Sense of Soul - Modern Alchemy

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Today we have a new Sense of Soul favorite, the Cultural Alchemist, Katharine E. Hargreaves aka Kat, she joined us for a high vibe, deep and inspiring conversation, that is a must listen.  Kat is a transformational storyteller, ritual designer,  initiated teacher, culture alchemist, and author.  She explores how to catalyze evolutionary knowledge and teach people how to re-design reality and we adore her!!! She designs and facilitates experiential portals and products that cultivate the conditions for quantum leaps and miraculous transformations.  Fascinated by the conditions that influence transformation, her practice explores the ancient future tools and evolutionary mechanisms that engender exponential shifts in consciousness.  Katharine is the creator of the AWAKYN deck (which is amazing) and the founder of ARKO, a culture lab for people. She lives in the mountains of Northern California where she writes and teaches on spirituality, consciousness, ancient future technologies, and how to redesign the mind. Her very beautiful book The Art of the Experiment, a modern alchemy manual, (you need this book)  find all of that and her many fun workshops here at her website! https://www.arko.world Follow Kat’s journey on IG Please go check out our Sense of Soul’s merch and workshops and learn more about us on our website. www.mysenseofsoul.com Exclusively on Sense of Soul Patreon  is the 777 Chakra Journey, 7 weeks 7 Chakras, beginning this week with the Root Chakra and end at the end of 2021! Listen to Shanna’s mini-series about her ancestral journey Untangled Roots! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul  

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have with us Katherine Hargreaves. She is a transformational storyteller, ritual designer, cultural alchemist, and author. She explores how to catalyze evolutionary knowledge and teach people how to redesign their reality. And we are super excited to talk to Catherine. Hi, Catherine. Or do you go by cat? Hello, I go by cat. You too. So good to meet you both. I've been looking forward to this. Ritual designer.

I like it. You've got some fancy words. I'm telling you. Cultural alchemist. The more I understand about energy, the more I understood how we were actually all individual alchemists. Yes. And do you love the book, The Alchemist? It's so beautiful. Oh my God. One of our prior guests, our listeners will remember, Adapia.

She was such an amazing guest to have on. She's an amazing soul. And she recommended you come on our podcast. How do you know Adapia? Adapia and I actually got connected because of a Bufo ceremony. So it was just, oh, so Bufo is, it's a Sonoran desert toad medicine, which is the organic DMT. I think of it as a main line to God. It is just like, you know, like, have you smoked it? Yes. Yes. And it's, it's a very quick trip. It's like maybe 20, 30 minutes versus ayahuasca where you experience a lot of the DMT effects of like the fractals and the visions. But I am not a fan of barfing.

So it's really nice to bypass the purgative part and just go straight to the divinity um so we got connected through that and it's funny Adapia has become one of like immediately we you know called her up to be like hey can I be a part of this and we ended up in like a three-hour phone conversation which never happens because I'm like I don't want to talk to strangers on the phone for three hours. But so yeah, we have just become like best soul sisters in that time and creators and collaborators and yeah. So she's one of my, my dear ones. I'm so excited. I like pulled up your modern alchemy manual and like that exercise. I actually was going to ask you about it. 40,000 feet view. Yes. It's really about how are we scaling out of our own experience? Here's where I am. I have this perspective on a

story or what happened to me, whether that's like, I'm the victim or I'm right. And so the whole 40,000 foot view is like, okay, come back up, frame it from every perspective that's involved to provide yourself with all of these opportunities to simply see details. It's funny. I did this exercise once that is very similar to this, where I was working with a coach and they were like, think of your most, one of your most like traumatizing moments. And I was like, oh, the time my like ex-partner like totally cheated on me and then gaslighted me about it for months so it was super painful and so they're like okay like write write that down and then they're like okay now that's your perspective now see it from your partner's perspective and I was like okay and did that and then it was, finally see it as if it were a gift. And that's when I was like, Oh my God. So in doing that, and that's the 40,000 foot view and kind of a nutshell is like,

how do we give ourselves the opportunity to get out of our story or a way of thinking that might be serving us on, you know, any egotistical level, it might be what all we know or all we choose to believe, but there's so many other opportunities to see more deeply. And on your website, you say, expand your perspective by embracing the opposite, which I do with my clients on a timeline. I do that. I love that exercise because I feel like it's just so powerful. Like you got through that, like rename that shit. You're a fucking warrior now, you know? Yes. Yes. Yes. So I'm curious, how did you come up with 40,000? Cause I'm a, we're, we're number peoples. Does that number mean something? You know, so I wrote the essay, it's kind of talking about this like landscape of like,

you know, this hawk that's looking at this mouse and circling it right I think 40,000 foot view I'm a wordsmith so I tend to write in almost like a rhythm so 40,000 just felt kind of like it's enough for we're like up and we're elevated and it also like flows I love it gosh you do write so good. You, yeah, I'm sitting here, Mandy and I actually talked about that a little bit this morning. I'm like, my God, you know, your vocabulary is a lot higher than mine for sure. It's funny because sometimes I read people who are like, you know, like academics and like, don't get me wrong. I love the ivory tower. I, but I also walked away from it. Cause I was like, I literally don't know what that word means. Like, what are you talking about? You know? So it's interesting that you say

that. Yeah. I try and write in a way that reaches people. I don't want to be exclusionist in my writing. Cause what's the fucking point? Yeah. It makes me want to learn more. Like the certain words I'm like, Whoa, like that sounds fucking magical. What does that mean? Even her descriptions, like a ritual designer. I mean, that is, but it sounds amazing. It's become one of the focuses of my work. I think that we have lost the honoring of essential pivotal markers and milestones in our culture I don't know if we ever had them to be honest and rituals are what get all of us there you can set your intentions you can manifest but if you are not like if your body mind and soul are not connected and aligned you are not like, if your body, mind and soul are not connected and aligned, you are not going to have the same results. And I think rituals help us do that. They're primal. I feel like, you know,

lately Shannon and I did a lot of studying on the vagus nerve and chanting. And I feel like what we are ultimately trying to do is get back to not only that childlike mind state, we need to unlearn everything and go back to the basics of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Yeah. Because right now the rituals are negative thought patterns. That's the ritual because you're right. It is primal. So we're looking for something of repetition, right? We'll just fill it up with a bunch of shit in our head, you know, that, you know, came from the conditioned world that becomes the new ritual. But now we have to swipe on and out and create some more divine and design our own rituals, become the designer of our own lives. I absolutely love your language.

I was just thinking like, we need to dummy down. We need to, is there a word for like unadvanced? Dude, something I've been thinking about and noticing is like, I'm as out there as anyone, right? Like I have made a career out of being like wild and free. But recently I had this Akashic reading and she was saying, she's like, you know, there's a shift. You're, you are the wild woman, but it's no longer about being this out there galactic rebel. She's like, it is returning to the grounded nature of your inner like wildness. And so I've been thinking about that because it's like,

I feel a lot of people want to go out, out, out, you know, and like, that's cool. Like we do need that. But if you are not grounded, if we are not connected to what's here right now, we're not doing ourselves any favors. We're actually bypassing. Speaking of being grounded, there's all this science coming out. That's proving also that like, we're not even ingesting and putting enough of the dirt and the soil of mother earth in our bodies anymore. So we're not even grounded in our eating habits and in our water anymore, because we have stripped everything from that natural ground. So it's like on every level, we continuously becoming less grounded because we feel like we're always having to advance everything or cheat our way out of everything.

Does that make sense? Yes. Have you watched, there was some like grounding documentary on YouTube and it's so simple. It's like, hey, we've walked for eons on the earth, like our skin touching it. And now we don't, we have concrete, we have floors, we have shoes. And the earth actually removes like immediately upon touching it, it starts to rebalance your body, like removing all of the negative ions that we receive and kind of collect in our bodies. And the results have been honestly astonishing. Like people have lost weight, they've rebalanced, they've healed stuff simply because they are back in connection with the earth. And I think about that, I'm like, how many times do we actually touch the earth?

And that's scary to me. Yeah. I mean, and, and now they're even like, I grab a scooter in Denver. I'm not going to walk. I'm going to grab an electric bike. It's our laziness keeping us ungrounded. We're always trying to find ways to cheat the system instead of going and making natural crops. We're going to cheat and our water, our water doesn't have enough of mother earth in it anymore because we keep coming up with more advanced, you know, more, more ways to sell it and make it fancier. But we're filling up our brains with all of this pointless stuff.

So then we don't have the space to explore what is natural. I mean, my son, Ethan, he's so he's autistic. You know, it is so pointless for him to learn about fucking Caesar. Okay. He likes Caesar salad. And that's about the only thing he needs to know. Why fill up that part of his brain to memorize these things and to learn these things when he needs more life skills, even watching the news or worried about shit.

That's not yours. We're filling up our minds with all of this shit and don't have space just to just be, to be like, I should go outside. I'm super interested and passionate about education and where I believe that we are just, we're being scammed by the educational system. It is not teaching us any relevant tools and it's like, we need to rewild children and fast. Like, I don't feel like they're equipped with the tools of the future and the tools of the future are the tools of the past. If we're to learn about energy bodies and anatomy, that would be helpful. Self-love, awareness, stewardship. Say it again. The tools, the tools of the future are also the tools of the past. Yeah. I mean, that's really what it is. That's kind of our theme right now,

right? We need to go backwards. We need to get it back to the basics. Redesign our reality, as you call it. She also calls it the ancient future technology. Yeah. So in ancient future technology, to me, my work has really taken me back to the earth, earth-based patterns and technologies. So I'm really fascinated by what has persisted over billions of years right I believe every answer we need exists in nature whether it's in a metaphor whether it's in a pattern whether it's in a universal principle of change and so it's like when you start to really think about that it's like why are we thinking that we can do better like I'm sorry I'm not interested in Elon Musk's like masturbation Mars fantasy like to me that's just an egregious sort of like we have not been able to maintain the closed loop system that we

exist within so how are you going to do any better Like we do not respect the governing laws of our planet. And that to me is problematic. And so when I talk about ancient future technologies, it's like, what is timeless? What is evolutionary? And how do we harness that? Because something I'm thinking a lot about right now is context, right? How are we connected to our earth? How are we grounded in our community? How do we locate ourselves, right, in a time, in a place? And so when we start to decontextualize everything, we start to remove ourselves from those laws. We start to remove ourselves from the natural boundaries

and constraints that are there for a reason. And so we become really dislocated. We become disconnected. It's where I think we are right now is we've actually lost respect for what our land gives us, what our community gives us, where we are connected to a physical place or a people. So to me, coming back to that is what's

going to ground us and give us a future. It's like, yeah, there's some things that maybe we moved past, like drawing and quartering people. I'm glad that we left that in the past. But in terms of what is evolutionary and what is timeless and what is real, I think we need to return to that. That to me is technology. Technology is anything that gives us a framework for change that is functional and lasting. Wow. That is so age of Aquarius girl. Thank you. Do you know St. Germain? Cause I feel like he may be one of your guides. You know, that's funny. I do know St. Germain. Okay. Yeah. I kind of

figured he was talking to you too because I received pretty much the same from him. And he is actually known as an alchemist. Interesting. And he also rules the age of Aquarius. Oh, dang.

Okay. I'm going to look into this further. Need to know a little more. Yes, please. Connect with him. So I'm going to ask you to, you talked about time travel. I want you to take us back right now on some things that you feel like we need to harness. The important things that you feel like right now is what we all, including our listeners, for the greater good of humanity need to get back to? What a beautiful question. Thank you. Honestly, I think what my beings have been communicating to me is that we need to reweave ourselves back into the web of life. And so, you know, there's a really interesting conversation that's happening in our culture right now. And so, you know, there's a really interesting conversation that's

happening in our culture right now. And I've really stayed out of it for the most of it, because I'm just not interested in divides. I'm not interested in inflaming that. But a lot of what has come up is this issue of sovereignty, right? And I'm not a fan of mandating anyone do anything, but I'm really fascinated because I'm like, what is sovereignty? I don't have an answer to this question, by the way, but I've been asking myself that because John Muir, as he said, when you tug on one thing, you find that it's hitched to everything else in the universe. And I think that humans have an incredible hubris that has ignored that fact. And we keep trying to, you know, again, distance ourselves from

the reality that our actions have serious consequences on ourselves, on our ecosystem, on other people in our community, on faceless people we'll never interact with. And so there's this, I've been really considering that as like, oh my God, how do I start to act in a way that considers the larger repercussions of my actions while understanding that I don't have control over all of it. I don't get to influence the decisions of people I'll never meet or see. To me, it has really deepened my appreciation for the beauty and power of life. And what do I do with that? Do I honor life by honoring someone else's life? Yes. Do I honor life by starting to honor and communicate and talk with the natural world around me? Absolutely. Because if there's one thing I've been learning,

it's that we are not the only consciousness in the universe, not even close. I think that when we start to elevate our consciousness above everything else, everything that's been here for like billions of years, it's like, come on. Yes, we have an amazing consciousness, but to me, true God self, true God mind, It's like, come on. Yes, we have an amazing consciousness. But to me, true God self, true God mind is recognizing that consciousness actually doesn't live in you.

Consciousness is decentralized. And we are plugged into this incredible web of consciousness, right? Intelligence. Trees have intelligence. Rocks of consciousness, right? Intelligence, trees have intelligence, rocks have intelligence, right? And there's different forms. And when we start to connect to those different forms of intelligence, we can access a lot more consciousness. We can access a lot more information.

And then we do start to develop what I think of as super consciousness. That to me feels like an incredible directive of our time is recognizing that if we really want to evolve and be here, then we need to start reconnecting ourselves with the incredible embedded knowledge that exists all around us and to respect that. I don't think we are respecting that whatsoever. All right, girl, you are super fucking smart. And that is beautiful. You've received all this stuff from your beings, or did you have to go through the shit to learn all this? Oh, both. Oh my God. It's to be perfectly real with y'all. I am in one of the most intense

ego deaths of my life right now. And I am like flying, you know, I'm like, ah, I don't want it to go. That's so uncomfortable. I want success. I want this. I mean, did you grow up this way? Did you have like amazing, like open parents or were you just, you know, born this way? You think you're a crystal child? What do you think? How did that happen? How did you awaken to this? You know, that's such a fascinating question.

And I don't know if I can pinpoint like one place on the map. I think that awakening is a process that happens over and over and over again. I will say that I was claimed by spirit at three. My family was going through a crisis at the time that would have probably left me in a really bad place if I had not been claimed. And the reality is I have never felt like I fully belong to the world.

I felt like I exist in an interstitial realm and I've always had access to the other realms the other worlds but I didn't have a language for it and I think as we were talking about before a lot of us don't we're like am I crazy like what's happening like I'm just gonna block this off I'm gonna wall it up I'm not going to engage but if there was something that really opened me, it was that I grew up in the wild. I grew up talking with nature. I grew up in a backyard that opened to a woods and I ate dirt, you know, like that's, I did not have a ton of human friends. I had a lot of rabbits. I had a lot of pets, but I really come back to that now because I'm like, oh my God, what a gift that I was surrounded by the natural world and so

consumed by it. And then when I started to become a civilized being, I lost that a little bit. I lost my connection. But there was always this wildness within me that is not easily attained. I have not fit into the rules and boundaries of society very well. And I think that's part of my gift is that I've always been an outlier in how I see the world and how I pursue my path. I think I have been granted very powerful opportunities and messengers and experiences on the path that were designed to awaken me. I think my parents have been extremely supportive, but to this day, they're still like, wait, you talk to beings with a stick? And I'm like, yes. So, you know, I feel very blessed in that no matter, even when I felt my most lost, I have had honestly miraculous experiences, messages that I can't explain in a rational framework, but have come in when I've been struggling or floundering

and have helped me see like, you are here for a reason, this matters. And there's a gift that you are still here to give, whether or not it's accepted by mainstream culture, whether or not it's approved. Wow. So you said claimed by spirit. What exactly does that mean? It's funny because I've been told that I've been claimed by both spirit and the earth.

When I think about belonging, it's such a powerful thing for me because again, I've never felt like I've had a true sense of belonging. I've been able to be in many communities and many groups and many places because I don't have, I don't have like an in-group, I guess, as a way to put it, you know, I don't belong to one specific demographic. And so claim by spirit really to me means I was kind of raised by wolves, but in a sense that I was governed by a body of beings that I answered to. One of my teachers once called that out in one of our first sessions, he was like, you carry cosmic justice medicine. And I was like, whoa, tell me more. He was like, yeah. He's like,

it means that you don't follow human rules. You don't subscribe to human morality. And I was like, Oh my God, that explains it. I answer to nature. I answered to a larger force that has nothing to do with petty human ideas. And so that to me is what it feels like. I'm still discovering what it means to be claimed by spirit, but to me, it means that my home is there. That's where I root. I think there's a lot of kids out there, especially teenagers that have felt how you felt like there's no belonging that they don't abide by the human rules. And unfortunately, a lot of them don't have support. And a lot of them feel alone and depressed and are in the dark. One of my cousins messaged me not too long ago and asked me some pretty far out questions,

but he knew that he could ask me because I'm pretty far out. And he just said, it's very hard to live within what people think is normal. And he's been trying to fit in that. And I just kind of said, well, why would you want to be that? He said, because that is what is accepted. I wish that I could fit in that box. God bless him. I was so proud of him. One, I told him you are, you know, you don't want to be normal, but you're just as normal as anybody else. And two, I'm so glad you reached out to talk about this with somebody who you knew would be open and loves you unconditionally. And honestly, I mean, I don't fit in that box.

Most people don't fit in that fucking box. In his life, everyone's looking at him like fit in that box. He's experiencing lots of things. He's a sensitive person. He is exactly what Mandy just said, you know, a young adult trying to fit in a box that he doesn't fit in. What would you say to those kids? Mm. I have so much empathy and compassion for anyone who doesn't feel like they fit. A big thing that I'm learning right now is that normal is a colonization of the mind. Normal is a construct that is in an, I don't want to get too fiery, but to me, it's an imperialist idea.

It's a rule book that is inherently trying to control you. So to some extent, I understand that normalcy is governed. It's an agreement that allows us to kind of coexist, right, in a society. And I think it's really dangerous because I think no one is normal, right? Like, what is average? Like the question is what advice would I give and what are some ways in which I would recommend or advise to, I'm going to say like support yourself in that, in recovering your sense of reclaiming your own sense of identity outside of what anyone tells you or prescribes to you is right at the risk of sounding redundant it's to me nature has been an incredible healer

and it has allowed me to recognize that there is a place for everything in nature right like look at what evolution has done Like there are some crazy animals out there who have crazy features. Like look at a platypus for instance, but it fits. It has a place and a purpose. It might look goofy, but it's necessary. And so when you start to look at like, oh my God, the world is so incredibly diverse. Diversity is necessary. One of my favorite poets, Ariana Rhyne said, diversity, difference is a toy. From a cosmic level, difference is absolutely necessary to give us a thriving world. We don't exist in a monoculture. That is a bullshit idea invented by corporate whatevers. And that to me is like, if you start to go out and populate your consciousness

with more examples of how absolutely necessary you are, because look at what's around you look at the map that nature has invented it's really um it's a powerful affirmation and that's what I mean when I say my beings are saying we need to reweave ourselves back into the web of life and they often give me rituals to to give my clients or for myself even that are literally go out somewhere, go out into the woods, go out into an ecosystem and plant yourself. And feel how you come from this. Feel how you are connected. Feel how essential every part is to function. And so I have this secret fantasy that there's a workshop where kids tell adults what to do, because I think adults are the ones that are truly in trouble. Kids are closer to

spirit, right? They're closer to the actual essential nature of life and so I think that's something that I would tell any young person is actually you haven't lost your genius yet sorry sorry to offend any adult listeners out there but you have not become colonized and that is an incredible power that people want to control. So don't let them. Oh, you're just melting. Shannon. I were, I mean, the, the energy around me and wow. I can tell Shannon is affected. Yeah. I love you.

And I see you as a modern shaman basically is, is what this is. I mean, it is today's message to today's people, today's cultures to take off your fucking shoes and just go fill the earth. So I was thinking about like, for me, I fit myself into that box. I became a really good like actress, you know, like I became this person to go into that box. And it was so difficult for me to have to peel off all these masks that I had learned to carry for so long to fit. And it was fucking hard and it took me, you know, into addiction and dark places. And so both journeys can be so difficult, so difficult. And I was just thinking about that, like your journey and my journey, they're both fucking hard. I don't know. Part of me was like, Oh, I wish that I had that nature in my backyard and that forest. And that I would have embraced that, that different in me and that I

would have known better than to become an actress and put myself in that box. But I didn't. Honoring that you are different and being glad that you are. I'm so glad that my little one knows that she reminds us all the time. My youngest is definitely the most wisest in this house because you know why I've allowed her to be totally okay with that. You know what I mean? And continue to tell her all the time that you don't want to be like everyone else. You don't want the same as everyone else. You just want what you want. And thank God she totally gets that because she is such an introvert. And so she doesn't really fit so much

in the box sometimes because she's very artsy. She's creative, but that's beautiful. Otherwise, you're just like a freaking brainwashed clone of the rest of the, you know, Americans. You become a robot. You lose your essence. I so resonate with, I've struggled with addiction. I have struggled with the math. I've struggled with the performance because I felt for so long that I was like, God, I'm like, Oh, I really need to make myself acceptable so that people receive me and love me. And you know, I don't die alone. But we were taught that my parents taught me that. Yeah. But you need to, this is what you're supposed to do. This is the American way. You're supposed to do all these things fit in somehow, you know, come on. Did you just say, so you don't die alone? Yeah. Isn't that always like one of those biggest fears what if I am so weird that I drive everyone away what

if no one ever gets me the tradition that I work with is a West African divination practice really and yes I got initiated in April of this year this is what I mean when I say I use a stick to talk with beings and the beings are earth-based I can talk with trees. I can talk with, you know, essentially our leprechauns and elves, little ones, the keepers of the wild. But as I've been working with this tradition, something that struck me so deeply was that they don't have a word for fiction. They literally do not differentiate between the real and the imaginal.

So think about what that does to your mind. We in this rational, like, you know, science-based world and like, yeah, science is cool. I love it. But the rational can become so dangerous, I believe, because we limit our world to this tiny little box of what can be explained. And I'm sorry to be the bearer of fucking truth, but our world is like 98% dark matter. We can't explain that. Science can't explain that yet. Science is still trying. So when I think about that, I'm like, we have so much information and forces that we've just basically been like, I don't know how to deal with that. I don't have a frame of reference for that.

And so we eliminate it from this like incredible realm of possibilities. And so I can't prove this. So it's not there. It doesn't exist. I can't see it. So it's not there. there. We do that with everything. It's so crazy. What would happen if we started to normalize all of that? I have this epiphany like early on in my journey that we as humans have given the word imagination, this false definition. Imagination is more reality than anything, but we've been taught imagination is a bunch of just made up bullshit. And it's so opposite. You are speaking the truth. Who is the regulator of reality is what I want to know. That would be white America. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm just, I'm like just sitting here like all mushy thinking

about like when my daughter gets home from school today, I, I want her to take me on an adventure. You know, you said this workshop where these kids are running it and I'm sitting here like, yes. What does that look like? Just adventure. Probably looks like my household. You said something earlier that I'd love for you to expand on. You believe there's a super consciousness. It doesn't live anywhere in this, you know, meat suit or in this brain. It lives outside of us. Talk about that a little more.

Is that the collective consciousness? Is that the Akashic records? What is that? So interesting is I'm still learning so much about like, what is the Akash and what is the oversoul, right? There's so many layers of different forms of consciousness and reality and energy, let's say. So there's probably other people who can make distinctions or discernments that I'm not totally equipped to yet. But what I will say is this, there's this quantum physicist, Nassim Haramein, I believe his name is, who has basically proved consciousness

does not live in the human body, right? It does not live in our brain. And I'm, again, like, please do some more research for anyone out there who's curious about this, because I'm covering just like the salient high points. But there's this concept that is called or referred to as Indra's net. It's a Buddhist sort of metaphor. And essentially Indra's net is this infinite web. And each facet or node on the net has, I think of like a diamond with an infinite number of faces. And that diamond is reflecting every other node in this infinite web. It breaks your brain to think about, but it's a powerful thought experiment. And that to me is what, like when I

heard the two, I was like, oh, okay. There's the metaphor and there's the map, right? Quantum physics, I'm sorry, is usually explaining and underlining things that people are not able to quite fully be like, ah, I can't wrap my mind around and underlining things that people are not able to quite fully be like, ah, I can't wrap my mind around it. How can something be stable and moving at once? But our world is built on these such like paradoxes. So paradoxes by nature can't be fully explained. And that's okay with me at least. But I like this idea of Indra's net because it starts to help you see like, oh, if I'm not the owner of this consciousness, it's liberating. And then I can actually start to plug into kind of any form of consciousness. You can plug into tree consciousness. You can

plug into platypus consciousness, right? You can plug into the consciousness of the person next to you. And really, I think the biggest issue that we have is that we get ideas about who's right and who's wrong that limit and prevent us from seeing outside of a very small kind of worldview. And to me, it's like, oh, wow. Like if we're really trying to evolve, then maybe it would serve us to not be so arrogant and think that we're like at the top of the consciousness food chain and actually start to have a broader understanding of what that could look like. And to be humble in that conversation. I think there's so much we have to learn that we've just kind of swept under the rug because

we're like, we know it all. Well, and here's the thing. If you don't believe me, go and experience it for yourself, like the name of your book, the art of experiment, because I can believe everything you just told me, you know, and just say that that is truth. Like I did most of my life. But until I actually experienced it for myself, now that's my truth. That becomes my truth. So it doesn't matter what anybody else believes or says. That is exactly it.

Go out and play with reality and you'll start to see, oh, this is pretty malleable, right? There's no fixed definition of reality. that self-love first. And then I played and then self-trust because of the self-love, because if I didn't have the self-trust, everything that I was playing and receiving, I w I would have gone back to my conditioned brain of it's not truth. You know, I had this vision when you were talking about that, of like this massive native American dream catcher with these like beads all over it. And like that web you were talking about and you so beautifully explained it. Thank you. What are tangible things that you can give our listeners to start with, to do, to go play, to go dip back into that ancient times? Like what, what are some things that you could suggest for them to do to get grounded? Love this question. Thank you. This is a game I've been playing lately. Life is built on fractal patterns, right? And a fractal

is simply a pattern that repeats forever. So we see that on like shorelines, for instance, like you go up and there's the same kind of fractal. So fractals can scale up and down. Now, with that in mind, you will see those same patterns, for example, in the roots of a tree, in a lightning bolt, in the veins of your arm, right? Life likes to conserve energy. So here's a game that people can play. You have a problem. You're like, oh, how do we figure this out? What's the answer? Look around you for a metaphor, for a pattern, for something that's happening in your external world or in your periphery. Just literally listen, watch, observe, and see what you notice. Because if you are getting outside of your I know, right, I'm right, once you set that down, you become so much more available to anything else that wants to present itself to you. So the game that I've been playing is like, okay, I have this question. How is life answering this already? What is already in my space that is

showing me an answer that I just haven't seen yet? So that's really what the art of the experiment is about. It's like we tend to have these very rigid ideas of what our answer is supposed to look like, how it's supposed to arrive. But once you start to remove the walls and the boundaries, then you'll realize that answers are constantly arriving. You are constantly being confronted with information that is exactly what you need if you are simply willing to see it. So that's one way. You have a lot of these examples on your website too, available for anyone to get on right now and actually look at them. One that I saw was going back to the modern alchemy manual and the experiment of expanding your mind and seeing things from different perspectives. And it says right here,

it says, sniff out your fear that lives in you, which is another one you can do. So it's just bringing that awareness and taking different things. And it says, observe how praise on your weaknesses. What does it feel like to take in the landscape from a completely neutral perspective? Because we're always so judgy. We always think we know more and know better. It's so hard just to be, but it's in that space that all the answers are. Absolutely. Like there's so many ways that you can flip your own judgments, your own biases, your own perspective. And I think a lot of it to me comes from like, are we willing to bypass our own ego? Because, you know, one of these tips is like, do the opposite. If you normally do this, what would happen if you did it differently? But first you have to get over yourself.

You'll like this, Catherine. It's like a hawk, you know, who's sitting on this very, very, very tall building and he can see so far. Maybe he can even see 40 freaking thousand feet. However, if he doesn't shift, he can't see what's behind them. You know, you have to be able to shift to see all angles. Yes. Yes. Our blind spots are where we usually get stuck. And so how are you expanding your perspective? Are you bringing in someone who might hold a different idea or a different worldview

than you to help you see that? Are you actively challenging what you hold to be true or right? And it's not to say that you're wrong, but maybe you just don't have all the information that's available to you. Yeah. Oh, people that have been awakened still have ego deaths. Oh, honey. Yes. Daily. I think a lot of people think that once you're awakened, life is just all, you know, unicorns and butterflies. I loved that you said that early on. It happens over time and it keeps happening and it never stops. And you talked about how right now you're going through one of the most difficult times of an ego death. Can you explain to our listeners what that means?

It's interesting. Like ego deaths are when we fall through the ground floor of what we've defined as real, you know, and that usually has to do with our ideas of how the world is supposed to work and how we're supposed to, you know, do life. And what I've been encountering is all of these deeply embedded beliefs about what does success look like? What is, you know, and like, does it mean more money? Does it mean more followers? Does it mean more this? And really what it's been showing me is like, oh, wow, I need to let go of a lot of these beliefs and stories about what I think I'm supposed to do and actually let life show me. Because we have a lot of agendas and a lot of, a lot of the times it's unconscious, right? It's like a program

running and we just see what's happening in our world. And we're like, oh, I need to do it like that. To be honest, it's like, well, what works for someone else is maybe not what works for you. And maybe what worked for 50 years is not going to be serving us in the future. Life is continuous change. I think it was Octavia Butler, who's one of the most brilliant sci-fi authors there is. And she has this beautiful quote where it's like, change is God. okay like if you are able to acknowledge and embrace that life will shift you and it will shift you in ways that feel abrupt it will shift you in ways that feel uncomfortable and if you are not willing to get uncomfortable you are going to suffer deeply and that to me is the ego death is you know we somehow get shoved out of our comfort zone and then we need to kind of reinvent what works for us. And a lot of the times, and I know I struggle with this, like I've really had to deal with my own feelings of failure. Like, oh, you didn't do it right

because you didn't have, you know, money dumped on you or because your business didn't do it right because you didn't have, you know, money dumped on you or because your business didn't succeed or because people didn't love that thing you put out. And in the end, it's like, those are just, those are feedback. That's feedback that can be really helpful. But sometimes life is going to take us away from the known. And the ego likes what's comfortable. It likes what's safe. And life is fundamentally unsafe. And we've just created a lot of really fun ways to feel safe. So right now, my ego death is really about like, I'm rethinking my whole business structure. I'm rethinking where I live. I'm rethinking what it means to be in community. I'm rethinking my whole business structure. I'm rethinking where I live. I'm rethinking what it means to be in community. I'm rethinking what it means to be in service.

So deep fundamental beliefs about who I am, where I fit, and what the world is and does are being challenged right now. That can be incredibly painful. And usually it is to some extent. I don't want to diminish that. But it can also be incredibly liberating if you choose to, you know, kind of fall through the trap door as it's crumbling underneath you. And Catherine, I mean, the earth and the seasons, and you know, I always go back to this, the tree, you know, earth has provided the answers and the fact that can you imagine

if the trees and the seasons all just said, you know what, fuck winter. We just want to be in summer. It's so warm and comfy here. You know, I mean, we wouldn't survive, you know, without water and what, you know, and you have to weather the storm. You have to be fluid and keep rooted, you know, and you know that you're going to have to go through all of these different changes. But as long as your roots are anchored, then you can weather that storm. And you know, there's always this begin again. Oh, thank you for that. Because that's I think, like the core of it, right, is it is we, we tend to root into other things like, oh, I think, like the core of it, right? It is. We tend to root into other things.

Like, oh, I've rooted into this identity as a successful business person. But if you're not rooted in yourself without needing to be validated or approved of by all of this other stuff, then you've rooted in something that's essentially false because it will shift. It will change. And then what? Exactly. Great point. Can you do a quick exercise of Kinsley? I call him Mandy Kinsley. I call Kinsley Mandy all the time. Can you do like a quick exercise that's part of this modern alchemy manual? Absolutely. Do you have one in mind or should I pick? You pick, you pick. So that way we just won't have any kind of expectation on thinking that we know better.

Okay. All right. I think I know which one's going to be. One of my favorite essays is called Talk Your Life. That's our kind of lesson. It was an inspiring one. I'm not sure if you're familiar with David Data. He's a very interesting person, writer. He does a lot of transformational work and kind of tantric in the sense that it's like, how do we really start to bring forward that which we've isolated or relegated to, you know, the darkness or like, Ooh, that's not bad. I'm not

going to talk about that. And he does so in a way that's very provocative. Basically, you know, what I see in this essay is that we talk a lot in our culture about like, give no fucks, you know, what I see in this essay is that we talk a lot in our culture about like, give no fucks, you know, like I have no fucks left to give, but it's like, isn't life about one big, beautiful fuck? Like our desire is what leads us. Our desire is what creates life. Like, why are we literally denying our desire? I get it like it's a political move but so I'll just read one my favorite stanza in this so the greatest gift we can give is to fuck the universe right back this isn't a fuck off or a fuck you we've already done that but rather thrusting with the force of a million years of evolution behind you.

Fuck your life like a volcano that can't stop erupting. Fuck your life like a mother lioness who's hungry for blood. Fuck your life like a god fighting the stars for light. Fuck your life like you are breathing for the first time. Fuck your life like you are saying yes for the last time fuck your life until you can't stop laughing fuck your life with every cell until you are spent so that is fucking powerful i love that i feel like i have to have that like printed out and put on my wall love that maybe i'll get a little yeah make a poster with some pretty art i knew this but fuck is like one of my favorite words and we we had on this, this doctor, this neuroscientist that who told us that whenever you say the word fuck, whatever comes after it, the person will always remember.

So if you want to like penetrate their brain and their consciousness, then always add fuck first. Oh, I love that. You have just given me so many dangerous powers. I fucking love you. Right. It's so much stronger. I do. Thank you. I fucking love you guys too. This has been one of the fucking best conversations. I agree. Thank you. I'm blown away. Thank you. This is the conditions that y'all have cultivated here truly allow for people to come forward like me with all my fucking

juiciness. So thank you. And let's fucking fuck our lives. Are you ready? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. So here's the point of this game, right? What's the point of living life if you're not going to give it all you fucking have. Right. And I think a lot of us sometimes cop out. I know I do at times and I'm like, I just can't be bothered. But that's the point is we want to start bringing all of our energy to what matters. So in this experiment, basically I invite people to create a little group experiment together. So inviting like three to 10 people that you want to play with and you want to go get like deep and real with, because as we all know,

we're more accountable when we're being witnessed. We're more likely to do shit when we have, you know, some, some stuff on the line. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to go around this circle. And first we're going to answer the question or we're going to complete the statement. I'm really fucking good at, and then tell me about one of your superpowers. Tell me about something you fucking rule at because I want to know I'll go first I am really fucking good at giving people permission to be weird as fuck I am really really fucking good at being creative and coming up with ideas I am really really fucking good at being vulnerable and raw about my truth and my stories and my experience beautiful all right ladies so we're gonna get some more vulnerability in the mix finish this statement i'm really fucking struggling with and then identify or challenge or question you have and what you explore okay i'm really fucking struggling with trusting my mission right now.

I am really fucking struggling with being organized able to protect my own energy against the world's problems right now. Real. Thank you both for being so real with me. Okay. Here's where we go next. So the goal is as always to challenge what we think we know or hold to be true. Okay. So, so in this experiment, ideate, create, brainstorm an experiment that can be done in the next week that is designed to fuck our ideas of what's possible. Oh, I like that. All right. We're becoming the ritual designers. Yes, yes, yes. So let's see if there's anything else I want to say about that. Oh yeah. And I always like to tell people because people love to put on their heroic hats, which I love, but something like save the world with your mobile app is not helpful and it's not going to get done

in a week. So I invite people to think about like, what is an incremental yet quantum leap that you can, right? Like, and for me, that means like, what would take you to the very core or heart of that, you know, struggle for you and kind of blow it open in a way that could help you see more sides of it. The whole idea is like, what is a way that you could kind of test or play with this struggle? Yeah. So I was just thinking that, you know, it's the organization, the physical organization, right? But I do know that if I actually don't worry about cleaning this or clearing this out, I need to clear out the space in my head.

And in that space, I'll be able to compartmentalize maybe and find the solution there. So maybe taking a little bit more time, maybe doing some morning meditation, being just not anything specific. A lot of times I always feel like meditation's got to be like, okay, I'm going to work on this, but this is just going to make space. I'm just going to clear the cobwebs out of my mind and clear that and almost go through and vacuum my shit. Anything that I have to do and vacuum my shit anything that I have to do to the physical house I'm going to do to my my mind and that's I'm going to create that space oh that is a powerful connection to forge because your reality is just a reflection of your internal state agree overall yes 100% I celebrate that. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to use that new Dawn spray. That's got the cool little sprayer on it. Just a little spray of that. Oh my God. I love this. This was like one of my most favorite interviews. I, and I love what that simple exercise just brought to the three of us. It was fun, which sometimes, you know, people shy away from doing inner work because they don't think it's fun and it's shitty and it's hard. You just brought fun to it. You brought connection to the three of us. You brought authenticity, truth, non-judgment, a safe space. I mean, and it was fricking fun. That was so cool. That was so cool. Well, and I love, you know what she's, she puts a warning about these two,

because you get 15 different transformational experiments, five playful mantras, which I'm all about right now. And one timeless toolkit to literally redesign your reality, become your own ritual, you know, designer. We could be just like you. If you want to be just like Catherine, I want to be just like Catherine. I truly believe that everyone is a creative genius. Like if you don't believe that it's because you have,

you know, accepted a certain conditioning about yourself. And so that's what this book is here to do, is just to help people get out of the ruts and be like, oh yeah, I can actually start shifting my reality just by playing differently. Life is a game. And one of the things that life has taught me is that life um how is it uh life doesn't play to win life plays to expand so there's no end point of at which you're like okay i've won life you win by playing yeah oh my gosh my word right now in my life um you want to know it's funny in my notes that I wrote down about you. One of the things that caught my attention was when I was looking into your deck and you put

play it forward. That cool. I love that. And let's inspire each other to, to play more and to play it forward because just like we're, you know, full circle going back to when you were a child, that's what you were doing in that, in that forest. And in the nature is you were just playing, you were playing and your mind and your consciousness and with other consciousness and you were playing, we forget to play, don't we? Yes. Yes, we do. Talk about your deck though.

I have to know, like, what is this deck? Where did it come from? Is it like game deck too? Y'all will have to let me know your address and I'll send you a copy of the book and the deck because this needs to be in your hands. So the awaken deck, funny thing. I went through a pretty massive ego death a few years back. I was like, all I want to do is to help people come alive, like be more alive in this life. And so I was creating what I called play temples, which were social experiments, you know, where people are coming together. And what I noticed,

I'm an introvert. People don't often think this because I'm, you know, I love to talk and I can hang with people, but I have my awkward moments. And one of my worst years and least favorite moments is when I walk into a space and I'm like, ah, who do I talk to? How do I approach them? They look so cool. You know, I'm not alone in this. And I noticed that a lot of people would kind of hang back at gatherings and sort of wait for a reason to engage. And I was like, oh, let me give them a reason. So when people would come in, I made this like set of cards, you know, I just had one deck, but it would have these little prompts, questions, like, you know, give someone a blessing, ask someone where their name came from.

And what I noticed was that there was one man in particular, he was probably like 40. And he, you could just tell he felt awkward and shy. And by the end of the night, he was probably like 40 and he, you could just tell he felt awkward and shy. And by the end of the night, he was literally rolling on the floor laughing. Like he was so liberated because he had come through that fear of being accepted. And so it was interesting. So I took this like prototype deck that I'd made and I went to different festivals with one of my soul brothers and something miraculous happened you know because we were walking around and checking out the sites and I would we'd meet cool people and we'd pull one of these cards and all of a sudden by the end of the festival I had random people coming up to me and being like

I need a card where Where's the card? I was like, okay, I think we have something here because it would just start to create these beautiful group moments. Like what we just shared where people felt connected and seen and like, no one ever wants to be asked what their fucking job is. Who cares? take me somewhere else you know like take me somewhere different get me out of my normie role and talk to me about something freaking weird yeah yeah weird real authentic yeah something that's not so surface I don't give a fuck where your kids are going to college you know what I mean how is your child doing I want to know that You know what I mean? How is your child doing? I want to know that, but you know, I mean, you know, everybody needs that deck too. It needs to be put on the tables. Most gatherings, you have some cool shit. The good karma club. I mean, hello, that's amazing. You have just so many things. Can you tell everybody where they can find you, where they

can get all of your, you know, whatever you have, because I know you have a lot and they probably don't, we probably didn't even name it all. So let us know what's going on. Absolutely. So my culture lab, which is where I house all of my products and my offerings is called Arco World and that's spelled A-R-K-O dot world. So if you type www.arco.world, you'll find all of this stuff there. It's the awakened deck. It's the art of the experiment book. There's the good karma club, which is our newsletter. And that's a total gift exchange that we've been experimenting with. What does it look like to give from generosity without any expectation of return? People can also find me at youarethemagic.us. And that has more information on me.

It has information on my divination work. It has information on the rituals and rites of passage that I designed for people. Yeah, like I will send you all the information as well in case there's any show notes that you want to share, but I'll be happy to provide links so people can find all of this amazing stuff. And now it's time for break that shit down. Oh, that's such a beautiful invitation. I think what's on my heart right now is we are in a time of remembering and returning to, to me, it feels like an original state of being.

I think we are remembering how deeply connected and deeply rooted we are. And I really invite everyone to befriend something in nature. Like go talk to a river. Let it show you the wisdom, let it give you medicine, make offerings to your trees, go visit nature, go be in it. Because to me, that is one of the most healing and powerful ways that we can remember who we are and what we came here to be. So that's, that's what I offer your, your listeners. You just said like a few minutes ago that you did that deck because you wanted to help people feel alive. I mean, just being on this call with you has made me like have a zest on my tongue for

life, made me feel really alive. I'm like excited right now to go outside and connect with my yard. And you're so gifted by just sharing yourself. So thank you. And, you know, we don't do this a lot, but I would love to just go ahead and schedule you again for like next March or something, because I feel like next week, because we just want to talk to you. No, you are amazing. I know our listeners will love you as much as Mandy and I do. Yeah. You're going to be like one of those episodes where Mandy and I just get like text after text after text, like, Oh my God, that's amazing.

I totally, you know, feel so connected and I, and I know how you guys feel and, and that's just what we need though we need that we need the sacred space to know that you're not alone and that you know we're all going to go through this thank you both for creating that sacred space this has honestly been one of the most lovely conversations that I've had the pleasure of having in months if not years you two are fucking awesome I can feel your light I can feel your love I can feel your joy and it's just it's been a divine time here with you thank you girl I appreciate you very much much love thank you at a p.m. did you know that sense of soul now has a Patreon where you can get exclusive episodes,

mini series that Mandy and I have been working on for a long time that we can't wait to share with you, monthly readings, Sense of Soul sacred circles, workshops, behind the scenes clips, and much more. Hop on Sense of Soul Patreon right now and sign up. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.