 Hi, this is Debbie Daschinger and welcome to Dear to Dream. Exciting stuff because today's show features John P. Milton, who is a meditation and Qigong instructor, author, and environmentalist. John is the founder of Secret Passage and The Way of Nature. He pioneered vision questing in contemporary Western culture in the 1940s. Well, I usually tell you about Dear to Dream and the awards that I've won and all of that, and that's lovely. You could hear that in another video. But what I want to tell you is three to five months from the time that this airs, you'll be able to see me on Gaia TV, interviewed on the Beyond Belief show, and then coming up, I'm going to be interviewed on Coast to Coast with George Norrie. So taking my message way further and doing the things that I teach you guys about also coming up. I'll be speaking in Glastonbury, UK in September 2024. And then on a spiritual cruise where you can hear amazing transformational people speak. And in the upcoming episodes, I'm going to start giving out the link. They only have so many places. Capn's on the boat. It's a celebrity cruise. So it's going to be all that. And I'll be speaking there as well. So I love you to join me on the spiritual cruise. And just wait for next week when I'm going to be giving out the live link. This show is sponsored by Dr. Dane here and Access Consciousness. They do energy work in the world. If you'd like to join them, you can go to Dr. Dane here, H-E-E-R.com. I'm Debbie Daschinger. And you know what I do. I help you with your books to take it from the inception of the idea to the finished publishing of it. Also, once your book is complete, I've got a company that guarantees I'll turn your book into an international bestselling book. And finally, I show you how to be interviewed on radio and podcasts and get massive results. You can learn how now. You can do all of this yourself. Let me teach you free gift for you. Go to Debbie Daschinger.com slash gift. And there I give you templates, videos, and I teach you how it's D-E-B-B-I-D-A-C-H-I-N-G-E-R.com slash gift. My guest, John P. Milton is a pioneering ecologist, spiritual teacher, meditation master, vision quest leader, and shaman. John's vision quest and shamanic work began in the mid-1940s after experiencing his first vision quest at the age of seven. Since the 1950s, John has guided thousands of people into the wilderness, sharing with them experiences and practices that cultivate a profound connection with nature and ultimately source awareness. Over the years, many have sought his profound transmissions and powerful yet gentle qigong teachings. Tai Chi training, meditation practices, internal alchemy training, shamanic practices, and sacred passage programs. John continues to lead wilderness trainings in many of the earth's wild and sacred places. Through Way of Nature, he offers nature quests, sacred passages, advanced awareness trainings as well as custom programs and retreats for individuals or groups. You can learn more by going to wayofnature.com. And with that, I welcome John P. Milton to Dare to Dream. It's so great to have you. Wonderful to be here. So, gentlemen that I know for a couple of years now, I see him at events all the time and we become kind of acquaintances. When he's been on this show, great guy, Matthew James Bailey, was finishing his interview on my show a bit of time ago, last year. And he said, I just feel like you should meet and interview John P. Milton. I feel so strongly about it. And I really trust Matthew. So, this is how we got connected through our mutual friend. Yeah, Matthew is wonderful. He's a very working in a very important field right now developing ethical foundation for AI. Yeah, he's changed my life a bit too because he's opened my mind to using it in very ethical ways. And I do in my business, it's been wonderful actually, very, very, very helpful. And there's so much about who you are, John. And first, I want to start just the audience knows this amazing background that we're looking at. Tell us where you are right now. I'm in the middle of the desert in southern. Bah, California, the, the area near La Paz, maybe a couple of hours away from La Paz. And I've been running retreats here for going on 30 years with the whales. We have a male whale migration with a back grain and blue whales coming through. That put people on retreat here in the winter months. And so it's been kind of a home for me in the winter time each year. You know, I've been coming here for about three years. And so you've pioneered for Western civilization this really unique way of spiritual development through nature. And that creates a communion with all species and with Gaia with Mother Earth. Where did that training stem from? What teachers or lineages did you experience to get you to where you are right now? Well, the first and probably the most primary teacher was nature itself. And as a young child, I began asking my parents and grandparents, and we lived on a farm in northern New Hampshire. And I asked them to let me go out and spend some time alone in nature because I was so passionate about it. And I began asking for the other on four. And then finally they said, well, maybe next year, try to get it five, six. I said, nope, yeah, we have to wait a little bit longer. And finally at eight, seven, they said, okay, you can go out. And it was fairly short period of time, only five nights and days. But going out there, when I went into a place that I was very fond of near our farm in the forest, I ended up seeing the animals coming in from the forest and I had quite a circle of different kinds of animals join me during that five day period. They really became like close friends, companions. And I felt like I was initiated into the big family of all the things that I'm really changed my life. And I've been sharing that experience ever since. Wow. I love the idea of being surrounded by animals and birds and birds. Yeah, it just feels like an initiation. It's interesting, you know, I'm sure you know to become a shaman. It's often a very difficult path, a true shaman, and there is definitely at least one initiation. Usually it's a near death experience or a mental crisis or you struck by lightning, or you have a psychic trance and you meet an animal face to face that's fierce. And it dismembers and eats the shaman and then blows it back into being sometimes it's not that quick. And when it blows it back into being it then becomes it's the shaman's protector and tutor. And I had a very profound animal experience to that didn't include dismemberment but there is no doubt it's my spirit animal. And I'm wondering if any of what you experienced back then at that young young age, have any of those animals step forward to become your ongoing spirit animal your tutor and protector. Well, bear has been a very consistent partner through the years. And I've continued to have many experiences with black bears, grizzly bears, both in the States and up in Alaska and Northern Canada. I did a lot of expeditions in the Arctic in my earlier years. But I'd say bear is one of the big ones. And I was struck by lightning and killed and then brought back to life later after six hours. At what age? I was 1984. Wow. And what were the circumstances? I had just been asked to dedicate a sacred site for a good friend, yet about 1000 acres near in your words for New York, New York State. And so I went up and did the ceremony for him to kind of officially honor it as a sacred site for contemporary humans. And I came back to doing the ceremony and began to get ready to spend the evening alone in my, I had a little rental unit that I was staying at. And a lightning bolt came through the window. And the only thing I remember is it was around midnight 11 to 12 somewhere in there. The only thing I remember is the sound of a tremendous explosion. Thunderbolt sound. It felt like it was shredding the universe. Wow. And it took me into the, I'm sure you've heard of the classic experience spring, but into the tunnel, the jar tunnel, shot through the tunnel alone. There's no, nobody there with me. Through the tunnel and I could see a light at the end and then I shot into that light, which appeared to be once I entered it, my sense of individuality merged with this light, which is very clear and very, very bright. And I remember for about six hours, I know that because when I came back, that's what time it was six hours later. When I came back, I was brought feet first kind of breach birth back into a human form again. And I felt like I was reassembled at that point. And I still had my eyes fixed on the star that or the light that now became something like a star. And when the tunnel walls of the tunnel dissolved in my was back in the human form. I saw that the strong I was looking at was actually the planet Venus, the morning star. Do you think there's some connection for you with Venus? Well, this is a very profound planet. There seems to be something about that that is is really profound. I don't have any theories, but that was that the experience and I felt like the merging with clear light and the the reality of Venus itself, there's some kind of a connection there. Very interesting. I mean, it makes me want to pause and race over to Google and look up the Venusian people. I don't know what your feeling is about extraterrestrials and all that. I am deep in that world and much of a believer and an experiencer. And so I know they're a Venusian people. So it makes me wonder just as an offhand comment what your connection might be or if they're lineage. And may I ask you, John, when you came back after six hours, quite a dramatic experience. Was there anything physical happening for you? Like did you need a lot of help after that in recovering and also did you come back with gifts shamanically? Well, you could probably ask my students about the gifts, but the there was no damage. Wow. It felt looking back on it now. It felt like it was an initiatory experience that was meant to give me a direct introduction into source. So it would just be a theoretical concept. And since then, I've been focusing on my teachings really are focused on a big people make a deep connection with other living things. The rest of the life system of the planet and in the planet itself as a living being. And then inner nature, which is, of course, the whole combination of perceptions and experiences. I call it the makeup of non experiential fields of sight and center tastes and smell and touch movement. Energy comprehension emotions and thoughts of that matrix makes up the experience of this lifetime. So, and we call that in a way of nature, the inner nature reality. And then of course, the source nature, which is the foundational state of clear and open consciousness, which is foundational to all the other processes that we experience in life. All the forms manifest in that context. So a lot of my teams are about helping connect with other inner and true nature. How do your experiences with shamanic work and the vision quest inform the spiritual aspects of your work. Well, one of the beautiful things that happens on this path where you honor of life as sacred is that you begin to see that many living beings can bring very profound teachings. And even methodologies for attaining spiritual growth and cultivation. In the shamanic pathway, we honor all living beings as having immense capacity and wisdom. When you merge and integrate with the energy of these beings, they bring gifts of deep insight and wisdom. And then of course, that wisdom begins to flow through you if you really receive the initiatory process that totem has brought to you. We kind of specialize in totemic process in a way of nature. Can you explain that more? Well, you've heard the word totem, I'm sure. Yes, absolutely. Wolves and BC and that kind of thing. That really represents how beings of nature begin to, when you begin to go through a process of deeper connection, then the opportunity or the invitation goes out as a human. You're not seen as one of these humans that's completely caught up in self referencing to their whole life. They're more open to a type of referencing which connects more with sourcing with many other forms of life. And when that begins to happen, a number of invitations often show up. In my case, and I had a number of early invitations from different life forms and began to learn from the connection to them. In our process, what I train people in is how to go through the process of first learning the fact that most of us are not connected to the rest of life, or instead of disconnection, especially as we live mostly in cities. And so we using these approaches that we've developed over the years, which are essentially shamanic. You go through a process of reconnection. And then once you've established a reconnection, you begin to go deeper with that and establish an experience of actual community where you, you're still you there's still the other being of nature but you're in a state of very deep connectivity. And you prove the community experience and open up an experience of unity where you and the being of nature, essentially one being is no separation between you and that other being of nature. And that's all done without the help of plant medicine. It's sober. Wow. Beautiful. Okay, I have a couple of questions that came up while you were sharing that I am really moved by what you're saying. And I want to first ask you about your relationship. Clearly, you have this very profound connection with all things nature, all animals, plants, trees. Does that extend as far as rivers, the Apus, the sacred mountains, the sky, everything? Very much in fact, one of the things we have nature doing right now is we're beginning to establish sacred sites in nature as contemporary places, which are considered sacred by modern humans. And where we honor the rights of nature itself. Bring back the rights of a river to be to own itself, the rights of a place to own itself, the rights of different animals and plants to own themselves and their own sovereignty. And we have a place called the Sacred Land Sanctuary in Crestone, Colorado, where a fairly large chunk of land north of the town of Crestone has been dedicated to this process. And many of her issues are held there. And so the field effective creating that kind of space. And then what happens with nature how it reciprocates when people come there is just amazing as a welcoming. Because once you begin to have this kind of intention, all of nature kind of goes in the spirits of nature go. Wow, these are really different kinds of humans. They want to connect they want to be go into a deep experience of being part of big family of all living things. This is really special. And so they're embraced and honored. And they have experiences that are far more profound than if they were just going out into a regular place in nature where that kind of cultivation did not occurred. And do you in your relationship with all of nature. Do you, what does that look like? What does that feel like sound like do you actually talk to you have to go into meditation to connect. What kind of information do you receive or direction, talk more deeply about what this is for you because it seems to me that you're actually a voice and a guide. Maybe the plants even gave you that job before you came here. And you said yes, that you are a mouthpiece and an action force for them. So what is that like for you, your engagement. Well, it kind of goes back to that early quest at age for age seven. I began speaking with my parents very early on about the fact I was here to help people be more happy and begin to have a better relationship with with plants the animals and the earth itself. So it came in with a mission. And that's just been refined over the years. And I've combined that that early knowing of what I was here for with training and things like to Chen Taoist internal alchemy. It's been dueled by the violence of from the hindu tradition and very shamanic lineage is like the bunpo lineage of Tibet. And also several Native American traditions. And so a lot of this is sort of helped me to find the common ground of connection to outer inner and true nature of different cultures and different pathways. And to see where these common ground principles, what they are and how they function as a whole. And then to come up with practices that also fit in beautifully with those core principles of cultivation. And part of the idea is there is to have a pathway that you can travel without having to be part of a specific lineage from the past. And also have a pathway that helps you see other pathways are also powerful and profound because we can begin to see we all share common paths for a particular lineage that others share as well. So it takes away that competitive who's got the best pathway kind of respect based on a common ground. Yeah, it's incredible for me to hear you talking about this is the way of healing, because something that I talk about is my unique point of view is that shamanism is the way to heal the planet and heal humanity. The planet Gaia don't need saving they need loving and they are living, breathing entities, they are powerful entity entities. And so when I'm being interviewed or I'm talking on stage about this, and people are saying well what do we do from here. You know, for me it's about adopting more shamanic ways of being and what I mean specifically is this reverence of the mountains, the river, the earth, the animals, the sky, the moon, everything understanding it is alive. You can hear a lot lot longer than us it has tremendous wisdom, and rather than doing things that have greed and control and a lot of what corporations do etc, and things for money is to turn that around. How do you see what you do and what you know in relationship to these things in nature. How do you see the way forward john to healing people humanity at this very interesting time and also the planet at this very interesting time. So what if we begin to embrace nature as a partner, and the beings of nature as part of a bigger family, we start to have a different relationship and we are open to learning from nature, and especially learning those things that can help bring us back into balance and harmony, and integrate state with the rest of life. We obviously face massive challenges in the degradation of ecosystems and the pollution of the planet everywhere. Problems like mining and loss of the oceans even with all the plastic pollution taking place there. So take a look at each of the national systems of the planet. And I, as a young man I studied deeply in the ecosystem ecology, because that seemed to be the science that most best described how humans and the rest of life were part of that big family experience that I had as a young kid. That science seemed to describe that in the relationships very deeply. And we've learned through ecosystem ecology that it's not just climate change it's also these massive impacts from certain kinds of pesticides that poison the soil, every living thing in the soil, or besides that do much the same thing to plants. The release of novel toxins that we have no idea what those new chemicals are doing, except they probably are not being helpful, and yet they're being released into the environment on a massive scale. So if we're going to have the insight and the wisdom to heal this kind of situation, this kind of truth, we need to make a connection with the basis of life itself, and be open to learn from life, and not put ourselves on the top of the pyramid of living things as the beings that know it all and have all the answers. We actually need to take the opposite view that we've screwed up pretty badly. We need to be much more humble about what we've done, know the mistakes that we've made, and take another look at how we can establish the connections of the fundamental wisdom of nature, and the beings of nature, and learn from them. So Shamanic is a kind of a deep purpose behind it to help in the re-indigenization of contemporary times. I never heard that word before, re-indigenization. Yeah, I had to kind of come up with it because I couldn't find a word to fit that. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, these very dismissed people actually have had some pretty profound answers all along. It's no accident that some of the most in tune and balanced peoples of the planet living in harmony with the rest of life have been the indigenous cultures, because they had the vision quest, for example. Yes. And in the vision quest, and we do a modified version of this. Okay. You go out into nature and you go out alone for a period of time. It could be anywhere from a few days. Most vision quests were three or four, or maybe as long as five days of solitude. And you often wouldn't eat during that time, drink very little or not at all. You'd have no tent or no shelter. You'd stay within a very small circle of roughly three meters. And you would pray and meditate and cry out for the vision that would give you the answers of, who am I really? What's this lifetime for? And what's this all about? It's lifetime. It's life on this planet. And get the basic instructions for how to live your life. And that was often done in your teen years. So you've got the message of how to live a good life in balance with the rest of life. And tap into the creativity that would allow you to do that skillfully. We don't have anything like that in cultures anymore. So part of our job in the way of nature is to bring that back and provide the vehicle for re-accessing that universal wisdom that the indigenous people have always had. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. The first, I was in a six month shamanic program. I'm in my third one right now, different teacher, but my first very extensive shamanic program was recommended that we do a vision quest. And so I just want to be very honest with you. It's kind of a big trigger. I didn't do it because the idea of me as a woman being alone in the mountains. And honestly, I mean, the animals, it's more people, you know, the concern of, I don't know, a man or a group of men coming along and I'm alone and all of that. So can you speak to that? I'm being very vulnerable right now. There's, you know, I feel called. When I hear you share this. That sounds, you know, even at my age, like a very beautiful thing to do. And it's quite a challenge. But also the fact that, you know, what would you do in that circumstance so somebody could really know they were safe. Yeah. It makes a big difference to do a sacred passage or a nature quest, which is the term we use now for a contemporary vision quest. It's a little bit different because you can have a tent. We do recommend fasting gently using the master cleanse. Wow. Complete solitude. You have no contact with humans during that time. Yeah. And you're able to have a larger circle of about 108 feet or meters depending on the. Because we do these in places where we have either agreements with the landowners where we actually own land ourselves guarantee solitude and nobody coming in to mess with you. Okay. And for example, I right now have close to a dozen people on beaches along the coast here. Each individual has their own little beach through a little promontory looking at over the sea. And they're just there with the sea lions and the elegans and the whales and the dolphins. And we have a team of people that are making sure that the security of each of those camps is maintained. People don't have to worry about anything from the outside. And you're quite correct. I think humans are probably the most dangerous species. So with good cause, it's very important to have that really secure. So you don't have to worry about that. You can take the time and have the freedom to really take a deep dive into your, your truth, your deepest inner truth. They're in a Biden that without fear or concern. What kind of profound things have happened for people doing this on your watch during a nature quest? I'd say, I often say to people, I have one of the best jobs on the planet. So I'm privileged to be able to see people go in with kind of waited down with the burdens of life and wondering if they're going to be able to regain the magic and the beauty. And the inspiration that they had as kids. And we're maybe in their early teens and twenties. And then these people, same people come out a week later. So we only, they only go out for roughly five to seven days of solitude in this way. In the front end and the back end, we focus on training and integration and sharing. So they come back from that week of solitude. It's just shy shining like an inner lamp. It's going off with 10,000 watts shining from the inside. And, and then very often I'll get reports back even years later from people say, John, you have no idea how my life was completely transformed by that one passage. I've heard that so many times. It's one of the most powerful processes of transformation on the planet. No question about it. And of course we combine the solitary part. It's really only one part of the process. The first part is to honor the fact you already have a liberated essence and to honor that truly liberated essence of yourself is perfect. And the second part is to bring in authentic teachings from that common ground basis that also reconnect you to the big family of all living things, as well as to the source aspect of yourself. And then thirdly, we, we work with the power of transmission, not just from the human teacher, but from all the other species that are able to transmit deep levels of wisdom and insight and energy, sacred energy. And then fourth, we have that power of solitude where we can drop human culture for a little while, let that extremely powerful reality of the of the non-consensual reality dominated world begin to reach us. And when we drop all our ideas about how the world is, which you get during solitude, then vast new levels of creativity are unleashed and completely change your life with the good. And then there's that power of being in a sacred place in nature where these places like the sacred and sanctuary I mentioned in Crestown where you've nurtured a sacred relationship with plants, the animals, the elements and the beings of nature. So when you go there, you're embraced by all life as a wonderful example of humans who are coming into a new kind of relationship with a big family of all living things. That's very special. So you have those five powers and then power of special community when you, when you come back out and share paradoxically for a process like this includes some solitude. It's one of the most bonding things you can do between humans because they've shared something so special, so deep. Amazing. Okay. Well, I am grateful to know that there is a group like yours for somebody like me who feels like that would be an important rite of passage. And it was not willing to do it on my own in a, you know, remote area and remote mountain here in Los Angeles. And I'm curious to know more about your shaman path. Can you deep dive with me about who did you study with some like reference points, important things that happened in your learnings, lineage, anything along those lines. I'm very hungry to hear that. Well, I was very fortunate to, when I was a kid, I think I had such a passion for the planet that I found blank spots on the map and decided to put together a simple expedition to go into the places that has on the map, unknown territory and expert. We still had such places when I was growing up. And so I ended up doing that in the last unexplored portion of the Northern Rocky Mountains in Canada. And then I ended up in a relatively unknown area in Chiapas in Yucatan and lived with a Lakindon Maya elder who took me on as a student and spent a year with him in the rainforest and he was my first indigenous teacher. How did they all react to you, white man coming into their territory? Did they respond negatively at first or did they, of course, they're very gifted people. Did they understand immediately who you were and the validity of you being there? Well, I think because the man who invited me to stay with him had that shamanic background, he was the leader of that particular group of Lakindon Maya. I think he probably see better into the hearts of people than most. And so I think you can see in my heart there's a real passion for being of service in a much deeper way than I guess most humans are these days. And probably that helped in his exception to me as an apprentice, as a student. So that that was a very early experience and I have so many things happen during that time I would have a hard time with sharing it all but one of my one of my students is now writing a biography about my lifetime and we have three other hours of recording of adventure stories. And so I'm sure some of that's going to come out in some fashion before too long. Another remarkable about that time if you could give one example of something while you live with that Mayan shaman. Yes. One of the things that I still remember is I asked if if he could show with me any places in the rainforest there. That had any Mayan pyramids, or any of the little temples of the Mayan people. And so he took me to a, as yet undiscovered by the outside world, Mayan city. I was a young kid of 19 years old, found myself as the contemporary discoverer of a Mayan city that was hidden in the jungle. And then spending time there meditating there and doing spiritual practice there and eventually making sure it was protected by the by the Mexican government as a sacred site and not messed with. And may I ask did you see this particular shaman do anything that was extraordinary, not of this realm that you can share. He seemed to have an extraordinary control over the elements, and that control was magnified with my work later on in the Himalayas. I went on to work in the Himalayas for about 15 years, helping set up national parks while I preserves and helping preserve a number of important areas that were being destroyed. And during that time, I bring us to it a teacher who followed the path of the Divine Mother, the goddess, especially in the form of Kali and Durga in the Bhagavan Mukti. And one time I was meeting with him to help him with taking a few pictures that would kind of preserve some of the power of where he lived and what he was doing with his life, which was extraordinary. He had a powerful impact on many people at that time in central Nepal, but was relatively unknown in the outside world. So I arranged to meet with him on top of a mountain where it was said that Shiva and Shakti first came together. And I remember I ran a little late. In those days, there were very few cars in Kathmandu and Bali. And he was staying at a place called Pashupati Nath, which is where the god Shiva said to inhabit in the form of the god of all nature. That's what it refers to, Pashupati Nath. So I was running a little bit late, came to the hill where I was supposed to meet him on that spot where Shiva and Shakti first came together, were unified, symbolically. And he said, you're late. And I remember I said, yes, I'm terribly sorry. And he pointed over my shoulder at an uncoming storm that was good 30,000 feet high. It was the first major storm of the monsoon season. And the entire monsoon was coming at us. It was a pretty good clip, probably 23 miles an hour. And he lifted his hand up and in good English said, stop. And the entire storm rose in place. And the tentacles of the of the rain patterns and storm patterns just kind of regaled like almost like like anacondas writhing in the air. And a yellow slight and a buzzing sound kind of came in and filled the small space. And I remember thinking this must take an awful lot of energy. So in fact, into the hills of the cave where he he lived, where I was studying with him. And maybe five minutes later, he showed in, said, why did you leave? And the moment he showed in first behind him, of all brain dropped like a like a waterfall. And a friend of mine came down to meet this man because he had been studying some of the techniques from the Buddhist community in Nepal, but how to modify whether to bring rain if you use that or stop if there was too much. And these ceremonies often took up to a week to go through the whole with a mantras and the different visualizations that you have to do and the invocation of the appropriate gods and goddesses and so on and so forth. So he was interested in meeting my teacher and came. So I invited him to come over and have a chat. And my teacher said, you know, he asked the question of how come you can do this when it takes a few I've been working with up to a week just to achieve a relatively modest or oration of the weather. He said, well, you know, it's not about the ceremonies and the mantras and the practices. It's about whether you have deep devotion and love for the Divine Mother. And if you really have that in your heart, she will respond. That was a powerful listen for him and for me. Absolutely. Why the Divine Mother? What was the connection there between the weather and the Divine Mother? Well, the weather is the manifestation of her body body of the mother of all the elements, the display of the elements. I've never heard that before. Fascinating. So to cultivate a relationship then with the Divine Mother, one of reverence, and then when you speak for the magic you want to create in changing the weather, that is possible. So basically, his message was that if you have that kind of honest and authentic relationship, of course, the Divine Mother, if you have a request or a need that you express, she's going to respond in a natural response. And in that case, the response was really to give me a teaching as well as my friend who was there for a brief chat. Probably in some ways it was more for me because I needed to hear that. And along the way, your path was shamanism. Have you had really extraordinary experiences where you were asked to do something to help you with your gifts and powers, to understand something, to cultivate nobility, etc. Can you share some of that? Well, of course, amazing things come along the way. I mean, every day, every week is filled with things for that sort. But a good example was some years ago I had a student who was a leader in the field of bioregional cultivation. It was a movement to try to redraw boundaries within different countries, according to the natural boundaries as nature sets them, natural systems set them like watersheds. And we were both working in this movement to try to get this kind of approach to how you draw boundaries and work with the natural systems of different parts of North America in that case. And so he came to me, he had an issue that was dealing with shadow aspect, and I agreed to work with him. So I put him out on a vision quest, a more strict vision quest than I usually do. But I do occasionally do the classical vision quest as well as the sacred passage, which is a much more gentle form. And so he went out and asked for some strong medicine because his problem he was telling was a major one. It was a really healthy issue, which needs some very radical cutting through the packages. And as I began to go back and said, okay, I'll do what I can. And I called on my experience with the lightning to come in and give me a bit of an assist. And he was up on the mountainside near Crestone, in the middle of the sacred land sanctuary that I mentioned. And this is very funny. He said, there is one thing I'd like to take in with me. You know, I'm supposed to fast, but I would like to bring in one thing that would help me have a, the only thing I will eat is this, but no other food. I won't eat too much of it. And I said, what do you want to bring in? He said nachos and hot sauce. This is something about this character. Anyway, so I did a little ceremony to invoke my, my totem helper lightning bolt. And sure enough, I saw it to the west or the rumble of a storm looked out over the valley and San Luis Valley. It's a beautiful thunderstorm with some folks coming down. They have a very beautiful view there out up to 100 miles out of the spaciousness of this valid big view. And that storm was heading across the valley right towards us. So I thought, oh, great, it's going to get a gift. And then I went back to the cabin where I lived. I lived in a very simple little cabin with no, no, no plumbing, no, no. Just see no telephone, very simple life 22 year retreat there. During that period. And so then I heard another rumble. And then towards place called Mount Blanca, which is a very sacred mountain. And another storm had formed over Mount Blanca, and that was heading north again towards right towards us. And then third rumble to the north. And there's no storm has formed to the north. It was heading south towards us. And you should have movement of storms going from the south to the north from west to the east and from the north to the south. No coming together right where we were. And of course, the fourth storm, then began to rumble over the mountains to the east. And that move strong began to move from the east to the west. And is he somewhere in the middle of all of what's converging. It's in the precise middle of the four storms. Man, fourth end of storms came together like that. And the continuous exchange of lightning occurred unlike anything I've ever seen. He was in the middle of it. So I ended up on my cabin floor. Please don't kill him. Please don't kill him. Please don't kill him. Thankfully, he survived. He completely wiped away his previous concerns. He threw all the blockages and he came out of completely transferring. But it was a radical therapy approach. John, was it the totem? Was it the storm and the lightning that did it that literally was able to remove that from him? Or was it his experience as a soul that altered him because of what happened? Both. Because the lightning both provided the heading through the past that destroyed all consensual reality aspects that he was attached to. They're actually causing his blockage. So the lightning provided the means for him to have a completely new view of who and what he could be. He emerged as a brand new human. That is a dramatic story. That kind of thing happens a lot in my life. If I work with you, I don't want to be. Please don't call in the lightning. Okay. That's my main tone. You can call in the bear. That's my, that's my guy. I would love, can you tell, because that when I was working, yeah, it was my first shaman. I was working with a Peruvian female shaman for about seven months and we'd meet out in the mountains. And it was one of the last times we were working together and she was having me go into a cave. And there was a lot of initiation things that occurred. And then before I left the cave, I was supposed to pick up some things and see some things. And all of a sudden, I felt this giant presence and I looked over and towering over me was this brown bear who opened its mouth and roared over me. I had no concern when it did that. I mean, in person that would have been different, but it was in person. And in that situation in my trance, if you will, I felt loved. I felt this creature is here for me. And when it was done roaring and it got down on all fours, it made it itself abundantly clear that it was my protector. And because I started walking and I was actually instructed, she didn't even know what was going on. And she guided me through this and she instructed me to leave the cave. It would not leave my side. And so when I came out of this, I shared, she asked me some questions and I said, oh, and the most interesting thing happened. And I expressed that to her and she said, really, I want you to look up a brown bear when you get home and just write to me what you find. And when I looked it up, I was really moved. First of all, going into it to be clear. And if you had asked me what animal would be your totem, I mean, I might have said lion or crow or, you know, there are many animals I resonate with, never in my life would I have said a bear. When I came home and looked it up. I saw its level of presence and protection and loyalty and I was so moved because my inner child was like, this is what I've been looking for all my life. You know, is really this powerful feeling so I now I have an altar here, and I have bear. You know, we are medicine in many places. I even made clothing with the bear on it. So, you know, I keep it close. Beautiful. Yeah, yeah, bear is fantastic. And another recent story which might fit in here. And with getting the way of nature out, obviously we're in the midst, we humans in the midst of a massive environmental and climate crisis as we were saying earlier on. And I was feeling that the way of nature process could play a major role in helping heal some of the disconnect that's the ultimate source of this. These problems we're having with nature and coming into harmony. And so the challenge was how can I more effectively build a spiritual community that gets this process up much more widely so it can be a benefit to have much larger numbers of people in program called the way share program help do that. But anyway, in the midst of doing that I was still looking for some deeper insight and how to go about this, this process. I was sitting on one of my oh I should mention I am sometimes called a stone shaman because I've discovered a number of archaeological sites that are kind of novel for our time called stone meditation seats. And I have several thousands of them in my home town Preston, and our sanctuary there is preserving these seats which have heaven earth connections that connect into the constellations and then down into the stone into Mother Earth. And you sit on them and receive unique teaching shamanically that are unique to each one of the seats and each store system they're connected to. And this is a kind of a brand new shamanic tradition for our modern time. Very few people know about this although it was widely known back in the indigenous days when the indigenous peoples ruled the continent. So I was sitting on one of these seats and just enjoying a deep meditation. There was still in the forest forest nearby out of the forest showed a beautiful full grown, maybe over unusually large timber wolf. The beautiful orange, orange and gray and white mixed to the fur was particularly struck by the orange hinges to the for really beautiful came right over to me right next to me looked up into my eyes as I was sitting on the meditation seat. I looked over it like this. And I said out loud in English. Hi, how you doing. You're beautiful. And then he looked up at me had absolutely beautiful golden brown eyes just extraordinary. And we bonded through the eyes for maybe a couple of minutes. Longer than you would think. And as that was going on, I got the message back from him that I'm doing fine. You look at you're not doing too bad yourself. Something like that. And we bonded and there was something exchanged. And then we thought it was complete. He got up and moved off and disappeared in the other direction off in the forest and vanish. I part of what I received is what Wolf stands for, which is the power of spiritual community was upgraded to a whole new level. And since that time, the outreach capacity for the way of nature is going to grow on steroids. And I credit that shamanic encounter is a mortal process that kind of authenticated that that involvement. That's how the totem process works. And how do you work with your specifically with your bear totem? Do you do anything to engage with it to encourage it? Do you ask it for help? What is that? How does that manifest? It kind of depends on the situation. Relatively, it's been kind of playful. For example, they've a area where I put people out in southern Arizona, very sacred mountain range. And it's a mountain range in the middle of a volcano. And so the energy has sort of an interesting kind of volcanic like almost like Maui or a place like that. And in combination with these beautiful forests and streams that flow through the sky on the forest up above the desert, it's kind of moist. So I was putting people out in that area and you have a camp there that we use. And I was going in to do some checks because we have a system where each day when you're on your solo part of the process, somebody is actually your buddy to check and see if you leave a sign. Maybe I'm not in a court, a little piece of rope. You tell me when not either the morning or the afternoon, the other person comes checks that see if that bounce been tied. Make sure everything is okay. And then if it has not been tied, then very of your responsibility is going to make sure that person is doing all right. So they might have slipped on something or fallen or it's another way of providing security for people. So I was doing the checks for somebody. And as I went into the checkpoint to check on the nodded court. I heard a sound in the forest. And then I looked up in a beautiful large bear. Black bear came up. And he turned towards me and then stopped when he sensed I was there and then he churned his right. There's some huge boulders there lined up on top of the boulders and then did a half an hour of stretching themselves out doing stretches, flowing over the rocks, almost like an other in a stream. So fluid, so, so full of joy and happiness and just loving his, his time there. And I think loving the fact he was able to share such a joy of life experience with me was it was a huge gift. So our relationship has become somewhat playful like that. And it's not so much about trying to get something or anything of that sort. Yeah, I was camping in the sequoias and went out with my partner for a day trip, really, really, really hot day. And I just, you know, camping, there's nothing kind of like that cabin you were talking about except it's a tent. And so I just wanted to jump in a river and get cool and swim and get clean. And we found a place that was private. So we scrambled down these rocks. And I was taking off my clothes and I was going to dive into the water when I heard a noise. And I turned around and I saw what I would typify as a teenage bear. Definitely not a baby, but a teenage bear and definitely not an adult. And he was feet away from me. He was incredibly close. I know enough to wonder, is there a mama close by because I would want to be very careful and cautious of that. So I carefully started to put my clothes and hiking boots together so I could carefully get back up the rocks. I didn't know what was going to happen, but what was amazing was the bear had no interest, was clearly not violent and posed no threat. Even though he was as close as he was, he just looked at me, looked at the river, and he went into the river and started swimming. And it was actually beautiful and glorious because it's an enormous amount of weight, even a teenage bear. And to see him so happily, joyfully swimming in the river to get to the other side and actually doing the very thing I wanted to do. Not having clothes on, getting cool, getting clean. And it was a significant moment. And interestingly, it was at least a year prior to having this bear totem experience in the psychic trance in the cave. So it's like these moments leading up to this. That's great. I carry that. Establishing a beautiful relationship. Yeah. Really beautiful. Great story. There's two. Yeah. For people who are listening, people who are watching us on YouTube or Spotify, et cetera, and they would like to explore the way of nature, John. What advice, what guidance would you offer so they can begin their journey? Well, I think obviously on our website, we have a schedule of our programs and they range from very introductory types of things, which we call renewal programs that are going to be even as short as a day to a weekend, long weekend on through the nature quest, which are more usually five to nine days. And then the passage is more like a 12 day process. And then for those that want to have a taste of have a YouTube channel has extensive amount of material that's there for free teachings and processes that hopefully are up for those that can learn and benefit from them. And then a podcast series that also provides could have been material, just as a gift. I put that together during COVID, feeling that I wanted to do something help people going through that very difficult time. And it also, by the way, birthday, what we occasionally do, which is some advanced training programs. It's a birthday program that involved two years of city shadow work as well techniques, come ground techniques to transform shadow aspects, and then how to apply them to the physical body to the energy body, the chakras and the the emotional body, the mental body, which often helps to hold those patterns of shadow that then manifests in physical, energetic and emotional. And then the application to the ancestral patterns that flow through families and close community processes in our lives and then finally looking into the cultural effects of social media and large cultural patterns that are picked up in our closing shadow aspects to amplify often. And finally the karmic traces that we carry for one life to the next. So we birthed a period of novel shadow work that we're still learning how to apply today and how to bring into a more popular outreach. And after the two years of shadow work, we had a year of direct introduction to source approaches, and then a year of what's called in Taoism, Uwe, where you learn how to flow in a state of continuous connection to source, no matter what's going on externally. Hmm. Why can people use that right now? Yeah, that's a longer training that we just finished the first four years of. And we do that kind of thing as well as these regular messages and nature quests and take a deep dive into some of the areas like energy cultivation, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, cultivation using some of the techniques from indigenous cultures. And specialized courses sometimes for people that would like to take a little deeper dive into into certain facets of what we have to offer. Recently I've been developing a personal passion, which is I love photography and the visual arts. So I've been working on developing a program with one of my students. She's a really wonderful artist. She lives in Tuscany. And we've been developing an approach to take the way of nature process and apply it to opening up connection to source that then would be opening a well for creative inspiration to flow more, more fluently, and also to bring through a kind of inspiration that is bonding with nature in the painting or photography. And of course in photography, one of the things I love is bringing together through culturally in the connection of the senses, the connection that we have with these things, these ways that we experience life through the five senses and energy comprehension movement, who helped them all come together around something that's being sensed, and then being able to feel that connection to source at the same time as you return to source those senses. And then there's a moment that comes that I call the click, the moment where everything comes together and it's perfect. And at that moment, the click happens for the camera, or the inspiration happens for the brush to move in a certain fashion. So a lot of it's around that kind of creativity and that kind of bringing through that kind of creative context. The nature process can be applied to many situations from helping an individual breakthrough, have a major breakthrough in a stuck pattern in life to helping organizations enhance their creativity and they're coming into a much more sustainable relationship with what they're doing with the family of life to some of these interesting things like working with creativity in the arts. And that is wayofnature.com. Yes. Wayofnature.com. And John, this is Dare to Dream. What are you next, Dare to Dream? What are your future dreams and goals? Probably the main driving dream is to see the way of nature process, having experience, how profound the benefits are for a relatively limited number of people. I mean, I probably only worked with maybe, I don't know, 25 to 50,000 people directly over the past 40 years. And that's great for those folks, but we're in a time when the planetary crises are upon us in a big, massive way and we must go through a shift as a species into a much better relationship with the rest of life. It's an outreach to survival issue for us, not just for the planet, the planet will be fine probably, but it's more a question for us, what kind of humans are going to survive into the future. So this, I'd say the main dream is to see it scale up so it can be a much greater service to a much larger community and help in the service bring recisions back into greater harmony with the big family of all living things. Amen. Really. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been a pleasure. Good to hear of your shamanic work. It's wonderful. I love those beer stories. I'm deep on the path, working with another teacher and yet another in May. So for me, people like you out in the world, lighting the way, holding the lamp, it gives me great hope. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you. And I end today's show with this quote from E. M. Forster. What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives. Subscribe to this number one transformation conversation the weekly dare to dream podcast. Leave a comment. I read them all next week on the show. I'm going to be featuring the amazing Marie Diamond. She's star of the TV show Feng Shui, Your Life and bestselling author. She was featured in the worldwide phenomenon, The Secret. Marie merges quantum physics, Feng Shui and meditation to help you attract financial success, good health, long lasting relationships and spiritual growth. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope one of your big takeaways is how you can start communing and creating a relationship with all of nature. It is truly profound. When you start, be stronger than your excuses, even if it means for five minutes every day you go out and put your feet in the grass and connect with the greatest mother of all Mother Earth.