Transcription
[Music] [Music] The great teachers of history all taught know thyself. They promise when we understand who we really are, we gain wisdom and with wisdom we live in peace.
Looking at everything that's happening in the world, the whole self-awareness and peace thing could do with some work. But I can vouch living in peace is hard. But I have found through trying to be less confused and anxious that humanity's discovered some awesome things about who we are that have helped me feel more grounded, less confused. But I'm still on my journey, which is why I'm here in the Kang, some of the fiercest nature that the UK has to offer to see what being in nature can teach us about our nature. And so I invite you to join me for the adventure. We're going to see what are these great teachings that can help us live with wisdom and can we not just rely on other people. What can we learn about ourselves through our own intuition? And can the mountain teach us anything about living in peace? For once, let's explore that age-old cliche of a question. Who am I? [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]
When you're in the city, what animals do you see? Pigeons, seagulls, everyone's pets. It's easy to take the mysteriousness of a poodle for granted. But when I'm here in the Scottish winter, my toes are freezing off. I'm seeing these animals survive. I'm struck by the extraordinary miracle we find ourselves involved with. It's another species of living being here on planet Earth and it's having an experience seeming emotions like fear and care for family and seeking warmth. It might be a bit of an unconventional place to start our journey trying to understand ourselves by looking at animals. But if they can feel things, what does that teach us about our feelings? Who we are, where we come from? What does that life teach us about this life? Maybe not a lot. I mean, we are different from the animals. I want us to get back up the mountain eventually, but first there's a few things that would be good for us to understand. Like how do you understand yourself today? Because our societies have inherited some ideas that see the animals very differently from us indeed with huge implications for how we feel about ourselves and our place in the universe.
For Deart, one of the founding thinkers of modern science and philosophy, he believed that animals had no mind at all. They were automata, unconscious machines. He justified gruesome experiments on live animals, arguing the cries of apparent agony were no more than automatic responses. Decart believed only humans had mind, or for him, it was a spiritual thing. Only man had the spirit given by God that existed independently from the body. It was these transcendent minds or spirits that they cart believed gave humans the unique capacity of self-awareness and intelligence. So that you could say probably the most famous line in western philosophy. I think therefore I am.
These ideas created splits in how we understand ourselves. one between our minds and our bodies that we are our minds or spirits in a body separate from it and a second split between the human and nature. If it's only us that have minds or spirits, then it's only us that are intelligent or sacred. Our bodies, the animals, nature then are not intelligent, inferior, automatic. science. In the subsequent years, they got rid of the spirits and the sacredness, but they still kept this idea that rational thinking minds are the only intelligence in the universe, which gave us a feeling of isolation that we are this blip of intelligence facing an otherwise not intelligent automatic universe. There are many forms of these ideas and science and religions. And we were promised when we understand ourselves, we gain wisdom and we live in peace. So I wonder is this who we are? So who are you? Are you a mind or spirit in a body? Is there mind in nature? Where does your intelligence come from? And can understanding any of this help us live in peace.
So I'm going to do something a little bit unusual for a film and invite you to try some stuff with me so you can see what you can learn about yourself through your own experience. So let's explore these ideas that our thinking is the source of our identity and that makes us different from the animals. So if you'd like to join me, invite you to rub your fingertips together. It's basic, but we can get deep with it. So just being present with the sensations happening right now. Maybe friction, heat, moisture, and that's an experience not of thoughts with words, but a direct sensation. Right? And now if you think about somebody that you love, maybe family, friends, pets, and you think about the experience of love, that experience is not a voice in your head saying love, love, love, love. You know, it's an emotion. It's a feeling. And so simply by paying attention to our own experience, we found that I think therefore I am can only be part of the story of who we are. I feel therefore I am is an essential part of being human. And yes, this is simple, but for me, reconnecting with this fact was life-changing.
When I finished education, I descended into confusion and anxiety. Not sure what I was doing with my life. Searching for peace, I journeyed to China, hoping kung fu might make me stronger. I tried to get into a kung fu monastery, failed. Tried to find a kung fu school, but by accident, the locals took me to a Tai Chi school. Tai Chi? I thought that's for older people, but I tried it and fell in love with it. Tai Chi is a moving meditation like yoga. And practicing it, I experienced what we're talking about. I'm not just my thoughts and I can hang out in my feelings and sensations where there's no words telling me I'm confused and lost on our journey towards peace. It's helpful to know that we're not just our thoughts. So, we don't always have to be thinking. And you don't have to try Tai Chi to learn this. We found this through observing our own experiences that sensations are an option. So, let's see if we can take a second look at the animals and see what observation can teach us about them. [Music]
If we spend time with animals, we see they're not automatic machines. Instead, they are very much conscious, hear, and aware, and they are creative, responding to life intelligently. Science since Daycart's time has found that animals that made up of the same sort of stuff, 80% of the genes that we have in our DNA, squirrels have as well. And a quick shout out to the plants, even celery. 50% of the genes that we have, celery has as well. [Music] Very few people take Deart's extreme views. But have we recognized both in how we understand ourselves and collectively the extent to which we share our experiences, our emotions, our intelligence with the rest of life. [Music] [Music]
So, we're at the start of understanding ourselves. We have an experiential sense of self, which we could call the sensor. that complex array of emotions and sensations that give us this feeling of being. And the animals have it too. But still, despite these similarities, it wasn't unreasonable if they cart to see us humans as fundamentally different. I mean, the squirrels can't give lifts to friends in camper vans. Surely, it is our thinking, our reasoning that does distinguish us from the rest of nature. So yeah, we got to understand where does our ability to remember our email passwords come from? Where does that voice in our heads fit into who we are? I want to show you something close to the mountain, an ancient burial ground that can help us understand the origins of the human mind. [Music]
This is a burial ground made in the Bronze Age. And it's clear the people that made it here 4,000 years ago had brains capable of complex thinking. They could create stories that motivated the community to come together to create this structure. Now, here's where things get quite mindboggling. We found evidence to say it's not just our species that had minds capable of storytelling. [Music] This is a human skull. This skull looks human, but then the eyebrows are really far forward and the whole thing is shaped like a rugby ball. This is not a skull of a homo sapien, but a homo Neanderthal. It's easy to forget that there have been over 20 species of human that have lived on our planet. What were these humans like? The Neanderthalss lived in community. They made their own clothes out of animal hides. They made tools to help them hunt, and they wore feathers for decoration. And some of the skeletons we found had been laid in dug pits with the person's hands placed supporting their heads as if they were resting asleep. The sites we found did not just have one skeleton, but many bodies. people of different ages, children, parents, grandparents. Some bodies surrounded by antler horns and rhinoceros skulls. The Neanthals buried their dead with care and in community. Why? What the burials we found tell us about what minds the Neanderthalss had and so where our minds might come from isn't clearcut. You don't actually need complex ideas about life after death to motivate ritual behavior. Take elephants for example. When one of their troop passes away will come back to the body for many days after the death. Each member spending time in silence touching the body showing their complex emotional life experiencing what we would likely call grief. The Neanderthalss too when their loved ones passed away would have felt intense emotions, heartache, rolling tension in the stomach. And maybe it was these emotions alone that motivated them to bury their loved ones with care. They didn't need to have ideas about what might happen after death. So, we need more evidence. And in 2013, archaeologists in France discovered something that shocked the world. 350 m deep into a cave, they found hundreds of stall tites and stallagmites had been broken off the cave walls and deliberately placed into large circles. And they found the remains of fires that had once been lit within them. The structure was so complex, the archaeologists assumed it must have been made by Homo sapiens. But when they dated the find, they found it to be an astonishing 174,000 years old. Long before homo sapiens had reached Europe, implying its makers were the Neanderthalss. What they found in that cave in France had no obvious purpose. Must have taken many hours to make. They had fires around it. The whole cave would have been choking with smoke. It seems to me very likely that there was a story motivating it. That that structure meant something to the Neanderthalss. And even if that story was just made with basic language or images arising in the minds of the Neanderthalss, that would mean that I think, therefore I am is not just for us Homo sapiens.
Deart believed our thinking minds made us superior to the rest of nature. But we found evidence that the Neanderthalss felt and thought in ways surprisingly similar to us. And we found the animals experience rich emotions and navigate their lives creatively. We haven't found any splits between humanity and nature or between our minds and bodies. So us asking where does our intelligence come from has led us to a bigger and deeper question. How is it that our planet is bursting with beings that are conscious having experiences and so are able to solve the challenges they face intelligently? [Music]
What consciousness is or how conscious life began on planet Earth is a great mystery. Planet Earth was once just rocks and water. But what we can see from the fossil record is that life on Earth began billions of years ago and through evolution became more and more complex. Eventually, animals evolved and they began to experience emotions such as fear and these emotions became more and more complex like care for family or the desire to play. And eventually for some animals, thoughts and basic language began to arise in their minds, giving them the ability to interpret and tell stories about what they were experiencing. And for one animal, us homo sapiens, we developed highly advanced language which led to an explosion of human power and lots of questions. Every human culture has some form of spirituality or religion, stories to help satisfy our natural curiosity. We want to understand who we are and what we are a part of. Given the infinite mystery we find ourselves involved with, any understanding of ourselves needs to be made with humility. As the Bible says, with humility comes wisdom. But we found we can through observation determine some of the principles that shape us and the universe. Science at its core is this process of observation. Making predictions about the world, collecting evidence, seeing what the evidence tells us. Science doesn't have to feel cold and mechanical. In fact, it's led us to an understanding that many wisdom traditions shared, something that's truly inclusive and universal. that all of us, no matter our religion, nationality, gender, or even our species, we all come from the same mysterious source. [Music]
One of the great barriers to us finding peace is disconnection. And so if you have thoughts telling you that you're separate from the world or there's nothing inspiring about you, shift your focus and reconnect with what you are a part of. You are made from the same energy that created the many humans, the plants, the animals, and our precious, beautiful home, planet Earth. [Music]
So who are you? You are embodied awareness, mind and body coming from the same mysterious source. And we found you have two main ways of experiencing and understanding yourself. The first we call the sensor, the complex array of emotions and sensations that give us this feeling of being. And then there's what we could call the storyteller. That which watches what you experience. And using thoughts narrates and interprets and creates stories about who you are. And to really understand how the storyteller works can be life-changing. So to demonstrate how this works, I'm going to look a wee bit silly for you. So each ball is a thought like my name is George. I grew up in England. My love language is vegan brownies. I know all the words of the Tarzan soundtrack off by heart. And see, the story of who we are, we construct from thoughts that pop into our heads that we identify with. Would you like to meet your storyteller? What's your favorite thing to do? What was that thought you just had? There you go. There's one of yours. And if we really understand this, it leads to something tragic that we can only laugh at. But there's nothing intrinsically George about me. If I was born in another country, I'd have different thoughts. I'd have a different story. And in the various times of my life where I have felt not good enough, it's not like not good enough is a physical quality of the universe. No, that feeling came from judgmental thoughts that popped into my head that I identified with. So isn't it astonishing the amount of pain that we create in our lives from the stories that are only true to the extent that we identify with and believe the thoughts that pop into our heads. [Music] [Laughter] [Music]
I remember first reading classic spiritual books like the power of now and finding dowoism the philosophy on the mountain where I was studying that I've since dedicated a lot of my life to. I remember these insight moments. Whoa. I'm not just my thoughts and not every thought I have needs to be true. Instead of fighting my thinking, I began to just pause and to be curious noticing these stories which created a space within for me to be able to choose my response. And a beautiful way that we can bring the practice of the pause into our everyday is with a mindful breath. I do this throughout the day. And if you'd like to join me, why don't we take a breath together. Breathing in together, softening the face and breathing out, letting any tension go. Let's try one more of those. Breathing in. Can you soften even more? And breathing out. letting any tension go. If we notice painful thinking or stories, we just pause. Bring some curiosity to it. Open some space within. That space is our freedom. So we were promised by the great teachers when we understand ourselves we gain wisdom and we live in peace. And indeed we found we're not just our thoughts. Not every thought that we have is true. We found the practice of the pause. All important steps on the journey towards peace. But inevitably, even if we have insight today, maybe tomorrow we'll be back covered in takeaway grease scrolling on Tik Tok wondering how did I get here again? So just knowing who we are isn't enough. [Music] [Music]
So, got my iceaxs, krampons in the bag, cold, and we haven't even started yet. It's time for us to climb back up the mountain. Can the perspective it gives us help us understand how to transform what we've learned into wisdom that can actually help us? Where is this peace we've been promised? [Music]
We found that we create our own stories through the thoughts that we identify with. Why is it then if we do create our own stories, we tell such rubbish, negative stories? Why is inner piece so hard? So, if I draw a line in the sandy rocks, it's not going to stay around for very long. If I scoop something a bit deeper, I could be around for a bit longer. Give water enough time and it can carve canyons out of sheer rock. Our brains work like this. You know about neural pathways. The more you repeat certain behaviors, the more that neural pathway is strengthened. And this is essential. It gives us our habitual ways of thinking and being. Take the habit of worry for example. It's a good idea for safety for us to sometimes worry about what might go wrong in the future. The challenge comes with what we do with these habits. So for me in my time of crisis, a new character began to dominate my storytelling headsp space who I personified as a little evil wizard called the underminer. And the underminer channeled everything that was happening in my life through the habit of worry and negativity. So the fact that I was single and didn't have many friends, my underminer would tell me I was flawed goods. And when I started getting anxious, my underminer would tell me I was weak for being anxious. More and more of my life flowed into underminer valley until I lost all hope that I could feel better again. [Music]
Rule number one of getting out of the hole, stop digging. How do we normally react to pain? I was beating myself up. Maybe we numb ourselves out or try and run away from ourselves. But all this does is just multiplies the pain that we're feeling. Wisdom traditions around the world all talk about the power of love and compassion. For us to be hurting in this often chaotic world doesn't make us weak or flawed. It's okay to not be okay. With compassion, can we extend love and kindness to our whole selves. Even the bits that we might not want. We can be with pain instead of lost in it. [Music]
The acceptance of where we are is crucial on the journey towards peace. But we don't have to be stuck in underminer valley forever. There are more empowering ways of responding to the challenges of life. We just need to find them. [Music] [Music]
The word wisdom derives from the root to see. It's no coincidence then that mountains around the world have been spiritual places. With perspective, we see that we can choose how to respond to life. Look, there's underminer valley. It still has its place. There's play valley. There's creativity creek. Wisdom is when we channel what happens in our lives towards the responses that serve harmony, that serve peace. In any way, we're all unique, so your place of perspective will be different to mine. And the stories that empower you, you need to discover for yourself. But be empowered that with patience, persistence, and kindness, change, big or small, is possible. [Music]
Even if you think you've found who you are, found a story that feels good, when the world changes and your old patterns start rumbling in, how do you respond? Left it quite late with the filming and the weather's turning. It's getting cold and still got quite a way to go before we get to safety and warmth. Getting cold. We'll be all right. We'll get through. Change can be scary, which is why we crave certainty. Certainty about how the world works, certainty about who we are. So, we think we've got everything under control, but the only constant is change. The weather on the mountain is constantly changing. You're constantly changing. I'm constantly changing. Can we trust the intelligence of the life force that animates us? An intelligence that has produced the astonishing resilience that is you, that has produced the breathtaking beauty of the planet. All done without words. Finding yourself is great. A human being needs a story. We have roles to play as parents, children, employees, students, citizens. But know that the searching will never end. Can you also develop the subtle art of losing yourself? To surrender to the ever changing flow, to not need a story, to embrace the mystery of your being. And so rest. [Music]
On our journey towards understanding ourselves and living in peace, we found that we create the stories of who we are from the thoughts that pop into our heads. And so we have the freedom to choose a story that empowers. But we and the world are always changing and too complex to fully capture with words. Thankfully, we don't always need to be thinking. We can hang out in our sensations and so lose ourselves. And one of the most reliable ways I've found to lose myself is being in nature. When I feel stuck in self-criticism and painful stories, if I can get out and walk in landscapes bigger than myself, I'm reminded of the great tapestry of life that I am a part of. And George and all my stories feel less and less important. As my mind softens, I find moments of no thought. George disappears and what remains is a simple presence, ease and connection. Mountains have been great teachers in my life and so if you can get out and have some adventures, go for it. But I know you may not have access to mountains or fancy kit like this. What we've learned can only truly be impactful if it helps us back in the mystifying mountains of modern living. It's time for me to go home. Back to the city. The intelligence of the universe has achieved some pretty awesome stuff. It's easy to forget, but all of our technology is still nature expressing itself. There's much to celebrate about humanity, but at the same time, a modern world brings with it big challenges. I've been back in the city for a few months now, and the challenging bit is living with wisdom, living in peace. And if that resonates with you, we're not alone with that. To struggle is to be human. Which is why the wisdom traditions have always offered practices. Practices to help us stay in connection with our wiser selves. And I want to share with you a practice that has been really helpful for me. But first, a ghost story. No, not really. If we imagine that our consciousness is like a light, our awareness illuminates that which it focuses on. And we've been shining the light of our awareness on the world and ourselves. But it's hard to live what we've been learning because for some reason the default setting of human consciousness is this. We're flitting between cravings and distractions the whole time. Which means that we stay unconscious. And it's only if we can learn to steady our awareness to rest that we see ourselves clearly and so see our potential for wisdom and for peace. And this brings us to meditation. Meditation is a big word, but it's about presence. If your awareness is on what you're doing as opposed to lost in thought, that's meditation. And meditation as a practice is training our awareness to rest, to find that presence more easily. Meditation has been discovered all around the world over history. It's helped me so much. And I thought maybe we could try some together so you can experience for yourself how you don't always have to be caught in thought, how you can lose yourself, how you can rest, how to stay in connection with your wisdom to help you live in peace in your everyday. So would you like to join me for a meditation? If you would, then you can be sitting in any way you'd like to. And an invitation, and this is only an option and taking as long as you want with it, is for you to close your eyes and to see if you can find your breath. Where is your breath right now? Maybe coming in and out through your nostrils, maybe out your mouth. And can you slow your breath down? Slow your breath down. softening the face. If there's any tension in your forehead or your eyes, allow them to unwind. If there's any tension in your cheeks or your jaw, allow them to sink. The sensation of your breath is part of your sensor. that feeling of being. You're not just your thoughts. And so, you can rest in your sensations. And so, can you kindly be watching your breath coming in and out? And you may also notice thinking, that's your storyteller in action. And thinking like the sensation of your breath is an experience arising in your awareness. You're not just your thoughts. Not every thought that you have is true. You are the embodied awareness that watches it all. And so you have the freedom when you notice thinking to just let it go to bring your awareness back to the breath. Meditation is not about having a quiet mind. Instead, it is the process of returning. We get lost in thought and we come back. And how gently can you come back? Can you come back without judgment? Can you rest with the breath? If we use meditation to improve ourselves, then we're back in thinking and stories. And they were precisely the things that got us confused. So can you hold this openness, this space for its own sake with no expectations of magic fixes or future rewards? Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be. Can you lose yourself? Can you rest? Can you rest? [Music] and gently beginning to come back. Bringing some movement into your shoulders, some shoulder rolls, and then taking it as long as you want. beginning to come back and opening your eyes. It's a real privilege to be practicing with you. And for me, doing a daily meditation practice has been training my awareness to find that kindness, to find that spaciousness more easily. [Music] [Music]
Imagine [Music] [Music] how different your life would be if you could bring that space and kindness into your everyday in an argument instead of being stuck in the valleys of reactivity, blame. What would happen if you remembered to pause, take a breath, to find your inner mountain view, and to look with kind curiosity. What feelings and stories are you in? What might be happening for the person in front of you? Or take something as mundane as your daily commute. If you apply the practice of the pause, find your inner mountain view, you may begin to notice that nature, even in the city makes its living and you reconnect with what you are a part of. And yet we so easily forget. So with practice, it is possible for us to feel resilient, even joyful. But we still are missing something. Because even if we become master meditators and discover our inner chill, if our loved ones are struggling while our country is at war or we're facing climate disasters, it's going to be hard for us to live in peace. And that's because true peace is not just peace with ourselves. It's peace in our relationships, communities, countries, the planet. We've been exploring this idea. When we understand ourselves, we gain wisdom, and we live in peace. And if that means true peace, this leads us to a big question. Could it be that understanding who we really are can not only transform our lives, but change the world? Welcome aboard this Great Western Railway service to London Paddington. In the same way that we create our own story, all the economic and political systems that shape our world, they too are built upon stories, assumptions, narratives about what it means to be human and what we're here to do. And ultimately those stories are agreed upon and given power by people. people like you and me. You can imagine how different our world could be if you and I and more of us while acknowledging all the struggle and trauma we nonetheless believed in our own capacity and so the human capacity for healing, for forgiveness, for cooperation and if more of us lose ourselves and reconnect with the great mystery that we are a part of and so find a sense of our own sacredness, our value that comes from our being not what we do then no longer do we exhaust our energy chasing happiness that is always outside of ourselves. Instead, we find a contentment and richness in simplicity. So, understanding yourself matters because not only do you create resilience and peace in yourself, you inspire the people around you that change is possible for them too. And if there's enough of us, we can reach a tipping point where our collective stories and so the systems that shape our world begin to transform too. As I've learned more about myself, that I am an aperture through which the universe is experiencing itself on this stunning planet, the only place we know to support life in the whole universe. Where before I felt anxiety, I now feel a love, a love for humanity, a love for the earth. This love makes me want to be part of the movement that seeks to protect and celebrate the flourishing of life. And for you, as you learn more about yourself and your connection, if you feel called to, how could you dedicate more of your energy to the movement? The movement that believes in our potential for balance and for peace. [Music] And for the times where we may feel like peace for ourselves and the planet is just some naive pipe dream. Can we give ourselves permission for better not perfection? A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. So all we can do is keep stepping and to support each other on the journey. So keep stepping my friend. Keep practicing. Keep finding yourself and losing yourself. What story are we going to write? Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]
Hello dear friend. Thank you so much for watching. I'm so grateful for your presence and I want to share what can you do next. If you want to watching the film again with friends can be an awesome experience. It poses questions for you to explore together. We've created a free losing yourself email course where over weeks you can get the ideas and practices to help you integrate what you've learned in the film into your everyday life and that's completely free. I run events now around the world and online. And if you want to join me for those and if you want to get even deeper, Toweris Wellness online is where you can learn with me and my Taichi master, Master Goo, to help you better understand yourself and your potential for peace. I want to say a huge thank you to anyone that has joined the online academy or come to one of my courses because this film has been completely funded by this community and I'm sending you my best wishes for your onward journey. Balance is possible.