Episode 43 – The Sun, Gaia and Your Inner Soul Fire

The first time Amina marked one of the seasonal rituals, she didn’t really know what to do. She wrote what she wanted to let go of on a slip of paper, sat down outside in the snow in her slippers, and burned it with a lighter. Pål-Esben, meanwhile, lives his year more or less 100 percent in rhythm with the seasons: full-on action all summer, and hibernation all winter.

In this forty-third episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the sun, Gaia and the soul fire within us, in a summer greeting recorded just after the summer solstice. They explore why a balanced yang needs an integrated yin, how to make a simple seasonal ritual of your own, and why Mother Earth is a living being and not just a mechanical globe of magma. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• The summer solstice and the soul fire, the energy and talents that come from the soul into our dreaming existence
• Living in rhythm with the seasons, and why a healthy yang in summer rests on a deep yin in winter
• A simple summer solstice ritual at home, the wheel of the year through Lughnasa, the autumn equinox and Samhain, and Amina’s first ritual in the snow
• How patriarchy and religious dogma cut modern people off from the natural rhythms that the old nature-based cultures lived by
• Mother Earth as a living being rather than a mechanical globe of magma, and why souls are only one of many forms of being
• Maha Terra’s patience, the great resets, and humanity’s responsibility to change course before a new one
• The beings of the seasons as avatars of Maha Terra, and how her blueprint rhythms can retune our own rowdy music
• Making contact with nature the way you are present with a friend, and why the podcast exists at all

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Pål-Esben: Hi, Amina, and a warm welcome to this very short episode we’re going to record now, which is really meant as a summer greeting from us.

Amina: Thank you so much, likewise, Pål-Esben. We’ll see how short it turns out to be.

Pål-Esben: Yes, let’s see. And a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. We’ve now been through quite a lot of episodes, where we’ve talked about a great many different topics. In the most recent ones we’ve talked a great deal about the ultimate path a human being can choose to walk: finding the way to the Sahara, where life changes completely, turns upside down, in quite a radical way, and for the better. We’ve also talked with some of your fellow students, who have told us how life changes quite extensively in practical, everyday terms. It has been a very exciting journey so far, Amina.

Amina: Very. It almost feels as if we only started recording episodes yesterday. We’ve been through so many exciting topics, and there’ll be lots more exciting ones later too, so I’m looking forward to what comes next.

The summer solstice and the soul fire

Pål-Esben: We have some really spectacular ones up our sleeve for the autumn, which will probably make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. But right now it’s summer, and we’ve just been through the summer solstice, which is the high point of the year when it comes to yang. The sun is shining at its strongest. We’ve been through the summer solstice ritual, where we celebrate the sun, which is the reason everything grows, the reason we have food, and the reason our biosphere works at all.

And in our tradition there’s also a very important part where we celebrate our soul fire: the very energy and talents that come from our soul, via the higher self, into our dreaming existence, that is, into us as human beings. The soul fire is what drives our primary feelings, such as love, enthusiasm, joy and pleasure, and it’s the foundation for them; it’s the very building block they’re made of. So there’s a great deal here that’s exciting, at least in our tradition, where we don’t just celebrate the sun but also bring in these even more exciting aspects of reality.

Amina: Yes, we take it much further than the cultural understanding of the seasonal rituals. And I’m thinking that the sun is at its highest now; we’re actually heading towards darker times, even though it feels as if summer has only just begun. And I also think that when we look at the sun, and celebrate the sun, and are grateful for the sun, and the earth is lush, and nature is in bloom, and everything grows, sprouts and flourishes, it’s also a reminder of the sun that lives inside us, the life force that lives deep within us. So it’s a lovely way to reflect a little on this time of year.

The inner sun

Pål-Esben: Yes, because everything is mirrored in everything, so to speak. And it’s very exciting when you begin to experience more and more of it: OK, we don’t just have an external sun that warms us and makes the crops grow; we also have this internal sun that lies deep within us. It’s what actually gives us our fundamental emotions, and the resources we need to cope with this rather chaotic world. And unfortunately a great many people in the modern world have forgotten it and lost contact with it, caught up in the hamster wheel.

When we do a summer solstice ritual in our tradition, the students are brought into direct contact with this inner sun, into direct contact with this soul fire. We do that so we can rekindle our connection to it, so that it becomes much clearer in our lives in the weeks and months that follow.

We’ve talked a little about the soul in earlier episodes, about how this works. Our soul comes into this rather crazy existence of ours, which we call the elite university for souls. It’s actually a very complex thing for our soul to handle, since it projects itself out into a dream: a dream that is you and me, and you, dear listener, and that we believe is reality and real. But in that dream it has also disconnected from itself, from its talents, from its knowledge of how things fit together. So we’re a bit lost, especially as adults. Once we’ve lost the access we had as children, it often feels as if we as adults can be a bit lost in our own world.

We function, but it’s a bit uncomfortable living this life, with war and unrest around us. Then there’s chaos in our lives, we have kids, we have problems, especially those of us with teenagers. We have a massive number of challenges. And then everything feels a bit overwhelming.

Living in rhythm with the seasons

Pål-Esben: Many shamans celebrate seasonal rituals like these, especially with an emphasis on the cultural aspect of the season, which our ancestors have celebrated for thousands of years, since it has been the foundation for life on this earth. Taking part in them is something I really want to recommend to everyone. It’s simply a way to make yourself aware that our earth has a cycle, that we have a cycle, and to ask yourself: How am I doing? Am I living a healthy cycle in my life? Do I have summer and yang and action all year round, or do I also have a bit of winter solstice, and a bit of rest and regeneration, in my life?

For me it’s a privilege, I’d say, that I’m able to live my life more or less 100 percent in rhythm with the seasons. That’s because I’m free to do pretty much whatever I want. I don’t have a nine-to-five job I need to get up for. Thank goodness. I haven’t had one for the last 25 years, and I could never go back to it either. Because when you’re used to living in harmony with these rhythms, summer, at least for me, means full-on action.

That means I’m on holiday for a couple of months. I have no students and don’t deal with people, but I deal with myself, with my projects. I’ve just finished writing my book about the way out of burnout, which is now with the editor, and I’m writing three other books. Then I have a couple of big projects, with the runes and other things, that I’m working on at the moment. I’m just reaching my first 1,000 A4 pages of rune descriptions, which I use to train my students in what the runes are really about.

So I have a massive number of projects. For me this is yang: I’m completely fired up, and I’m in step with the season. And then I look forward to the autumn, because then everything calms down again, and then I have the winter period, when I go into full hibernation and regeneration mode. How about you, Amina?

Amina: Yes, this is probably my third yearly cycle of joining you for the seasonal rituals at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, and I can really feel my own development. I feel that in the wintertime, in the deepest yin, I really laid the foundation for a healthier summer in this yang period. Because I can take that calm with me into the yang period, and find that calm even when everything is buzzing, even though I’m actually a big, big kid at heart.

I joke around a lot, I dance, I sing, I tease people, in a nice way, but sometimes they end up getting irritated. So I’m very much that kind of person. That side comes out even more now, but I notice that I can enjoy it, and I can live in the active energy without it being about stress, without it being about rushing, without it being about the negative expression of yang energy that a great many people can end up in. So I’m looking forward to seeing how this summer continues to unfold for me.

I don’t have any big plans or big projects. I was supposed to travel to Germany in a few days, to see your beautiful, lovely, wonderful wife. We were going to take a group along to a tantric massage course, but it was postponed, because there’s a heatwave in Germany now, so we’re putting it off until the autumn and winter. So now I have four open days: what am I going to do with them? The forest. We’ll see what happens, what wants to unfold. And with two children you never quite know what’s going to happen either. But I’m very much at peace with that, and I feel really good about just taking the days as they come, and not least doing what I feel like doing. Having the chance to do what I feel like doing through the summer holidays: let’s see what that turns into.

I know there’ll be a lot of forest, that much I know, and contact with nature. And then we’ll see where it all ends up on the other side of the summer. I’m also preparing a great deal for the big ritual you hold once a year at Spidsbergseter, a mountain hotel in Norway, so for me the summer is also an important preparation for that. There shouldn’t be too much stress and rush.

Balanced yang requires integrated yin

Pål-Esben: Yes, and I usually have this retreat in the mountains in August, where I bring the students into their Sahara, with deep experiences of oneness and the things I work with. So that’s also a very exciting part of what we do.

But what I find very interesting is that now that it’s summer, it’s easy to slip into a chaotic yang. That’s often what you find in people who have a great deal to do: they don’t have a balanced yang, they have a very chaotic yang.

And here’s what’s interesting. When I observe myself, and those of my students who have integrated yin into their lives, that is, who have integrated the time we have at the winter solstice, when we go into the deepest calm, the deepest yin, the deepest balance, I see that those people, at least those of my students who have a very good foundation of yin, find it much easier to express a healthy yang when it’s full-on action in summer. That is, a yang without chaos, but with a bubbling joy in life and a deep inner calm.

That’s what you’re talking about here, and it’s what makes it so exciting for any human being to learn about the seasonal rituals that our ancestors have celebrated for so many years. And you can make these seasonal rituals a little study of their own: look at what the differences are, and here I’m thinking of the big eight, the eight festivals of the year. How were they celebrated in the Celtic tradition, how were they celebrated in the Egyptian tradition, how were they celebrated in our tradition? And then perhaps you do something yourself around these rituals, to remind yourself how Mother Earth, how Gaia, how Maha Terra shows herself, she who is the foundation for how we’re built, and the foundation for our own nature.

Because remember that every building block your body consists of has come from the earth. Every carbon atom, every water molecule: it isn’t just something that has arisen in you; it’s something you’ve received from Mother Earth, and it’s part of you. So your blueprint rhythm is already in you. It’s just that we adults, through our lifestyle, have gradually moved so far away from the natural rhythms that our building blocks come from, and that Mother Earth and nature show us.

So finding a way back into contact with these rhythms is something I’d recommend to absolutely everyone. And on top of that come these eight seasonal rituals that shamans and others celebrate: you can tag along with those who hold rituals like these, celebrate them, and think through why these rituals are there. What does this have to do with me? What might I need to turn my attention to in this seasonal ritual? I think that can be very helpful in the process of finding a fuller and more joyful life.

It has definitely helped me, and you too, Amina, and many, many others. But it takes a bit of attention, because nothing here comes by itself. Even though we’re perfectly built to begin with, that doesn’t mean we can just close our eyes and say: I’m perfect and everything’s fine. That would be like saying in the mirror, “Every day things get better and better”, like a mantra, without anything happening. That’s spray paint on rust.

So that’s one of the reasons I love these seasonal rituals so much. And in our tradition, when students come into the senior shaman training, they join my seasonal rituals, which are really a much more advanced version. There we move on from the cultural concepts into the magical principles of the rituals, and we do deep development and deep healing through the rituals. I love doing that. It’s something I look forward to every time, and we do it eight times a year.

Amina: Yes, it’s absolutely spectacular to get to be part of. You have to start somewhere, but this just goes deeper and deeper.

Your own summer solstice ritual

Pål-Esben: That’s what makes it so exciting. And there’s so much literature and knowledge about this out there on the internet that you can start doing it yourself, at home. It’s as simple as that. We’re around the summer solstice now, and even if you’re listening to this at the beginning of July, the sun is still very strong.

So why not get out the fire pit and light a fire? And think a little about the gratitude you feel for the light and the sun, for having food. And then you can do a ritual where you actively let go: you send into the fire what you don’t want to take with you further into the cycle of the year. It might be pain, it might be stress, it might be discomfort, it might be resistance. It might be behaviour that brings you into suffering.

Some people choose to write it down on a sheet of paper, on a slip of paper: the things they want to let go of and not take with them further into the cycle of the year. Then they crumple it up and give it to the fire. You don’t need a fire pit or a physical fire; you can also use a candle. Anyone can do this, anywhere. It’s just about taking an hour, sitting down and thinking these things through, and it’s a very uncomplicated way to start.

You make your own little ritual for each summer solstice. And then at the end of July, beginning of August, we have Lughnasa, which is the first harvest ritual. Then we have the autumn equinox, where we learn from what we’ve been through so far in the seasonal cycle, let go of what we don’t want to take with us into a new seasonal cycle, and prepare ourselves for Samhain. Samhain is around 1 November, and it’s both a conception ritual and a death ritual, where we begin the new seasonal cycle.

And it’s totally spectacular, when you open yourself up to these things, how much it can give you in life, and how much help you can get from it. For me it’s totally spectacular.

Starting small

Amina: Yes, it’s something quite different from a good feeling that passes when the ritual is over. It’s almost as if it only begins as you come out of the ritual. It really is a rhythm you can carry on riding, and you feel the deeper contact with what we’re really doing. I didn’t even think it existed, and I don’t think the average person can even imagine it. I certainly couldn’t.

And I started out myself by becoming aware of the different seasons and seasonal rituals. I think the first time was in wintertime, around the winter solstice. I didn’t really know what to do, so I searched a bit on the internet, and then I wrote something I wanted to let go of on a slip of paper, and then I sat outside in the snow, wearing my slippers, and burned it with a lighter.

You just start small. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. And that’s the whole point: that you start and do something or other for yourself. And as I said, there’s loads of stuff if you search on the internet; you’ll find tips on how to do it, what the season represents, and questions you can ask yourself. It’s so easily available. And it can be a way to start the journey. Once you’ve perhaps been through the first round and done this yourself, you may think: How can I do this in a slightly bigger setting? Perhaps you’ll find someone who holds these rituals, and then things begin to build.

From nature-based cultures to the hamster wheel

Pål-Esben: And this is something our modern world, modern human beings, have completely forgotten, but it was incredibly important for our ancestors, who were much more closely connected to nature than we are. Look at the really old cultures, the ones that aren’t based on a patriarchal way of thinking or on religious dogmas, but are real nature-based cultures. One example is what we find among the Aboriginal people of Australia, before the white man came in and destroyed their whole culture. They were deeply, deeply connected to nature. They lived in harmony with the seasons.

Even though the seasons in Australia are a little different from what we have up here in the north, they lived in harmony with the seasons. And these seasonal rituals, or similar kinds of rituals that they held, which fitted their cycle, were an important part not only of binding the tribe together, but also of celebrating our access to Mother Earth and what Mother Earth gives us. They were also a chance to reset their own rhythms in relation to Mother Earth.

But then patriarchy began to dominate our cultures, which started two, three, four thousand years ago. The masculine began to take over from the feminine, and men suddenly became the ones in charge. Then religion came in and poisoned this whole world, with its merciless dogmas about hell, with fear and demons and all these things. That makes us more and more distant from all this, and today we live in a culture whose umbilical cord to the natural rhythms has been cut, cut off from what Mother Earth shows us. And so we’re on this hamster wheel that drives us on; we always have things to do, and in the end it’s a constant rush running on autopilot inside us.

So why not take the opportunity, now that we have these seasonal rituals eight times a year, to take an hour, or a day, relax our shoulders and think it through: Why was this day or this time so important for my ancestors? What can I do to come into deeper contact and find my way back to the natural rhythms? Just asking yourself questions like these can be totally mind-blowing. And it’s a step in finding the way out of this autopilot, out of this hamster wheel that brings so much stress and so much suffering, numbness and emptiness to modern human beings. It isn’t difficult.

Amina: No. And we’re used to thinking: OK, it’s summer, and then it’s autumn, then it’s winter, then it’s spring. But thinking about it: What is summer? Why is there summer? What’s actually happening? Those are the kinds of questions I’ve begun to ask myself, and it opens up something more. It opens up a deeper contact that we’re actually deeply anchored in.

And when we say Mother Earth: OK, Mother Earth, that’s nice. Mother Earth is deep and lovely, it gives you a good feeling. But what does it actually mean? Why do we say Mother Earth? After all, she’s the one we get all our food from, all our security, everything that happens on this planet. We wouldn’t have survived a day without her; we wouldn’t even be here. And the sun and the moon, and how everything fits together. It’s so easy for us humans to think: OK, a tree is there, a human being is there, and we’re not connected.

And our ancestors knew this, and they didn’t have any choice either, if they wanted to survive. They had to live in step with nature; they couldn’t pop down to the supermarket for their milk and bread. So there’s something beautiful about that too, even though there are surely pros and cons to living in any culture. But asking: Why Mother Earth? Why summer? And what does it have to do with me as a human being? That can also help us come out of this numbness.

Mother Earth is more than magma

Pål-Esben: Yes. The first time I heard the words Mother Earth, a long, long time ago, when I was probably very young, I got the idea that Mother Earth, yeah, yeah, that’s our planet. OK, our globe consists of magma inside, at least that’s what they say, and it’s very hot, lots of hot stuff and magma.

Then at school you learn how the different layers of the globe are built up, how it works, and why the lava comes up. Then you have the crust, and on the outside of the crust trees grow, and the water is like this and like that. It’s a very static, engineering way of looking at things.

In the same way, modern medicine tries to describe the human being as a biological machine with certain properties. But we probably all have a feeling that we’re something more than a biological machine. We’re something more. I think every human being can feel that: that we’re something more than just a biological machine.

We have something deep within us. Some call it our being, some call it our deep inner voice, some call it our deep inner nature, some call it our soul. These things have many names. But it’s something more. It’s something this body of ours is built on and around. Our body, that is, the shell, is the user interface between what lies deep within us, call it our soul, and this material, rather crazy reality we live in. Our body, our eyes, our senses are this user interface between our real self, our soul, the deeper voice in us, and the trees and other people.

The Earth is a being

Pål-Esben: And if we see it that way, we can also have an idea that this globe of ours might be something similar. As long as human beings see our globe as a mechanical thing, made up of this layer and that layer, magma, with the crust on top, and water there, and then our biosphere, it’s a very limited, technical way of seeing it.

If you’re a being that your body is built around, don’t you think Mother Earth is a being too, one that everything we see, all the physical components such as water and soil and trees, is built around? As an engineer, I’d say it has to be the same. That follows if the microcosm is like the macrocosm, and everything is mirrored in all its parts.

You have Thoth, the Egyptian Thoth; I can never get my tongue round his Greek name, Hermes Trismegistus. He described this: As within, so without; as above, so below. Everything is mirrored in everything.

So if I have a soul, and you, Amina, have a soul, and you, dear listener, have a soul, and let’s call that soul our being, then everything that exists will have a being, or be part of a being. That means the planet Earth, our globe, Tellus, is a being. And that being is what interacts with everything that is created around it, such as water and trees. In just the same way, your body is a result of what is built around your being, of what radiates your being in daily life.

And then your relationship to your existence changes completely overnight, the day you recognise exactly what I’m talking about here. Because then we can relate to this not only when we talk to people; we can do the same when we relate to our globe. That means: next time you’re out in the forest, or walking barefoot on the grass, or out on the smooth rocks by the sea, you can remember that what’s under your feet is a living being. It’s just as alive as your being.

And everything that arises from this being, the trees, the mountains, the sea, is part of that being. So when you put your arms around a tree, you’re not just putting your arms around the tree; you’re just as much putting your arms around the being of our globe, which has several names. Some call her Gaia. Out among those who observe us, she goes by another name, Terra, and in our tradition we name her Maha Terra, the great Terra. She is a living being that we as shamans can learn to interact with. That’s how we can learn to make use of our greatest and most comprehensive healer, but first we have to learn to understand her and learn to interact with her.

And then you’ll see that this poor word, Mother Earth, which is often used as if it just meant the grass and the trees and all that, actually stands for something completely different.

And we can go on to the moon, which is also part of Maha Terra. What is the moon? Why does the moon follow the orbit it has, and not the orbit it would normally have had around the earth, that is, around the equator, if this had happened in a natural way? Why is it at an angle to the equator? How was the moon created? That’s perhaps a topic we’ll take up in the autumn, when we begin to get into what our listeners want to know more about.

So, sorry, but I get very enthusiastic when I start talking about this. I get totally stoked when it dawns on you: Wow, aha, so that’s how it all fits together. That’s why nature is so important. We’re not dealing with some technical, biological things; we’re dealing with something so much more intense and so much more far-reaching.

Beings, not souls

Pål-Esben: The last thing I wanted to say about this now is that we humans have a soul. The globe, that is, Maha Terra, doesn’t have a soul in the same way as us humans, but another form of being. It isn’t the case that everything out there that lives and is intelligent has a soul; it varies. We humanoids have a soul, which is a very special form of being. The planets have their own forms of being, which are billions of years old, and which come from before the universe was created. Our galaxy has a being of its own, and our universe has a being of its own. But they aren’t souls; they’re other forms.

And that’s also where it gets very interesting if you practise astrology, for example, and relate to the planets. Then you no longer relate to Jupiter as a planet. You relate to Jupiter as the being that Jupiter is. And then astrology becomes exciting, for the first time. Otherwise it’s a mathematical thing, which personally I find very uninteresting.

It’s about relating to the beings that are out there: living beings that are much older than your soul, if we’re going to use the time aspect, much smarter and much wiser than a soul can ever come close to being, much more complex, much more comprehensive. We’re like small children; our souls are like small children compared with their mother, in this case the one we, within our sphere of consciousness, call Gaia or Maha Terra.

Maha Terra’s patience and the great resets

Pål-Esben: And then we’re like little rascals who think we’re so incredibly smart and intelligent, who think we’re the most intelligent being in this universe. Monkeys and primates, that’s what we are. Little toddlers wandering around on top of this mother, Maha Terra, this being. And how patient is she with us? My God, she must be the most patient of all.

And then she comes to a point where she’s had enough of the madness of these toddlers, these kids crawling around who think they understand everything, and who invent nuclear weapons and all these things to destroy Maha Terra and wreck everything. Then we come to a point where she’s had enough. The last time was about 12,800 years ago, when she did a full reset. And it happens either through an asteroid striking, or through the supervolcanoes: OK, now I’ve had enough, now I’m doing a reset, removing all these primates, these toddlers, and starting a new phase of new life that gets the chance to establish itself.

So Maha Terra is a hyperintelligent being that can be patient for thousands and thousands of years. And when she’s had enough, these resets come. That’s what we’re facing as humanity right now. We’re facing the question of whether Maha Terra needs to do a new reset, which in that case would very probably happen through the supervolcanoes erupting. Then we’d get a new Fimbulwinter, where it’s completely dark around us and everything dies, and perhaps only a few hundred thousand people survive. The alternative is that we come to our senses and remove all these lunatics we have as leaders, like Trump and Putin and company. After all, it’s us humans who choose these fools.

There needs to be a full reset in how we think about dealing with ourselves as human beings and with the earth we live on. Only then can we create what esoteric thought calls paradise, or the new world, these things we talked a little about in recent episodes. But it’s our responsibility. There’s no magical angel or alien coming to do this for us. We’re the ones who have to take this responsibility. If we don’t, Maha Terra, this being, will bring us into a reset, as has happened several times before.

And the humanity we live in now, the culture that has arisen over the last 12,000 years, is the sixth cycle of humanoid forms like us to exist on this planet. Before us there were many other exciting things that existed here, which we may be able to talk about in a later episode.

So, that’s all from me. I get so enthusiastic when I get to talk about these things, because they’re so important to me. Nature is so important, because it can show a human being the way from where they stand today, whether they’re ill, whether they’re empty inside, or whether they have a life they don’t feel very content with.

Relating anew to the being beneath us

Pål-Esben: You have contact with this gigantic being as soon as you take off your socks, go out onto the lawn, close your eyes and simply try to make contact. That’s the start of relating anew to this fantastic being. And then you see how meaningless it is to say: I’m going to go for a walk in the forest and listen to a podcast, or go jogging, or take the dog for a walk. That isn’t rich contact with Maha Terra. For that you need your full attention.

Through forest bathing, through walking consciously on the lawn, through digging in your garden, which is lovely in summer: how aware are you that you’re digging into this mind-blowing being? It’s billions of years old, and it has lived longer than your soul, since before your soul was even thought of. It becomes a different way of relating to what’s beneath us. What do you think about this, Amina?

Amina: Wow, I’m thinking many things. I’m thinking, number one: restoring that contact with Maha Terra, with Mother Earth, with nature, starts with us, each and every one of us. And it starts with, and continues with, teaching our children to love nature from an early age. If I could go back in time, I’d have done it a bit differently, but everything happens for a reason. It’s about teaching the little ones, the future leaders of the world, to love nature, by creating contact with nature.

And I just want to encourage you to play this episode again, listen to what Pål-Esben is saying, and after that go out into nature, and not just be in nature, but be with nature. Because then, by thinking these things through, something may arise that hasn’t arisen before, and you can get a completely different connection, a completely different contact with Maha Terra, with Mother Earth. It isn’t just: now I’m going out into the forest. Gradually, if you cultivate it, something more will arise, something deeper: a recognition, a contact, a support, a primal sense of safety that lies there. So those are my thoughts.

The beings of the seasons: avatars of Maha Terra

Pål-Esben: And it’s totally spectacular when these doors begin to open. That’s also an important part of the primordial shamanic process of development we take people and students through in our tradition: opening these doors, so that you gradually get more and more contact with these rhythms. They lie deeply hidden underneath, but they’re actually so accessible once you just open your eyes to them and learn to interact with them.

And one of the ways is to start with the seasons. Because each season has its atmosphere, its vibration, its music, its being. And the beings of the seasons are avatars of Maha Terra. They’re also living beings, but they’re avatars, parts of Maha Terra. By learning to interact with these eight beings, you learn to interact much more deeply with Maha Terra herself.

That’s one of the ways we use the seasonal rituals: to teach my students to gain access to these beings. Because it’s much easier to learn to form a relationship with the being of the season than with Maha Terra herself. But it’s about starting with these things. It’s about, I think, being willing to shift perspective, and to think about your interaction with your own body, your own soul, your own deep inner voice, but also about how you begin to interact with what actually allows us to live: Mother Earth, Maha Terra, Gaia.

It’s totally spectacular. And it’s spectacular when you begin to realise it, when you begin to feel these things. Then it’s just as if you get goosebumps. I think: What? Is this what it’s really about? Is this the very blueprint rhythm of my existence? Yes, I suppose it is.

Retuning: from rowdy music to the blueprint rhythm

Pål-Esben: So if you’re ill, if you’re sad, if you’re depressed, if you’re empty inside, if you’re stressed, whatever it is that’s making you suffer, it suggests that your own rhythms are out of step with Maha Terra’s blueprint rhythms, which you’re built from, after all. That’s how you were when you were a newborn baby, laughing and squealing with unrestrained delight whenever your basic needs were met. As an adult, you’ve forgotten it; you’ve become numb to it.

Your music as an adult is a kind of rowdy death metal music, which makes you feel what you feel. But Maha Terra, Mother Earth, shows us the perfect blueprint rhythm. And if you’re willing to open yourself up to Mother Earth and Maha Terra, and really open yourself to interacting with her, making contact with her, her blueprint rhythms can rub off on your rowdy music. Your music becomes more and more connected to Mother Earth’s blueprint music. And through that, the emptiness you have in you will be filled more and more with something other than emptiness. Your low mood will change into something other than low mood.

That’s how shamans since the dawn of time have used nature to retune themselves. But unfortunately modern human beings have forgotten how it’s done, so it has to be relearned. That’s what we’re doing.

Amina: Yes. And one last thing I want to say about making contact with nature: I remember when I was going to do it myself; I think it was in a conversation I had with you too, Pål-Esben. I thought: OK, how am I supposed to make contact with nature? I can’t establish the connection. Then you said something like: But you’re making contact with me now, aren’t you? Or when you make contact with a friend? Or when you’re present with your child? Thinking that way: start with how you’re present with another human being, in a conversation, and do the same with nature, do the same with Mother Earth. You can start that way too. That’s something that helped me a great deal, anyway.

Pål-Esben: Yes, because it doesn’t need to be so complicated at the start. And if you find this meaningful, you can begin to learn properly how it’s done. Then there are several kinds of methods, rituals and things to think about, so that these parts can open up. You can also use it actively in your own process of development, your own healing process, and of course also to be able to help others, for that matter.

A summer greeting

Pål-Esben: So that was a long conversation, a summer greeting. But this is something you can ponder a little, now that it’s so light, and this shows itself so clearly in nature, where everything is in bloom, and the apples are coming, and the tomatoes are coming, and the grass is growing, and everything in your garden is green.

How powerful is that? How incredibly powerful is that? Nature is radiating food all around us. So why shouldn’t I be an active part of it, interact with and embrace all this radiance, and become part of it, so that I can become a more whole human being, a more whole being? Because the more whole I am, the more joyful life feels.

So that’s the impulse I want to leave you with, dear listener. It’s so simple, really, and it lies right outside our front door. So, yes. We should say a little about starting up again in the autumn, because now we’re taking a summer break. We’re taking a summer break with our own projects, and when we start the podcast up again, we’ll slide into a new kind of theme, with a good many episodes. We have many exciting topics we’re going to take up, and many of them come from you, our listeners.

Amina: Yes, and keep sending things in. If you have thoughts, questions, tips for topics, something you’d like to know more about, or questions about things we’ve talked about before, keep sending them in. We really appreciate it.

Pål-Esben: That’s really the reason we make this podcast: to inspire people to see that it’s possible to find a solution to the situation they’re in, whatever it is, and that the world is so much bigger and so much more exciting than they might ever dream. The possibilities are there, in every situation, to find the way out. And with the shamanic way of thinking, this is of course much easier than if you go the traditional routes. That’s what we’ve tried to inspire through your story here, Amina: to show what’s possible in such a short time. It goes way beyond anything you could imagine.

It means a lot to us when more people find the podcast. We’re human too, after all. The more people we can inspire, the more fun it is. And the more people interact with us, send us messages and ask questions, the more we notice that we have a voice that can do some good for our fellow human beings around us. That’s the intention. It’s also very motivating. It puts fuel in our tank, and gives us the drive to keep going.

Here in Germany it’s going to be 36 degrees Celsius this weekend, so things are really boiling now. Even though I live in a house of oak and clay that’s more than 200 years old, it’s starting to get seriously hot in our house too. So next year we’re thinking about installing air conditioning.

Amina: Yes, that sounds sensible.

Pål-Esben: It’s 28.6 degrees in my office right now, so it’s time to go down to the ground floor. I think it’s only 24 degrees down there. So, a nice problem to have, you might say, if you live somewhere cold.

Amina: Yes, I’d say so.

Pål-Esben: But we all have our challenges, Amina. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.