Podcasts

Episode 28 - Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Manda Scott - Four steps to our next evolution

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to our next episode of decoding AQ. I have with us a really special guest, somebody that I've enjoyed listening to in some very interesting podcasts. We have Manda Scott, welcome.

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Manda  

Thank you, Ross. It's an honor to be here.

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Ross  

Well, having a novelist I wouldn't say fellow podcaster because I don't think I'm yet a real podcaster you know, I still think I'm pretending.

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Manda  

You've done 25 episodes, you're a real podcaster.

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Ross  

Recorded. I think there's maybe at this point, while we're recording this about 15 live but learning every day. You're a shamanic dreamer, trainee, homeopath. And as I said, a podcast and you host the massively successful Accidental Gods. So really a pleasure to have you.

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Manda  

Thank you, it genuinely is a pleasure to be here, because I have also enjoyed listening to your podcast. So an area of life that I don't know a huge amount about. And it's fascinating, genuinely fascinating to hear the perspectives of people in business who are trying to make business, sustainable, regenerative and just work. It's been fascinating. So thank you.

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Ross  

Well thank you, I now know the answer to who the other one is, other than my mum who is listening to it. We're on a win, we're on a win. So tell us a little bit you know, you've had a background in writing books, you're working on TV things, all sorts of bits that you've been through, give us just a little bit of some of the highlights of your journey so that we can get to know you a little bit better if the very few that haven't heard your podcast today.

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Manda  

Or indeed, the overwhelming majority. So I grew up in Scotland, southside to Glasgow, and I qualified as a vet at Glasgow vet school too long ago to mention, and I came down to Cambridge, my first job was as a house officer, an intern. In the days when interns were actually paid, surgical intern at Cambridge. I walked in through the door, the senior surgeon said, “Hello, this is Manda. She comes from Glasgow, but we won't hold that against her,” and my Scottish accent evaporated on the spot, it was a really interesting experience, I suddenly started speaking RP English from that moment onwards. Although if I go back to Scotland, I do revert to southside Glasgow quite fast.

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So I was specialized quite quickly in anesthesia and intensive care. And then because Cambridge is right next to new market and horses were my thing I specialized in horse anesthesia, and neonatal intensive care, which is a particularly specialized sub-specialty. But the great advantage of it is a new market. If someone has spent 750,000 pounds on a stud fee, they will pay whatever it takes to keep the resulting foal alive. So I got to play with some very high tech kit for a while, which in those days was great fun. 

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And then one day, the following season was kind of odd. The following season starts first of January, not because any horse in his right mind naturally has foals in the first of January. But because humanity in its wisdom decided that the horse would have his birthday on the first of January. So it's born on the 29th of December. It's a total utter catastrophe, because it's technically a year old the day later. So it's born on the 29th of January, actually, they hide it and bring it out. In fact, if it's born anywhere in December, they hide it and bring it up. 

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And so you don't get any sleep basically is what I'm getting to between January and July, all horses fall down at four in the morning. So sleep was hard to come by. And I was in a particularly sleep-deprived state. And I ordered a couple of books in the days when you had to get a catalog from a bookshop, and read through it and send away a little forum to buy it, which just feels very bizarre now. And they arrived and I was sitting up with a foal that was going to die. But it was the first foal ever to have been born under 300 days of gestation that had survived long enough for us to get some lines in and start putting fluids in. And I was sitting at this ice think I sat with it for six days. And I read these books. And they were it was Sun Bear medicine wheel. 

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And I had done a lot of druidic work at college and then fallen into very hardcore medicine, left brain stuff. And it was like falling back into the other half of my mind. And when I finally came away after we put the foal down, I started exploring and I found that shamanic work had come to this country by then, because the druidic work was fascinating, and I learned a lot. But what I learned most was that people were making it up as they went along, that may no longer be the case for my druidic friends listening. 

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But in those days, it seemed that we were endeavoring to recreate a lost past to which we had very little access. And then here was a group of people offering to connect us, to the gods of this land, with a living system, to which they had direct access, there were people alive, who remember that their grandfather, who remembered being at Wounded Knee. And that's not the case, the druids were wiped out by the Romans, in 64 BC, there was ad even, it's been a long day. So I started training in that, because I really wanted to connect to the gods of the land, it seemed to me the most important thing to do and always had done from when I was very small. And that journey has continued in parallel in the beginning of the veterinary journey. And then in parallel with a writing journey, when I finally realized that I probably didn't want to be anesthetizing horses for the rest of my life. But there must be other things I could do and because nobody told me otherwise, I thought I'll write a novel and make enough money to be able to give up the day job. And the great thing was, nobody said that that's not how it works, little girl. And so it kind of did not quite but not far off. 

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The first four novels did not make much money at all, but I learned the writing apprenticeship, and then the Boudica books, did earn enough money to give up the day job. And that was me as a writer for the next 20 years. And then I will take a short detour. So the Boudica reading books were the big ones where they brought the shamanic spirituality, and anchored it in our shamanic past, which was before the Romans came, and then that kind of inter period before Roman occupation really destroyed our tribal existence. 

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And I wanted to show who we were in the hope that we could become so again, my view then, and probably still is, was that the Romans had annihilated our connection to the web of life. And that was the core of our wounding as a culture. And that if I could show how we had been before the Romans came, then we could aspire to be that again. And my belief was, everybody would do this, partly because when I sat under the tree to do the journeys that led to the books, I was told this will change the world. And I believe everything I'm told in journeys, and looking back, it changed my world. And the great thing about whatever happens in journeys is that can be very literal. 

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So they were right, it changed the world. It changed my world. And I came out from that. And I began teaching the dreaming, because I went around the country going, “This is who we were, this is who we can be.” And people were going, “Well how?” Then I said, “It’s in the books, just read the books.” And about three weeks down the line, in my first book, two people were coming back, and I'm sure I signed a book for you. And they said, Yes, you did. And I read it. And I still don't know how to do the dreaming. Oh, dear. 

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So I started teaching. So that run alongside the writing and then in 2016, I had it kind of Shamanic crisis, which probably won't interest your listenership that much. At the end result of which was abs. The imperative was to go to Schumacher and do the Master's in Regenerative Economics. Partly because by then I had realized that the economic system was the way that the wounding manifests in our culture, and that we were being lied to. And this was six years into, we're all in this together austerity, which was quite plainly untrue on every level, but I didn't have the understanding of how to explain how.

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Ross  

How to connect into that system.

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Manda  

Yeah. And how to explain to people that there were other ways, what the other ways were and how much better they would be. So I spent a year doing that it was so much fun. I loved being a student. Again, it was magical. And Schumacher is Schumacher. It's a magical place. It runs like an ashram, you get up in the morning, you meditate together, you have breakfast together, you clear up, you cook lunch, you hoover the floors, you have classes, and then you eat lunch together. And the first bit of learning was don't say yes to everything that happens in the evening or you will get no sleep. And you will never get any work done.

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Ross  

But you're used to no sleep, 

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Manda  

Not anymore. No, no, no, I did 20 years of sleeping well, thank you. So I did that, came back, it totally transformed my view of the world. My partner and I took a huge what felt like a huge risk at the time and bought a very dilapidated smallholding in which we live now at just over the hill from where we used to live. And then I read the Deep Adaptation paper. Have you read that?

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Ross  

I haven't. No.

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Manda  

Oh okay, Deep Adaptation Jem Bendell, Jem with a J, Bendell with two L's. It is the single, most downloaded scientific paper of all time.

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Ross  

Interesting. 

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Manda  

So it's a little brief on because I think this might interest your listeners, Jem Bendell was, is, I believe still a professor of sustainability at Cumbria University. And I think it was a professor of sustainability management, which feels like a bit of an oxymoron to me. But I think he woke up to the fact that it was an oxymoron one day and decided that there were big holes in what they were doing. And he gave himself a year’s unpaid sabbatical. So that's my first I am very impressed with this man. He took a year off and he went back to Cambridge where he'd done his undergrad. And he spent the year talking to the climate scientists, got to the end of it, wrote his paper, submitted it to one of the journals in his field, and the peer reviewers went no, no, no, you can't possibly publish this. You haven't cited anybody else who's come to the same conclusions. And he said, that's because nobody else has, but you could publish it, it would be a world first. And look, here's all the evidence. And they send it back to the peer reviewers who said no, no, you can't possibly publish this. You can't tell people this is too distressing.

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So he self-published it, on the Cumbria University blog. And at the time, when I downloaded it, they'd had to update the server three times. And that was, so he published it in July 2018. He revised it in July of this year. And his fundamental premise is we have had then 10 years absolute tops before we hit complete societal collapse. If we don't turn the ship around, and his evidence and his reasons for getting there, I haven't found any holes, you will find holes we hunt deeply enough in libertarian websites, there are people who will start parsing the language and get upset about the semicolon and third sentence of the second page in the way of that then undermines everything that it says but I haven't heard anyone who's actually undermined the science. 

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And so it's one of those things don't read it unless you're quite well resourced. And feeling resilient. I cried for a week, which was unfortunate because I was teaching at Schumacher at the time. I walked in and the head of department of the Economics Department said, have you read Deep Adaptation? And I said, No, no, no, I’m reading this, this and this citing books. And he looked at me and said, it's a paper, read it. And I read it that night, I was phoned up faith and said, Okay, we have to change everything. 

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You know, forget trying to save for a pension. There will be no economic system by the time we need a pension. Forget all of the long-term stuff, we need to be building, I decided the things I really wanted to put effort into were food resilience, building communities around food, we live in Rural Shropshire. We could feed half the country from here if we'd really worked at it. And I had learned about regenerative agriculture, and also regenerative agriculture build soil sucks in carbon. There is a slightly contested, but I think broadly still accurate premise that if 40% of this current surface area that's given over to chemical industrial agriculture, which is essentially extractive and destroying soil, were to be given over instead to regenerative agriculture, we would be at pre-industrial levels of CO2 within 10 years. And I think this is a no-brainer. 

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If Monsanto goes broke, that's fine. You know, for us not to become extinct, Monsanto going bankrupt, is wholly fine. But it's not wholly fine to the people who control the money and the narrative. But, it's taking off I think, I don't listen to the archers, but I understand the archers has been pushing regenerative agriculture recently, there was an entire edition of farmers weekly that mentioned it so it is gaining traction. 

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So I came home and began building that here. And began really that was then the beginnings of the push towards Accidental Gods in the form that it is now it had started at the previous winter solstice, I can tell you that we want but that we need to change the basic narrative of our culture. And there are a few fundamental that one again, clearly my brain isn't working. There are a few fundamental ways we can do that. And Accidental Gods is one angle and then I began writing a script with a group of friends. And that's another angle because television, you know, binge-watching Netflix is now our equivalent of sitting around the fire in the Roundhouse.

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Ross  

Telling stories to help people see and believe different things.

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Manda  

Yeah, and finding heroes in different ways, re-quantifying what success is. So there we are, that was quite a long-winded introduction to it.

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Ross  

Yeah. It's interesting when we hear people's stories, and we look for connections of things that resonate with us with either our experiences or things we believe in or don't, and we look at all these different triggers. And what was interesting for those who are listening to this and not able to see the video version was just your story you were telling through your face of the smiles of recalling these moments through your life, in terms of where naivety might give rise to something unexpected to when you, when we discover something that we then can't unsee. 

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And it takes us off into directions that perhaps are unexpected, and it invokes change and shift. So from Earth, a path of logic of then dealing with other living beings, and wanting a desire to connect with them more deeply. And the journey that you've been onto then writing about it to creating stories to communicate something that you're passionate about. And throughout that journey that you've had, we all go on. That is life. That's life where we dance, this beautiful poetry between the unknown, the known, between a vision we're trying to work towards, something where we believe there's better. Whether it's reconnecting to our past, and bringing forward some of those things that were perhaps lost.

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And it's, I guess, it's just this balance of, of evolution, and what you're talking about, and something that I’m equally passionate about is doing that in a sustainable manner. And a phrase that you might have picked up on a few of the other podcasts and pieces that I've talked about is co-elevation. And it's just a lovely phrase, a lovely concept that isn't about equality. It's about everybody having the opportunity that tomorrow could be better. And that takes effort and work, right, and it takes tough decisions and choices. And ones where you change the world from your eyes. 

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And if by what you're sharing, you can help others change their own worlds, through their own eyes. That's how it kind of ripples, isn't it? And I'm interested in terms of your career so far that you talked about of, from an education to a first chapter in veterinary to then, into writing to communicating to now working on expanding the reach into TV, and things like that. How do you think your own changes or your environments have changed as affected that. So you've talked about certain papers, certain readings, what else has influenced those shifts and changes that you could recall have happened through your stages of chapters in your book?

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Manda  

Good question. I would just like to pause and say that no one has reflected back my life story. My life story so insightfully I thought that was beautiful. Absolutely. And will be a cause for reflection. The shamanic work is the answer. I think, for me, connecting with a spirituality that feels relevant to the land on which I live. So the old gods were here long before the Romans brought their kind of upstart religion and reconnecting to something that feels real and grounding, and of with which I can build relationship, so that I can ask the question, so pretty much from certainly as far back as writing Boudica. I get up in the morning, and I do my morning ceremony. And as part of my morning ceremony, I ask, what do you need of me? And insofar as I can, I endeavor to follow whatever arises as a result of that. And sometimes I get very lost. And sometimes I don't hear anything. And sometimes it feels as if there is somebody standing in front of me, basically reading me the riot act. 

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So that I think and essential, or integral to that. And I think probably also because I started teaching, the dreaming back in the early 2000’s. And we used to say it, that's cool. I'm sure it's common everywhere. See one, Do one, Teach One. That's one and the other one is, you teach best, what do you most need to learn? And so, if I was wanting to teach people how to connect, and how to connect in a way that our egos don't get in the way then I needed to be watching myself quite a lot. So there's a lot of meditative practices. 

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Ross  

Yeah, in terms of this opportunity to reflect, have a routine at which allows you to then consider thought, behavior and action. I'm interested to just scratch a little bit at that in terms of when you set yourself up for that routine and that day, do you feel that you use the language, you know, read you the riot act between Tumbleweed between its self identifying? Do you feel it's something that is another word, another kind of framing that landed with me? Was this one of to serve? And do you feel that it happens that this is a flow that you're part of? That it is an instructional process of your day? You know, I'm just curious as to what happens in is it a mix, when you're at those moments of reflection and action and decisions of how you turn up and show up?

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Manda  

That's another very insightful question. Thank you. I would say, it depends. I'm doing a lot of online horse-trading at the moment, everything's online because Covid And one of the most impressive teachers I've ever had in horse terms, and her answer to most question is, it depends. Because we're dealing with living things. And in this case, we're dealing with my imperfect hearing, I think sometimes.

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So I think your concept of a flow, definitely. So let's take a step back. One of the visions that I had at the start of Accidental Gods, that sounds very grand, it's not meant to sound very grand, but I do occasionally, something just arises as a very clear felt visual sense. And this was one of those and it was of the Earth, as seen from space, that iconic picture of the Blue Pearl, floating in the blackness of space. And all around it. In this particular image was a very, very highly complex web of light, very fine filaments crossing and crisscrossing and multiple crossing. And at every crossing point for one or more often many filaments crossed, was a node of consciousness. 

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And some of those nodes of consciousness were human, but most of them were not. And when I first perceived that I had no concept of what it meant, and overtime, so we're very nearly up to the two-year anniversary of that it's begun to make sense. Insofar as I understand it at the moment, and I suspect this will evolve, my job is to take my place in one of those nodes of consciousness, to help other people to do it too, to let go of everything that I believe to be true.  And to connect to the rest of that web in a way that is balanced, where I know that I am the right person in the right place at the right time. I've let go of all my judgments and self-doubts and all the voices that told me, you know, all of the things that we tell ourselves, and flexible enough that when I ask the question, what do you want of me or hold open even to that being a possibility? I can respond in the moment to the answer. And so my current understanding and very much this is my truth for today, my truth for tomorrow may be completely different. 

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One of my very early teachers quoted Gandhi, and I've never checked this, but let's assume, who said, God knows the truth, my truth changes from day to day, my commitment is to the truth, not to consistency. And I really took that on board on that. So this is my truth for today, tomorrow, who knows. 

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But there's, I have a sense now that I am working towards trying to connect to that web at the moment and it's fractional moments, when I feel as if that connection is arising then it feels very much as if there is a flow of awareness and self-awareness and consciousness to which I am being invited to join, my grammar there was very bad. And that somehow something that we had done in humanity and being human we have chosen to separate ourselves from that because I really think if we look at any of the indigenous cultures, or what we understand of past indigenous cultures when we were foraging hunters, and those who still are, we live in context with the world. 

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We can connect to the trees and the rock and the river and the red kite. We did connect to the elk and talk about the hunting. And the hunt was a cycle of hunter and hunted giver and give away. And we chose to step away from that. And if we believe that people who have near death experiences, which is it's a whole belief system, but let's go with it for a moment, let's just hold that as a possibility. Every single one who comes back comes back, saying it's okay everything is as it's meant to be.

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And at the moments when I look at the politics and my brain falls over in a steaming heap, and I just want to throw things at the walls, I endeavor to remember this. Everything is as it's meant to be. So therefore, if that is the case, who knows, then our stepping away was for a reason. But I genuinely believe that now is the time to step back into context, because we are screaming towards the edge of extinction. Faster than I think even Jem Bendell would have us believe. 

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And we're taking everything else with us, you know, ridiculous numbers of species are becoming extinct every day. And if we're going to change that, it's not going to be us working out better technology, or meditating or having better ideas or implanting nano chips in our brains. It’s going to be by us having the humility and the common sense to connect with the web of life and go “Okay, guys, we fucked up a bit. What do we do to fix this?” And listen to the answers, because the answers are out there. We just need to stop thinking we have all the answers ourselves. And so I'm not sure that exactly answers the question that you asked. But it's, it's where I am feeling the connection is at the moment.

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Ross  

And I think as humans, we have this kind of inner desire to answer. We function to pose questions, we have a unique ability to envisage different futures, to then create strategies and different paths, and then to seek answers along the way. What I found just fascinating was observing my own body, in your conversation there of various moments in my own life, I felt how I described it, the language I used was being at peace. Whilst I wasn't done, I felt, like you some days, there's so many things in the world, I want to have a go at moving the needle at. And that can be both empowering and overwhelming, but equally felt at peace in almost this transcendent situation of not needing to be judged to judge myself to all of these things. I've had a couple of moments where I felt completely at peace.

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And I felt moments there in listening to you about the challenges we're all facing. And it's not necessarily about oh, well, this is why or this is a result or it's a Monsanto and, their seeds, or it's about this technology is just connecting with the situation. Having confidence that is a belief about it's happening perfectly, it will be okay. And whether that is perfectly means we are extinct or not extinct, is kind of just the bigger element, it would be a great shame for me and the people I care about if one envisaged future is a dystopian one. And I think it's about the choices we all make each day to think about is this additive? Or is it subtractive? Is it destructive? Is it constructive? And this is the simplicity of we can get so into the whole sustainability and development of these things. And just boil down for me is, is this additive? Not just to me, but how many future points?

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You talked about tribes. And I remember years ago learning about one particular tribe that when they make a decision, they're thinking about, how will this affect seven generations time. What beautiful way of thought around, whether that's planting trees that will be for the next generations homes, three down the line. And our complete opposite to the pendulum shift where I buy it, and I throw it away. Because I need it now, but I don't need it in 10 minutes. I need the fix. And it's convenient, i's there. And we answered the question in that manner. 

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So I am interested to work in an area in our conversation around the training that you're doing, where you're helping people connect to dreams, to thoughts and working with individuals, teams, organizations that are trying to transform, trying to transform whether that's destructive behaviors or thoughts, or to envisage a connection that they yearn for, and how to get into that flow. What does that look like? How does it feel? What kind of stories have you had, where you've worked with teams or with people to take them through those periods of change and how they adapted through their journey? Just bring that a little bit to life? Because I'm fascinated to learn.

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Manda  

That's quite a complex question. So I'm trying to break that down in my head. So there's a distinction between people and teams a bit, but actually, probably not. Okay, so what I teach, I teach two separate things. One is Accidental Gods, and one is the shamanic dreaming. And the more I teach both, the more I'm understanding that the Dreaming is actually a subset of the Accidental God's work. 

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So let's, in the broader sense, I want anyone who wants to, as an individual, to have the tools to be able to stand on the hill and say, “What do you want of me?” and hear an answer that is authentic, that has integrity that is absolutely grounded, that isn't a projection of internal hopes or fears, that fears, feels, clear, coherent, and constructive. Which is sound very straightforward, and is pretty much a lifetime's task. It takes a lot of practice, in my experience for people to step past, hearing what they want to hear or what they're afraid they're going to hear, when they ask that question, because essentially, we're hearing it or perceiving it, in the space between our ears. And finding something real is hard.

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Ross  

Is this the area where you talk about a conscious evolution? Is that what you're looking to unlock? Is this evolution of our consciousness to receive information in a different manner, unfettered, and a connection that is at a different level than we currently operate? Is that what you're connecting into?

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Manda  

Absolutely, yes, I think so this again, grew out of the night set on the solstice of 2018. But what I understood from the result of that was, was that conscious evolution is the next evolutionary step. This is not my idea particularly, this whole corners of the internet devoted to conscious evolution. But when I explored them, my understanding which I stand to be corrected, but I couldn't find anything that wasn't either we philosophize a bit more deeply, or we meditate for another few 100 hours, or we implant a nano chip, and that way, we evolve. And because I have a shamanic background, and I go up the hill and go, guys, is that very likely, because of it is let's do it. You know, frankly, if it takes the philosophizing or the meditating, then let's do it. And the responses that I get every single time is, if that were going to work, you would have done it already. And so therefore, let's try something different. But I think the connection is part of setting the groundswell I see this in a systems context.

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And Prigozine talked about one account, when a system reaches a maximal complexity, its timeline bifurcates. It either crashes into chaos and extinction, or it emerges into a new system. And the definition of the new system is that it was not predictable from the old system. If you can predict it, it isn't a new system. 

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Ross  

It’s part of the same, it's not one of a whole.

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Manda  

It's just an iteration if you've repainted the wheels on the car, but the butterfly was not the chrysalis, which was not the caterpillar, and each was unpredictable from the previous state unless you happen to watch the lifestyle of the caterpillar through. So my wish to get people to connect is because I want partly because that vision arose, and I really hate belief systems. I spend so much of my life trying to teach evidence-based spirituality, we do what works, we test it against the real world. If it doesn't have real world impact, we'll do something different. 

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This is a bit of a leap into a belief system of those visions were strong enough and I'm prepared to put quite a lot of effort, because I've had a lot of real world feedback from similar images in the past, the whole of the books, getting to Schumacher, where we are now all arose from a similar source. So I'm prepared to give it credence that if I can get a critical mass of people, and I have no idea what that critical mass is, to a point where we are contiguous with the web of life, able to ask the question, then I have a felt sense of a gate opening. And I don't know the gate. It's clearly not an actual physical gate, but it's a…

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Ross  

Metaphorical?

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Manda  

Horizon.

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Ross  

Yep. Through wakening…

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Manda  

A ripple effect.

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Ross  

As you talk about a system, you know, we're unable to see that point by definition.

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Manda  

Exactly.

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Ross  

Inside the jam jar, therefore, we can't see the label. 

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Manda  

Yes.

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Ross  

So in terms of this, you have this strong vision and commitment to, as you talked about, conscious evolution is in lots of corners around the world of things. And so there is multiple house and people endeavouring to devote their resources in order to achieve that vision. And that vision might manifest slightly differently in each person but collectively, let's hold that thought. As something that we both are passionate about is taking something that is conceptual, and visionary into a root and practical. So whilst that's great, lovely.

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Manda  

There's a lovely idea. How do actually we do it? 

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Ross  

How do we do it?

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Manda  

Yes and my model is I want a working mother with three children under the age of 10 to be able to do this, because if they can't, then you know, it has to be ordinary people, not just flaky people, let me think conscious evolution, it's a good idea.

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Ross  

So where do we start? Where do we start and what's the sort of key steps that we can do on that journey and pathway to whatever that new horizon maybe.

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Manda  

Yes, the unseeable, how do we become the butterfly from, I love the whole thing of this is an aside, but the caterpillar munches its way through the leaves, and then it spins itself a cocoon, and then it dissolves into DNA soup. And then little things arise called imaginal cells. And in the beginning, they are destroyed because they're seen as being alien by the DNA soup. But then more imaginal cells and more imaginal cells, and they clump together to make imaginal islands. And the imaginal islands become imaginal organs, which join together to make the butterfly and I think it's just such a wonderful metaphor. So I'm, you know, we're aiming for the imaginal cells. 

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So I wanted structure, I really like structure. So my structure at the moment, with the coda, this is my truth for today. But it's been on the website for nearly a year. So it's pretty solid, we need four steps. We need to reawaken interconnection, we'd really need to learn how to connect to the more than human world. 

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In a way, that's a heart-level connection so that we can begin that dialogue, so that we can build a relationship that feels as real as the relationships we can build on Zoom, or on the streets, or in our offices, or in our homes, so that I can step out of the door, and the Redcoats overhead are part of a reality that is communicating with me. And I genuinely believe that humanity had this capacity in the past. There's so much written in, even in modern anthropology of that.

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So we can do that. And I think, my partner has grandchildren, I've been watching them from a bit of a distance, because I don't really know much about kids. But it's, they seem to me that we are born as forage hunters. And what we do in our western culture is domesticate our children. And now as the adults, what I'm trying to help people to do, is to unwind some of that. 

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So that because kids are totally connected, the world is alive to them. And we tell them it's not and they have to learn to behave. So we need to kind of unwind but we only have to unwind it the span of a life. Get back to the connections that we had as kids. So that's one part reawaken interconnection and I put a there's a lot of effort in the Accidental God's work of building that because it doesn't happen overnight.

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Ross  

It's lots of tiny movements tiny steps. 

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Manda  

Yeah.

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Ross  

That help us get to that.

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Manda  

Baby iterations, yes. 

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Ross  

Okay.

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Manda  

And then we also need to do the what I called Growing into Coherence, we need head-mind, heart-mind, body-mind, our intellect, our intuition, our instincts, in alignment. At when I was in therapy, I had this metaphor of the various parts of myself being like chariot horses. And I had this idea that I wanted them all hitched up to the chariot and Roman chariot, obviously. So they're all horizontal, all moving in the same direction. And by the time I came out of that particular therapy, I decided it would be okay if they were just all in the same field. Forget about the chariot that's too complicated. I just want all the parts of myself actually in the same field at one time.

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And so it's that kind of doing the meditative work, doing the contemplative work, however we do it so that I not under limbic hijack all the time. Really, that's the bottom line. So I can see my own processes arising. And I don't have to get caught up in them. So that my heart-mind and my head-mind are in balance as I understand it in indigenous cultures that function in a hallway, our heart-minds make the decisions and our head-minds work out the logistics of how to implement those decisions. And what we do in Western culture is our head-mind just has total…

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Ross  

Or at least we think it does.

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Manda  

Well, yes, of course, because actually our lymphatic system is running the show. So what we want, I think is to become more transparent to ourselves to have done enough work to see. So that's two. So the third part is the actual learning to ask for help learning, having made the connections, having grown into coherence so that we can see our own projections to get out there and sit under the tree and open and say, “I need the help.” What can you do and to work through the inevitable process of “Okay, I'm making all of this up. It's pointless, why am I wasting my time I could be watching EastEnders,” and learning to sift through the noise to something that will have real world implications, learning to do the testing in our own lives that gives us this sense of evidence base, because it has to feel real. There's no point in doing it otherwise.

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And then having got to that, the final step is the empty handed leap into the void. The I need to let go of everything I believe to be true. It's the top of Donella Meadows Twelve Leverage Points. Are you familiar with her? She was, I am so sad that she died before I knew who she was. Because she's clearly such an astonishing systems thinker. And her Twelve, we were introduced at college to her Twelve Levers of Change. And I got to the second to top one, which is changing the paradigm. And I thought, yep, I can do that, I can, that's when I started writing television, television is our…

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Ross  

Story context.

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Manda  

We can, we can change the paradigm. And we still need to do that. But the top one was… 

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Ross  

Well, that's a tool isn't it, it's a lever. 

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Manda  

It's a lever, but the top lever was abandon old paradigms. And it took me a long time to get my head around that. And now I'm getting around, if I stand as part of the web, and I have preconceived ideas of what it wants of me, I may as well not be there. So I need somehow to be able to let go of everything I believe to read through including that it's a self-referential thing. And stand there utterly open with no boundaries, with total connection, able to move. 

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And I think if we can, as I said, get the critical mass, who knows how much that is. Gurdjieff said 200 fully enlightened people will change the world. But first of all, he didn't define fully enlightened. And second, I don't know how he got to that number. And it might have been a percentage of our population that has changed somewhat since then. So who knows, I think if we can get a critical mass to there, then we stand a chance of our complex, emerging hyper complex, emerging system that we are being able to emerge to something different.

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Ross  

I like that. I think my view it's one, it's one person is the starting point, most then is six, in my experience that a team of six deeply committed people will shift systems. I know there's lots of other figures of numbers, you've got Dunbar's number of 151, you've got all of these different bits. Kind of it's I want to pick up on there and I think for many of our listeners that might find some of these things very challenging, and a challenging situation because it's maybe different to their current. 

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It's not in the realm of normal and whatever unnormal is, is unknown, and therefore falls into exciting or fear. And we need a bit of both of them. But what we need is to embrace and make a commitment to something to try it on. Have you talked about a commitment to fitness? Well, it's a commitment to rolling the mat out to do the yoga.

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Manda  

There's a tiny bit of so yes. 

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Ross  

With these thing is, whilst we might not live in total sense of any one of those steps, if we could get a glimpse, if we could sneak a glimpse through the door, one of those bits that you've talked about, in terms of whether that is, you know, Marshall Goldsmith’s, “What Got You Here Won't Get You There” that's abandon or existing, you know?

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Manda  

Yes, brilliant. What was it? The forgetting? No, the unlearning.

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Ross  

Unlearning. Unlearning, is that rather than thinking of this is how I'm rationalizing it in my mind as an endpoint and a total state and that that's where I get. What if it was a moment? What if it was just for one minute? What if it was just for five minutes? What if I could enter a place that I go into, and I say, “You know what, in that room, nothing exists from before, our future,” or every, and I physically enter and I'm a believer in changing our environment, changes our thought and changes our behavior. So if we are getting up, in the same way, doing the same thing, and expect us to be able to suddenly go, “I'm going to go and sit by a tree, or I'm going to go and do these things,” is consciously making some choices to change some of our environments that might trigger and give us permission to explore. And where you gave yourself permission to read a paper, to read an article, you did that, because somebody stimulated you to do so. 

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You've just stimulated me and our listeners to do certain things. You've given us some tools. Now for some people, they might go, “Hmm, not today, not now.” But I encourage all of us to think about one thing, what one thing could I do tomorrow from this, that would help me see something I've not seen before. And then I can try it on, I can try on those clothes, I can try on that feeling, I can try on that level of whether it's open mindedness or experimentation. And the beautiful thing that it seems to be a recurring theme for me at the moment is about this return has always been to me something negative, the whole connotation of return.

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And I've always been somebody who's a futurist, about the future and those sorts of bits. But there's beauty in returning to a childlike state, to returning to the connections that you talked about of, before other things existed before there was no’s, before there was, that's not the way to do it. Nobody told you writing a book was gonna be hard. So you go off and do it, you know? That to me is a beautiful gift you've given me again, to just be not looking for an answer, and allow the answer to show up and know that it will. And if people can just be open to you don't need to even ask for the answer, but just give space for it to show up. And that's something that I've taken, whether that's right or wrong, that's my truth at the moment of those things. 

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Manda  

That’s fantastic.

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Ross

If there was, you know we're talking about change. And we're talking about adapting to either anticipate this new system that's going to come from the soup. And I believe strongly that it will happen, and that those things are almost inevitable, and we are merely passengers along the way. But the choice we have is, What part do we want to play within that?

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Manda  

Yes, absolutely.

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Ross  

If these things are already there, what part do we want to play? What will make us smile when we look at ourselves or tell stories to others? What will others smile when they hear of those things? And that for me is been a gift of just listening and just allowing it to come over me and I'm looking forward to listening back to it. This conversation and episode. And I wonder if people want to reach out to you if they want to begin. Obviously there's your books, there's your podcast, if there was one area where it's this paper, you must read this paper of your works of your world of your thinking. If there was a first step of first anchor what might that be that people could dive to their next step in with you?

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Manda  

I'm not sure I’m the best place to answer that, Ross. But I think in the field that we've been talking about most recently, head to the website which is AccidentalGods.life and just the homepage that what we discussed in the last 20 minutes, I have put there as concisely and uncomplicatedly as I can, on there for sure. So that would be, that would be a first step. And there's, we're doing courses, we're doing webinars, we're doing Zooms. The aim is, if anyone is interested in this, we will make it possible for them to be able to step more deeply. And if it doesn't speak to people, it doesn't speak to people, as you've said, there are so many different avenues being explored now. But yeah, that would be the first one, I hope they'll be television out someday. And we can that would be, that would be another one.

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Ross  

To finish off with that. We're having a conversation, it's a year's time, it's been the best year, whatever you consider the best year is for you, in your journey towards that vision. You have a current number of things that you are envision and see, from the TV to various things. If you had to pick one of those that you think is going to be the knowledge that you know now, the biggest impact over this next year? What would that project be? And how could I help make that more real, and come into its fullest vision for you? So think about that.

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What is it that if you only had one thing you could do to achieve the best result, which project would you focus in on? And perhaps on a next connection that we have, how might I be able to contribute to the progression of that project, of that initiative that that's in there? Because I think there will be listeners who perhaps had an inkling about this might not even have had the language, might not have discovered this, but this could have sparked something for them that suddenly awakens a “Yes, I know there is a connection in me to nature to this other realm to this other piece, and I want to explore it.” And if that's what you're working on, I can make that happen with you and support you in that. That will be just a small contribution to my higher piece of making sure no one's left behind in this new system that gets manifested.

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Manda  

Yeah, this feels like a really important offer. So I'm sinking into heart mind and checking. Because there were two obvious answers. One is, you talked about bringing Accidental Gods to teams. And to date, it's largely been single people who've come on their own, and then tried to take it back into, what one of my senior students works for a foundation that works with other companies and is bringing it in that way. But I would really, really like to be able to bring this to teams.

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But the other thing that arises. And when I think really deeply, this is the one that has the brightest light. At the start of lockdown, I sent an email around all of my friends who are involved with television, and in the end three of us, me another writer, and a gentleman who's a director on the matrix. He was furloughed then. now he's working a seven day week. But I because it seems to me, part of the problem, part of the reason we are who we are, is that every single bit of the narrative, in our culture is predicated on business, as usual, is predicated on the myth of redemptive violence. And the concept that having more stuff, or having the perfect partner, or somehow gaining material things, is how we define success.

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And so what we are endeavoring to do is to write a television series that starts exactly where we are. But over 10 seasons of a minimum 10 episodes per season takes us to where we need to be because I think if we don't have a roadmap, if we don't have a template, if we can't see it working in a way that makes our heart sing and makes us realize that we want to be part of that is not just flaky people with radical ideas. Here is something that all of us could be part of, particularly what we're trying to do is give voice to the various very disparate tribal viewpoints in our culture without giving weight to any particular one, but in the hopes that we can carry those with us so that by season 10, people have stopped wanting their tribe to win and have reached the understanding that tribalism itself is the problem. Does that make sense to you? 

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Ross  

It does.

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Manda  

And so we have got to the point where we’re just putting the pitch, we have a first episode, we have the outlines for the whole of the first season, we have sketch outlines for the 10 seasons, and we're putting together a pitch deck. And what I really want my vision is that we not take this to Netflix or Amazon, because I think they will try and turn it into a matrix six, whatever, they will take control. And it will become another iteration of business as usual. Because it takes a huge amount of work to step outside of that, and I kind of live outside of it.

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So it's, it's not quite as much work. What I would like is to find people who are prepared to invest. And my understanding, I'm not very good with numbers, financially dyslexic, but my understanding is that there are ways of investing in film in Britain that guarantee 102.5% tax rebate, which makes me think that this is a no brainer, that if we can get the package together, that it isn't too much of a punt on people's part.

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But what I want is people who get this, people who understand that this is necessary, and who would be interested in financing it, or in helping with the finance so that we can maintain editorial control, and make sure that it needs to be as compelling as Game of Thrones, it needs to be something that the whole world wants to watch in multiple different jurisdictions and multiple different languages. It has to speak widely. But it has to carry us to where we need to be. And if anybody wants to help with that, I am wide open to ideas.

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Ross  

I think having ambition is the thing we are often lacking. And that sang to me a wonderful ambition that I enjoy your response to questions, to think, to consider. And we can all learn a lot from that. And to not just, react but to respond and to allow ourselves the time to do it. I'm very grateful of your consideration on it. Because whilst in the moment versus contemplating over a long term time, there's somewhere in there, that is the best one. And I have a few ideas already. I'd love to connect with you on that. But one thing that was coming into my head was a voice of Dan Sullivan, whenever I share huge ambitions, and he's my coach and mentor. And he mentors and coaches some of the most prolific entrepreneurs and creators around the world. 

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And he says, quite often focus on the one person and the storyline and the narrative and can you effect that one person and all the other things of the complexities of languages of bits of all of those things will happen. From that base point of clarity of the journey of that single person of what will they know, feel and do through the experience of your vision.

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I've been fascinated, I'm sure we could talk for a very long time. But I want to thank you very deeply for sharing with us your wisdom, your truths, and your visions for the way in which you would like to manifest humanity's conscious evolution and bringing together not only the tools but also some pathways and strategies to help us achieve that. So thank you deeply for the work that you're doing, and for joining us today.

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Manda  

Thank you so much, Ross. It's been such a pleasure. And this is such an exciting podcast. So thank you very much indeed.

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Voiceover  

Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive in the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo-yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ visit "AQai.io" To gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability for limited time enter code "Podcast65" for a complimentary AQ me assessment. AQ AI transforming the way people, teams, and organizations navigate change.

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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