualistic world. It's not possible for everything to be positive. It's about being in a state of mind, where you're not fazed by the negative, but at the same time, you're also not swayed by the positive, to where you can find that stillness of inner stillness, no matter what is happening, no matter what someone is saying or doing to you, about you. So I want to share a little story where I was traveling back in 2010, it was...Support the show

This episode is an introduction to the concept of projection. We talk about how we project our feelings outwardly, and how we can utilize this for our own healing. Recognizing our projections can turn ourselves from a victim of what is happening to someone who is aware and empowered.Transcript from the first few minutes of this episode: "So what is projection? Well, Freud is the psychologist who's attributed with the term projection. It happened because he was writing about a particular patient who was trying to avoid really looking at her feelings of shame by projecting that her neighbors were actually gossiping about her instead. Basically, if you don't deal with your internal problems, then you're going to see it externally around you. And so that was one of the first cases that it was written about. The thing with projection is that we're doing it all the time and we're not usually aware of it and it can come up in All sorts of situations and relationships through work relationships, family relationships, romantic relationships, etc. And we just project so much without even realizing it.So, by the end of this, we'll have gone a little bit deeper about the concept. And I'm going to give you a lot of examples and stories that I've come across so far in life and give you some tools to be able to bring awareness and then also to be able to let go of whatever it is that you're holding on to. So in more modern times, the concept of projection is actually associated as being something negative, like you hear in a lot of more mindful or spiritual communities where people are often saying, "You're projecting!" and the funny thing is, is that the person saying "You're projecting!" is projecting too, and so whenever we're trying to bring awareness to somebody else, we actually need to bring it back to ourselves. And you know, we're, we are projecting everywhere all the time. Something that has stuck with me is this idea that when you're pointing your finger at someone, realize that there are actually three fingers pointing back at yourself. So anytime that you're blaming somebody for anything, even if a person has done something, the feeling of blame is actually a projection of something that you're feeling inside. And it might not be direct, but it is reflecting something that you haven't brought to awareness that has been pushed into your subconscious or unconscious mind. And one of the..."More at: https://www.yourinnerstate.love/blog/episode-5-podcast-show-notesSupport the show

This episode is about the importance of creating space for yourself, what happens when you don't create space for yourself, and how both introverts and extroverts, people with a lot of time on their hands or people who are busy can apply this. I talk about having dates with yourself and scheduling yourself into your calendar. We talk about what it really means to be with yourself and will practice that in a short meditation.If anything, by the end you'll have gotten the message that it is absolutely important to take time to be with yourself and hopefully you will make it a bigger part of your life!Support the show

This episode talks about what not to do when it comes to decision-making through some personal accounts and also leads the listener to an experience beyond a limited perception of options. We practice getting quiet to listen to your inner Self to receive answers that can lead you on a path that is in alignment with our higher good. This episode is for those that perpetually have a difficult time with decision-making or doubt the decisions that they make. Support the show

In this episode, after checking in and talking about how important it is to create space to release stress, Paulette shares how to be the observer of your own mind and your emotions. Mindfulness is about being the observer throughout lives, in everything you do. She shares some practices and rules that she learned from a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. We join in practicing how to be the observer of your mind with a simple visualization of imagining that you are on the side of the road and the passing cars are like your thoughts and your feelings.Support the show

In this episode, Paulette introduces herself, the background of this podcast, and addresses living in this time of uncertainty with the COVID-19 virus. This is a time of looking at our shadows and past pains, and this is the beginning of learning how to navigate through it. We do a check-in to take a moment to see where you are in this moment, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Support the show