Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods. To the podcast where we believe that another world is still possible and that if we all work together, all of us, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility. And our guest this week is someone whose podcast I have been following for nearly a year. It's one of those where I learn something new about myself as much as I learn about the people who are being interviewed. Where I gain insights into what it is to be human, how we can relate, how we can feel more deeply. Mark McCartney is the host of the What Is a Good Life? podcast, which is now into well over 100 episodes. As you'll hear, Mark used to work in the city, but he's now a coach and a writer based in Berlin via Dublin, Ireland, Vancouver, Peru and a short spell in India. He started the whole project of asking people 'What is a good life?' back in 2021. It became a podcast soon after and is now in its fourth year. He's interviewed over 250 people, with humanity and sensitivity and a glorious, marrow melting Irish voice that brings out the best in a suite of truly remarkable people. So this was our chance to turn the microphones the other way round; to ask Mark what values underpin his life that have brought him from Ireland to Peru and back to Germany. How has he navigated the turbulence that is common to all our lives? How has he approached those moments that push us to ask the most important questions of who we are and what we're here for? How has he found that sense of being and belonging and becoming that we all seek?
Manda: Authenticity and the capacity for honest self-reflection feel really critical right now. And in this conversation, Mark models both of these with deep humility and humanity, as he and I explore integrity, vulnerability, humour, courage; the capacity to listen to our body minds and act on instinct when it's right to do so. And how to let go of lifelong terrors and learn to love the object of our fears. Nothing is certain anymore. It never was, but for most of my lifetime, and I suspect yours, we have been able to seduce ourselves into thinking that we could predict the paths our lives would take. Now we know we can't do this, and so learning from people who are able and willing to walk in uncertainty seems to me one of the most valuable lessons we can embrace. So this is exactly what we're doing. People of the podcast, please do. Welcome Mark McCartney of the What is a Good Life podcast.
Manda: Mark, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast. How are you and where are you this sunny winter day?
Mark: Uh, how am I? Is a multitude of things, I guess. Somewhat in the busyness of a Monday day, but I'm after just taking a stroll with my little daughter as well, so kind of in the throes of that presence as well. And just delighted to be to be here with you. Since talking with you on my podcast as well. Your company is always very uplifting, so I'm very grateful to be here.
Manda: Thank you.
Mark: And where I am is Germany in Berlin.
Manda: Yeah. So I'm about to ask about your daughter, but just while we're in Germany; for everybody listening, we're recording on the 24th of February, which is the day after the German general elections, in which AfD did better than they had before, but not quite as well as some of the polls were predicting. And Greens and Die Linke also did quite well. So what's your feeling of the outcome of the coalition that will inevitably arise out of this?
Mark: To be perfectly honest, Manda, I'm not the most politically curious person at this point in time in my life. I will say that I think that there is somewhat, and I wouldn't just restrict this to Germany, I think there's kind of been a somewhat of a fake progressiveness that's been on public display in a lot of places. In other places I've lived, whether it was in the UK or in North America as well. And I kind of get the sense that some of that is crumbling now and it's kind of emboldened a side or given them more kind of oomph to come back a little bit, from positions that were held. My take on a lot of things, is when something breaks in the wider world, like if there's a new movement, if there's new norms that we're going to be adopting or that we think are better values, I really think we need to create more spaces where we can really be honest about what's brought us to this, and we're not just adopting new ideas.
Mark: And I don't mean this from the point of view of pointing fingers at other people, I mean for myself to sit and reflect. Like what in my past do I need to sift through and maybe even wince at? On some levels it can be a little disturbing. And at the same time, too, I've been saying to people since I've arrived here, and I've lived here maybe six years now; I'm also not really shocked at anything. I'm not really shocked at rises that I see in the UK, I lived in London, and I'm not really shocked about it here either. I didn't quite believe some of the values that were being suggested were now what this society believed in, completely. I'm not trying to place too dark a picture in other countries that I've lived in, but that's my general take on these things.
Manda: Because you've been in Canada and the US.
Mark: I've been in Canada as well, and I've heard many times people talk about immigration, even in Canada too. And me kind of raised my hand in the corner and say, well, guys, I'm an immigrant and be told almost quite quickly that I'm not really. Do you get me? So I've lived in the UK and I've heard things like, well, the UK isn't what it used to be, or this area isn't what it used to be. And you used to always know what that meant. So in a lot of places I've lived in, I think we ran too far with the idea that there's some great Evolution between us and our predecessors, in whatever way it will be. And this isn't a mad judgement on everyone. But I think it's more I feel like I'm being greeted by, even a lot of stories that I see on websites, it doesn't feel very genuine. I think that there's something in a lot of our relating, it doesn't feel very genuine. Like I'm seeking more of a sincerity rather than a purity. And I'm wondering, can we be sincere together? Because I think we're a long way short of some of our projections of purity, or some of our projections of thinking that we've evolved further than we have. And within that I hold a lot of optimism, if we can become a little bit more sincere. Do you get me? It doesn't lead me to very pessimistic places.
Manda: Sure. Yeah. So we've already gone way off where I thought we were going to start. But this is really interesting. Let's carry on. We can come back to... We might go for your opening question at some point, but let's stick with this. Because this is, you know, we're now a month into the Musk presidency and they are dismantling the whole of liberal democracy in the US in real. It's going to come over to the rest of what used to be called the weird countries; western educated, industrial, rich and democratic. And now at least you've hacked the D off the end and the rest doesn't work. And I heard Ginie Servant-Miklos, in her book The Pedagogies of Collapse, she said part of the problem of the politics of the West was that we had two neoliberal parties, one of which was waving a pride flag and the other wasn't. And basically that was the difference. And it was impossible to graft genuinely compassionate values and character traits and systems on top of something that is basically destructive. And so there was always going to be a value clash, really at the core of what the project was. It wasn't real. Does that mesh with what you're saying about the difference between sincerity and purity and fake progressivism? Was it that kind of inherent character clash?
Mark: So, look, I'm really not crazy plugged in to the political discourse. For context, an Australian friend of mine when I lived in Peru, before I moved to Berlin, he told me about this term called culture wars. I'm not on social media, I'm on LinkedIn at this point in time, so I'm a little bit more...
Manda: Hardly counts.
Mark: Yeah, it's not as seductive.
Manda: It's not Twitter for sure.
Mark: Exactly. So I'm not all that plugged in but I'm really fascinated by who is actually walking their talk. I always remember this expression by Gandhi when a reporter came up to him when he was doing some tour of India on a train, and they said, Gandhi, what is your message for the people? And he simply said, let your life be your message. And when I look at a lot of the political discourse, I just don't really get the sense that I'm being met by really genuine actors on either side. This isn't a defence of the right or anything like that. It's not a support of it. It's just an acknowledgement that I think it's a dangerous thing to think that the sincerity is being held by any particular group at this point in time. That's my feel.
Mark: I've read things. Some people have sent me articles about Elon Musk and engagements he's having with Keir Starmer in terms of stirring things up and whatever else there will be. And it was a really problematic article to read and not feel like somewhat the wind had been taken out of my sails that morning. And then I hung out with my daughter for an hour in a coffee shop, right?
Manda: Right. And she has no care of who Keir Starmer is or Musk or any of the rest.
Mark: Exactly. And what I'm trying to decipher is not to avoid things. It's most certainly not to avoid things in myself. It's not to avoid things in the space between you and I and how we're relating. It's more like what can I get a real sense of that feels fundamentally true, that gives that gives some sense of meaning to me, irrespective of whether the world is falling apart or whether the world is absolutely blossoming. So by that I mean if the world is blossoming, but my relationships and my level of contact with sincerity are just are out to lunch, then I'm going to suffer either way; whether the world is blossoming or whether the world is suffering. And I'm seeing politicians on either side, and this is my interpretation. They've kind of taken a mandate from the people, which I don't sense the people have given them a mandate for. And I don't want to go all over the map here, but something I saw yesterday was Zelenskyy saying something like, well, if we were allowed to be a NATO, then I would actually step back from my job. And the article's tone was, wow, look at this, and the war would end. And I was like, what sort of self grandiosed ideas of ourselves is this? That it would be considered somewhat wonderful of a human being to sacrifice their present role, which they'd get another role for, in the face of a war ending.
Manda: Yeah, quite. Yes. How many people need to die before that stops looking like a sensible thing to do?
Mark: This is where there's a kind of a disconnect. I'm really trying to focus on what is here right now, between me and the people in my life, the people in my neighbourhood. And so I'm not trying to skirt your question and maybe just move away from my complete ineptitude to answer it with any kind of founded thing.
Manda: No, no. And it's fascinating.
Mark: So it's not this, oh, I'm just going to go focus on myself. Absolutely not. It's I'm going to focus on the relationships that are in my vicinity, because I have a hard time listening. Sometimes I listen to people that talk about a poly crisis or a meta crisis, and they talk in these really intellectual ways that sometimes I feel are lacking heart. A generalisation there, but that's what I feel. And then I also wonder if someone's coming up with a theory to save the world, if it doesn't involve saying hello to your neighbour, it's a bit like that line from V for vendetta when he says something like, well, a revolution without dancing; what kind of revolution would that be? If we're coming up with an idea to create a better life or community or way of relating with each other, saying hello to your neighbour to me has been one of the most fundamental changes I've made in my life over the last six years. So I'm kind of left with the what's the felt lived experience of my life, versus what's the noise that's going on around inside it? And then how genuine a sense do I get that people are being sincere in their communication?
Manda: Thank you. I think that's totally brilliant and speaks to a lot of the rest of what we're doing on the podcast. Which is saying that the political system is not fit for purpose, we need a whole new system that is predicated on a different set of values. And what I'm hearing from you is values of sincerity, integrity, care and compassion for the people around you. And connection. Above all, human connection. I'm guessing with the more than human world as well as the human world. But that might be my projection.
Mark: No, no. That's fair.
Manda: Okay, so your opening question on your podcast, I would reframe it a little bit: what is it that is your guiding light or your North Star throughout your life, or at least this part of your life? What is it that you take as your guidance?
Mark: Simply human connection and I would say not solely human connection. I guess we'll go in a few different stages; it's connection with myself, connection with humans, and then connection with the outer world. And I don't say that in terms of a hierarchy, I say that in terms of an order in which I've noticed it occur. So prior to there being a connection to myself, I struggled to have deeply connected experiences with other humans. Prior to that expansion, sometimes I could just be wandering around the street here and this may sound strange, but if there's a tree there that I think makes a good fit for a hug, I might give it a hug. And I feel something, I feel something very deeply with that. So I think it's in that order. But really the human connection piece, I've noticed in my life and you know, for some context, I'd left a career in finance. I left it without any plan whatsoever. I ended up spending a year in Peru because I'd become really fascinated with modes of inquiry, whether it's meditation, philosophy, journaling, explorations with psychology and a therapist, and things of this nature.
Manda: Can you just briefly say why Peru was the answer to all of those? Because I could think of a dozen other places that could equally be. What was it about Peru that drew you?
Mark: Um, really, it it all happened in a significant win. So I guess for further context, I'd taken a sabbatical when I was 32, I went to India for 3 or 4 months, I met my now German wife in northern India. Neither of us had a clue about what we wanted to do. So an ex CEO of mine got in touch with me; he said, can you please move back? We'll give you a signing fee, we'll give you a moving fee. I'd already known that finance wasn't for me. I told my wife I'd go back as a mercenary. And literally that, I'd carry on my meditation, I wouldn't be drinking, I wouldn't be doing any of the stuff. And this is what I was going to do. I got to a point where things worked out really well from that, and I was going to leave it and then another company came in and offered me a 40% increase. And then I looked at my wife and I kind of said, or I could do this for another year or two and then would be really set up. This was kind of the framing for it.
Mark: The weekend before I was supposed to start that job, I was laying in a bed doing a body scan, and I just got like a whiplash of like electricity through my body. And it was just very clear. Like it didn't come with words, but I called up my wife and I said, who was still back in Germany, this was after the Christmas period. I said to her, there's no way I can do this job. There was toing and froing. It was the money that was going to pull me back in, nothing else. And so she said, cool, where are we off to? And I said, I don't know. Marius says the sacred Valley in Peru is good. Marius was a friend of mine living in London that I knew when I lived there, and he had just mentioned it. And so we just did it on a whim. We had done no research about Peru, we'd booked a hotel for 2 or 3 nights, did a little bit of research there, and then settled in the Sacred Valley for a year. So there was really very little research or thought that was put into this.
Manda: Yeah, but a lot of energetic connections. Tell me a little bit more about doing body scans. Is this now something that you do regularly? And how do you perceive, other than those big moments of this is not going to happen, how do you perceive connectivity in your body mind?
Mark: It's Interesting. It's hard to put words to, was my immediate reaction, and so I was curious as to where the hell I would go with this answer.
Manda: Okay.
Mark: I'm really interested to test the subtlety of my perception in a number of different expressions or modalities. And I think a really a really big part of that, and even being able to perceive the connection between you and I, is obviously knowing then even what's mine ahead of an interaction with somebody else, or what's mine presently. And of course, nothing can live in isolation with me. But for whatever reason, this is what I'm experiencing, this has nothing to do with you, but it's present in my body as we're speaking. And so I don't really have fixed methodologies or practices at this point. Vipassana was a very interesting insight into some of this initially, doing some retreats, really paying attention to what was in my body. That expanded even just into a more casual sense of just checking in with my body on very frequent basis, whether that could be out in public or not. And then just laying on a floor, really, I found without anything bent or folded or anything like that, and just really noticing what's moving around in me. And I find it's just a constant well of information, of wisdom too if listened to. And when that experience happened to me, it's not like words accompanied that: you must leave your job and go to Peru. Absolutely not. It was just like, wow, that feels really substantial.
Mark: And it can be even in more subtle ways that that comes about me. And just really honouring that felt sense of of experience, if you get me. And I think when we do that, it doesn't extricate me from the ambiguity or the uncertainty of life. It's more that my being kind of dissolves into, to take an expression from you and our conversation, almost into the living sense of the web of life. Like I become part of this. I'm still aware of my separateness, but it's more that I dissolve into a shared sense of being a part of this world. And I think that's amazing to be able to make decisions from where there isn't mental mitigation in mind. It gives a freedom to jump, a freedom to leap. And as you say, it's not just in those big moments in life, but even in a conversation. Like I'm sensing something very strongly right now; can I trust myself to introduce that into the conversation and that it will be received? So I think there's a lot of things in which I just notice a greater subtlety of my own experience. And it can be body scans, but it can be a number of ways. And I think that's a beautiful way of connecting with this life.
Manda: Absolutely. And it seems to me, even just speaking about this and speaking with you and the quality of the eye contact that we're making over the zoom, my heart space feels wider, deeper, bigger and more resonant. There's a kind of a sense of a resonating frequency that is different when I'm talking with someone where there's a genuine connection, than either when I'm on my own or talking with someone where it's more of a we're just making noises at each other. Does that make sense? And is that something that you would recognise?
Mark: Yeah, that's absolutely something. I think a lot of people get involved in their spiritual journey or even if they wanted to call it self-development or inner work, whatever terminology people wanted to use. And it becomes very separate. Like mindfulness almost becomes this compartmentalised exercise. And I did this a lot at the start, particularly when I was really into Vipassana, it was an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, and I felt I was really, you know, I was a real meditator.
Manda: Tick those boxes.
Mark: Yeah, absolutely. And tell everyone that I was really meditating and tell people who weren't meditating that it was probably about time they started meditating. You know, I was a real delight, Manda, as you can imagine, right?
Manda: Yeah.
Mark: So all this is fine too. I think it's almost just part of the journey at this stage.
Manda: It's a phase we go through, for sure.
Mark: But with it I think we fall into the trap of trying to unravel this siphoned off expression of, or almost part of the puzzle, i.e. ourselves in connection with the rest of the world. And we almost try to figure out everything in isolation. And even our ways then of noticing, they become so reduced. We say we're really going to pay attention in this context. Like when I'm meditating, I'm going to be Uber mindful and and cognisant of what's going on. But in the rest of the day, then I'll be on my phone, I'll be on my laptop, I'll be on everything else, and I just won't pay attention to things. I think this connection between us, if two people don't get in the way of it, I think this is heaven. Like, this is real heaven on earth stuff. And I think the beautiful thing is, I think it's abundant. I don't think there's any scarcity around it. And it's an ace. And I really think that there's just so many things in our lives now that interfere with that, either through malevolent intentions or just just the mayhem of existence and nobody can really plan or figure this out in advance. But I really think that there's a capacity to feel that connection you're alluding to. It doesn't even feel like it's invisible to me. It feels like I could even move with this.
Manda: Yeah. It becomes a dance. Back to V for vendetta again; we're dancing.
Mark: Completely.
Manda: It's just less physical and more energetic. And I'm wondering, because you hold your silent conversations, which are not wholly silent, but they sound like they give a lot of space for this to happen online. They're online, yes?
Mark: Yeah yeah.
Manda: With more than two people. And do you find you get the energetic space becoming as rhythmic as our space is just now, when you've got more people? And does it change depending on the quality of your holding?
Mark: Interesting. Very interesting questions. So first of all, I initially piloted this online thinking that this would just be a pilot online because it wouldn't be that interesting. Do you get me? That it would just be interesting to go through the process of it.
Manda: Yeah, I started teaching shamanic stuff like that.
Mark: And I was genuinely blown away by it, in terms of the connection with the group. And it's taking your own view off the page too, so you're just looking at the group, you're not aware of your own appearance on screen. That's what I do in any conversation as well. I'm really fascinated what is really occurring between us energetically, whether it's one on one or if it's a group capped at eight people, or whatever it may be. I've been really fascinated by this. There's someone who I know who does this Way of Council training, which is just a modality of kind of group dialogue, which I find really fascinating. And he was commenting on the same thing. He says he does this in person and he does this online, and he really doesn't notice the difference that much in terms of the energetic exchange. And I think it really says a lot as to our general ways of communicating when we are in an online or zoom space; like it probably says a lot about the formality that's usually introduced, it probably says a lot about the decorum that has to be upheld. And I think there's a lot of ways in which we think are socially correct ways to behave, which do nothing to share or give a hint or an expression of our wildness, our humanity. So I think we're going to find these kind of places a little bit deadened anyway.
Mark: For me, what I'm really intrigued by is moments in these conversations where people say I felt like the other people are in the room with me, right? And I guess, what I'm trying to do with a lot of experiments that I'm doing, even if it's the podcast or these conversations, it's, to kind of play with modes of communication. To see what's there and what isn't there and what we're assuming that we don't need to assume. What we think are helpful stories to share, but they're really not that helpful. By that, I mean, I think you may have experienced this, maybe if you've travelled and gone to other parts of the world and maybe your own inquiries; you can get to some environments where people are very quick off the mark to share their deep traumas or things that maybe they've processed now and whatever it might be. And they just kind of land it on you very quickly in a conversation, and I don't know what to do with that. Do you get me? Like you've told me something that's by all accounts quite traumatic, but you don't feel connected to that. And so it's not coming from now. I think it's something you share very frequently with people.
Manda: This is a story. And you're just telling me the story.
Mark: Exactly. And so I feel very little intimacy. I feel very little connection between you and I when you do this. So the way these are structured, as you alluded to, it's not complete silence. There could be 15 minutes of silence, we sit at the start. Then there's a time to reflect on what we all experienced, confined to that. And then there's more questions for contemplation with silences and sharing thereafter. Someone could just say something very simple, like 'in the first silence, my hand was clenched and I realised in the second silence my hand was relaxed'. And I'm not trying to come up with these big transformative moments. It's more appreciating the subtlety. And it's more appreciating sharing really human experiences in the moment and showing people that it doesn't have to be about our big traumas. It doesn't have to be about our life stories. It's like, can we show up and be present with each other right now? And that could be being present with each other right now. It could be sharing the most mundane thing possible and that's fine. Life doesn't always have to be this white knuckle ride or this thrill seeking thing, it can just be, oh, we're both here and I'm resting in this space with you. That's fine. That's enough.
Manda: Yeah. And offering attention. I noticed in one of your reflections you linked attention with love; that offering complete attention to someone is coterminous almost with offering love in the moment. Can you speak a little bit to that?
Mark: Someone in a recent group said humanity is irresistible. And when I heard that, I was like, oh God, that opened my heart. Do you know what I mean? I really felt it. I probably even had some goosebumps at the time. And I think it's very hard to truly pay attention to something and not feel love towards it. Attention then, would be a momentary dissolving of the labels that I might even associate or project onto something. I'm not saying this is a permanent state that I exist within and some objects, things, living creatures, people, make it a lot easier to fall into that than others do. But when I'm in that space of just absolutely paying something attention. And it also happens a lot in silence, too. I find if I'm not hearing the blah blah blah of modern life and this is what I do and this is who I am, I think it's so easy to look at people and almost think the best of them. A bit like we do very easily with children and with dogs and different animals too. I have a dog and I have an 18 month old daughter and if I look at how some people approach them and they know nothing about them and they're transfixed by them and they fall into this reverie and this love.
Mark: And love doesn't have to be this thing that we say, well, when we go out after a certain amount of months, or if you're my father or daughter or mother or son, that I'll love you. I think in these moments of attention that we genuinely feel love for each other, it's not restricted to some romantic or familial sense. I think it's something that we can share, but it's so hard for people to grasp that. People feel that I could just be verbosely speaking here and exaggerating something. I just think our capacity to be, to feel, to notice, to be sincere, to subtly observe, I think it's just been bombarded these days through so many different methods. That we've lost complete contact to just what is here, what is present and what can be sensed. That my perception of it, if you get me.
Manda: Yeah. And imagine if we lived in cultures where there's, you know, a Dunbar number, it doesn't matter, a number of people. And you have that level of attention between all of you and the rest of the more than human world all of the time, it's not surprising that their default is laughter, I think. And isn't it sad that we've lost it, but isn't it amazing that you're finding it again even online? I'm guessing with people who are in completely different countries and come from different cultures, and some of them are the 'let me tell you what I just discovered in therapy' on first meeting, and others are the 'I don't really talk about anything more than the weather until we've known each other for at least six months'. And in between everything, everything growing. Tell me a little bit about dogs, because I know you have a dog. And it sounded to me listening to other things you said, that before you went to Peru dogs were not your thing. Is that right? Was it Peru? You discovered your neighbour's dog? Tell me a bit about that.
Mark: Yeah, so you've been listening quite clearly.
Manda: Also dogs fire up all my hormones, so, yeah.
Mark: So this is the most probably one of the most remarkable things that's happened to me, to be honest. I went to Peru and I was absolutely petrified of dogs, I would say.
Manda: Why?
Mark: My mum had been bitten by a dog. She grew up on a farm in the west of Ireland, was bitten by a dog, carried a bit of fear for it. I think I definitely inherited some of that. But then I also remember on my uncle's farm, waiting for his sheepdog not to be at the front entrance so I could quickly run into my granny's house without him harassing me before I got to the front door. But I remember my first girlfriend, I was afraid of her Bichon Frise. I don't know if you know that, they're little fluffy things, and I'm six foot four, I'm not a small man. So I was pretty wary of that. And I think I went out with her for six years, and it was the last little while I got a little bit more comfortable with it, but I always carried a little question mark about it. And so I get to Peru and because I've done no research, as I've alluded to earlier, I come to this town and we've found this place, which I just think looks like heaven. It's a bungalow by a river, by a mountain in the sacred Valley. And I'm like, oh, God, we're here. But there's dogs everywhere in this town. Whether they're street dogs, domesticated dogs or just wild dogs. And the property we get to even they've got two dogs and two quite big dogs as well. And the moment we arrive on it, one of them is going crazy. And as I've mentioned, I was using my missus almost as a bit of a shield from animals or dogs approaching me because she is just super chill with dogs. So she says to me oh, don't worry, just breathe. Because they're kind of snapping at my feet at this point. Just stay still. They're not going to bite. And so we did that and I navigate my way to the house. But you know, I'm like, oh my God, what have I done here? We've signed up to this place for however long. This is a nightmare.
Mark: And so after a while, after a few tests of just walking around certain parts where I know that there's lots of dogs, and to be quite honest, having some degree of panic attacks. And granted, there's five year olds walking up and down these streets, so I'm not trying to present them as these dark alleys where only the gnarliest of dogs were. Not at all. But after a while I found the garden that we shared with the people that were our landlords, essentially, a huge garden, like a massive garden. And I just watched these two dogs playing with each other. I started observing when they'd go crazy at people passing by, how they'd wrestle and fight and play with each other, all of these things. And after a while, the main dog who saw himself as a real alpha of the area, he just kept on hanging around me. Like wherever I'd go, he just started following. So even if I went inside our little bungalow and he was out in the garden and I went to the toilet, he started going to the toilet and scratching the door and kind of making these whimpering sounds. And then it got to a point where I was going on hikes with him every day. And because he lived in the area, and I had no clue, I'd just go on these crazy trails with him, following him.
Manda: And he would lead you. Right.
Mark: He would lead me. Yeah, yeah. So there was absolute trust. So I went from absolutely fearing dogs, to having this bond with one creature who apart from a year with my wife, I'd never spent as much time with any other creature. I'm calling my wife a creature, too. We're all creatures, if you know what I mean.
Manda: We're all creatures. And your daughter was not born at that point, obviously.
Mark: Not around at this stage, yeah, yeah. And as much as I did with this dog. And by the end of that trip, I was feeding dogs on the streets. I was going for hikes with packs of dogs. And I was even volunteering, and whatever your views are on castration campaigns, but dogs that weren't castrated, the offspring were being dealt with in really horrific ways. But I was volunteering at a few of those campaigns where I was nursing street dogs or domesticated dogs back to health after their operation. If somebody had said to me, after this trip you're not going to fear dogs, I would have been, wow, that's the greatest thing I ever could have wished for. If you could have told me that I'd absolutely love and adore dogs, I literally couldn't have even conceived of it. I couldn't even have thought of that as a possibility. So, I don't know. I think it's really just interesting to reflect on moments in our lives. Not necessarily think like books we read, but just to reflect on what's occurring in our own lives or the possibilities that exist within our own lives. Because yeah, that to me just blew my mind. So when we came to Berlin, I was doing weird things like pretending to tie my shoelaces in Berlin, because if I crouched down I thought other dogs would approach me.
Manda: Because you're not six foot four when you're tying your shoelaces. Brilliant.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just other people's dogs in parks may have approached me. So we just got a little rescue dog, Alma, from Romania, and she's obviously just...
Manda: She's gorgeous.
Mark: Part of the family.
Manda: Tell me a little bit more about the one that you fell in love with in Peru. Give us a word picture. Breeds, size, colour?
Mark: He was a street dog originally, so he was a mixture of a whole bunch of things. He was probably around the size of a German shepherd, I'd say, but didn't look like a German Shepherd. He was blonde and Stunningly symmetrical, beautiful face, ears one up, one down. Um. And it was amazing. Before I arrived there, he'd run off from the owners for 2 or 3 days every so often. And they were beautiful people, this older Argentinian dude and this Dutch artist lady. Just the most loving people. He tormented them because he was just such a curious character. And he'd follow tourists or travellers around, hang out with them. He had a favourite restaurant in town called Ulrike's, where he would track particularly western travellers into town and make whimpering sounds that he hadn't been fed.
Manda: And they would feed him.
Mark: They would feed him. Yeah
Mark: He was just a character. And I must say he was aggressive as well. Like he had his territory. That was something that was really surprising to me, that I could witness or be around or in the proximity of dogs attacking him, or vice versa, and feeling comfortable in that, too. But he was just a real character, like, I absolutely loved him. I definitely shed a few tears when we were saying goodbye.
Manda: Yeah. And why did you leave? Because it sounds like Peru was just utterly magical.
Mark: I don't know about you, but for me, there are certain spaces that it's not that they don't feel real, but it didn't feel like it was part of my journey to just relocate completely away. And I had a lot more things and I still have a lot of things to figure out in my path of what I'm exploring, what I'm exploring with other people. A mixture between what are my values and integrity, and how do I present this to other people? That kind of tension between feeling it's somewhat of an artistic endeavour and then how do I make a living from this stuff? There's lots of things I'm navigating even right now. So I think there was definitely a sense that I was going to come back to Europe. And my wife also said she'd really like to go back to Europe. And I said, where do you want to go? She said, Berlin. I said, okay. Like I mentioned before to you, I proposed to her after five weeks, so our relationship is kind of instructed by these very simplistic decision making moments, if you get me.
Manda: But very clear. This doesn't sound like there's the heart wrenching sitting down with lists of pros and cons and trying to work stuff out. You just go, Berlin? Okay.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And once again, I wouldn't be prescribing this to anyone.
Manda: But if it works.
Mark: Absolutely.
Manda: It feels like the synchronicities that you've talked about in your podcast. That sense of knowing when everything's stacked up and then you don't fight it. And waiting until things are stacked up and not trying to force them to stack ahead of time. Does that make sense? Because it feels like that's what you've been doing in your life for quite a while.
Mark: That makes complete sense. And this is almost from approaching life in, not the complete opposite, but I think my wildness, shall we say, found unhelpful habits. So drinking, gambling, sleeping with other people, things like this. Expressions where I don't think I was connected to my soul.
Manda: Okay. And this was when you were in the city. When you were doing something fairly soulless?
Mark: This is when I was in my 20s. Human connection, obviously always has offered me a way of feeling connected to something in what I was doing, or feeling that there was soul or a part of something that I was doing. But yeah, definitely there wasn't a maturity to my impulsiveness, if you get me. It wasn't connected to any kind of sense of feeling I had a subtle perception of what was going on in my life. I think I was probably driven away from what I felt uncomfortable or what felt painful, so that I couldn't really trust my intuition. I don't even want to say impulsive in a negative sense, but that I could have the capacity to make an impulsive decision or an intuitive decision that actually would lead me to somewhere more interesting or somewhere more connected. So, yeah, I think it's definitely that.
Manda: You spoke earlier about you'd begun to meditate. So was there a shift or was there a gradual understanding? I feel sometimes there's a kind of ache in people, that this is not the life that you want, but you don't know what you do want. What was it for you that began to shift you onto a different path?
Mark: Yeah. Absolute suffering. And I can say it with a smile now, obviously, but. I was 31 or 32 when I moved to London.
Manda: From Ireland?
Mark: No, from Vancouver. I lived in Vancouver for the previous four years or so. So I think I'd come to the end of my tether in being able to uphold the projection of myself that I'd created. I guess that would be a way of describing it. And by that I would mean that in intimate relationships I'd feel very uncomfortable, like extremely insecure. And yet in my experiences of starting the dating process, or if I'd met someone in a bar, confidence would have been a word associated with me. So if somebody said, if we were starting a relationship, I really love your confidence. I was like, oh, God. Like now I'm not going to be able to show or express that I struggle with trust or I struggle with not feeling jealous or whatever it may be. And then realising, I guess, by the time I went to London, a relationship had ended and it clearly wasn't the other person's fault. Do you know what I mean? Other relationships, I'm not saying were other people's fault, but I could also see that there was more of a dance involved. In this circumstance it wasn't. I started to express things that just were not going to be sustainable if I ever wanted to find a satisfying, loving relationship. So it started off with seeing a psychologist.
Manda: Not a therapist? An actual psychologist.
Mark: Psychologist, yeah. I couldn't have told you anything about whether it's a therapist, a psychotherapist, a psychologist, it was all new to me at that stage. So initially, it started off from some really basic places, like a psychologist asking me, so how do you feel? And then I started reading some books around that time, just sharing psychological theories. She had to ask me three times, how do you feel, and a prompt, before I could say how I felt. And it started from there. But then I became so fascinated by the whole thing.
Manda: So a door opens.
Mark: Completely. And it was some really obvious stuff, like I'd created a narrative that my father leaving the family home hadn't affected me. And shock, horror, it affected me. Yeah a real plot twist to reveal to myself. But it was just that. And it wasn't met with oh, you idiot, how did you not see this? It was like, wow, I didn't see this.
Manda: Well done.
Mark: And then just the attunement then to noticing more and more. And once again, nothing to... Well, like when I was telling other people to meditate, of course I had delusions of I'm going to be this enlightened creature that transcends human experiences and emotions. I'd be lying if I didn't say that that was pencilled in for five years after I began. But then just going oh wow, I see this pattern, I have a sense of this could be triggers for it. I see when I do this, I don't feel particularly good after it. We could be talking about eating something, whatever, at the weekend. And now I'm in it and I'm doing it right now again. And I've talked to my very good friend who we're trying to be accountable over this. And so the whole thing just became a revelation and curiosity. I became really curious about me as a human and relationships with other people, their absurdity. And it's incredible, maybe over five years when some of the judgements began to fall away, I really noticed such a drop off in judgement and finger pointing and all of it just became like, wow, that's your experience, here's mine, kind of thing.
Manda: And are you met with that? Do you find people let go of their judgements and their finger pointing when you meet them with that energy and that language?
Mark: I think so. I'm not saying that everyone needs to fall into that energy or that space if they're around me. Or that absolutely everyone does. But I get it reflected back to me often enough, that I feel comfortable being myself in your presence. And I know that that's not always the case for people. Sometimes when you hear people talking and they're saying, oh, when you ask someone how they're doing and then if they just say fine, no, ask them how they're really doing. And these are all good developments. You know, none of this is an abomination or something like that. But then I also see this other line, where the wounded healer shares their big trauma from six years ago, and shares that almost to the extent that they don't have any suffering anymore. Or this is the one thing that they can really share. I have a beautiful relationship with my missus, so it's very easy for me to say this; Oh me and Eve had a bit of an argument this morning. And I could be saying a whole bunch of other wonderful stuff, but I've noticed if I say that, and I say that genuinely and sincerely, people open up with unbelievable things. Do you know what I mean? So it's not this 'I'm the healed one. I'm opening the space for you.' It's like I'm a human, you're a human and let's talk and let's see what emerges. Do you get me? That's more the perspective I take.
Manda: Totally. And what's been coming through all the time, or let's say regularly through our conversation, is the sense of integrity and authenticity. And it seems to me, and I'm questioning with you, that if we show up authentic in the moment: this is who I am, I'm not trying to be anything else, I'm not trying to cover stuff up; this is, to the best of my understanding, who I am in this space and time. That's part of our humanity. It's that concept of humanity is what we do and what we are and what we want. But there's also a huge relief and release to other people of it's okay to be authentic. It's okay to be honest and then the challenge and the question is, so what am I actually feeling? Who who am I in this moment? How does that Land?
Mark: That's what I see is just like a huge part of my curiosity or my work even, I'd say. But more like when I say my work, I don't even make the distinction of this is my professional life and this is my personal life, right?
Manda: No, no, I wanted to talk about that in a minute. Exactly that.
Mark: The whole thing is part of it and it's all just a giant exploration. And I think it's a real kindness to ourselves and the other person, to do that. And really, from my point of view, like I see so many people struggle with the sense of belonging and a sense of self-acceptance. And how can I feel this sense of self-acceptance if I'm not being myself? How can I truly connect with another person if I'm not showing myself? It's almost like our like our projections, our holograms of each other would be trying to ground in each other, but they're just kind of moving through each other, they're not real. So it's not even from some making of gritty or authenticity, I'm not suggesting you were even with the question, but the way authenticity is described sometimes. Almost this virtuosity to it, like as a value or something.
Manda: It becomes another box to tick. Look, I'm being authentic. That's not what it is!
Mark: Completely. So it's an act of kindness to myself. But even more so it's, how do I know who I am and how do I even know how I'm feeling right now if I'm not being myself? Those are really hard questions to figure out. Those are really hard questions to get any kind of sense of comfort in. And I was always struck from my conversation with you, just this expression again, the web of life. And I find it really hard to feel like I'm part of all of this if I'm not being whatever this thing is. If I'm not expressing that, I feel it's really hard to kind of fall into a sense that I belong here. And I think there's a deep sense of a lack of belonging, that could come from connection to ourselves, each other and land and nature. And not separating ourselves from nature, but just in the way that we sometimes think of it. And I think so much of that stems from authenticity. We've made authenticity almost this box to tick, as you say, this intellectual exercise. And it leaves us with this really reduced idea of its power or its possibilities that it offers really.
Manda: Right. And what I'm hearing or I think I'm hearing, I'm checking, that who I am in any given moment is a fluid thing.
Mark: Absolutely.
Manda: And that being authentic is about being able to navigate the shifts in internal state and recognise them without necessarily having to name every single one all the time. But just noticing that this was my truth for a moment ago, and it's not necessarily going to be my truth for the moment leading on. When you do your silent communications and you give people that time. I've been reading a lot of cognitive neuroscience and behavioural change recently, and I read last night a study I think it was 2014, and they discovered that they left people alone in a room for 15 minutes just by themselves, but they left them with a kit. 67% of the men and 25% of the women would rather administer electric shocks to themselves than be left in their own company. What? And that was before Twitter went crazy. That was ten years ago. The whole world has gone even more weird now. And that capacity to just watch what's happening and express it, when there's an energetic meeting that will happen because of that expression. And so the question would be: the eight people, I think you said capped at eight in your silent communications, I'm guessing they're self-selecting for people who would not rather administer electric shocks to themselves than sit in a circle with you. What kind of people arrive? And give us a little bit of a sense of the flow within the eight.
Mark: Just to say that obviously it can vary, right? Just to be really obvious, I guess, upfront.
Manda: Yeah, of course.
Mark: I think often, particularly when people experience it the first time, they're often a little bit staggered by the simplicity of it and what is experienced. And I think we have made so many things a process, and we've made almost really basic human innate capacities to feel and notice, we almost have made them into superpowers, or we put them into the realm of the fanciful. I'm trying to offer people a space to realise this comes very naturally to us. I'm not saying it's the same for everyone, but particularly the things that often get mentioned are a sense that something substantial has happened without trying to. And I think we're so busy and I don't want to make it a cliche of the doing and the being stuff, but we're so busy making a process out of everything. Making a rite of passage or, you know, we have to earn the sense to to really feel connection. We have to earn the sense to feel good enough even. And I'm more saying that if we subtract things, if we clear things out. You can meet a group of people and spend 15 minutes in silence with them and know nothing about them.
Mark: So there's people from all walks of life. There's people that are very much on their own path of self-inquiry, and that's even what they do with their careers in lots of different modalities. But there's people there from finance as well. And there's generally people there that have some degree of curiosity about the way that we're connecting and what is possible with human connection. And before I made this into a course, I just did this for free, maybe sometimes once a week or once every couple of weeks. And I just called them the Silent Experiments because I had no clue what would happen with them. And I had no clue what people would experience. But it's one of these things, again, the way I said at the very start, I don't get pessimistic about what's happening in the world because I'm so optimistic about what is required, or just the subtraction of things that may be required, for us to connect with what I think is one of the deeper joys in life, which is a felt sense of human connection. Whether that's online or that's in person.
Mark: I think the ease in which we can feel connected is what's really interesting for me. And I will say another thing: even if it's a course or the drop ins that I do for free, I never let people introduce themselves. So I'd never get on the call and say, my name is Mark, and I do that. So they can see the name of someone on it, but you don't hear what their role is, because I think this is one of the great separators. Language can be wonderful, but we've made it so divisive and very few words seem pure in meaning, that it could actually convey something of a singular nature that we all agree on. So even if we can just step back from 'I work with this amount of kids or family or this amount of pets', or 'I live here'. Nobody even hears where the other people are calling in from. And to me, there seems something important to that.
Manda: Yeah. Because then you're just being yourself without all the added structures of words. Bizarrely, we're heading towards the end of our hour. There's so much I wanted to talk about. One of the things I really wanted to explore, so however succinctly we can do this; is you were in finance, you were clearly wearing a business suit to work, I guess. Which for me defines all kinds of things that are worlds that I've never seen. And now you speak quite freely on your blog about being in a space where your income is not guaranteed or structured. And you've also said on this call that you don't necessarily differentiate between work and not work. What you're doing is what brings you alive. I'm paraphrasing from what you said, but it seems to me this is true. And you have time to go out with your little girl and just spend time being human and that this is clearly important to you. And if I've understood the process correctly, your path to that has been very intuitive. You spoke recently to someone who does psychic mentoring in a way. And and it seems to me that everybody has the capacity to connect in with that sense of, we were talking earlier, at least the bodily 'no' and occasionally the bodily 'yes', that gets us to a place of flow. So I want to check that I'm right in assuming that's what you've done.
Mark: Oh yeah. All of this is correct. Yeah.
Manda: So we go with the flow. Some of us go with the flow, and some of us end up in places where that feels really generative and we feel part of something bigger. And yet I am aware that I could have gone with the flow all I liked but if I happened to be born in Gaza I would probably be dead by now. And I find myself questioning. There's a part of me that wants to relax into the sense of connectedness to the web of life; that connection being who I am, falling in love with living. And that being, in a way I'm making a bargain, I think this is something I've been exploring at the edges of myself recently. I'm assuming that life will flow with me because I am flowing with life. And that feels quite an infantile response sometimes, particularly when I look around the world; I could have been born in a very different life and it wouldn't really matter the extent to which I went with the flow. And I wonder where you are on flow versus not flow and relationship with the bigger essences of life.
Mark: And just before I start, the bigger essence of life, is that uh...
Manda: Spirituality, deities, the concept of there being something that has plan and purpose and direction perhaps. Or doesn't and just wants us to exist.
Mark: Ok,yeah. So this has been really interesting for me. Because even as you touched on there, I genuinely still need to figure out the financial side of things in my present endeavours. There's no two ways about that. And I went from that literally being the last thing that I had to think about. But what I've discovered in the meantime, really, is that I've felt amazing even with that uncertainty. And I have a good friend who left kind of similar positions and has quite a similar path to me in ways. And we kind of both are kind of second guessing it. For the first few years this was happening, we were like, it's kind of weird, like I don't have X, Y, or Z in place and you know, I'm 41 now. I really thought when I was 41 that that would be the case. And yet I feel, just as you said there, really connected with a sense of aliveness in my life. And I find that really telling. And of course, this all sits within the context of keep my heart open to the immense suffering. Like I'm not walking around pretending that life is a picnic, even for me all the time. But even just you look around the world and there's some horrific things happening, but keep your heart open to that as well. Cry about that stuff. Like don't ignore that or pretend that you just haven't had positive enough intentions. A lot of this stuff would become very redundant. But how sad it would be that people whose hand hasn't been forced by the constraints of their life, that they could live such a constrained and closed and separate life. I have been afforded this opportunity, I guess and so there's something to honour I think in that. But also I would say, in living this life and noticing these things, and I mean human connection in the sense of deeply nourishing relationships. And having had conversations with the people that are closest to me in my life and having really amazing conversations with family members, like with parents, with friends. With just hellos that I have with nearly everyone in my neighbourhood. I don't mean that this is some separate thing where I'm just minding my own business and trying to become as as Conscious as possible; this very much lives in an expansion of that.
Mark: And then with any aspect of larger essences or a sense of the divine, I do feel held by that. So I am making decisions that at times, with a family to support, where I'm kind of like looking at myself; and I have a really lovely relationship with myself at this point, I can see where I'm erring and I can see what I need to apologise for and acknowledge. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm a perfect human being in that sense, but I really enjoy, I respect my own exploration of life. To the point that wow, you could be making far more 'practical choices' right now from a from a monetary point of view, and you're still doing your thing. Like, wow, that's incredible.
Manda: Go, you!
Mark: Thank you. But I see that's what still keeps me alive. I have a good degree of belief in what I'm doing, I get feedback from different people and in situations. That I sense I'm on to something and not in some isolated sense either, right? So I'm not trying to pretend that it's all just this giant uncertainty for me. No. There's been lots of periods where it has been a far bigger amount of uncertainty than now. And it was still this feeling that uncertainty was actually feeding my life, not draining my life. This comes back to this idea of authenticity that we were talking to earlier. I've reduced life to something really simple; if I can pay attention, so that's to myself, to relationships and to the living, pulsing, breathing thing that life is. If I pay attention and if I am Myself. You know, I've interviewed some death doulas that talk about people having regrets on their deathbed. I can't imagine a moment in life where I'll ever regret that I was myself and that I paid attention.
Manda: Yes.
Mark: And that, to me, fills me with an abundant amount of conviction in terms of just living this life. Like, what else is there to do but those two things? And then, if you've had genuine experiences where you're feeling a sense of some connection with divinity. I don't use divinity as some sort of mental trick to abdicate myself or extricate myself from the human experience and experiencing emotions. Sure, when fear comes up, let me let me say that I feel fearful. Like, oh, wow, that was a real spike in fear right now. So it's not to avoid any of that. And yet, within all of that too, I just feel held. And it's my conviction that that's available to all of us. And I don't want to speak on people's behalf that are just in the most horrific circumstances. And yet, I've interviewed people that have encountered things that I would never wish for, and I would never wish for anyone to experience. You know, I've interviewed over 250 people around the question of what is a good life? I hear lots of things as well, after these conversations, that people have alluded to in the interviews that they even expand upon. And I'm consistently left with this kind of really weird quirk about life; that once somebody has gone through that process, that there is this amazing alchemical kind of capacity within humans. I don't want to speak on people's behalf and in some really awful situations and say they're grateful that it happened, but they're grateful for the person that they've become. And so when I mix all of those things together, I don't know, it's hard not to have a good life or it's hard not to appreciate it.
Manda: I am so resisting asking your final question of mixing all of those things together: what is a good life for you, Mark? But it just seems you've just expressed it. This is what the good life is. And I feel and I'm hearing from you, this is a one way valve. You get to that place where life is magical and that doesn't stop it potentially at times being really hard, but it will still be magical in the hardness.
Mark: So that was literally one thing I was going to add to it, that you've kind of added to it, that I was going to say, which is just this doesn't guarantee outcomes. I'd be hard pressed to say that Vincent van Gogh didn't find some sort of calling in life, and he apparently didn't sell a painting. I think we live in such a material, success driven and success equating to money driven society, that we can't even possibly perceive how someone could feel okay if they're not smashing the finance side of life or whatever expression someone wants to use. This experience of life, life itself and living becomes its own reward. And it's not about some kind of false something and then crashing thereafter. It's just an experience with life, it's a conversation, it's a relationship with life itself that feels nourishing and rewarding in of itself. Just in all the moments, whether it's even in pain or sadness that you can go, wow, I can feel this, I can sense this right now. Yeah. So I definitely agree with that. It moves life away from it being totally obsessed with outcomes. And I think if most of us reflect on it, the outcomes have very, very rarely created any kind of sustained fulfilment, you know?
Manda: Yeah. For sure. Yes, yes. We are witnessing the fact that you can be the richest people on the planet, and you're still clearly not happy.
Mark: Completely.
Manda: It's got nothing to do with your capacity to send rockets to Mars or order infinite number of boxes from Amazon. It's exactly what you said. And it doesn't guarantee that you won't end up being crucified. People throughout history have mentioned that life is magical and bad things have still happened to them. But that doesn't stop life being utterly magical. And this has been a completely magical conversation. Is there anything else that you want to say to people other than tell them how they can find you? I will put links in the show notes to everything that you've got, but tell us a bit.
Mark: I will just say this. And you've listened to the podcast, I say this sometimes. But I would honestly say, because look, there's a cell phone around with me that's had pretty stunning impact on my life. I don't want to suggest anyone don't carry a cell phone around, because everyone has their own relationship with that and all sorts of different things, right? I would just say saying hello to people on the street. This little anecdote: I was walking past a day centre for older people in our neighbourhood with a friend. And he started really excitedly waving at this lady behind a window. It's a few blocks down from me, it has these big open windows. And she's sat there at the window. I forgot to ask him because I think he had to answer his phone or something like this, so I forgot to ask him what that was about. And then I asked his wife what was that about? And she goes, every day we've been walking our dog. We've waved to this lady ever since we first waved to her, and they've had this relationship. She's described where after she saw her getting pregnant the woman gesticulated to her: oh my God, you're pregnant. And this is all just through these tiny moments. Then her son was born. Like the lady's just losing her mind behind the window, they've never gone in. And then when the son is growing and he's walking, now he's waving at this lady, too. And I just mentioned that purely from the point of view of that we don't have to even make these huge sacrifices. I think there's so much value just in human attention. Yes, we can deepen our attention and we can really sit there in an attentive capacity with each other.
Manda: Or you could just wave through a window.
Mark: And listening to this woman talk about this experience, like she has developed a real sense of intimacy with someone, that has literally required a wave and a smile through a window. So I would just say, just play an experiment with this gift of human connection that we're given, because it creates staggering ways of being, of feeling, of being seen, of seeing. I don't know, it's not complicated. Like I'm not trying to oversimplify something, but in this case it really feels that simple to me. So I'll just leave people with that, I guess.
Manda: That's beautiful. Thank you so much. All right, Mark, thank you for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast. This has been the delight that I had hoped that it would be, and believed that it could be. Thank you.
Mark: Thank you so much Manda, you continue to be the treasure that I found you to be.
Manda: And there we go. That's it for another week. Huge thanks to Mark for all that he is and does. For the sheer joy of listening to him speak. It's not just that his voice is something that I could listen to for the rest of my life and be really happy, it's that he talks with such wisdom, with genuine authenticity. And it does seem to me that as our world turns over, as a lot of our certainties become uncertain, finding who we really are, each of us. Being able to listen to our own bedrock values. To live from those absolutely alive with the wonder of the magic of life; this is what really matters. And as I hope is really clear, Mark is doing this. I have put links in the show notes to his website, to his silent conversations, there are some coming up in April. And to his podcast. If you are looking for recommendations for other podcasts besides this one, that is definitely right at the top of my list. And while we're here, if you like it, please do go and give it five stars and a review on whatever is the podcast app of your choice. It does make a huge difference. So that counts for us, too. It's kind of like when you read books.
Manda: I am assuming that by now nobody is ever buying anything ever again from Amazon, but sadly, putting your review up on Amazon still seems to make a difference to the way that publishers and booksellers consider a book to have value. So if you like a podcast, five stars, subscribe or review, share it with your friends. If you like a book, go give it a review and share it with your friends.
Manda: And while we're on the topic of things that you can usefully do, we have some gatherings coming up on Accidental Gods. The one I particularly want to flag up is on Sunday the 11th of May: Dreaming your soul's purpose. I really want to make this a chance for all of us to explore what we are here for at this moment, now. We are now in the middle of the great transformation. Liberal democracy is falling apart in real time. We are never going to go back to it. So what can we build instead? What is ours to do? Each of us, what are our core values? What do we live by? And are we living in alignment with those core values? Because we absolutely need to be doing that now. There isn't room to be living the lives that somebody else told us that we ought to be, or that we feel constrained by culture to be.
Manda: So if you want to come along and explore what is true for you, what is your truth for now, then this would be the time to do it. And then this segues into becoming a good ancestor on Sunday the 6th of July. You can come to either of these independently, but I will be running them so that the one runs into the other. So if that sounds good to you, they're on the gatherings tab at accidentalgods.life and I will put a link in the show notes.
Manda: So that's it for now. We will be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, huge thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and foot. To Alan Lowells of Airtight Studios for the production. Thanks to Lou Mayor for the video, Anne Thomas for the transcripts, Faith Tilleray for wrangling with the website. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. If you know of anybody else who wants to understand how we can find the authenticity of what it is to be human, then please do send them this link. And that's it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.