Broadly Speaking: Meaning, Mysticism and Manifestation

[Music] [Music] good evening everyone i'm chantel weatherall and i am so happy that despite covid playing its usual games with us you've still been able to join us tonight for this live stream of our broadly speaking talk on meaning manifestation and mysticism before we go any further i would like to respectfully acknowledge that tonight's conversation is live streaming to you here from the wheeler center on unseated sovereign land the event is coming from the lands of the cullen nation and i would like to respectfully acknowledge their elders past and present and also send my love and acknowledgement to all mob wherever you're watching from i'd like to say happy nadoc week and that i hope that wherever you are even if you are stuck in covert lockdown you're well and being able to celebrate the wonderful contribution of first nations people to this beautiful cultural life of australia now i also have some acknowledgements and thank yous tonight's event is presented in partnership by the wheeler center the capital and rmit culture and the broadly speaking series is supported by christina campbell pretty am and family and also by the copyright agency cultural fund so meaning manifestation and mysticism we know that for eons human beings have lent on various practices to help us find meaning in the world now um there's been a real resurgence and reclaiming of those practices recently but be that astrology tarot manifestation it really seems to be something that's been very popular among women non-binary folk and queer communities and as well communities of color these practices can help provide spiritual and practical direction for our lives and pathways to help us find our own version of success i'm really lucky to have a wonderful panel of guests with us tonight who i am delighted to introduce firstly we have journalist and uh skeptical believer amal howard hi amal thank you so much for joining us and then we also have creative producer tarot oracle and all around superstar erica mccallman hi erica hello we have podcaster entrepreneur and self-described spooky bench uh lillian ankanan also known and loved as flex mummy hi lil and we are also delighted to be joined by practicing mystic poet and musician lay the mystic hi lay hi so we are going to talk tonight and try to unpack the joy and purpose of mystical pursuits and consider the intersections of spirituality self-awareness and uh maybe explore some of the roots of this becoming so mainstream right now now i know that i can't log into instagram without seeing something about my horoscope or manifesting and it's become pretty mainstream and you're hearing a lot of terminology being just used and thrown around but when we really come back down to it it's something that i consider a personal daily practice for me so i wanted to ask you on the panel what does um mysticism mean in your life as a practice and what does it add to your life perhaps i could start with you lay would that be okay yeah that's fine so uh mysticism is a practice and the way that it functions in my life is an active engagement with anything that is mysterious so it's a process of taking myself to the edge of what's knowable and being comfortable with being vulnerable and engaging with things that i don't understand that i don't completely have worked out in order to dispel mystery so aligning closely with mystery to practically engage with it and investigate it from that point i love that i love that you're your performing name is lay the mystic but you're also coming at this from the point of view of curiosity and not claiming mastery that's beautiful thank you lay who'd like to share with us their practice of mysticism and what it adds to their life uh lil absolutely so i myself am a big fan of tarot manifestation and astrology and i guess i've been drawn to mysticism as probably a reactive response to how logically time and time again so um i often find similar to what lay said something about the unknowable something about investigating and interrogating the things that you could never know to its full extent and surrendering to that process i found to be far more lucrative for me than trying to logic and rationalize my way through life trying to make sense of things i could never possibly understand it's like um like a healthy delusion and it's a very uh ins practice for me i don't like to convince anyone of mysticism i don't like to use it as a tool for connection i don't hear that somebody else is into astrology and deem them my person deem them like-minded i'm really not interested it very much is a self-serving um centering practice i love that that's so empowering erica can i pass to you in the meantime sure um so for me i think my practices which which cover sort of western occult and astrology and tarot and just constant learning and also being a first nations person living on this land as well it's about being the deepest most human most authentic representation of myself um humans are miraculous in how creative we are we actually don't realize our own power to manifest and create our own realities collectively we kind of give it away a little bit um so when when i'm looking at the cards or i'm looking at the stars or i'm talking to ancestors or making connections between different creative and cultural practices of other people i am yeah i just see sort of the miracle of humanity and our creative power i think creativity is what sets us apart from every other creature on this earth i love that and you i can't um pass without mentioning this wonderful mystical accoutrements you have in the background there can you talk to us about those um well i'd love to introduce to you uh belinda she is the crocodile that one of my clients named belinda because i told him that i didn't know her name yet so that's stuck um then back here probably just grab it so this is a local artist in darwin called frank gautier and he just made a ouija board that also has mob language on it and i saw it and i laughed like a drain so i absolutely bought it and i've never used it for anything mystical it just sits there to remind me that life's also inherently funny as well too but and i've got my cards here i always have a deck near my desk that i play with every so often and of course read for other people as well too so i keep those things around me and they're part of my everyday life are they almost talismans in your workspace yeah i think they kind of probably going back to that theme of authenticity and sort of deep um understanding and reminder of who you are i i like to look at them and they they remind me of who i who i am separate from my my job or my other responsibilities or my other achievements as well to the the kind of a way to connect to to myself um and just also all of us to remind us that yeah you were meant for more than to wake up work pay bills and die you've got another mission on this earth um and part of a living is finding out what that mission is and it's a never-ending adventure and a journey as well too so it's a way to lift my spirits hard agree on all of the above but one thing that's coming through really loud and clear for me hearing you each speak about mysticism and your relationship to it is that it's a really empowering thing for you can you talk to me about mysticism as self-care do you think mysticism is a form of self-care for you i can probably jump in on that one because i have clients as well because i also read turret cards for others professionally and i think that absolutely i've got friends who check out the cards before they go on a date or i have a daily card just as a way to understand the themes or ideas or energies that are coming into their day but absolutely something like a tarot reading is is a practice of self-care one of my teachers told me basically half of your tarot reading is just listening to someone else and letting them talk about their life and helping them build a narrative and have tools to navigate it in a safe private space we existed before counsellors and psychologists you used to toddle off to the village witch and have a cup of tea and talk about your troubles or talk about the things that are preoccupying you and come up with ways um to navigate those issues all those joyful things as well too which is probably why i settled on the slogan of empowering tarot for everybody everybody has access to it whether or not they're a believer or a skeptic um it's there for you as well oh i love that i absolutely love that and uh lil i saw you had something to add on that and i think it's so much part of your um your brand is that when i when i want something to make me feel empowered i'm like lil's gotta have a little something for me for that um i was actually just coughing but i i often walk at the phrase self-care just because of how juvenile the ins has made it seem you know like a little band-aid solution for a greater issue or a band-aid of the symptom and not the problem but upon reflection i think that often when i'm operating out of fear or stress insecurity or anxiety i do seek out my cards i do seek out otherworldly insight to kind of justify or rationalize what i'm going through in a way that only i understand i feel as though often when i am looking outside of myself for answers they only help to sort of validate that really superficial surface part of me who needs to feel good in that moment but something about knowing you have the agency to dig a little bit deeper to speak a language that only you know with yourself to figure out what you need in this moment i guess it is self-care of some sort like a self-soothing practice definitely absolutely and i i love that you use the word agency because i think going inward is so empowering because as you say you're not giving your power away you're not looking to somebody else to tell you and it's a it's a personal practice i love that and lay what would you say as far as the self-care as much as that phrase has been rinsed out element of all of this for you um i think that self-care is a conditioning practice that i've become accustomed to just the understanding of so i have a practice in prophecy mainly um so i work with tarot cards but i ask people not to speak because the more i know about them the less of things i can see so i just ask them to sit down not talk and i talk for a long time and completely and utterly admit to not knowing what any of it's about just translating um and in order to be able to do that my self-care needs to happen prior to engaging with mysticism as a practice so uh coming to a deep understanding of what's influencing me what my wants are what i'm thinking about what's affecting and impacting me before i um allow my feelings to be projected onto somebody and then the practice of mysticism kind of turns into this like smooth flow from that point so as soon as self-care practices fall off for me i'm a mess i'm a mess with um within every different area of mysticism um so yeah i love that i love that it's uh it demands a discipline of self-care from you so that you arrive fully resourced to be able to give rather than center yourself in that exchange with somebody you're working with that's a really interesting angle on self-care i think a lot of the time it's positioned as a crisis response and i really love a lot of somatic practice which is about pre-resourcing and topping the engine up so that you don't actually get to the point where you're running on fumes and i love the generosity aspect of what you've just said which is that you pre-resource so that you can be generous so that you can be sharing from your overflow when your cup is full wonderful um i am really keen to make sure amal can i can i actually just go back to the very first question absolutely i thought the answers were so spot on and i and i think it relates to the second question about self-care mysticism is really inquiry you know it's it's it's really um uh you know inquiring to the mystery of things unseen so that we can better know ourselves and who we are and it's deeply personal i i don't know anybody who is deeply and truly and genuinely mystical who showcases that it's such a private uh feeling and you know the transformative aspect of that is something as well that is shown in who you become rather than what you show people on instagram um you know there's a lot of uh performative spirituality and i don't think genuine mysticism is that and i i i don't consider my i don't know if i am a mystic i think that i am someone who is definitely curious and a seeker and i i absolutely love tarot cards and anything that i consider a tool that allows me to deep dive into myself because you're in a journey it is related to the external world but i i think there is a lot of focus on external products and tools and props and we are completely losing sight when we do that of what it's meant to actually do and and so whenever people talk to me about these things i'm always curious if they are really seeing change in their lives and how private they are and how quiet they are about that change so that would be my my thought on mysticism and self-care it's self-care because if you have that depth of uh understanding that the point isn't to have all the answers but to seek growth and transformation then you will absolutely be enriched by that it's it's going to make you better in all aspects of your life and you know you don't become somebody who is drenched in blame of other things and anger that the world isn't the way you want it to be and people aren't behaving how you need them to be uh it takes courage to be a true seeker in life because you have to be comfortable with despair and joy and also learn how to find that that even kill and understand that that is much better for you than highs that feel great for five minutes but are over once you've finished the workshop so i wouldn't say that holy mackerel sorry i have a lot of time to think about my hands up i'm saying holy mackerel because there were multiple moments that you you floored me with the points that you just made i would like to circle back on the idea of being a seeker being a practice of accountability how's about that when people are continually uh disparaging these practices as you know frivolous activities i love amal the way you frame that is actually having the courage to continue to seek the truth especially to seek inward the truth being an a practice with deep accountability taking accountability for your journey through life and the outcomes that come from it wow amazing thank you so much you've all mentioned i think or at least three of you have mentioned tarot that's probably something that many people are familiar with and um i just wondered if any of you have a cultural connection or family connection with any sort of mystical practices i know myself i'm a belize creole woman that means that my family have mixed ancestry with european ancestors but primarily my mystical cultural connection comes from my west african family and it's incredible how that carries over despite this clipped english accent it has it echoes in my life still today and i find myself doing things and then i will have conversations with my elders and they will say you know what you're doing is dot dot dot and i and i trace the lineage all the way back to something ancestral and it's deeply comforting for me and it makes me feel very rooted in that ancestry wherever i whichever beautiful shore i'm allowed to wash up on um do any of you have ancestral practices that you uh can trace your connections back to or maybe you have ancestral mystical practices that you're not familiar with i'm super interested in that i saw you nodding vigorously amal yeah i mean i'm arab so we come from a long line of priestesses and uh magicians and and desert you know nomads who who love the mystery and and you know obviously sufism is is a huge component of islam for a lot of people and you know for me it was growing up knowing that we could read our coffee cups to divine information about our days or weeks ahead and of course i've revised my understanding of sooth saying in older age i've realized that it's much more useful to use these things to almost get advice you know to look inward and it's a mirror it's not really someone being definitive and faithful and saying this is going to happen tomorrow but you know one of the reasons i was so moved by my own research was i realized how much history there was behind me and my ancestry traveled behind me as i wrote because it was almost like me honoring where i've come from and and not feeling that shame that so often in the west we're expected to feel because we we want to believe or have a deep belief in something other than ourselves other than you know the 3d reality this idea that there is you know mysterious forces that are at work in our lives and that we can commune with them and understand ourselves better and improve our lives i think is quite profound but it's not new this is something we've always been doing and culturally it is flavored accordingly you know and i think that that's just a really beautiful thing beautiful culturally flavored accordingly what a wonderful phrase um erica talk to me about that that wonderful ouija board is such a beautiful example of two cultures coming together talk to me about your mystical elements of your cultural ancestry how they may or may not be present in your practices today it's a really good point that you've made that i just hadn't thought about before yes that ouija board is very demonstrative of um the two universes that i that i come from um in terms of my cultural upbringing um i grew up in the outer suburbs of melbourne um everybody probably knows that great documentary about my family which is catherine kim that's that's the background that i come from my mother has exactly the same accent i've got the daggy stepfather we've even had relatives who lived near where they shot um so in terms of mysticism and and having access to my aboriginal ancestry we were very cut off we're a very we're a forcibly assimilated family um so part of finding that that culture finding that country not hearing those ancestors that's still a process that myself and my family are undertaking and that will take generations to to put together the pieces and and figure out what the new version of being a baladang nong person is as a result of colonization but my grandmother was also a huge influence on me she was a woman who was anglican but she believed that jesus was a great guy with some fantastic ideas and it didn't matter whether or not he was divine she also used to give me the scientific explanations for his miracles and then she'd go in and teach ri classes and say exactly the same thing in schools i have no idea how she got away with that one and she was eventually kind of pushed out of her anglican church because she stood up in front of the congregation and defended buffy the vampire slayer um when she when that was show was criticized because she used to watch it with me but uh so yeah but we talk about closing yeah i love you nana she's an ancestor now um but she i loved that our conversations meant that i i picked up a book on astrology when i was nine and i was hooked um i found books on witchcraft um during the previous occult revival which happened in the 90s and realized that that was what i'd been practicing all along i found places like the theosophical bookshop in melbourne which has now moved to flinders lane and found books and ideas um that that really resonated with me and i kept on pulling that thread as much as you could with the limited internet that we had so it's still a process of discovery but i think from my background and from my practice and for the people who've influenced me the mob who've embraced me and from my family and from the other wacky people i've met along the way we talk about closing the gap i live my life in the gap i can tell you all about the gap i can tell you all about how where who's missing what point and who's missing which bits of information because i feel like i'm sitting at the intersection of a great conversation that needs to happen but also it's a big continuum colonization started in europe it started before the witch burnings the first people oppressed and colonised were the europeans and then hurt people went on and hurt people so that's how i see those practices coming together it's tracing one lineage and figuring out what got smashed and broken and occluded and then going down another lineage and seeing where the damage was wrought as well too and figuring out how to maybe come together or figure out how to heal there's definitely a lot of things that have been missing there as well too so yeah that's that's my mishmash of a mystical existence that is gosh i i there was so much in that erica thank you so much i think it's really fascinating to me whenever you talk about mysticism that there is almost a way that it's exoticized so it's uh it's made out i speak sometimes to some of my anglo friends who say oh you know i wish i had a interesting culture and i'm like have you been to ireland where your answer's pretty deep mysticism and fat just just because you know i think that's the thing capitalism and colonialism the machinery robbed everybody of their connection to culture and that is why our rediscovery of these practices is so threatening to the machinery so when i'm doing my tarot i'm like put my little black beret on i'm fighting the power at the same time love it and lil have you um you practice and i love that you also offer people a way in i think that so much of your writing and so many of the wonderful things that you share and your wonderful business um flex factory like your card sets are gentle invitations into a world of mysticism for people who potentially may have been separated from those cultural introductions talk to me about giving people a soft landing and an easy way in i mean perhaps they might be but it's never their intention i see the way people are so rough when it comes to spirituality and mysticism and i do not want to hold anybody's hand through that process i feel as though it requires um a general interest and i don't want to i don't want to be the person who sells you the dream and says okay well maybe i'll start manifesting because something about the way you've projected your life suits me and i want to do what you've done no you're the wrong person another one i want to be speaking to so i i do recognize how my approach to living fully and being intuitive um overlaps with spirituality but it's not my intent to be the silver spoon to a bunch of people who want to feel good also i wanted to make a point about what we were talking about just prior about uh our own cult spirituality and i have vivid memories of my mum being so anti-west african spirituality obviously colonization little blur so staunch chris staunch christians or staunch muslims anybody who practiced african spirituality was regarded as like a witch a voodoo practitioner like synonymous with the devil like synonymous with the bad stuff and i would always find it really interesting how my mom and a lot of my relatives would not want to make us aware of the fact that african spirituality existed so they would kind of diminish it or demean it like it's not serious it's very silly it's child's play but in the same breath be so fearful of it be so aware when they feel as though they've been hexed or somebody's done blood magic on them so i'm like how do you reconcile these two very incompatible belief systems um without making us hyper aware that one exists and you want us to have nothing to do with it fascinating anyway it's very hard to speak to um west african parents about you know the intersections of colonization and christianity and going back to their roots i don't want to have that conversation but very interesting also to the point though i think the reason why i struggle a lot to broach conversations like really genuine honest conversations about um intuitive living and spirituality and mysticism is because of the way i know my peers have been introduced to them as well like manifestation is always a get-rich-quick scheme to get that partner get that job um get get that holiday live a four-day work week it's so uh superficial at its core and i feel as though there's a layer of critical thinking that is rarely ever applied um same with tarot i know if any of you are on tick tock or if anybody watching is on tick tock there is this niche called tarot tick tock where these readers who are often i am let me not talk about their expertise but they'll come on and they'll make these really blanket readings about how goodness is coming your way and they'll pick up cards like they'll pick up the tower card and be like you're gonna have a great weekend with your besties and i'm like why are you why are you lying to these people and everybody's lapping it up and they'll those things like you know just click the click the follow button to receive this message i'm just like this is we are not we're not the same we're just not the same and so uh generally and part of even my hesitation with coming on this panel initially was that i didn't want to be somebody's conduit to spirituality i didn't want to be complicit in almost selling a lifestyle selling a belief system selling a dogma selling a doctrine because i just know that people aren't um they're just not delicate when they're holding centuries and centuries and centuries of social practices in their hands they're not serious and i want us to be serious i want things to be sacred i want them to be regarded with the respect they deserve but i also don't want to be the person who teaches people how to do that gosh some really incredible points about perhaps the downside of accessibility because i i'm always kind of caught on the fence with that one because as a person who uh through colonization and various other ills of um you know i call it wasp inc because when you when you have to say um you know white supremacist patriarchal color it's a lot it becomes a bit of a mouthful so i just call it wasping so when wasp inc has separated you from your culture then i have a huge sympathy for people who potentially are flailing you know searching for a way in and i want things to be accessible for people so that they can find a way in but then i absolutely will take your point about is it sacred if you're just giving it away without somebody doing the internal work and i guess that brings me on to another question i wanted to ask i'm always curious myself about um you know i some of the practices i've introduced into my life that i feel that i get great benefit from don't originate in my culture and i wonder sometimes whether there is a risk that i myself am commoditizing things and you know taking away what is precious and sacred about them through my lack of knowledge um how do you think you tread that line between being a learner and an enthusiast and a searcher without disrespecting other people's cultures does anyone want to take them i could say a thing i i also haven't i was just gonna say i i mean i have a huge section in my book about appropriation and interestingly it's the one section that keeps getting like you know published you know as an excerpt because i think people uh really don't understand the extent to which we have a problem when it comes to appropriation however there's a difference between appropriation and appreciation and for me what i always look for is the source of the information who's presenting it to me how did they go about presenting that information to me i i think i've learned a lot i i was probably very naive when i first started investigating i guess what you call the so-called new age practices that have come out and i realized that there's a lot of for example appropriation appropriation of like hindu gods and goddesses and i i do feel that that's starting to come up as an issue for people and i don't think it was a huge thing before i think a lot of uh oracle card decks and still they still do actually have a lot of hindu you know the hindu gods and goddesses and deities and i i think that i don't think we should be shutting off our culture to other people i don't i don't think that's the point it's that it can get downright dangerous and disrespectful when people are using it to make money and that's all they're doing and i i mean i give examples where it literally ends in death and so we have to be really careful about uh who is giving us this information where did they learn this knowledge and are they equipped to really pass it on respectfully or are they just trying to make money in a get rich quick kind of way because that is part of it and it's not always the case but i don't think that the solution is to never be curious and connect to other other ways of being i think that there is something very universal about these experiences but it comes down to the energy of that who's involved and why is my personal approach beautiful thank you this information that they've gathered i've seen the moment someone picks up you know a little a little right away tarot deck and suddenly they're a tarot reader and it's their practice and they will do tarot on you and you can receive that benefit through them the source i think that's when it becomes a slippery slope i think in private it's far easier to reconcile your approach to dipping your toes into other bits of spirituality because generally it's coupled with research of some sort i mean for instance i remember when i referenced a chakra briefly i knew about the seven african powers before i knew about the seven chakras so i was like wait is are we not talking about the same thing i'm confused and even then i don't know what the information is but i feel as though this battle to to own which this bit of spirituality and to separate those from others i mean none of us really are so entitled to it unless it's actually coming from your culture i feel as though the issue with new age spirituality is the fact that it a lot of it is just reappropriated stuff that's meant to be really accessible and really like sweet and like feel good and it's a direct response to the rigidity of traditional uh doctrines right and so i get it and it's it kind of feels counterintuitive no we're here for like good vibes and ease and then like but wait there's structure and you need to figure out where you got that from you need to critically think people are confused which and like we were mentioning earlier you'd hate to be the gatekeeper of anything to say that because you do not have a tie because you don't seem as genuine about your approach therefore you mustn't be allowed to participate but also what we've come from or what's happened the implication of that is now it's hard to create any boundaries between who can do what because everybody feels entitled to everything times um and there are a thousand and one ways to justify why somebody feels entitled to something that it's not that that is not theirs at all and there's heaps of debates about what practices should be closed and what practices should be opened um and i was on tick-tock the other day and there was this woman um i think she was hindu but she was saying that it should be a closed practice and somebody's saying well currently you're sitting on stolen land you have been assimilated up until this point on your life talking about what practices should be close or not you need to understand that your understanding of your own culture came through a colonized lens you're learning about it with when everybody else is learning about it and i was like this is too much we we cannot be fighting back and forth the layers with 60 second detox it's it's a lot but i don't think there's an answer to it but i feel as though the slippery slope should be as soon as you try and commodify it as soon as it becomes a tool to make money you need to be careful i think that's a really good rule of thumb i also love what was hinted at by both of you there around humility i think if you approach with humility you're probably going to stay on the right side of the line right did you have something to add as well leigh yeah definitely i think that it um it's the responsibility of anybody who's making the investigation to understand what they're investigating and when there are bits and pieces being from a larger ideology and from a larger system of belief in a system of understanding the world because as soon as you take it out of that mindset out of that lifestyle out of its context it becomes something completely different and it slowly corrodes the integrity of what was there so it like personal rule of thumb would be to go deep into your own senses and approach any learned thing or any kind of like acquired knowledge with respect just having a look at what it's connected to and having respect for the entirety of its existence for its the entirety of its integrity and understanding the like the body of lifestyle and practice that it might belong to i think that's right and also agree with both of y'all yeah i know this is like chorus of furious agreement i love it um yeah i think that's really sound advice going really deep internally i think you're also probably on to a hiding to nothing if you have that shallow understanding and immediately want to share it with the world you know it should be something for your own improvement for your own growth and again that could be a good rule of thumb am i using this to further my own i hate the phrase journey or am i pushing it outward beautiful beautiful sentiment and erica what are your thoughts on on the ongoing debate around appropriation um first off furious agreement with everybody at the moment i guess um it did make me think of because in the last year i've gone from being i guess for want of a better word an amateur tara reader to a professional um and and what you said lil about who gets to a point when do you cross that threshold into making money off something where does your integrity sit and it did make me think of um yeah why i i crossed that threshold of the last year and it was because i i run a business called art oracle where artists come to me by the hour and have a safe space to talk about their practice without worrying about their being an agenda or they're jeopardizing their careers for saying the wrong thing or looking dumb and when i ran out of tricks during the lockdown last year i actually started saying some of them i don't have any producer magic for you but i have a tarot deck will that make you feel better and i started doing tarot readings for people and then they started booking in specifically for tarot readings not to talk about their project or their career trajectory and it was the artists who went you need to start terror oracle this is actually helpful and it occurs to me that also there are moments when the community tells you that you are ready to take on that mantle as long as you have um the integrity or they tell you yes you've got the integrity and you're at the right point i've done 20 years of reading cards for free for people to give them comfort or help or or amuse them at parties or or stave off someone's jet lag at one point um as well too and it was really nice getting that moment of going huh i maybe i should cross that threshold and try to hold this battle with with integrity and and and part of that is um also just thinking about different models because we still have to survive as human beings that's why capitalism is so coercive because it marries our survival so intimately to to a group of people who oppress us and doesn't give us any agency to look after ourselves which is that disconnection from culture and land when you're connected to culture and land you don't need somebody else's permission to eat that night um and yeah that it's something i'm still navigating as well too astrology has a model for that though how sex is about being useful to your community and the health and well-being that comes back to you when you help when you're useful and you're valued through the work that you do with your community as well too and house 2 talks about how you just shelter yourself from the elements give yourself comfort and give yourself everything you need to sustain yourself on this earth as well too so i think about those two kind of principles of astrology as well when we start heading over into the filthy luca part of the conversation i love that you um mention the reality which is that people should not be ashamed to earn a living i think that there is something about the shame that is heaped on sometimes to people who work in mystical practice and mystical spaces that is to me deeply connected with the way that we shame all caring professions and devalue caring professions i think i i once saw a documentary that had um the noted skeptic richard dawkins going around and berating um lovely elderly ladies who practiced caring for people through mystical practices and i thought there's something just deeply misogynistic about that perhaps and i wondered um when we're reflecting on the naysayers and the people who want to deride and sort of downplay the importance or the validity of mysticism um what do you do you ever face them how do you how do you reconcile with them and where do you think maybe that hectic energy is coming from can i say something about the the whole money thing i i completely agree that i i i try to tackle this in my book as well this idea that there's something shameful inherently about getting money for a spiritual practice i don't i don't agree with that i i think everybody has to make a living where where i worry is when let's say a westerner appropriates native american traditions sets up a sweat lodge and someone dies and they're making thousands of dollars for something they have no right to run that they don't know how to run and basically they're literally responsible for the death of somebody so i think we can differentiate between that and somebody charging for a tarot reading i don't i don't think there should be any shame around that and i similarly see people attacking you know reiki healing and we should we've got to stop infantilizing people who use services just because you don't agree with them you don't have to think reiki is real but if somebody does and they genuinely walk out of that session feeling like that helped them let's not assume that they are just being fleeced by somebody because i know so many people in this industry and they are amazing people and i it really it breaks my heart to see such blanket you know condemnation of people um because it was a belief now the funny thing about the atheist lot let's say the dawkins and dawkins isn't a skeptic he's an atheist so he he's very rational and he's very combative you know he he is condescending and racist you know he's actually not just uh you know saying i don't agree with this he is living by his disbelief and that is very different to somebody who says a skeptic who says look i just need proof now i don't need proof i'm not somebody who goes through life needing proof i need proof of my experience that's all i need i i will always be asking questions and i'm okay with that um but this is the differentiation and i and one thing you can say is doing things for free does not serve anybody because some in some cases obviously that's needed but when i've read for people if if i don't if there's no exchange there's no uh benefit for that person they walk away and they just want another one the next week and i learned that the hard way and i'm sure you know this that it's just you have to put a value on it so that the person feels like they have received something in return now i'm not saying charge 300 that's not what i'm talking about some sort of exchange though is very necessary because anyone who reads tarot can tell you it's energetic it's very uh draining and it can be very very um it can very be very beautiful but you are definitely going somewhere dark sometimes or deep when you read for people so i think exchange is a beautiful thing gosh i love that and i love that you just did not mince your words just sorry i had it i love it i couldn't agree more it feels very um yeah it definitely feels quite racist the way and quite vitriolic and vicious the way that um these people will attack and i also think that you need to have an understanding of power when you look at the role that atheism plays in our society right now and its connection with what is acknowledged as scientific practice and who had the power to get their things endorsed through that methodology and who didn't and why therefore that is not a yardstick for the validity of everything in the world but um thank you for calling it like it is am i love that so um these salty skeptics these ashy ashy men as they tend to be um when you come up against them do you try and just protect your energy and not engage sometimes that's my approach sometimes i sense that actually what they want is to distract me from this very fruitful path that i'm on and i kind of do a deep inhale and i'm preparing to give them a piece of my mind and then i go auntie auntie tony morrison taught me about this about the fact that you're just trying to distract me and i'm just gonna give you dust give you nothing that's sometimes i find my most uh self-protective approach how do you guys approach naysayers i just don't like to deal with people who are determined to misunderstand you and that's often what those conversations are and i can't explain the unexplainable i can't explain the unknowable and i've reconciled myself to that fact i'm not going to reach down to the pits of my being to try and find the language to explain to someone who really couldn't care why i do what i do or why i believe what i believe it's just not worth it often i i often think that part of what makes that conversation really um just not nourishing in any way is that we're not even we're not even reading the same book we don't even have the same vocabulary to express this um this experience that's so contrasting like our experiences are not overlapping and so i can't even pull from you know a common ground to explain to you why this is going to be beneficial it's just not worth it and i often think the metric somebody uses to determine whether or not anything spiritually sounded is good or bad and not the metric somebody who actually uses the practice users so somebody might say well um if if tarot is completely intuitive then how can you rely on it don't worry about it don't worry i've got it i haven't got it don't don't worry about it it is okay because there is not real concern to you you don't actually care and i don't need to answer to somebody who is masking their ignorance as curiosity it's not hot and i see right through it i just say i have no interest in talking to naysayers because i i don't think we're speaking the same language i i think they're seeking validation for their own doubts because if you're going to live your whole life trying to disprove something you're as strong as the ardent believer who spends their whole life trying to prove something and i'm i'm neither of those people uh you know i always look at what i do as an invitation if somebody sees me and says hey you know what there's something about you that i like and i'd like to be more like you what do you do i'll tell them but i have no interest in um creating some sort of brand that that speaks to people convinces them because i don't think people really want to be convinced they want to shame you they want to make you feel small and they want to feel that they are right now i've been i've encountered people like this my whole life so i don't it's nothing new to me i i know the playbook so i don't really care and i i just think the less you care about those things you you find you don't really attract them anyway like they don't really and i don't say that in a woo way i just you don't you're not like lil said like you're not operating in the same space you're just so different um and and you know even within the spaces of mysticism and curiosity and seeking you're not you're not necessarily in a group like it's so different like you know you know you talked about tarot readers online like i actually i i will admit i i get lost in the youtube pick a card readings because some of the readers are really good but the stuff they say of course some of it's ridiculous like telling people about twin flames and i don't know like stuff that's just not useful to them it's not gonna help them in their lives um and i can't stop that so i don't look at them and see my kin you know but i see people and i go you're a really good reader i really think i'll watch you again because i want to see how you interpreted that so we've got logic still look at our minds we're not blindly following things and trying to get everybody to do the same i love that it's all about agencies yeah definitely i personally think that some people who are bent on not understanding and not seeing aren't actually supposed to that there's no point for them to like be interacting with things it's like um like i don't know what the inside of my computer looks like because i i have nothing to do with that i'm going to break it i will break it if i am playing around with the inside of the computer that's just not my place and so i understand that people who just aren't able to understand it's not their spot and people who are aggressively saying like it isn't even about them not believing they're just like people who feel entitled to uh give give someone or control somebody's perspective and outlook and how they're how they're thinking about the world and what they're doing so i could have been like playing badminton and that person would be well maybe not badminton something else but it's less about the fact well no one can argue with i like badminton a lot bad at it i love it um the point is that a lot of the time they're people who are just looking to exert their power on somebody else when they're going way out of their way to shut a person up or smush an idea i hear you so true now we have i could talk to you all night this is fascinating but we have just five minutes left so i should thank everybody you have been fascinating and super engaging and what i'm going to do uh we have a special treat because lay is going to perform some beautiful poetry to close us out so before i pass the mic to lei i'm going to say a huge thank you to the panel it has been so wonderful hearing your insights on this and your generosity has been beautiful thank you so much i'm also going to let everybody at home know that we have a wonderful bookstore partner for tonight um and that is uh sorry i'm i'm i'm off in my mystical land right now i need to come back um so neighborhood books neighborhood books and if you go onto their website you can grab yourself a copy of amal's book in my past life i was cleopatra or a copy of lille's book the success experiment and i know i'm going to grab one of each um i will gift them to my friends because i'm that sort of generous auntie but um all that remains is to say thank you so much to the sponsors to the panel to the wheeler center and to you for joining and to pass the mic to lei to end the evening with some beautiful poetry [Music] [Music] days [Music] can you feel it [Music] myself [Music] i only catch myself half of the time pipes i think they're in the pipes see pipes creep the syllables of my name until i'm falling into space as far and nothing [Music] i sometimes imagine myself [Music] between have you ever figured out how to meet your years because i met these moments while they were falling in and out of care for each [Music] other sometimes hate how names that people call you and i make these memories for how i like to fear i've been crying falls into my own body and everything in between i met you before and everything in between you'd be standing too close if it weren't for everything in between and then there's this something and then there's nothing and then everything's in between and i think that i just don't know it yet but everything's in between [Music] once i made this city and my secret place [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] myself [Music] [Music] that was beautiful lay thank you so much everybody good night

Channel: WheelerCentre

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Id: zLztXN9qu2M

Length: 61min 10sec (3670 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021