Fundamental Wholeness - Jude interviews Simon

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Jude, Jude Homme. And Jude's going to be asking me questions today. Right? Yay! Yeah, so people that have listened might have heard of Jude before. I've interviewed her, she's interviewed me. She did a guest interviewing. She came up with some guests that she wanted to interview. She interviewed them.

[00:00:26] And today she's going to be interviewing me with basically around a summary of what I call Fundamental Wholeness. So that's the headline, right? Fundamental Wholeness. There you go. Fundamental Wholeness, yeah.

[00:00:51] Yeah, so this is a topic that Simon and I have bounced back and forth for years. And we both wholeheartedly align on. And it will bring us to the discord around the primal wound or just trauma.

[00:01:14] In adoptee circles, we call our wounding the primal wound. It's a metaphor, I guess, or a term that really resonates within the community. But it is also a picture of any trauma, right? Because trauma is trauma.

[00:01:41] So why do you think that the primal wound is not the correct term or is wrong? Simon? Because I don't believe that trauma damages our fundamental wholeness. It doesn't, it doesn't incur into our fundamental wholeness. It doesn't, trauma doesn't impact who we, who we truly are.

[00:02:08] It's more like a veil on us than something that damages us. So trauma conceals us. It doesn't cut us. It hides us. It doesn't harm us. We are fundamentally whole. And that wholeness is hidden by our trauma.

[00:02:36] Yeah. So I used to be a massage therapist. And the way that trauma works in the body, right? Like, so the trauma impacts our nervous system. And I'm thinking more of like an acute injury. Let's say you broke an arm or were in an accident. And so there's a physical trauma to the body. The fascia becomes kind of enmesh.

[00:03:05] The fascia becomes kind of enmesh, like a spider web. It's very sticky. And it gets very, like, enmeshed together. That's how, it's also how we get scar tissue.

[00:03:13] And so that enmeshment, it causes like a log jam in the body where there's not flow. And I see our trauma kind of like that. Like there's this log jamming. There's the veil. There's a buffer that keeps us from remembering our wholeness, right?

[00:03:37] It keeps us from knowing who we are. So that's just my little metaphor through a physical example. But yeah. It's physical. But then again, we could say, right. I heard this, I heard this summarized beautifully by one of my mentors, a guy called Michael Neal. He said, we have a body. We are not a body. Nope.

[00:04:02] Our body isn't who we are. It is something that we have. It's our earthen vessel, right? Like it is, it's not who we are. It is what we live in. It's our container. Yeah.

[00:04:19] Yeah. But, but that fascia is a great example of how trauma acts for us, even like in our psyche or in, in our body, even though it's not who we are.

[00:04:35] Yeah. I mean, you could say trauma is, is, is, is retained in, in our body, but yeah, but, but we are not our, not our body. And if, if the body's, if the body's broken, it's broken. Yeah. Right. So if somebody's, if somebody is blind, they can't see if, if, but when we're talking about, we're talking about trauma, trauma is more like a, a feeling that comes and goes.

[00:05:06] So it's, it's intermittent damage to the body. Damage to the body is permanent. Trauma is largely a felt experience and that's intermittent. It comes and goes. So yes. Especially when we're talking primal wound or that type of trauma, right? It's the, it's stored in the body, but it can also be released.

[00:05:37] But it's not, it's stored in the body, but it, but our feelings come and go. They, they, they come. Absolutely. They come and go in, in us. Something that's, that straps in the body is permanently tucked in the, in the body, but it's, it's a constant thing. But trauma isn't constant. No, it's not. Right. It can be released.

[00:06:05] It can be moved. We can change our relationship with our emotions. We can change our relationship with our stories. We can change our relationship with the wound. And it's not who we are. I'll bring us back full circle.

[00:06:31] So why does, why do you think that it resonates with so many adoptees? Because it put, it puts words to, it puts words to something that, something that we, that we feel.

[00:06:51] And, and it, I interviewed a mentor of mine, a lady called Claire Diamond about four years ago. And, and, and she said, we, we've, we've all got a primal wound to the extent that we are, we believe that we are this apparently separate self. Yes.

[00:07:16] That, that is the, the, the, the, the, the, the primal wound of separation is a separation from our, our, our, our wholeness. So that is a, that is a human thing. So what the primal wound does, it takes something that is human and pathologizes it as something that is adoptee specific. Yeah.

[00:07:46] I actually look at the primal wound or as an, almost an archetypal journey. I think it's very human. Oh, I can never say his name right. Ty, like Ty Nat. She, like he has a quote that I use. Ty Nat? Yeah. Yeah. Here's a quote that I use about like the illusion of separateness.

[00:08:09] And, and I do think that it is an archetypal journey that we go through in life, you know, and we, we think that we're separate from everything from, even from our own selves. We think we're separate from the world. We think we're separate from nature or each other when that's really all just an illusion. Yeah.

[00:08:33] And, and the wound, because everybody does go through wounding early in life and, and they feel separate and become a separate entity from their, their mom. And, um. Well, you could say physically, physically, they are separated by the, you've had four boys, right?

[00:08:56] So you could say we're separated from our, our mother by the art, by the act of cutting the umbilical cord. That, that's, that's a physical, that's a physical separation. But what we're talking about late, uh, later on is this emergence of the, uh, assumed separate self, which is, as you say, a human archetype.

[00:09:20] So what Nancy Verrier does is she, uh, she takes a human, she, she takes an archetype that is human and calls it something that is adoptee specific. And she's. Yes. She's, so she's wrong.

[00:09:40] Well, yes and no, I'm going to, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here because I think for me, um, I had been a massage therapist before realized before coming out of the fog, as we like to say.

[00:09:54] And there was something powerful in being able to name the sensations that were in my body to be able to point to, ah, ah, this is a remembrance record of something that of an experience, right? It's not who I am, but there is a remembrance record looping over and over and over again.

[00:10:18] And, and, and I think it was really important for me to be able to, to name it, to stop the looping. It, it was telling me a story of something that happened to myself that I didn't recall. And so by naming it and being able to see the narratives that I had adopted, right.

[00:10:41] I, because of an experience that I couldn't recall and made up all these stories about myself that weren't true. Um, I could undo, I could unravel that. And, you know, I came out of the fog in 2019 and I started feeling whole by 2021. Right.

[00:11:05] So that was like my spiral of growth, but I needed to like, see it to be able to release it, to, to recognize that it wasn't who I was, right. My trauma bound identity, as I like to call it, like that was not who I was. And I migrated, you know, through those years toward being me and feeling whole and, and practicing what I would call my sovereignty.

[00:11:35] So I think by naming it, that was part of, for me, it was an important step of being able to release it and move beyond that part of the journey. Instead of being stuck in the loop physically with it. Yeah. Me too. But, um, but it's also not correct in that it, you know, I was identified with my wound.

[00:12:01] I had this trauma bound identity, identity, I had identified with it and that was not correct in that sense. Right. I wholeheartedly agree with you. So some people would say that you and I are denying our trauma. Are you denying your trauma? No, no, I'm just saying that. I'm not my trauma. We are not our trauma. The trauma that we feel isn't who we are.

[00:12:32] No. And so would you, are you minimizing your pain or what happens when the trauma loop does play for you? I'm less bothered by it than I used to be. If, if we're okay, if we're okay with feeling okay, we're always okay. Yes. And when things come up, we're okay with that too, I think. Right. It changes.

[00:13:01] Less okay with it. Less bothered by it. It depends. Less bothered by it. Yeah. Less bothered by it. Here we are on April 17th. And I've not had anything come up since Christmas.

[00:13:31] Christmas. And Christmas, you know, my, it's a little bit more of an intense time. Um, it came up for me a little. I recognized it immediately. I went to my amazing, lovely husband and said, Hey, some stuff's coming up and I could really use a hug. And he hugged me and then it was fine. Like, so that's, that's my experience at this point. Um, but largely it doesn't come up at all.

[00:13:58] How about, what is your experience at this point in your life, Simon? Similar to, similar to you, if it's, it comes up more rarely.

[00:14:07] It's, it's more like, as you know, the irony here is that we, we came, we, we were brought together by, um, the lady that runs Fireside, Amanda, to, to run a, on the back of, on the, on the back of an idea to run a course on a new message. For the primal wound. For the primal wound. And here we are.

[00:14:36] We've been talking about that for the last three years and here we are talking about it again. So here's the metaphor, right? So I don't know if you've ever been, you've ever been knocked over by a wave. By a what? By a wave. You've been in the sea and been knocked over. Oh yes. Yeah. Have you ever been spun around by a wave? Yeah. Okay. So that, that's what, that's what trauma feels like when we're in the middle of it.

[00:15:04] What, what we're talking about here is more like we're riding the wave rather than it, it, it, it, feeling engulfed by it. And powerless. Yeah. That's, that's a really great metaphor because what came up for me and how I described it to Jeff was, hey, for, for whatever reason, because I wasn't even really sure. My nervous system is starting to feel a little dysregulated, right? This, so the, just, that's how I'm describing it. Cause that's what's happening in my body.

[00:15:35] And I could really just use a hug and then I'm going to go be quiet for a few minutes and I'll come back and join everybody. And that's what I did. Right. So it wasn't, oh, my trauma wound showing up again, or my adoption trauma or any of this. It was, oh, I'm feeling a subtle shift in my nervous system. And I, I know where that can go if left unchecked. Right. So let's just bring it back into alignment. And, and I just need to regulate for a second and, and do that.

[00:16:05] So it is much more like riding the right, like riding the wave instead of being carried under into a current and down under. Yeah. That's a great metaphor. So if adoptees are whole, then why do so many of us struggle so much? You and I both know the statistics and, and we've been in groups.

[00:16:33] We know the struggle is real and we're not trying to minimize that. We think our feelings are permanent and we don't see our wholeness and we've lost hope. And other people around us are, are, are validating the way that we see the world.

[00:17:02] The, the, the bleak and the bleak dark future that we see is being mirrored by other people in our circle. Yeah. So do you think some of the feelings of permanence relate to the fact that we've carried these emotions in our bodies since very early?

[00:17:29] And so it's, it's like, we don't know ourselves without these feelings. Well, no emotion is permanent. I think what I said was we, we think that the feelings are permanent, but, but that they're not permanent feelings, feelings come and go. Yes, they do. In feelings come and go in us.

[00:17:56] So it's a bit like the external weather and the internal weather. Right. So we've talked a lot about this, this idea is trauma as a storm, but storms pass. Yes. Storms pass and internal storms pass as well. And so anything that is any feeling that is intermittent cannot be who we are because.

[00:18:27] Who we are is permanent. It's permanent. The sky is always there, but it's sometimes hidden by, by the, by the, by the storm. We're always there, but sometimes our essence is hidden by our internal storm, our trauma. Trauma comes and goes.

[00:18:53] And then anything that comes and goes cannot be essential to us, as in it can't be the essence of what we are. That's what I said. I could talk about fundamental wholeness. I could also talk about essential wholeness. I could also talk about the wholeness in our core. These are all pointers to who we truly are. The sky that is the constant background. To the ever changing weather.

[00:19:25] Yes. And when we have. The experience. The experience. Of a trauma. Like you said, it's a veil. Right. Um, it's, it's a buffer, but I like the veil and I'm going to use that metaphor right now. It becomes the weather system.

[00:19:45] Like, let's say, oh, I'm living in a desert and the weather's not changing very much, you know, because by the time I came out of the fog, I had spent many years fairly depressed. And I thought that was who I was. So there was this forgetting of my essence, right?

[00:20:09] Forgetting of my wholeness and, and identifying with the wound even before I could name it. So I, so in my mind, that was, I, most of my feelings were very low frequency, low level, um, experiences, a lot of fear, right? Like, so that was my, I had not built a capacity for higher states of being.

[00:20:37] I was living in low frequency feelings. So that was my permanent kind of state of being. And every once in a while, I might have a sunny day every once in a while I might, you know, feel light, but for the most part I was in these lower levels. And I think that is, you know, part of that struggle too.

[00:20:58] And so that, that remembrance and building capacity to hold the higher states of being is, is part of the process toward unveiling our wholeness. Um, we get, we get, we get very confused. We get very confused. We, we say, we say, uh, I feel, I, we say, I am scared or I am terrified rather than I feel terrified.

[00:21:30] So, but how we feel isn't who we are. Who we are. Yeah. How can something that is intermittent be, be, we, we've all got that sense of who we are and that's, that's permanent.

[00:21:48] So how can be something, how can, how can something that is intermittent, even if it's very recurrent, like a feeling, um, like a feeling, a low feeling, how can something that is intermittent be something? Because we identify with it. That's why it's the, I am part that you're saying. And that's what people tend to do.

[00:22:19] And then they, once they identify with it, you have to break down that narrative and break down the identity. Well, we say it all day, don't we? And shift it. We say it all day. We say it all day long. Right. But you and I say what? I'm whole. I'm sovereign. I'm whole. I'm well. Right. We, we have a different state of being at this point. Yeah.

[00:22:44] Um, so what do you see about adoptees that no one else is saying? That we are fundamentally whole. Everybody is fundamentally whole. Vladimir Putin. Absolutely. Donald Trump. Fundamental. Absolutely. They are.

[00:23:12] So what's your alternative? Fundamental wholeness. Okay. So what do you mean by that? Wholeness? I mean, I mean, the, the kids game, the kids game rock, paper, scissors is, is, is my, um, kind of best metaphor, I think, for this. Okay. Rock, paper, scissors. So the, the scissors can't cut the rock.

[00:23:44] The rock wins against the scissors. But the, the, the, the, the rock only loses if it's covered by the paper. Mm-hmm. So unfolding, unfolding the paper reveals our fundamental wholeness. Okay. I love that. Okay.

[00:24:12] I love that because I, I think that, tell me more about this unfolding the paper. Unfolding the paper. I don't hear what you have to say. Well, so unfolding the paper is looking underneath our feelings. Looking underneath our trauma. So if we talk about trauma, we think of trauma as, you know, we, we think of it as a thing.

[00:24:40] I'm, I'm calling it a thing by, by saying it's like paper that covers the rock. Yeah. But it, it, it isn't a thing. It's, it's, it's largely, it's a feeling. It's a feeling of terror. It's a feeling of insecurity. It's a feeling of shyness. It's a feeling, feeling of anger. It's a feeling of fury. So. It's, it's a nervous system activation. It's a, it's a whole body. It's a whole body experience. It's a whole body.

[00:25:10] It's a whole body experience, but it, it comes and goes. It's a whole body experience. So other than like, you can say rock, paper, rock, paper, scissors, and then we can go back to the sky metaphors as well. And maybe those two, those two metaphors for me are the, the, the, the strongest one because the sky is never changing. The weather are, the weather is ever changing. It's a bit like our feelings. Our feelings are ever changing.

[00:25:39] What they are, what they are feeling, what they are arising and falling in is our essence. They're the constant background that is, we're the constant background that is veiled by the trauma, by the, by the trauma. So, but in the body, right.

[00:26:06] The, the trauma has like a, an energetic charge. It does get stuck in the body and it is on a loop, right? Like in that something can activate the nervous system and bring that loop up to play again. So, but you and I have both described an experience. So we know that it is possible because you and I both have had it where that's happening less. And when it does happen, it is less strong.

[00:26:36] It's not a wave that's tackling us, right? It's a wave we can ride. So I call that like, instead of healing, I call it resolving. I have resolved my trauma. I've worked through the narratives, right? Like I've recognized that these feelings are just feelings. So this nervous system activations, right? That this is not my state of being. And, you know, it, it took me just a little time.

[00:27:04] It took me three, four years to get to wholeness. So what for you got you, like, did you have some aha moments? What shifted for you? In identifying. It's all aha moments. People say that this is my favorite, one of my favorite ones, right? People say that time is the greatest healer.

[00:27:32] Well, if there's, if there's no change, there's no healing. So what is the greatest healer, right? Nobody's asking that question, right? Nobody's challenging the cliche. Nobody's challenging the belief. Time's the greatest healer. Well, it's not. So what is? Well, aha moments are. Insights are.

[00:28:00] New ideas that come to us out of, out of the blue. To use a religious word, epiphanies are, right? So you've got insights, shifts in our perspective, aha moments, blue sky thinking, fresh ideas, insight. They're all synonyms. Words that mean the same or synophores, right? Metaphores that mean the same.

[00:28:28] And they, my favorite one is kind of insight. But, but sometimes insight feels a little bit heady to me, right? An insight is something that happens in our head. The word epiphany feels bigger for me because, you know, an epiphany is a whole body, a whole body experience.

[00:28:54] So it's not just something that, an insight that we see with our eyes or a change in belief that goes on in our head or even something that we, that we get in, in our heart, right? A change of our feelings. It means a whole body, a whole body experience.

[00:29:12] So my biggest whole body experience was reading this letter from my birth mum, feeling her pain, feeling her love for me, realizing that 20 seconds of fear towards her, 20 seconds that she felt, I felt that she was rejecting me, was complete and utter BS. And, you know, I was, it was a full body experience.

[00:29:42] I was crying. I was crying. And the tears kind of washed, washed the trauma away. They washed the beliefs away. It's a whole, it's a whole body experience. So it's not just a nice new idea, right? It's like, right? You can, we can glimpse our wholeness. We can see our wholeness.

[00:30:07] We can have a change of heart or we can have a change of who we are. We can have a change of the world, right? So not all insights are created even equal. Some of them are far more profound than others.

[00:30:25] Now, all the other insights that I have and continue to have over the last 19 years looking at this stuff, none of them have the kind of the visceral, tangible, easily explicable, get by other people substance that that particular insight has. But we've all had insights. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:51] Or like synchronicities, for me, that the symbolism, that life or the field will play with me and give me messages through symbols. And I love that because there's a lot of condensed information in a symbol. And so it comes and then it like unpacks and unfolds.

[00:31:16] And it has so much more meaning and creates a lot of change, like a ripple of change in me. I want to unpack your epiphany just a little bit because I feel like it could give a little helpful insight. Right. So that came to you very specifically from your mom. Right. So the wounding seemingly from her. Right. Believe of rejection.

[00:31:46] Right. And then reading this. It was undoing that code, let's say, of wounding. Because now you kind of could download this. And your body had like a very visceral, physical release. And crying is very much like a solvent that softens and can help us release the trauma energy.

[00:32:14] And it caused like a huge shift for you in how you saw yourself, like your whole identity shifted. So I think for you, like that was kind of that trauma bound identity leaving behind moment. Like what I had, you know. There have been loads, loads of those moments, but that's the most. Yeah. Profound. Yeah. Profound. It's profound is French for deep. Right.

[00:32:42] So I must come from Latin profound. I know. Anyway, so deep. It's a whole it's a whole body experience. It's an epiphany. It's a it's far more powerful than a light bulb moment. Absolutely. So what becomes possible when an adoptee stops identifying with being wounded? Well, this isn't just for adoptees, right?

[00:33:09] No, this is, like I said, archetypal. So, yeah, it's like what becomes possible when we let that go. Well, we don't identify with it. I don't think I let it go. I think it was let go for me. So. We we see our wholeness. I thought that I would. I would say resolve. That's my favorite word. Like when I resolve that, right, like that piece of my identity.

[00:33:37] But when when we're able to stop identifying. Sorry, because I just want to clarify for anybody that's listening. When we're able to stop identifying with being wounded, what's possible. There we go. Peace. Causeless joy. That's true. Happiness. True. Oneness.

[00:34:09] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you ever feel like because sometimes I feel like this. I have actually felt guilty. In adoptee circles for feeling so good. Yeah, I feel that. Do I feel guilty? Sometimes. I. Not very often. I just had to an adoptee in Kansas, I think, earlier this week.

[00:34:33] And she said, you know, I I told people that I was adopted and. There was like an expectation that I would be that I should be really messed up. Yeah. There are a lot of stories out there. You see that movies and books, right? The adoptee has to go through all this stuff. Yeah.

[00:35:00] So it's like that pathologization, if that's a word, right? That pathologization encourages us to self-pathologize like Nancy Verrier did. Yeah. She. She assigned a human archetype. To the fact of being adopted. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:28] Well, one thing, the orphan child archetype, when it overcomes that story arc of the wound, becomes the magical child. They step into their power. So I put that out there just as anyone if anyone's interested in archetypes and narratives and story. That is the arc for the orphan wound.

[00:35:58] As you become magical and powerful. You know who you are. Become whole. You feel good. Yeah. Step into a realm of possibilities. Right? Like, I think what became possible for me was that I could feel good about my life, which I never thought I would feel good.

[00:36:22] What became possible for me was to have a relationship that is partner, like a partnership. It's power with. It is not because I had a previous marriage that was very dysfunctional and I was codependent, right? Like, and I didn't know that I could have a healthy relationship.

[00:36:45] And so to be able to step into that and really, like, enjoy it feels good. Like, and to be living for myself, right? Where I was always in service before. So those are things that I didn't think were really possible for me in this lifetime that I'm living. You know, like, I really enjoy my life.

[00:37:15] And in the peace, I think, well, I mean, I know that trauma dynamics can cause, like, a lot of drama. Drama causes drama. And to have just a really steady life. For a while, I thought something was a little bit wrong with me. I was like, am I, like, numb? Like, because things were so calm. You know? But then I realized, like, that is a good thing. Like, I'm good.

[00:37:45] Yeah. Yeah. As a venture of mine, Richard Wilkins says, high tide and low tide are just, no, happiness, sadness, are just high and low tides on a big C called contentment. Yeah. Big C called contentment.

[00:38:08] But we're not talking, like, if you look up at the sky on a day where there's not completely overcast, you kind of could be forgiven for thinking that blue, blue, blue, there's a blue cloud there. Right? So the blue cloud would be happiness. And the gray cloud would be sadness or trauma. Right? And we think that they're intermittent.

[00:38:35] But I'm not talking about what's intermittent. I'm talking about the sky that's the constant background. I'm not talking about happiness that comes and goes. I'm talking about happiness or a peace that's always there. But the peace that's always there is usually or often drowned out by the trauma.

[00:39:01] So it's a bit like in an orchestra where, you know, the guy with the triangle, his little ping of the triangle is drowned out by the woman with the double bass and the guy with the drums and the musical instruments, other musical instruments. The horn section. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:28] I guess I would describe, like, I just feel very grounded. Right? Like, I am very grounded in just peace. But this isn't adrenaline-fueled happiness. This isn't adrenaline-fueled happiness or hugeness. It's more like peace and contentment. Yeah.

[00:39:52] And it's not bypassing either, you know, which I think some people would say out there just, you know, spiritually bypassing. I would say, like, the trauma was, like, static on my radio. And, you know, we're not broken. We've just been tuned to the noise for a really, really long time.

[00:40:18] And so it's been a process of turning that dial and just shifting it back and forth and tuning in to my original broadcast. And aligning with that. Or the silence behind the static. Or the silence behind the static. It's always there. It's always there. It's just right there.

[00:40:48] Yeah, it was always there. It always was just loud. Drama, right? Yeah. So the drama of the TV show or the film, whatever, right? It veils the piece of the screen. Yeah. And when we switch the television off, right? Or when the television goes, yeah, go switch off.

[00:41:16] And then there's peace. It's disconcerting. So that's what it was, what was happening for you. The absence of the drama felt disconcerting. It was just like, wait, is everything all right? Like, I'm not used to this quiet. Yeah. And then I got very used to it. Yeah.

[00:41:45] But all the time. Now I protect that. Yeah. But all the time, all the time in, even in our darkest days, there are moments when we glimpse the sky, metaphorically, right?

[00:42:04] Where sometimes, so we're walking and we're walking in nature and the beauty of a yellow hammer that we see on the hedge takes our breath away. Or we come round a corner on a trail and the sky opens up and it takes our breath away.

[00:42:28] Or we're listening to a piece of music and that takes us to the peace. All the time, even in our darkest days, there's those intermittent sightings of those intermittent moments of our clarity.

[00:42:56] But we think that this is a good thought or a good feeling replacing a bad one rather than the constant background to our life. Right. Yeah. It's almost like we flip-flop it and we think, oh, the good feeling is the fleeting thing, not the permanent thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good word. Yeah.

[00:43:27] I know that you work with, like, adoption professionals and parents. So how would adoptive parents and professionals work differently if they saw adoptees as a whole? Right? Like, you're saying how adoptees have kind of been pathologized.

[00:43:49] So how do you think they could work differently from this premise of wholeness that would be supportive for adoptees? Well, I would say that adoptees share their own wholeness first and then see that adoptees share their wholeness too. Yeah.

[00:44:20] Yeah. Yeah. I think that is really wise. I know my parents were not operating from a place of wholeness, my adopted parents. And like you and I said at the very beginning, this is a minority sport. Yeah. Yeah. This is a human condition issue, not something that adoptees have cornered the market on. No.

[00:44:48] We do not have a monopoly on trauma. No. No. Or low self-worth. Yeah. And I do think had my parents been in a place of wholeness, what would have shifted? They would have been able to regulate their nervous systems and emotions, which they didn't. And that would have taught me how to regulate my nervous system and emotions, right?

[00:45:15] Because there's a coherence that happens when we live with others. We sync up and they could have, through coherence, through resonance, raise my frequency and my state of being. Just through that, just by them holding a state of wholeness. Yeah. So as I say, you know this, and I don't know about everybody listening to the podcast. And not a lot of people listen to this podcast, right?

[00:45:45] This is a minority sport, right? Most people, thriving is a minority interest, right? Most people are doing trauma education. They're not doing thriving education. Absolutely true. Or they're doing trauma bonding. They're not doing thriving bonding. This is a minority sport. And I've only reached, that's the lesson that I keep on getting more and more, right? That's the lesson that I keep on getting more. Being okay with it being a minority sport.

[00:46:15] Being okay. Because I want to change the world, right? So when I look at my numbers, I think 136,000 downloads in five years. It's terrible, right? You know, the voice in my head says you should be reaching, you should have more downloads than this. Right. So, but being okay with it being a minority sport.

[00:46:43] Being okay with it reaching the people that it needs to reach. Being okay with, maybe the conversation actually is just about me and that other person that I'm interviewing. Maybe it's just about that. Yeah. And not giving two figs about the listener numbers, right? This is a minority sport. It is. It is.

[00:47:11] And I sometimes have that same tape playing in my head around my work. And I have pulled back and kind of been on pause for just over a year, right? And I notice now that I'm writing again and posting, like, the interaction is, like, nil. And my stuff is not as trauma-centric because of where I'm at. I'm, you know, talking other things.

[00:47:41] And so, yes, it's a minority sport. And it is exactly what the world needs. Right now, as we are shifting. And I'll share this. Like, I believe, I know I told you about, like, my near-death experience. And when I was brought out into space and I was looking down on the earth, there were these little pinpoints of light. And they would pull up and be like a little movie screen playing. And I would see what was happening there.

[00:48:11] And then it would turn and I would see another one. And they got faster and faster. But eventually, this was the message of that part of my near-death was that everything we do, everything we say, everything we think matters. And it's impacting stuff all around the world. And so I have to remind myself of that, that, you know, a rock tossed in the pond,

[00:48:38] and it may seem like it's not doing very much. But it is rippling out. And so there's a trust. I've gotten so much closer with my soul through all of this that, like, I trust the leading of my soul around my purpose.

[00:48:57] And if it is, if my writing, if you're speaking is really just for me and clearing my signal, right? Like, clearing the static of this lived experience so that my soul can shine more brightly and be more coherent and be at a higher frequency, that that's rippling out and impacting the entire planet. And that might sound woo, but it is physics, and I believe it.

[00:49:27] So, you know, so that, if it's just that, if I'm just downloading a template for moving from trauma-bound identity to earthbound sovereignty and wholeness, and then so be it. Now, I would love to bring others along, as you would, right? Like, we want it to ripple out. We want people to feel well.

[00:49:53] Because a lot of the damage that we're seeing done in the world is the result of what we're talking about. It's the result of people acting out of the trauma that they're holding in their bodies and identifying with instead of identifying with their wholeness. Because people who feel good and whole treat other people well. Yeah. Right? People who are empowered empower others.

[00:50:24] Did, well, I'm sure this is a very leading question, right? Did your near-death experience convince you without a shadow of a doubt that you're not your body? Not at the time. It actually came through a meditation experience.

[00:50:47] And it was almost an existential crisis when I realized that I was not my thoughts. I was not my feelings. I was not this body. And I, and I, all of a sudden, was in this place of, like, witness, sovereign observer. And I, yeah, it was an existential crisis that led me out of Christianity.

[00:51:17] Because I was deep within Christianity at that point. So, yeah. Because. Multitude of experiences. But the, but the, so I think that, you know, the people, I can say we're not a body. The body is something that we have, not something that we are. And people can say, well, that's fine for you, Simon. You're off your nut. Yeah.

[00:51:44] But, you know, people that have had MDE's, you know, you, you, you have floated up. How many, how many, how many stories have we heard of people that are on the operating theater and they, they leave their body and they're in the top. And they're looking. And they're looking. And they're looking down, right? So that, that's, that's MDE's. And what, what about, what about Eben that you interviewed for the podcast, right? As a neuroscientist. Neuro. Yeah.

[00:52:13] If you haven't heard that, go listen to it. If anybody's listening to us. Eben Pagan. No? Eben Pagan? No. Eben Alexander? Eben Alexander. Okay. Right. Who's Eben Pagan? Right. So it's a hardcore neurosurgeon. I'm reading a book by another neurosurgeon at the moment. And similar sort of thing, right? Yeah.

[00:52:40] And he, he says that they can't find reason, the reasoning part of the brain. They can't find the reasoning part of the brain. Right. Because it's not in the brain. It's not in the brain. It's not in the brain. It's not. They can, they can, they can, they're doing this for, I don't know, a hundred years.

[00:53:09] They've been splitting our hemispheres. Yeah. Yeah. Between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. They don't get two people. It's still one person. Yeah. You should have two. If we are our brain, if we are our personality, we should be, there should be two people in there. There's not. Yeah. There's one. And yeah. And a lot of people in the fields that I operate in, like we call it the mind body because although

[00:53:36] we separate the brain, the brain extends into our nervous system. Like there's really no separation of anything. You know, it's, and our memories aren't even stored up in there. They're stored in the body. It's, and now they're talking about that. It's stored out in the cloud. Like our memories are not even in our body. It's out in the cloud in the field. So there, you know, there's a lot of science that's shifting around these things, but, and

[00:54:05] I think I did know that I wasn't my body, but it took, I have like another experience that really like brought that home through that meditation. And, um, you know, that's why I just call this my earthen vessel. Like this is, this is what holds the light. And, you know, I'm glad to be in it for now, but it's not who I am. Yeah. So.

[00:54:33] You don't, people that, people that have, that, so that makes you the light. Yeah. Yeah. So the light doesn't need enlightening. No. Trauma and darken, trauma and dark, trauma, trauma and darkens the light. There's no dimmer switch. There's no, there's no dimmer switch on the light.

[00:55:02] No, but you know, I'll go back to my Christianity. Jesus said, don't hide your light with, in a bushel. He was right. And, and I think that's exactly like what trauma does. It just covers it up. And we begin to identify with it. It doesn't break the light bulb. It doesn't break the light bulb. No. It doesn't fuse the electricity.

[00:55:30] No, it doesn't change us at all. And if anything, if anything, it's actually, they're going to get me for this one. It's actually kind of this beautiful, um, seed, uh, um, seed that the trauma like compacts all this information with it.

[00:55:55] And as we, um, as the seed unravels, right. We are learning from it, right.

[00:56:03] Because, because I came out of the fog, because I decided to resolve my trauma and, you know, that I discovered and came to remembrance of home is here inside this body while I'm here on earth. But there's a remembrance of home is who I am, right. It's a frequency.

[00:56:31] It, it reminded me of my sovereignty, of my wholeness. So it, that whole like story arc, if we want to think of it that way, brought me to uncover and remember who I am. That journey. I saw a snail yesterday. It reminded me of you and your home program, right? Because a snail takes his home with him. Yes. Or her. And I like the snail.

[00:57:01] I have a snail sticker on my computer. I'm looking at right now, but I like the snail, right? Because it does have its home with it, which, uh, but it also has a spiral of growth on it and we can only go the pace of our most tender parts. And so we each have our own pacing of recognizing that home's right here and our wholeness. We're, we're good. Yeah.

[00:57:28] So, um, yeah, I'm trying to think. I, I, there is one more question on this list. You want to go for it or? Of course. Okay. So you're not a psychologist or a therapist. So what gives you the right to say what you are saying? Connecting to the threads in this interview. Yeah. It's just my opinion. It's just my opinion. It's just my experience. It's just what I'm recording about. That, that.

[00:57:57] And that's what makes you the authority is this is your lived experience and therefore, you know it to be true. The fruit is in your life. Is that the mic drop moment? I guess so. Thanks listeners. Bye. Bye.