So pigs are very intelligent and they often get out of their pens, and if they make it to a forest or someplace they can hang out and be themselves, they turn into wild boars again, not through generations. That individual animal will turn into a wild boar, grow black hair and tusks and get bigger. And yeah, and I was amazed when I read this, and I was tracking this boar around my property, and I had the weird sense that it was playing with me. Like it would go in a circle and I could see a place where it had stood and watched me look at its tracks from earlier. So we had this relationship, and I ended up writing not a novel, but an allegory about a woman who goes into the forest and meets a wild boar. 

And I also heard that people in England and Scotland in the olden days thought it was very bad luck to mention a pig to a fisherman. So they did not refer to pigs as pigs, they referred to them as “themselves.” So I thought, here’s an animal that if it escapes from society, human society, will become wild and become itself. And I thought, well, maybe if I had an alternate identity that was a pig, maybe if every woman did, who knows, maybe we would all revert to being our true selves. So I wrote this allegory and I did the cover. I painted the cover, that’s the cover there, see? A woman with a pig.

And I upped the ante a little bit. It’s not me who is the heroine of the book, it’s somebody much more fabulous. But the idea of returning to our natural state never left me. And even when I left that ranch, because I thought it was time, I left because it felt like it was in my true nature to do it. So I wrote this book about how there is a part of us that can be wild and that it’s calling to other parts that can be wild. 

And there was a sort of hippie dude in the sixties who used to sort of present this same paradigm: that if we can get far enough from society’s rules and be willing to break the rules in some ways and be willing to look deeply within ourselves, we will go back to what nature wanted us to be. And he said the job then there’s only one task we need to save the world if we can find our true selves. And that one task has two words, no three words, and those words are “Find the others.”

So my entire life, it was from that ranch that I started these broadcasts and I just turned on my phone and I thought, I’m going to talk and I am going to see if the others make their way here. Because I believe that the technology that we now have for gathering like this is a tool in the hands of magic or the force or whatever you want to call it, the divine. And that the technology itself was becoming a kind of wild space where we can become ourselves and then: Find the others.

So, I told you all about this a few weeks ago. There’s a technology that has now arisen, and I tried to make it—I tried to code things that would not only bring people together the way you all so incredibly beautifully show up for these Gathering Rooms. It would not only let me talk to you and you talk to me a little bit through the questions, but would let everyone talk to everyone. Because the model of who we truly are is not the pyramid-shaped, crushing oppression that has been in operation for the last 5,000 years of American history. 

No, no, no. Instead of being a hierarchy, I believe we’re meant to be sources of energy in a pool of energy that is like still water, where every person is like a drop coming continuously into this still pool. And the amount of presence we bring, the amount of truth we bring, the amount of true nature we carry with us creates a ripple effect like a stone dropped into the water or a drop coming into the water. And the more present a person is, the more the vibration generated by that presence moves out and interacts with all the other ripples coming from everyone else’s vibration.

So for example, my son Adam, who’s in his thirties and can’t really talk very well and doesn’t go many places—he works out, he has a few friends, he does a few things—but mainly, if you say to Adam, “Do you want to go to the county fair today?” he will say, “I already had a workout.” Like, more than one thing a day? No. And you say, “Well, what are you going to do?” And he says, “Relax.” So there’s not a lot that Adam does, but he is his true nature. And let me tell you something, a vibe goes out from that kid, that man. There is such a vibration of energy extending all around him. And people who come to our house, who don’t even know he exists, have told me this, that there seems to be a source of energy in the house that puts them in a strangely altered and very delicious place.

That’s how I believe the world to come is going to value individuals, not because of their power, wealth, and status, but because of the amount of presence, truth, and spirit they bring into our very materialistic society. And I hope that if we can get a critical mass of us, then it will tip the scale. And those who represent True Nature will relax the other people into their own true nature because everything wants to be itself. 

I mean, how much time have all of us spent climbing pyramids of power, education, wealth, looks, whatever it is we thought we valued, and it never feels easy, it always feels stressful. There’s never a place where you go, “I’ve made it and I’m a hundred percent okay.” But if you can drop all that, all that cultural nonsense, if you can go wild, and I called this “be-wilder-ment,” bewilderment, if you can go wild, there is a place, I promise you, where you’re sitting there one day and you are where you’re meant to be. And there’s no question, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to strive for, but everything to love, everything to enjoy, everything to experience, to sense. That’s why we’re here. We are here to enjoy this world. 

And we have as a species, we have been destroying it and making ourselves miserable for thousands of years. But I believe that’s about to change. And here’s why. I wrote a book where I said the technology of magic, the spirit that has been recognized, treasured, and practiced by millions of pre-modern cultures that came and went, and some of them still exist on the earth, but they’re being eradicated, they know the technology of magic. And what our culture has is technology that works like magic. 

I’ve said this before, if you went to the rainforest and showed an uncontacted tribe the computer you’re watching now or the phone you’re watching now, they would say, oh my gosh, magic. And we’d say, no, no technology. And then they would give us a potion made out of two specific plants that have to be cooked in a certain way to give us an experience of expanded consciousness. And we’d say, whoa, magic. And they’d say, no technology. That’s their technology.

Now, I’m so excited because the technology I wanted was that thing that would make everybody on this team, this amazing group of people who were born to bring in the new consciousness, make us able to talk to each other. And the technology, about a year ago, I realized the technology had been invented. And I’ve been obsessed with it ever since, along with my partner Rowan. Together we do a podcast called Bewildered, and it’s all about finding your true nature, dropping away from culture. 

And over the last few months we’ve been building this community. I’ve told you about it on another broadcast, but it opened today and already we’ve got, there are so many amazing people in there, my head’s blowing off today because they’re introducing themselves. We know things about each other, there’s AI technology that introduces people to other people who are like them. And I am learning more about you, you out there, those of you who’ve signed up for it, than I’ve ever known in all these years of doing the broadcast. You know everything about me, every story I just told you I probably told you 20 times, but now we’re finding out I can learn about you and we can all learn about each other. 

And that is so much closer to the model of the still pool, the level pool where we’re all equal and precious. So much closer to that than this pyramid-shaped thing where people with more status, power, and wealth, like that might be me here. I talk to you from my pyramid of power and wisdom and knowledge and education and all that crap. No, we’re meant to live in villages of loved ones who understand each other and who are constantly creating. We are the most creative species in the history of the world. And in one morning since we opened our community—it’s called Wilder Community, and you can come along if you want. We can’t run it for free, so we can’t offer it for free, but it’s not expensive. It’s like 10 bucks a week. That is very expensive for some people; it’s as cheap as we could get it.

But the point is it’s closer. It’s closer to the still pool, it’s closer to the level playing field where everyone has a voice and everyone is using these magical technologies to connect. I’ve watched people create and I’ve had people help me create this morning more than I have for years. It’s happening, y’all! The new consciousness is arising and the technology to convey it, to allow it, is arising. 

And we’re seeing an energy, I think you can all feel an energy flowing through, certainly through American culture. I hope it’s all over the world where there’s something about joy coming back. There’s something about love, about connection, and it’s not just about power, wealth, and status, and it’s been brewing and brimming mostly in people who are low on the pyramid: people of color, women, people who aren’t given the privilege right from the get go. I’m not saying the others are bad, but most of the shining new culture is coming from the Adams of this world, the guy who can barely talk, he gets to connect now because we’ve reached a place where that’s possible. Not just energetically where it’s always been possible, but also literally through technology.

Now, I don’t care whether you join the community or—of course I care, I’d love to see you there, but I really am not saying that. I’m saying find your village. Find your community because the time of gathering has come. And when the different waves of influence from people who are truly present when they connect with each other, there’s something when two waves connect. 

So when a wave and a dip connect, everything’s doing this right? So if you’re a wave and somebody else has a dip, it’ll level out and be zero. If you’re both dipping, it’ll be low. But if two people who are having a high energetic moment connect, you create a super wave. And when multiple people are all creating, it’s called positive interference, and when multiple people bring that, you can get these amazing rogue waves like the ones written about in The Wave by my beautiful friend Susan Casey. 

She wrote about how all these different forces can combine to create these massive rogue waves. And her book was called The Wave. And I read that book and I thought, she’s on the team, she knows about that. And when I saw her, because she was my editor at Oprah Magazine for a while, and I brought her book up on my screen and I said, “You’re not just talking about the ocean, are you?” And she just looked at me and winked and said, “You know it.”

It’s time, it’s happening. All right, I’m very excited, so maybe we should just bring it down, do our meditation, and then I’d love to take your questions because this is a little bit of your voice coming back to me. And I value every little tiny treasured bit of your energy that I can find. I can feel my tusks growing in as we speak.

So let’s do our meditation. We’re going to find the wild inside us now. Okay? Breathe out. Breathe all the way out every bit of air from your lungs and then let it come in naturally and then release completely. See if you can release all the stress of this week that’s happened behind us and the stress about the week that hasn’t happened yet. And that you don’t need to think about right in this moment. Everything is fine right now. You’re fine right now. There. You’re fine again in this moment, in this one and this one. And as your breathing gets regular and slow, ask yourself the strange question, can I imagine the distance between my eyes?

There’s something about that, you guys, that sends machines into a really interesting state. When a human is wired up to a machine and asks the question, can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Something happens in the machine that says this is very significant. Can you imagine the space between you and the surface where you’re watching this broadcast? 

Pay attention to imagining the distance between the surface and your eyes. And then imagine the distance between the top of your head and the base of your neck. Imagine. Can you imagine the distance between those points? Can you imagine the space inside the atoms going down through your whole torso? Imagine the space rippling down in every atom. It’s almost 100% space, and nothing can hurt space and it’s continuous. 

There are no boundaries between the space in your atoms and the space in the air around you. So can you imagine the space sustaining you that goes from the center of your body to the edges of the universe? Can you imagine the space between those of us who are watching, listening to this broadcast? Doesn’t matter if you’re live or if it happens later, it doesn’t matter. Can you imagine the silence under every sound? Can you imagine the stillness under every action, even the vibration of the finest particles? Can you imagine that you are made of this space, stillness, and silence that is alive? 

It’s alive. When it leaves your body, your body’s not what was alive, it was the consciousness that filled the space inside your atoms. That’s life, and that’s love, and that’s beauty. And that’s the intoxication of being in these material forms. Can you imagine it? Because the human imagination is the most powerful force on this earth, and it’s going to a whole new level. 

Oh, thank you so much for the beautiful energy you send when we do that meditation. Holy smokes. Yeah, we’ve been linked. We’ve been linking up every week. No mistake about it. One day the technology will catch up and it will be able to record the energy you just created. But until then, let’s look at the questions for today.

Fatima says, “I love your intelligence.” Ohh. “I learn so much from you. Can you recommend any books that you’re currently reading or a survey of social science books? Any book recommendation is appreciated.” 

All right, I just mentioned the book, The Dawn of Everything, which is a fabulous overview of the archeology and anthropology of our culture, starting way back in prehistory and going all the way to the presence. Yum! Yum, yum, yum. I’m also reading a book called The Way Out by Alan… dammit…Alan, I just think of him as Alan. Ro will get me his last name. The Way Out is a book about pain that is related to fear in the mind and how to rewire your brain if you have something called psychogenic pain. Alan Gordon. Alan Gordon is his name. And it’s a beautiful, warm, loving book about how we can rewire our brain so we will feel less physical pain. And I was using it on my walk this morning to make my knee hurt less, and it works. So those are the only two that come to mind right now. There are tons more. Maybe I’ll put some in the comments later. Oh, and I’ll list them in our community too. Ooh, that’s a good idea. We have a book club there.

So Kate says, “If we interact with lower-vibration individuals when our vibration is higher, what determines which frequency wins out? For instance, whether they go up or we go down, is it a matter of holding onto your own frame or vibration so you don’t dip?”

Yes, it is. And here’s the very best way to keep yourself from going into dark energy when it presents itself. You can start, even if it’s a really ugly energy, with think this thought and it will sound crazy, but just repeat it as words in your head and your body and neural system will hear it. And the phrase is, “I like you and you like me. I like you and you like me.” 

And you start to think, In my highest self, I do like your highest self. I like you, and you like me.” And as you start to go into the realm of energetics and higher selves, not just the monkeys in shoes that we are physically, you may want to drop into, “I love you and you love me.” I’ve been practicing this with some of the people I like least in the world. You can guess who some of those are by this shirt I’m wearing. And my constant refrain to the people who are causing a lot of trouble from my perspective in our culture, spreading hate as hard as they can: “I love you and you love me, and you’re not getting out of this. It doesn’t mean I’m going to roll over and play dead and let you do what you want, but I know that you love me and I know that I love you, in the higher self kind of way.” And there’s stuff that happens when you start letting your higher self love another higher self and know that it is loved by the other’s higher self, even if that other self is horrific. I mean, the person is horrific. “I love you and you love me, starts to feel true,” and it changes things. It changes things in a room. I’ve done it when I was an expert witness in a court case. I’ve done it at border crossings in scary African countries. “I love you and you love me, I love you and you love me.” Just say it in your head and your own vibration can’t dip too far and their vibration can’t help but rise. It’s very tricky magic. I love it.

So Rose Broadband says, “I’m an artist and I’m feeling so stuck creatively with two kids under three. My daughter’s name is Wilder, by the way, but I so badly want to feel expansive in myself in my wild creative, but I feel exhausted.”

Well, you could come to our community and get your tank refilled by a lot of other creatives who have been through that period of raising children when you’ve got no energy left and they’re just the beautiful little suckers are just pulling everything out of you. It’s terrible. It’s a terrible, wonderful time. And it does not do well with the physical aspects of creativity, like the actual words on a page or the actual painting or the music or whatever. You’re always taking care of a kid. But in those times, man, I love Catherine May who’s a beautiful British writer who says, she talks about how people write about going off and sitting in a cave and finding enlightenment because they find pure calm. 

She says, “I challenge you to do that with a child that you have to raise. I would like to take some of those dudes a newborn baby, let ’em have it, and see how much deeper their meditation has to go.” The 28-thousandth night they get woken up in the middle of an exhausted sleep and they have to find gentleness rather than fury. That is a meditation deeper than anything you’ll get sitting in a cave. And love is the deepest meditation. So when you’re giving up those personal values for wanting to create in the moment, you are developing a depth that will come to your creativity later and dramatically increase it. And that’s not just kids. It’s caring for a loved one. It’s caring for a friend who’s heartsick or for a parent who’s old and dying. Anyone you stop to help gives you that depth. That is the power of when you’re in the pool and you’re really present for another person and you’ve given up something that you would really like to do, temporarily, your presence is huge. 

And then when you bring that to your creativity later—and you will—you’ll be able to make things you never thought you could make. But in the meantime, find a community, find a village, find a village of crones who have been through it and say, “Oh, honey, I know.” Oh my God, I could barely get— when all my kids were under five and I was supposed to be getting a PhD and I was trying to write my first book, it was like three words a day. And now people say, “Oh, you’re so prolific.” I am not prolific. I have crawled through that space, but it’s made my work very different and I think much more meaningful. So good luck. You are okay.

Margie says—oh my goodness, I’m late, but I started late, so I’m going to go four minutes over. You don’t have to. So Margie says, “How do I join my people when I don’t know exactly who they are and also feel like an imposter? I’m interested in eco-psychology, but I’m very much on the periphery.”

Dip your toes in. Go around and see where are the people who seem to speak your language? On whatever, on an internet app of any kind that groups you together. That’s what—the technology we’re using, I love that AI comes in, you list your profile and it says, “Oh, you might be interested in meeting, you know, Margie, who is also interested in eco-psychology. This is Dan and Bobby and Sue, and they’re all interested in it too.” And Badabing badaboom, you’re in your peer group. Woo! It’s pretty fantastic. And you don’t have to travel to do it or become a famous writer or whatever. You can find it online. Magical technology.

So Ariel says, “Can you chat a bit more about the latter analogy you posted about the other day about it being shaky, no matter which direction you go in? So impactful,” she says.

It comes from a line in the Tao Te Ching that says, “Hope is as hollow as fear. Whether you go up the ladder or down, your position is shaky, but when you put both feet on the ground, you can care for the world as yourself and love all things.” So when you want something to happen, you’re always afraid it won’t. And when you’re afraid something will happen, you always hope that it won’t. Those two are the same. But it’s always about the future, and you can’t ever know what the future’s going to bring you, so it’s miserable. Put both feet in the present moment, feel what you need to do now. 

Be present. Remember, that’s the impact. That’s the wave, is presence, authenticity, integrity in the moment. And that, when you get in this moment, right now, you’re watching this broadcast, here we all are—that’s it. That’s all you have to cope with. Ah, now I can care for all things. Now I can feel my love for the world. That’s what that’s about.

All right, just a few more. Tracy says, “I used The Way Out technique after a recent surgery, and I didn’t require any pain meds after the procedure.” Thank you, Tracy, I really needed that today. I really appreciate it. See, that’s community. That really literally gives me a ton of hope. I feel so good. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, Letty says, “My Mom passed away last Saturday.” Oh, honey. “I’m away from my family. Any advice on how to deal with my grief by myself? Any tips will help. Thanks in advance.”

Well, first of all, Letty, there are, by my screen, there are a couple hundred people who are right here. And a lot of us lost our mothers for all kinds of reasons. A lot of us have grieved like this. And that means that the love of mothers can be with you and the love of those who have lost mothers can be with you. And you will not feel good. You will feel as if you are being ripped apart. But we will hold you. And I promise you that’s real. And if you need evidence, go online and find people who’ve lost their mothers and you’ll know for sure that it’s real. 

But I’m telling you right now, it’s real and it’s a space to fall apart and be reconstructed, which is the only way to deal with the loss of your mother. I’m so sorry for your loss. And I know you’re going to come out of this magnificently.

Okay, Mary Jeanine says, “I’m on an island in a tiny queer community, which sometimes feels like a breeding ground for the dark energy of gossip, scarcity, and clique-iness. How can I cultivate light, especially when I’m hurt?”

Be the piggy who gets away. Go into the forest, get by yourself, write down what you’re angry about because your anger will rise up in response to injustices you see. And some of that gossip is unfair, unjust, and toxic. When you get to your wild self, you’re not a farm pig anymore. You don’t have to accept the tame ways. You’re going to come back to yourself. And then you’re going to bring in people who want to be authentic. And you’re going to repel people who don’t want to be authentic. You’re going to lose the friends that needed losing. They weren’t friends anyway. And then you’re going to bring the friends that needed bringing, and that’s happening in so many ways all over the world. So yeah, come to the company of those who are true and you will find your truth.

And finally, Jao says, I don’t know the real name, I can’t pronounce it, “Martha, I just got unemployed. And I feel disconnected from the present, being overwhelmed by the options of the future I want to explore. What would you advise for people experiencing a similar situation?”

So many of us, losing what we are familiar with as the change of society accelerates, and industries collapse and places go out of business, and we’re unsure what to do. And this is what I would say, and I’ve said it to many, many corporate groups and individuals who’ve lost jobs. You are in the ocean now. You can go in any direction, and there are waves and it is scary and there is nothing that feels stable. But you were born to surf. You were born with the balance inside you to find your truth, your integrity. That works. 

Call it a kayak instead of a surfboard. Any small craft on the water. Your integrity is your kayak, and your yearning is a paddle that will take you in any direction you want. And you could not do that with the strictures of an employment situation around you, not most employment. So what’s happened is you have been freed from the structures of the old consciousness, and now you have your integrity and your yearning to move you forward. 

And I’m going to end, again, because it’s my obsession and my joy today, you find the others who are doing it too. In my next book, Beyond Anxiety, I talk about how people who are true to their nature form an economic ecosystem around themselves. I give examples of that and I really want you to experience it. And I know that you will. Focus not on getting another job first. Go ahead, do that. But the first priority is: Come back to what you feel. Feel what you feel, know what you know, say what you mean, and do what you want. And you will not only find a way to get through the ocean, but you will find other people paddling alongside you. And you will create economic ecosystems by yourself and along with the others that are different from anything that’s existed before. And I believe they’re going to, as the Tao Te Ching says, care for all things.

I love you all so much. This is such a big day for me, and I can feel your energy meeting me here. And life has never felt as magical to me as it does today. I love you. Thank you for joining me, and I’ll see you later on another episode of The Gathering Room.