Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 532: John Lockley

Episode Date: October 16, 2022

John Lockley, traditional South African healer & Shaman (Sangoma) joins the DTFH. You can learn more about John on his website JohnLockley.com. Be sure to check out his book Leopard Warrior & The Way of the Leopard audio teachings, both produced by Sounds True. John's upcoming ‘Way of the Leopard’ retreat is in Colorado from 29th – 31st October. For those interested in exploring the African wilderness check out John’s Dreams & Tracking retreats in the Kalahari in Botswana in 2023. You can also follow John on social media. Including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. ZipRecruiter - Try for FREE at ZipRecruiter.com/Duncan

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Some times, I just wanna run away with you To some place new, some place new. Sweet Erin, won't you come with me to the Hall of Earth? We'll speak our mouths in a cigarette.

She'll need water, I need the black sun. I need the black sun, so come with me. We'll get a babysitter and go. We'll walk together on an ancient beach. Dance to Margaritaville beneath the second sun. And then, we'll fuck. Sweet baby, I really need your black teeth in the Hall of Earth. I wanna make love and your pleasure don't refuse.

Can I make love and your pleasure don't refuse. We'll get a babysitter and go. We'll make love and your pleasure don't refuse. Each negative emotion or mental poison has an inherent purity that we don't recognize because we are so accustomed to its appearance as emotion. The true nature of the five poison's ignorance, attachment, aversion, jealousy, and pride is the five wisdoms.

Just as poison can be taken medicinally to effect a cure, each poison of the mind, worked with properly, can be resolved into its wisdom nature and thus enhance our spiritual practice. If while in the throes of desire, you simply relax without moving your attention, that space of the mind is called discriminating wisdom. You don't abandon desire, instead you reveal its wisdom nature.

Ah, so cute. Alright you two, go play. It's almost time for nap, you got ten minutes you can go play in the yard. Okay kiddo, I love the flute, but it's time to go play now. Go play. Thank you, Padma. You're welcome, Shakti. Okay Padma, now it's time to go play. Go play, yeah.

I'll see you in a little bit. Aren't kids cute? The youngest is, I don't know, found some bamboo in the back yard or something and fashioned this, that flute you heard him playing and the oldest has been saying these whatever that is, I guess little stories that he's been hearing in his dreams or at least that's what he says. What can you do, kids? Am I right people?

I just want to watch football and relax, have a nice cold beer and watch football, but these kids, they start playing the flute, they start saying that spiritual stuff and I'm like, it's football. And then I start weeping from the beauty of what they teach me. I'm sorry for my voice right now. The whole family came down with something called RSV. It's a really fun one. When you put your kids in preschool, you might as well just sign up

for Disease of the Month Club from Wuhan because that's what it's like. They just bring home little biological gifts for you and this one sucks. RSV is interesting, kind of like a really rotten cold. To me, it felt worse than COVID. It was just it's like really gross. You get real congested, real filled up with snot and it's got psychological components. You start hearing Halloween decorations talking to you, which is a weird symptom. But if that is happening to you, especially if your Halloween decorations

are telling you like the secrets of the Kennedy assassination, then you should get checked out. You probably have RSV. I thought the pumpkin in our kitchen that talks when you walk in front of it. I thought that was just some Halloween shit when it was telling me that Kennedy getting assassinated with some kind of Masonic conspiracy. But as it turns out, it was just a regular pumpkin, not an electronic one at all. And that's when I realized, oh shit, I've got RSV.

So I'm getting better now, but definitely if you're experiencing talking Halloween decorations, clusters of vibrating mice that glow. It's a very beautiful, enticing glow RSV. I mean, all this is on the CDC's website. Champions of your, if any champion of your comes to your house or like runs up to you on your walks to offer you wreaths, it's RSV. Very strange disease. Definitely check, get checked out right away.

If you're exhibiting any of these symptoms and we all know what the cure is. Nobody likes it. Maybe some people do. I don't know. It just depends on what mood I'm in. But yeah, you just need to find the friendliest person in your neighborhood and eat their cum and it goes away. Mine is almost gone.

We have got an excellent podcast for you today. John Lockley is here with us today. We're going to jump right into it. But first this, this episode of the DTFH has been supported by athletic greens. And if only I had not run out of my sweet, sweet greens. Maybe I wouldn't be experiencing RSV. I started taking athletic greens because I don't have time to keep up with the vitamin thing. I don't have time to do that.

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Send me more, please. Thank you, athletic greens. With us here today is a fascinating human, John Lockley. He's born in apartheid, South Africa. And at 18, he started having these dreams, which we're calling him to train as a singoma, which is essentially a kind of shaman slash healer slash teacher. If you enjoy this conversation, you can find John by going to johnlockley.com. And now everybody, welcome to the DTFH John Lockley. Michael Lockley.

Welcome. On you. That you are. Thank you. Welcome to you. It's the dog. John, welcome to the DTFH. I'm excited to talk to you.

I got a lot of questions for you. Thanks, Duncan. I'm really happy to be here. You, first of all, I already said this in the intro, but you are a shaman. And if you'll forgive me in your book, I couldn't, the pronunciations were

impossible. So can you help me pronounce Iguira Alakula? Is that the right word? How do you pronounce it? Iguira Alakula. Is that the right word? How do you say that?

Well, I'm a traditional healer in South Africa known as a Sangoma. And I'm a Sangoma in the Krosse tradition. And in the Krosse tradition, Sangomas are called Ikliches. So I'm part of a tribe or community of Ikliches.

See, I knew, I wasn't pronouncing it right. And if someone had come and said, listen, we are going to, we are going to end the world peace. We are going to end the conflict in Ukraine if you can pronounce this correctly. I never would have, because that click,

I never would have gotten the click. Would you mind saying it again? It's really beautiful. Iklicha, I'm known as an Iklicha, which is an old Bushman or Koisan word, and it means the one who holds the lightning rod of the ancestors.

So for Western listeners, for people in California and other places, do you have any idea of what you're going to be doing in the Middle Ages? I'm going to be working with the energy of the spine and of the universe.

Now, before everyone, and forgive me, these are the times we're living in right now. And just to sort of stop the comments of people saying, oh, great, a white dude who is saying he's a healer

and who you've worked with, just so people know it's not like you just titled yourself this. You're someone who has spent significant amounts of time training in this tradition. And I just know, I'm so sorry, but I just know people are going to be like,

come on, cultural appropriation. You can't go and become this or that if you're a Caucasian of no offense, folks out there. But this is not just somebody who like decided to, you invented this for themselves.

Okay, so the first thing I need to say is that I never chose to become a sanguama. And a sanguama for the listeners is a traditional African shaman. I never chose it. I never went looking for it. It came looking for me. And my story

is a long story, which is why I wrote a book called Lepid Warrior. So all those folks who want to understand more just, you can just get Lepid Warrior and it's available anywhere online. So basically with me, my elders, my cross elders, invited me to become

their apprentice. And it was just after the Civil War in South Africa, which was well known in terms of apartheid. Partheid is an Afrikaans word in mean separation. It was a horrendous Civil War that went on for many years. And

when I finally met my teacher, I was very sick with what we call the calling illness, which is called the Twaza illness and a syndemic all over Southern Africa with people who have the calling to become a medicine

person or a sanguama. So you never choose to become a sanguama. This is a very, very critical point. You never, ever choose to become that. It's something that is offered to you. So first you go for a divination or consultation with a teacher, with a sanguama

in a lineage, and then they will confirm that you have the illness, the Twaza illness, and then they will also offer to train you. And this is what happened with me. So my first consultation with my teacher in the late 90s, just

after Nelson Mandela was released, I had this vision and had this feeling about having a traditional sanguama consultation, which is kind of unheard of for a white person. But at that stage, the barriers between the races had opened and

South Africa was a democratic country and I had been suffering from the Twaza illness for over 10 years. And for those people who don't know, it's a physical illness. It's not just psychological, but it has very strong psychological and spiritual aspects to it.

So physically I was very weak and my immune system was shot, which meant that I was constantly getting sick. And I had been to all the specialist doctors in Johannesburg and they found nothing wrong with me. But I kept getting one illness after the next and it was quite scary

to be honest with you. I had over seven different kinds of mainstream illnesses. So the second thing of the Twaza illness over and above the physical is this psychic ability. So I'd have dreams, I would see the future, I'd see what was

happening to people I didn't know, and these things would come to pass time and time and time again. Can I pause you there? Can you describe like walk me through a typical dream like this when you're seeing these people

how vivid is it? Just if you could just maybe be a little more detailed in your description of this sort of dream. Okay, well the dreams would come in different forms and but one dream I remember I was at university at the time

and I kind of woke up from my sleep and there was one of the mothers of one of the students in the residence I was staying at came to me in my dreams and she said to me please you need to contact, you need to speak to

my son at breakfast time and tell him that I need to speak to him urgently about such and such. And this guy wasn't even a friend of mine. I mean I saw him I used to greet him, I knew his name I didn't even know him. And then when I sat down it wasn't actually breakfast because

I was a bit nervous at that stage. I waited till supper time and then I was sitting next to him and he was quite an open minded kind of guy and I just said to him I want to share something with you and you might think it's weird but I was going to say it and then I share this with him about his mother and I just said look

I have no understanding what this is all about but my sense is that you need to move on this and he thanked me he said thank you so much. What was going on? Did you ever find out? No, no he's a very private person and I'm also

a private person so we weren't friends so I didn't want to you know push too much. But another dream I had was also a person who was a friend of mine. He was breaking up with his girlfriend and I didn't know anything about that and in the dream

I saw the breakup, I saw the moving in separate ways and in the dream I thought this was really mysterious because they looked like they're really close you know and I saw him in his girlfriend walking he'd always say hi and they were like the lovers of campus you know.

And then it must have been a week or so later I saw him he looked a bit dejected and I said what's up? And he said no he had broken up with his girlfriend and I'd already seen it, I'd already seen all the aspects to it in the dream and

but the hard thing for me actually and it still is is when I dream about death and I dream about people who are going to die or sometimes I'm shown how I can stop the person dying so let's say someone is very

sick and I'll have a dream and I'm shown the illness and then I'm shown that I need to basically be like a 911 paramedic and get that person to medical intervention as soon as possible and I have done that and I've been able to help people

who are probably close to death but other times which is very difficult for me is when I'm just shown that someone is going to die but I'm not shown how and there's nothing I can do about it and that for me is very very difficult you know. Wow, I'll tell you it's more difficult for the people you tell

and that's gotta feel right when you're like hey you're gonna die I don't know why to stop it. I had this experience with one of my Sanguama elders actually her son who was basically like a young Rinpoche in the Tibetan system I mean he is extremely

gifted and when he drummed at the age of 6 years old you'd feel vibrations in the wall and people would instantly get a Sanguama calling and they would kind of go into the state of called it the paranormal was incredible and I became

very very close to her son and one day I had this dream where I was shown that he was that he died actually was shown very clearly that he had died and I was shown his funeral and I woke up from the dream shaking

and this young friend of mine and other Sanguama came to visit me for breakfast and I shared the dream with him and I said and he has and he has and he has I said I don't know this dream and I wasn't shown how he was

going to die so I can't tell I can't tell his mother I can't tell the teacher and he said yes because you don't know and then a year went by and I came home from being overseas actually from being with you at one of the Ram Dass retreats

and and the whole room was quiet in my teacher's house and I said what's happened and they said no Asisaki yeah or Yiva they said their city's name and they said that he had just died and

Asisaki or Yafa which means the persons died was Swellikile so it was very very sad and then when I went to the funeral I helped bury him the young guy and went to his mother and I told her about the dream

and I said I'm sorry Mama I never shared the dream but I wasn't show anything in terms of how he was going to die because he died from a drowning and my teacher said to me no you did the right thing thank you

she says I can feel your love for my son it's okay Glingo it's okay John don't worry if you tell someone that all it's going to do is make them paranoid it's difficult this is do you mind if I just finish

the scoring just slightly excited to get into this question but I'm very excited to hear yours I just want to pause this a bit because you know cultural appropriation is a very very serious topic and and I can understand

all the aspects of why it is serious so let me just speak a little bit about my background just so people are not judging me by the color of my skin okay so I had this calling and I still have this calling very strongly I was very sick for 10 years Nelson Mandela was released

and then I had this feeling and intuition because of my dreams calling me in such a vivid way I need to have a divination with a bona fide Krosse Sangoma traditional healer Shaman I need to do this so I contacted

I was actually a psychology student at the time so I contacted one of the members of staff in our psychology department who was a Krosse man and he was a translator and someone I got on birth with very well will you forgive me a what man

he was a Krosse man so he was in the Krosse tribe so like Mandela oh okay okay got it got it got it okay so I contacted my friend Sid and I said please can you organize a consultation with me with a traditional healer

with the Sangoma and this was like you know in the late 90s and he said sure he said I've been visiting this particular Sangoma and he mentioned her name and he said my son has been very sick and she's been able to help him so I was like great I said when can we go

he said I'll make appointment let's go tomorrow so then the next day we went and when I arrived I just saw my teacher on the other side of the fence and she was sweeping and she had this very stern look on her face

she had a lot of energy around her and she just looked at us nodded and then my friend greeted her in the traditional way and she just pointed which means turn go to the back for vumissa

so we went to the back and we put the exchange down which was money put that down and then she went into trance very very quickly she called in her ancestors and she went into the very very deep trance

and she came out of the trance and she said you are a senior Sangoma because in the up your blood is white blood like mine she says you have the calling like I do and she said I dreamt about you last night

and she said in the dream last night the great spirit who Ticro said that I must prepare myself for someone from another culture to come to me and that I was going to train this person from another culture to become a senior Sangoma like myself

and then Ticro the great spirit said I need to prepare myself for this moment so she said she looked at me and she said you are the one and she said you have had the calling for many years she said you almost died

and she said what took you so long to come to me and I said to her apartheid mama apartheid and she said she said oh god oh god I am so sorry we almost lost you

and in that moment a tear went rolling down her face and a tear went rolling down my face and in that moment there was no black and white there was just two people who fell in love with each other and that's what happened so we've been close for over 20 years now

how many over 20 years and then after that moment she invited me to be her student to be her apprentice so for all the listeners that's the clincher here so cultural appropriation does not work in my situation because I never went looking for it

it was something that was offered to me even though I didn't want to in the beginning so I said to her what does it mean to become a Sangoma because I was aware that I was walking into hellfire being a white guy and being her apprentice and she said

to become a Sangoma means that you're going to be able to heal people in different ways and once you accept that the ancestors will work through you you're going to stop being so sick and you're going to be able to heal people in many ways

and she said if you agree we are women do you agree and I said well that sounds like a good thing heal people and stop being sick so I said okay in the Avuma I agree so she said okay we'll come back tomorrow and I'll give you your first white beads

which is a sign that you'll be my apprentice and then afterwards she introduced me to her husband who's a tribal elder and he looked at me with these clear eyes we say the eyes of Inquenquez the eyes of the star people and he said to me

this home is now your home anytime you want to come here the door is open and he said do you accept to become an apprentice in this house and I said yes in the Avuma he said you are more than welcome you are part of this family

and that's it so I was invited by these powerful elders who didn't just invite me once I was invited again and again by different elders to become a Sangoma a quick break to thank Squarespace

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then all you have to do is use offer code Duncan you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain now back to the show how did your friends in college react to what you were doing

how did you know you're studying psychology which I mean western psychology I guess you have some Jungian stuff with dreams but certainly not like precognition and all that stuff is generally

like shot down or just sort of overlooked if anything how did your professors or like colleagues or fellow students react to what you were doing

well I didn't really share it with too many people to be honest I shared it with my girlfriend at the time and I was extremely like almost paranoid about keeping everything really quiet and very private I also shared it with one of my psychology professors

because I was close to him and he just didn't comment he didn't say anything and so there was this air of silence around me and there was no words spoken so I even within my own family and extended family I learned to keep quiet

to keep quiet about this calling because it was misunderstood and there was a lot of fear around it there was a lot of criticism and I learned very early on to basically keep my mouth shut you know did you stay in college I did yeah

the first time the courting came really strongly I had to drop out so the visions and everything was so strong so then I dropped out of university and I went to South Korea because I thought I should try and become a Zen monk so that was the first

aspect of the calling even though I had lots of dreams in terms of becoming a Sangwoma I was frightened of it because of of everything around it you know the cultural milieu in terms of apartheid and me being a white guy but I realized

in South Korea that I had to follow the calling and come home and vote for Mandela and find a teacher if that was the direction I was supposed to go in the archetype here shows up all over the place

which is you get that calling and you know in the Bible and all the stories the first reaction to it isn't generally like oh great I'm gonna go do this thing but usually it's attempting to evade it because it's so weird

or it's scary we're talking about Jonah and the whale you know he didn't want to do what God wanted him he gets eaten by a whale everyone you know the general reaction isn't like oh awesome I'm gonna go off to become a healer it's usually like

well if it was me and I was having those dreams I would just think like it's time to cut back on the acid I wouldn't be able to even with like confirmation even when I was seeing the reality of it you know and it's

you know have you ever heard the term default reality no but you can explain it more to me thank you yeah default reality it's like it's like the name for like just sort of the zeitgeist I guess there's another way for saying zeitgeist but it's just sort of like the accepted notion of how things work

so now that people don't care that default reality now versus default reality a few hundred years ago might as well be another dimension like what we accepted hundreds of years ago versus now it's completely different

but default reality is generally secular maybe a little superstitious but we don't we think dreams are just kind of like some like brain flatulence you know you wake up well that was a weird one you know we aren't really quite sure what happens when you die

we certainly don't believe in any kind of paranormal anything though maybe there's something like once that thing happened to me and when synchronicities happen they're generally forgotten default reality and so when you're a meshed in that and you start getting what in your

awesome book you called oh my goodness hold on I'm sorry my notes what is it dreaming sickness what did you call it calling when you started getting the calling dream while still in default reality

this I mean you go to the wrong place let's imagine that you didn't have the resources to even understand what that was you go to the wrong therapist you're going to get a diagnosis they're not going to be like oh you've got the calling dream you need to go study this they're going to

be like listen we're going to get you on probably a light psychotic maybe you're a little depressed or something like that and then you're really locked into default reality so I wonder if you could talk about how you overcame all of those barriers

that were keeping you from taking that first trip to meet your teacher I was in meditation a number of years before and I found meditation really really helpful and because what meditation does

is in meditation but all meditation it gets you to basically see beyond Maya Maya's illusion and I had a lot of compassion and still do for a lot of my family and friends who maybe didn't understand my calling

because how could they it was not something that what that we were educated about so it's very easy to judge but I didn't feel that that was my place because of the way I was brought up as well so what the meditation did was very

deep meditation and working with Kornans and riddles I was meditating in the snow of South Korea and it was very cold and I did a three month silent retreat there and I managed to break through some of these illusions

or obstacles that I had in my own mind and find compassion for people and for my community and that all I could do was be true to my own spirit and what was being called inside of me and I had to connect with a warrior with a warrior energy

inside of me and what gave me courage was my Zen masters in South Korea because they spoke about war and they spoke about basically apartheid which in English means separation and the biggest apartheid we

all suffer is between our minds and our hearts and everyone has that inside of us and we see that in the modern world right now it hasn't changed so the grand master which was Song Sun or we call Daesung Sunim who was actually the original teacher of

Trudy Goodman who is our mutual friend of ours and Daesung Sunim went to San Francisco and that's where he met Trudy and other members of the Sangha there in California but when I was in South Korea Daesung Sunim or Song Sun the grand master

would speak about civil war he spoke about the war between North and South Korea and how the suffering that he experienced is what propelled him to meditation and propelled him to going on a silent

retreat himself in South Korea and getting this incredible enlightenment so his suffering of not being able to go back to North Korea of experiencing the war he turned that suffering into the energy

behind his meditation so he inspired me because that's what I did I felt my suffering of being a medic in the South African army and experiencing all the woundedness from the soldiers and all the suffering from the Golden War I turned all that suffering

and made it energy for my meditation just the way he did as a previous soldier and so when I meditated I meditated like a soldier and then I looked around the room and there was a lot of guys who used to

be soldiers in the Eastern Bloc so Russia Eastern Europe when the war stopped in all these places these guys were so hungry for spirit and for soul that some of them found themselves in the same

temple like me and some of them are still monks to this day wow that's so interesting you know especially like with Zen as opposed to say Tibetan Buddhism

which is like apparently is originates from Bonn which was the shamans in the Tibetan Plateau Zen it doesn't have as far as I'm aware a lot of

the kind of mystical component that you find in these other I could be completely wrong about this I didn't study it as long as I've been looking into Tibetan Buddhism so smack it down if I'm wrong about this but I'm just curious

how in the midst of having like these very powerful bizarre experiences you were drawn to this like very austere very simple form of

Buddhism there is a lot of mysticism in the Zen tradition but it's not spoken about that much but when you do go into it and you get to meet the teachers it's a private discussion around what we call kongan's riddles so if you think of the dreams as riddles

in terms of opening the soul and the spirit to more enlightenment then you will find that in the Zen tradition but it's not something that is kind of advertised really but in my case

I think when I first found Zen I can tell you the exact moment that I found Zen the exact moment I was 18 years old I was holding the hand of one of my patients that was dying and they just turned the machines off he had had a car accident

and he had a very very serious brain injury I'd been nursing him for six weeks and every day his mother said to me is he going to live or is he going to die John I was 18 years old all I said was

he's going to live but in my heart I knew that he didn't have much long to go and one day the decision was made to turn off the life support keeping him alive and it was such a painful story in that particular award

and it was such a difficult experience for a lot of the nursing staff that the older medics or medical oddlies as we are called found it so difficult that they asked me if I could do the vital observations for his

last breath or his last breathing and I felt that I had a responsibility to be close by his side so I was feeling the pulse all around his body fading and I now felt him dying and then the last moment of my shift

where I was just about to leave and I knew that once I'd left and I was going to go and leave for like two days but when I was going to come back a few days later I think it might have even been the next day I'm not sure but I didn't feel that he was going to be there I felt that he was going

to be gone so I was going to miss just miss his passing so I made a prayer to the universe and I said this suffering right here, right now is wrong and I said I want you to teach me a way of helping people so that

if I'm ever in this extreme form of suffering again that I can do something, something effectual, something to bring more peace and more healing because this situation is just so painful that it's just wrong

so then I made that prayer and it was very very very strong it was very strong like I say and then I left and the next day when I came in or a few days later his room was empty he had passed

and then something very mysterious happened to me within two weeks a friend of mine came to me and he said to me John I'm starting the Zen Buddhist classes and how to meditate and I said what's Zen and what's Buddhism and what is this meditation

in the 90s and he said no Zen speaks about suffering and how to end suffering and I said right I'm in and I said when you're going and he told me and I went and then it just so happened that he was also learning French

and this lady was a French teacher and she was also a lay nun under the late Zen master Deshamaru from Japan so she taught us in a very very old form of Soto Zen

and I took to the Zen and the discipline and the chanting like a soldier and in my first retreat after my first retreat is when I had this incredible dream where I was called to become a Sangoma

which started this whole journey for over 30 years. It's like the Zen was a sort of precursor it opened you up enough that you could even have be aware that you were having dreams like that. You needed it. This is my suspicion with the

Neem Krolibaba and the Ram Das people and why there's this element of mindfulness is you know in the constant tension between the Buddhists and the Bhaktis is you know the two go very well together in some ways like one opens you up

so that you can maybe experience some of these possibilities that people like you have experienced I don't want to spend too much time more on the Zen thing but only because I've been wondering about it

I do understand what the koans are and I understand that they're confusing I've certainly been confused by the ones I've looked at but the most confusing part of it and maybe this is because I don't really I don't have it right is that apparently

after some period of meditation the Zen master will ask you one of these strange riddles and you'll respond with the correct answer but you've never heard the riddle before or you've you don't know the

answer it just somehow pops out of you or something and I'm just curious did you have that experience and what is the explanation for that like how does that even work I had that experience yes I could say I did have that experience but it was a particular

riddle that I've been working on for some time in South Africa and and our teacher was an amazing man actually and he was an old friend of Trudy's and he was Subong Zen master Subong actually from Hawaii and he was our personal Zen master who came to South Africa

and he was he was going to be trained to take over from Sun Sunim but it never happened because he died he died quite soon after my retreat in 1993 with him so that was that was really very hard for us in South

Africa and it was interesting for us because Subong was American you know he was half Chinese Korean brought up in Hawaii educated in California but he was a very strict Zen master like in the olden days and since I've been to California now and I was like wow

it's amazing that he came from this strict place I mean this this laid back easy going yeah and let's get high kind of a place you know was he whacking you with sticks did he do the whack we did get that but only if you ask for it so you're basically

bar and then he wouldn't he wouldn't do it would be the head monk so to be like the the yeah the head monk in the room would do that would do the stick and you ask for it so you put your hands together and then you bow and then you wait and then they do it and they do it in a very

very respectful way and it's very helpful actually with a with all the sitting and meditation oh I get it if you've done any amount of meditation like if you haven't really meditated you hear about that you're like well that's BDSM what is that but if you've done any kind of meditation where you're nodding off and you need to

wake up I could see how that would like energetically definitely like get you like get you back in the moment I see the usefulness of it I get it someone needs to invent like an automated one for people who don't have Zen masters you know press the button it whacks you now okay

again so you I'm so sorry because I know this is a or the answer to this question is probably go do a retreat for a long time and you will know why you can answer these koans in that way but only because I think that you have

you clearly have a vast understanding of the spirit world or or whatever you want to call that place and that's what I want to get into is I want to talk to you about the cosmology of that place from your lineage but I'm just curious about this particular

possibility like I buy telepathy I buy pretty much anything and I've certainly been around people as you have we've seen probably experienced things like oh okay they're not like tricking us but

this thing where your mind produces the correct answer for what seems to be a non-logical question I just wonder what where did that answer come from

where and how did it feel when it came out of your mouth did it feel like you had solved a puzzle or was it spontaneous that's a very good question if you look at say there's one word for it and that's clarity there's a moment of clarity

and think about it like this Duncan like you're watching a movie or let's say a play you're watching a play the Shakespearean play and then you've got the curtains and you're watching the play and it's amazing and then the play is over and the curtains close and then they're open

again and you get to see the background of how they're organizing the play and these people are like well the props come off or the masks come off and for a moment you get to see everything that's happening there and then the director will be like oh you've got to close the curtains

we can't let the public see this so it's a bit like that moment of clarity just one second or even a millisecond you get to see the truth of something you get to see through the veil and that's a veil of illusion and I want to speak Duncan

not just about Kongans or riddles but I want to speak about life this present moment and dreams so three things the riddle we're speaking about which is confusing in terms of Zen and also the dreams we have at night and then also

this moment where people might choose to take like yourself a cyber-cyber hallucinogens or whatever it is so what we are all looking for is that moment where the veil comes down and we get to see the truth

and the truth can be scary it can be painful, it can be ugly but when we get to see the truth there's some kind of beauty in that that is indescribable and if you want to talk in terms of Buddhist language or even shamanic

language we could say that this moment even with you and me right now and with the listeners hearing us later this is a dream and our job as people looking to become more conscious is to wake up from this dream

so what does it mean for you and I right now to wake up from this dream to be 100% conscious of this moment that we're in and that's why you and I and many others love Ram Dass because Ram Dass would always speak about be here now

be here now so this moment is a dream and in the Zen tradition the Zen tradition would say that when you starting the Zen training cutting wood

doing the laundry doing all the basic mundane things is normal and then over time cutting wood doing the laundry that changes it's no longer the same and then you have this epiphany and then you back down to

doing the laundry cutting wood and doing all the domestic chores but something changes and what changes is that we wake up from this dream state that we in now I've been working a lot

in the Kalahari I do a lot of dreams and tracking retreats dreams and tracking retreats in the Kalahari that's what I'm doing right now and one of the reasons why I'm doing it is because I want to work with ancient man so ancient man

and modern man and help us all to sit around a fire and revision our future together so the ancient man are the bushman people are the koi sun and the koi sun or the bushman people of southern Africa are seen as one of the oldest indigenous

tribes or people in the world and a lot of modern archaeological studies maintain that the birthplace of mankind is actually the Kalahari desert in Botswana in southern Africa because that's the oldest remains

we have found in terms of our human lineage and the reason why I'm mentioning this to you is because as Sangomas in southern Africa we get a lot of our ancient cosmology and spiritual teachings from the koi sun from the bushman people and

this links into the teaching we're sharing right now about dreams and Zen and all I could say is there's a very old saying amongst the koi sun, amongst the bushman people where they say that this world that we are living in right now is a dream

being dreamt by gamata the great dreamer and all the spiritual practices we do of dancing, singing, chanting working with plant medicine meditation it's all about having this moment of clarity where we see beyond the veils

we see where the curtains of the theater stay open and we get to see the director we get to see the dreamer of dreamers the dancer of dancers we get to see the great spirit in action and then in that moment

is when we get clarity in terms of our calling and we get clarity in terms of our life so that's one of the reasons why I've created these retreats so that people can have just a moment of clarity where that portal

takes them to that connection with gamata to the great dreamer so all we need is a moment and in that moment it's like a portal where we slide into another space in our minds and we connect to something

which is ancient so that's why I've created these retreats I want to thank Zippur Curator for this episode of the DTFH did you know there are currently over 2.4 million podcasts in the world including the renowned one

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now back to John Zippur Curator where do they say they came from we say it's the oldest indigenous people on the planet

how did they get here is it just they were dreamed into existence or what is the story, what's their origination story that's a good question I have to ask one of them it's all different theories some people say they come from the stars

they say different things so I need to I'll let you know when I come back let me know I'd love to hear I've heard that they came from the stars which is by the way they're not the only indigenous people that say that there's many others

who say some of them with real precision about what star systems they came from I find it to be really interesting but I want to talk a little bit about the veil and

this what you're saying is behind it the director, the great dreamer what is what are your theories on what this place is is it

simultaneous to the experience they're having right now in other words like as we're having this experience there's some background going on an extra-dimensional reality that is happening is it imaginary

is it just metaphor and finally if this thing is so real do you think at some point there might be a way to quantify it other than anecdotal evidence do you think that this place could potentially

actually be charted by humanity in a way that makes it more accessible to like materialists it's a big question Duncan it's a big one wow it's a big question for me

yes okay well all I can say and I hope I'm just going to try and simplify it for myself and I can just say some things that I've been working on and that is that we are all multi-dimensional creatures as human beings

we are multi-dimensional and you with your podcasts and your teachings let's put it that way your dharma or the way you share yourself with the world I mean you are in a classic case of someone who's a multi-dimensional being I mean you are

Duncan you know and then meeting you in Ram Dass's retreat there was a number of people there who were awake to their multi-dimensionality and Ram Dass was I mean he's our master he was there it was clear but I want to speak about this

what does it take to embrace your multi-dimensionality and in the Koso system amongst the people of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu the Koso tribe and other people of Southern Africa

we speak about Ubuntu Ubuntu means humanity and it's an intricate Southern African philosophy and also spiritual way it's not a religion it's a way of being and what would they say

Ubuntu which means a person becomes a person through other people so through our relationships with one another through our relationships with our ancestors and through our relationships

with the plants and animal worlds and the unseen worlds we connect with our Ubuntu our humanity and now the clincher of it here they say is that

people are born as human beings but they have to make a decision to become a human being that's the clincher to opening the door to your multi-dimensionality you made a decision it's clear

when I first met you it was obvious the work you're doing you made the decision because you're embracing your multi-dimensionality the only way to do that is to say yes to being a human being with all its pain and all its confusion and

this saying yes you don't do it just once you probably have to say yes more than once to continue like fine I'll be human today I'd rather be a dog someday and the stories of of like Nelson Mandela

he gave a classic story where he was incarcerated by these white people who treated him terribly and he said he was filled with righteous anger I mean who wouldn't be he's now in prison for the rest of his life just because he wants to save

his people from incarceration and a life of slavery I mean my god there's anger and you read about in his book his autobiography and I just want to share this because this is a classic case of connecting with your humanity and your multi-dimensionality

okay so there he is he's in his little cell he's filled with anger like he just hates white people he hates what's happened to him and all of us will go yeah I don't blame a guy and in the midst of his hatred there was this little voice in his head

that said to him Nelson this hatred is going to kill you you need to learn to befriend the enemy you need to learn to befriend the enemy and he just heard this voice as he went to sleep and then the next morning he wakes up

he's back in this prison he's not free but he's connected to that multi-dimensionality of freedom that we've been speaking about but now he's in this physical prison so he hears that voice and the jailer opens the door and says good morning Mr. Mandelo

or I think his number 6-6 whatever his number was and then he turned to the guy as a white jailer young guy and he says with a certain amount of vehemence naturally what made you decide to become a jailer and he said

actually I had no choice he says what do you mean because in his mind the programming that we all have in our stories all white people have a choice it's in his mind and he said you know my dad died when I was very young and he said

I've got six brothers and sisters and I'm the oldest and I had to go and get a job and support my family and he said he was only 14 at the time the jailer and the only job that they would take him at the time was the jailers and then they carried on

talking like this and Mr. Mandelo said that he was shocked in that moment because in his mind the story was that all white people were privileged and he realized in that moment that he had had more privilege than this young jailer because when his dad died when he was seven

he was brought into the Prince of the Royal Family of the Proser Nation and they looked after him and educated him so that's how he got a degree so they carried on talking like this and then the next thing the jailer and Nelson says what part of South Africa are you from

and he said no the Eastern Cape he said I'm from the Eastern Cape and then he said he says do you speak the language of and he said yes I do then the next thing the two of them were speaking in Nelson Mandela's mother language wow wild

and when finally Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa on his right was this jailer this young guy and they'd become best friends yeah what I had no idea yes that is incredible yeah that's the truth

they became very close friends because Nelson Mandela realized that this young guy was a victim of circumstance that he had no choice but to become a jailer and you know what Nelson did when he was incarcerated all those years he encouraged this young guy to get an education

to finish his schooling wow wow that's so cool so define from this perspective like the story helps me understand it but if you had to define it from this perspective what does it mean to be human

like what are their characteristics like how do you know if you've actually become a human or you just think you've become a human that's a very good question Duncan and I think the answer is also very simple and that is to be a human is to be a creature

the default of a human being is a creature that is empathic loving compassionate and also a custodian of the planet someone who waters their plants that looks after the animals that is not a voracious consumer that cares

for the natural plants and animal life around them and also honors their ancestors honors those who have walked before them now you talk a lot about being a warrior how does that square with war

like how does a warrior tell me about that you know I love Chukim Churma Rinpoche and I've read much about what he said about that but maybe some people haven't heard that you know when we think of war we think of atrocity you've seen it

we think of in fact the opposite of humanity like reducing the enemy to something that you don't feel rotten about killing if you can so tell me about this your version of warrior as opposed to what might be the common

understanding of like someone at war like a warrior violence aggression control dominance I think to be a warrior means to look within because the first war that starts is the war inside yourself

because someone who's at peace with themselves does not make someone else wrong does not belittle someone else does not intimidate undermine and hate and hurt someone else or even another animal because sometimes someone who's filled with war inside of them what do they do

they kick the dog and they torture animals so someone who has who has made peace with themselves is someone that has actually had to be a warrior because the first war is the war inside ourselves

is the war of separation of heartite between our head and our hearts and that ties in with what we are talking about with the veil the veil of consciousness where we are locked into our stories and our ignorance just like Mandela was locked into this idea of all white

people being privileged and having this hatred towards them he learns in that moment of truth where the veil came down and that voice inside of him said this hatred is going to kill you so that you need to befriend the enemy

so he in that moment was being called to become a warrior to actually look inside himself and be humble and see what is the truth and what is the lie inside himself in terms of white people

and that gave him the skill to actually be one of the world's greatest politicians and greatest leaders I mean it's just such a mess in there though you know I totally get it it's like oh this whole heart head thing that Ram Dass

taught us that you hear about it's just you know I think a lot of people when they even come close to the heart as Ram Dass as you call it as many people call it they associate that with just profound

vulnerability they associate it with you know weakness like how am I to successfully defend myself from perceived threats if

simultaneously I'm opened up and I'm loving and I'm joyful and I'm seeing everybody as that's not a prison guard that's somebody who got sucked into some rotten karma that's not

somebody that person who hurt me the most in my life they must be suffering so much the moment you start going down that path I think many people feel like great that might be great for you healer that might be great for me a podcaster

but I live in someone's like I live in fucking New York man you want me to go around and open our come on I gotta be tough I gotta get in the cab you know I gotta I gotta push and push my way through

so can you talk a little bit about that when you hear things like this generally the assumption is therefore you're gonna turn into some kind of like you know thing on the ocean floor that crawled out of its shell for a few blissful moments

only it choked by a shark oh that's beautiful I love that I think you know it's a very good question because this is a common question in spiritual circles and being loving and open-hearted does not mean

that you're a pushover being compassionate does not mean that people do whatever they like to you I think to be open-hearted and compassionate is to actually first feel your own spirit your own soul your own connection to the great dreamer that's that's where

we have to make peace with ourselves first so that's where the warrior energy comes in you first have to show a lot of compassion for yourself and your own foibles and your own like the saboteur and the inner critic and all this you know we often are

our worst enemies are ourselves so we have to we have to really get to know ourselves and actually be compassionate with ourselves and and I remember the my one my old Zen master Su Bong this one lady asked him a question once

about Buddhism and she said she's a lovely librarian librarian in our local our local Sangha and she said so Mr Zen master Buddhism is about compassion it's all about compassion and

and he just shouted at her and he put his Zen stick in the ground and he said too much compassion turns to shut he says you know like I mean that might have been a bit too strong in later years I've thought about that it was quite a strong answer but I think the point he's making is that

sometimes the compassionate action also means to say you are wrong you know like the situation he was very, Su Bong was very good about the situation in South Africa and he spoke to us and he said some kind of demonstration is needed

and a demonstration of love is also going into the township where people might hate you because you've got white skin and actually say what can I do to help or like making a demonstration or a demonstration of going in front of the police

and say you know this is wrong but I'm just going to stand and hold my space and demonstrate that's scary you know and I'm not calling for people to do that but what I am calling for people to do is is to feel your edge becoming a human being means

feeling your edge and as you feel your edge you feel the warrior as you feel the warrior you feel that multi-dimensional magic that connects us to our humanity so the better question is what does it take for you to find your edge

some people find their edge through illness some people find their edge through adversity through difficulty through often it's through difficulty where you find your edge like I found my edge through experiencing illness in particular the

twilight illness and being sick for 70-10 years the only time I felt some kind of peace inside of me actually was when I accepted the illness I accepted the fact that I wasn't well

that I was struggling and I meditated so when I sat on my cushion I had to each time I sat each day I had to basically befriend the illness and go okay I'm sick let go let go don't fight it don't fight the illness

let go and then when I did that then I got these profound dreams but I had to find my edge in terms of experiencing this illness having no energy going to one doctor after the next who didn't give me any help

we just said there's nothing wrong with you or we can't pick up anything and then feeling disgruntled and going back home again sitting on my cushion and then just having to go and just let go into the illness and befriend it so it's like the edge is the thing that happens

after you hit bottom it's not hitting bottom it's the moment where you hit bottom and realize that that you're not going to die that even though everything is on paper a disaster

you find something that seems to be outside of phenomena or something like some kind of non-conditioned peace that's right it's a bit like when you're having a dream

and you dream that you're flying and then you're going to crash land and then suddenly you wake up and you go oh thank god it's just a dream you know is that the same thing as enlightenment I don't know let's just find it and then tell me

50 incarnations we'll do another podcast that's being very generous with me so last question where do you do your retreats and what can someone expect

when they come to one of these retreats are there psychedelics involved is this like an ayahuasca ceremony what's going on with these things is I do I'm actually going to be doing like a wilderness retreat in colorado in the end of October

but in terms of my dreams and tracking retreats they are in Botswana and people fly into the Okavango and they fly into Maun and it's seven days in a lodge in the Kalahari and then it's three days in the Okavango Delta in tents

it's like lamping but the focus of the seven days is when people connect with that space inside of them that we're speaking about to create a portal of connection with the great dreamer and we're using

we're going to be walking every day walking through the bush tracking the wild animals like cheetah, rhino lion just tracking the animals on foot for two hours in the morning before breakfast

in an ancient way in terms of connecting with their ancestors connecting with their spirits and to find their edge like we're speaking about it's very beautiful we don't push people, it's very laid back it's very relaxing John, if somebody wants to skip hunting

tracking I'm sorry, deadly animals can we just go to the prayer tent we don't hunt animals I know you don't hunt, I'm sorry I don't know if I want to track a lion I might just want to go to the prayer tent I don't want to find a lion

in fact I think most people spend a lot of their time avoiding these animals well there's not really that many lions in that area to be honest and it's very very safe otherwise we wouldn't do it we walk about seven or eight people

we walk in a lion and it's very safe and the fact that we're walking in the spaces where there are wild animals and potentially dangerous animals is all about finding your edge in order to preserve the wilderness we have to respect the wilderness

in order to respect the wilderness we have to learn to understand the wilderness and part of this understanding is learning from master trackers and one of the master trackers is my business partner Arwen who's running the tracking side of the company

and also some of the Koisan or Bushman trackers and they are teaching us how to follow the signs of the wilderness so that we can actually be better human beings wow that sounds really really fun

I'd love you to join us actually Duncan I think you would be amazing there it's going to be a long conversation with my wife a long conversation you're not tracking animals I want another baby you're not going to find a leopard we're having more kids I'll talk to her about it though

Arwen just went out there and was describing the beauty of that place to me and it made me fantasize about seeing it one day that sounds incredible you know I can just leave this with a thought for people one of the things was I found absolutely incredible

was to hear the sound of the lions roaring and it was like this palpable actually vibration it was like a chant it was like this incredible chant done by like Krishna Das or someone but on another level that vibration of the lions roaring actually

it kind of affected my my system you know because it's a physical palpable experience when you hear a lion roaring and it helps us to wake up because it connects to that ancient memory inside of us you know John Lockley thank you so much

for this conversation so enlightening maybe we'll end up in Botswana together that would be a peak experience for me can you tell folks where they can find you? Yes I have my book I mean I have my book Leopard Warrior

but I have my website johnlockley.com and then they can find out about the dreams and tracking retreats and also my my book Leopard Warrior and Audio Teaching The Way of the Leopard which are both produced by Sounds True and it was a wonderful

experience doing those two things the book and the audio teachings all the links you need to find John will be at DuncanTrussell.com thank you so much I really really appreciate your time thank you John Thanks Duncan, thank you

Hare Krishna That was John Lockley everybody you can find more about him by going to JohnLockley.com a tremendous thank you to our sponsors all those offer codes are going to be at DuncanTrussell.com and do subscribe to my Patreon

TTFH and finally come see me I'm going to be performing in Fort Worth in Dallas it's coming right up that's November 11th and November 12th I hope to see you there until then

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