Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Space Between – Heaven on Earth is a companion podcast to Awakening – Heaven on Earth.
Through intimate, heart-centered conversations, this series explores the lived experience of awakening — the questions, integrations, paradoxes, and sacred pauses where transformation truly occurs.
This is the space between knowing and becoming…
where Heaven meets Earth through honest dialogue.
Welcome to the space between heaven on earth. This is a companion podcast to awakening heaven on earth created as a space for reflection, conversation, and lived experience. Here, we enter the pause between knowing and becoming, between insight and embodiment, between heaven and earth. These conversations are not about answers or conclusions. They are about presence, about listening, about reasoning together, about meeting one another honestly in the unfolding journey of awakening.
Jeffrey Aylor:I'm your host, Jeffrey Aylor. Again, welcome and thank you for entering The Space Between with us. Welcome to the space between episode seven, unity with the earth. In recent episodes, we've explored unity with God, unity with the self, unity with others, and with each episode, helping invite us to reconsider how we see and relate. Today, we're going to widen that circle to include the earth, and seeing her not simply as environment or backdrop, but as something many traditions have understood as living, nurturing, and relational.
Jeffrey Aylor:In fact, I believe conscious. So I want to take some time here before we begin. I really want to welcome Sherry Keyes, who's joining us for the first time in the space between. Sherry is a dear friend, a colleague whose presence brings great warmth and thoughtfulness and grounded perspective on connection and community and living in the world. I'm grateful you're here with us today, Sherry.
Jeffrey Aylor:Thanks for joining us here on The Space Between. So before we move into our reflection questions, the specific questions from our our Awakening Heaven on Earth episode on Unity with the Earth, I want to invite each one of you to share briefly what does the phrase earth as mother evoke in you personally, not as a doctrine or belief, but as an experience or a perception?
Joel Aylor:Well, when I hear earth as mother, I no longer think of it as mythology first. I used to. Used to think Mother Earth, it's something you know, it's just a myth. It's just a way of describing something. Now I feel more it's I I view it as dependence.
Joel Aylor:So every breath I take, every cell in my body, every meal is a direct inheritance from something that I didn't create. The earth gives it to me before I ask for it without even asking for it. And whether I recognize or not, I'm continuously being sustained by her. So I've come a long way from thinking it as just something I'm, you know, mythological that we talk about to realizing that it's something that I'm actually participating with or experiencing with. And there's no separation between her and her and myself.
Joe Dermody:So I think of Earth I know you say mother Earth, but I see Earth as more of a, friend, companion, somebody that we're coexisting with. I know that we come from the Earth. Our physical beings come from the Earth. But when I'm when I think of the earth, it's somebody that I'm coexisting with. Think of it, like I said, more of a friend, somebody that I am interacting with daily now, somebody that helps me to ground, helps me to get through my day.
Joe Dermody:And that's new. That's not how I grew up. That's not how I felt as I've you know, when I was younger, but it's definitely that's how I think of it now.
Sherri Keys:Well, when I think of earth, I think of it being a extension of God as the blessing that God has given us that allows us to to exist by providing us all the essential things that we need. Being able to wrap us in an understanding of the food that we need to nurture our body, the air that we need to breathe and exist in this world, providing us intellect and understanding of how various cultures among the different areas within the earth are able to live and provide for all of us. And so it's, you know, it's for me, it's just another extension of the blessing that all of us share from a very special spiritual being that being God.
Jeffrey Aylor:Love that last term spiritual being. To see the earth as a creation, as a being is is life changing. It was to me. I can tell you, I'm one of those people, and this is a full disclosure, that thought that the Earth was here for us to consume and just use inanimate. It didn't have feelings.
Jeffrey Aylor:It doesn't have thought. It doesn't contain the the reasoning ability that a human has when in reality, I'm learning that is absolutely not the case. The Earth is a being created by the same god that is the source of our creation. And what really turned me on, and this was a profound learning for me, it all again, it was because of my Christian background that I had those fundamental beliefs that, you know, the Earth was something inanimate, to be honest, But it's the same Christian teachings that taught me different, and that was back in the book of Genesis where, you know, God forms the Earth, and he goes through this creation process, and at the end, he says, now let us create man in our image. And I've always wondered, who is us?
Jeffrey Aylor:Let let us create man in our image. And it hit me all of a sudden that who's he's talking. He's talking to the Earth he just created. How can you talk to the Earth if the Earth can't listen and respond to you? Because our body comes from the Earth.
Jeffrey Aylor:It is the image of the earth. It's a microcosm of the earth. It came from the earth. It goes back to the earth. Our spirit is from god.
Jeffrey Aylor:It comes from god, and it goes back to god. The and both those images are true. We are created in the image of God. We are created in the image of the earth. And just like we are animated, our body is animated by spirit, The earth is animated by that same spirit, the Christ, the Christ consciousness, the Christ spirit that is in all living, all creatures and beings.
Jeffrey Aylor:That has totally changed the way, and I've always loved nature. I've always loved nature. Trees. I mean, my home, when we first built this house, there were there was one tree put in basically or two, and I did I just had to plant all kinds of trees because trees to me are wonderful, beautiful creatures and beings, and in fact, I love the image of man as a tree, and that connection to earth with the roots in the earth and the branches reaching up into the heavens, and it's that connection of earth and heaven that the tree gives us that I think is such a beautiful symbol. So but I definitely have come I always laughed at people who said mother earth.
Jeffrey Aylor:Mhmm. What are you talking about mother earth? That's crazy. But now I truly see it, and I think it's absolutely the correct name for earth as our mother. The feminine element, the masculine and the feminine also are represented in the earth, the yin and the yang.
Jeffrey Aylor:There's any number of of ways now that I I see earth as representative of those different elements. So I appreciate that. That's a good opportunity for Sherry. You get a chance to see how we enter into discussion here, and and it's beautiful to have you. We're so excited to have you joining us.
Jeffrey Aylor:But before we go into the reflection questions that are part of the episode from Awakening Heaven on Earth, I'd like to invite each of us to have a discussion, and it's gonna be an open ended discussion. We won't come to conclusions, and we hope that you that are listening to this discussion between us will enter into it in your mind with us, and it that it'll generate questions for you and thought around this particular topic. So again, we're not here to prescribe how anyone should relate to the Earth, but we it's simply to notice, you know, how do we already relate more or less with the Earth? Is it consciously? Is it unconsciously?
Jeffrey Aylor:And how does that level of awareness soften our sense of separation from Earth? So unity often begins not with action, but with seeing. So seeing the Earth is different will help us in relating to the Earth different. So with that, let's begin with our first reflection question, and this one's focused around unity with the Earth using a term that we talked on last week, which is sacred vision. So looking at the earth with sacred vision, have there been moments when being in nature helped you become more settled, present, or connected?
Jeffrey Aylor:What did you notice in those moments if you did experience that?
Joel Aylor:Yeah. Nature is always a great remedy for when things get out of hand or when you feel off energetically to just be in nature and walk in nature. It always vibrates at the the right frequency, and it can reset your nervous system and reset your your mind. Because nature doesn't nature doesn't demand you'd have an identity. It doesn't demand you to have achieved anything or to believe anything.
Joel Aylor:It just it just includes you because you are it. And and that inclusion, you know, has a settling effect. It helps the nervous system calm down. It helps us see things a little easier when we're able to just basically reconnect with nature and, you know, can go outside and take a walk in nature, spend time in nature with, you know, animals as well, grounding,
Joe Dermody:go
Joel Aylor:out in bare feet with your bare feet, reconnect to the earth physically because, you know, we actually do feel the the earth through our feet. So it just it it has a great way of helping calm and regulate your nervous system when it when it gets out of hand.
Joe Dermody:So, you know, we talked in previous weeks as well about the grounding, about always feeling calmer, about not having as many problems, before we started wearing the shoes that insulated us from the earth. I haven't had any spiritual experiences out in nature, but I can agree that when I am out in nature, which isn't as often as it should be, I love video games. I love being inside. I love putting LEGOs together. These are things I don't do outside.
Joe Dermody:But I am I had a dog, till just a couple years ago. And I can tell you when we were outside going for walks, when we go to the parks, when we'd be out in the woods, yeah, it's always much more calming. When you can go out and breathe the fresh air, it's it's fantastic. And you always come back from a camping trip, from a walk, and just a day trip in the woods feeling so much more calm. I used to love to go spelunking, so caving when I was younger and being embedded in the earth.
Joe Dermody:For me, it freaks a lot of people out, and I can understand that too. But for me, I loved it. To go into a cave and turn the lights off and have that total darkness, I that was something that I really enjoyed. So, yeah, I I definitely feel a connection now. I didn't necessarily when I was younger, but now it's fantastic.
Jeffrey Aylor:But isn't that a part of the awareness we're talking about, learning
Joe Dermody:to see that?
Jeffrey Aylor:Helps you you know, you didn't know that you were yes. You were probably feeling something when you were out there, but you didn't know how to describe why maybe you felt a certain way.
Joel Aylor:Yes. Intuition doesn't require you to understand it before you feel it.
Joe Dermody:Right? Absolutely.
Joel Aylor:You just feel it and you know.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right. It it that is yeah. That's why they call it intuition.
Joe Dermody:It's the and the mind didn't understand it yet,
Joel Aylor:but the intuition already did. Right.
Joe Dermody:Right. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing that I missed from being you know, from aging out of scouts was the camping trips that we used to do monthly. And now it's becoming clear why that was such a big thing that's missing from my childhood.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know what's really beautiful is you can always do it again.
Joe Dermody:That is absolutely true. Yes. That's why I do this summer. This summer and spring, that is something that we are definitely looking forward to is getting back out into nature and going for those walks, getting out and enjoying being out in nature.
Sherri Keys:That's interesting to me. I guess from my perspective, I kind of look at the different seasons as a way to spiritually connect myself. I that's why I love the seasons. Like, I look at winter and winter is like, man, you know, seeing the snow, it's like purification. Like, I feel like everything's cleansed.
Sherri Keys:I I I love the warmth of the summer. It's like a big hug to me. Spiritually, that's like, you know, it's, you know, I'm in my element, I feel like, know, it's, you know, it's a good time. I, you know, I love the spring because life is beautiful. Things are growing, things are blooming.
Sherri Keys:I love the fall because I'm like shedding off things that I'm dealing with in life. And I could start, you know, we could just start the whole journey over again. So as I kind of go through things that I'm dealing with spiritually, I really kind of embrace the different seasons that we go through. And to me, they have different meaning that I associate with as I'm going through my journey.
Jeffrey Aylor:That transition from one to the other. I always like to use, and Sherry's heard me, and Joe has heard me use this in trainings that and we ask people, do you like change? And most people will say, no. We don't like change. Mhmm.
Jeffrey Aylor:And then I'll say, okay, well, me ask you a question. What's your favorite season? And a significant number of people will pick spring, and they'll pick fall, which really aren't seasons. Right. Their transition periods between two seasons, winter and summer.
Jeffrey Aylor:Mhmm. And they love that transition time. Yep. And it so as long as you consciously are choosing to enjoy it, you know, it's amazing how you can enjoy that change in that. And and Sherry, I love that analogy of the seasons, because seasons can happen in short periods of time, or they can happen over long periods of time in our life.
Jeffrey Aylor:And as we age, we go into different seasons. I think that's such a beautiful analogy of nature teaching us spiritual lessons. Yeah. Which is super powerful. So for me, I know when I need to get outside and reconnect.
Jeffrey Aylor:People who are around me enough know that I love to walk. For many reasons, I love to walk. And if you want, I know I know people who work with me, if you can't find me, there's a good possibility I'm outside. And I'm probably taking a walk, just to get out and connect with the sun, connect with the air, connect with the ground, connect with me. Because that's when my thoughts tend to clarify.
Jeffrey Aylor:That's when if I'm working on something, and if I'm in a highly creative period, and I need to take a break and allow things to process, it usually happens in nature. And, you know, your mother and I, Joel, one of our favorite things to do is get out and hike. We love on a beautiful day to get out in somewhere where we can be in the woods on a trail, maybe near a lake, near some sort of water features, and just absorb that nature. And I didn't I didn't understand grounding at all. That's something as Joe was mentioning, the earthing, the grounding, that makes so much sense.
Jeffrey Aylor:I think in many ways, we've become so disconnected physically from the earth where most people, even our work causes us not to be connected to earth, where in the past, we were an agrarian society. Your hands, everything was in the dirt. Your food came right from the ground you lived on. Yes. Right.
Jeffrey Aylor:And now, even our food is disconnected.
Joel Aylor:And we're paying the price.
Jeffrey Aylor:And we are absolutely paying price. Our house separates us from the earth. Yes. Because of the materials that we use, the shoes we wear, the buildings we work in, all of it is actually separating us and all that energy that builds up in our body because we are just energy. We are all just energy.
Jeffrey Aylor:And that energy has to be grounded in order for is it Joe, what you're you're you're our resident electrical engineer? Is it the free electrons that build up in our system that have to be removed through grounding that cause inflammation? Yeah, free radicals, free radicals. Yes.
Joe Dermody:So the free radicals,
Jeffrey Aylor:the buildup of that electrical energy in your body that doesn't have an opportunity to escape through grounding is what causes inflammation, and inflammation is the number one cause of many chronic diseases and illnesses.
Joel Aylor:And autoimmune diseases.
Jeffrey Aylor:Autoimmune, which we hear more and more and more and more about autoimmune disease. And here, nature itself provides us solutions.
Joel Aylor:Maybe picture it this way. How many wild animals do you know that have chronic diseases? How many of them have hypertension or diabetes or any of these things or heart disease? None. Cancer.
Joel Aylor:Cancer. Until they come in contact with us and we domesticate them and we feed them the food that we create or we give them medications to do what we need them to do, then they start to show the exact same signs and diseases that we have.
Joe Dermody:Yep. Either that or they're around a radioactive source.
Jeffrey Aylor:Those are
Joe Dermody:the only really two Tend to come from us. Staples where they get which come well, there are some natural. But but yeah. But, primarily, those are the only two primes. Yep.
Joe Dermody:They're domesticated. They eat our food. They come into our houses that are isolated from the earth or yeah.
Joel Aylor:Yep. Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's it's fascinating, isn't it? And and knowledge like this comes freedom, but also responsibility. Because now, now that you see or see thee and understand these things, you know, you've got solutions, and those solutions are within your control. I think the biggest issue with a lot of the things we're talking about though, is it's very hard for people to make money from it. Because you have control yourself over how you can heal or how you can.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right?
Joel Aylor:So
Joe Dermody:Well, then there's opposition as well. Because once some of this knowledge comes out, then the people making money off of it wanna fight it. And I think that's one of the other big problems. They wanna squash the other ideas.
Joel Aylor:On a different note, mean, we don't have to necessarily change the entire world in this in this regard
Jeffrey Aylor:Mhmm.
Joel Aylor:Where we feel like we need to.
Jeffrey Aylor:We feel
Joel Aylor:like we we understand this. We see the we see the issue. We we we wanna fix it, but system's broken. Why why do we need to fix the broken system? Why don't we just step outside the system, create our own system, and live through that?
Joel Aylor:So no different than what we've been talking about over the last however many episodes now. Basically, we're not here to change the world. And in order if you wanna change the world, change yours.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right.
Joel Aylor:And then let it affect everyone else around you. If everyone goes home tonight and starts to take care of their own self, just themselves, that's a good start. As soon as they expand that to their family and they start taking of their own family that same way, the way Gandhi said, way to change the world is to to to take care of your family, to love your family, you start to affect that. If everyone does that and takes responsibility for themselves, we don't have a problem anymore. It's not about going and fixing the system as a whole because no one's gonna people are gonna resist like we're talking about.
Joel Aylor:There's money involved. There's livelihoods in stake. They're not gonna change. They have no reason to. But if you wanna change the world, the only way we can
Jeffrey Aylor:do that is to do it individually in your own world. So it's it's it's interesting because one of my favorite books that I've read in time past was called Orbiting the Giant Hairball. It's a book written by a fellow who worked for Hallmark Cards. And if you look at the world as this great big hairball, which it is, people are very comfortable in it. It's soft.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's squishy. They don't have to do much. It's just, you know, they're they feel protected and safe in it. They don't freeze. They don't feel seen.
Jeffrey Aylor:So they can kind of hide in the hairball. So he he said, you're either in the hairball or you're an orbiter. And you and I were talking about this before we came on today about being an outlier. That's an outlier. An outlier is somebody who orbits the hairball and pokes at it and project, but it's not sucked into it.
Jeffrey Aylor:You don't have to exist in this current system. We can exist in the system we're talking about, and enjoy a new Earth, while the other Earth and this other dimension are going on at the same time. And I think that's, and that's not escaping the Earth. In fact, I think that you know, in the in the Bible, it talks about being of the Earth, or how is it it goes? How do I live of the on the earth, but not be of the earth?
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? Kind of a concept. So, you know, it's it's, it's so incredibly interesting to me that we can exist in a parallel kind of a world with these with the way that we see things, and coexist with all the others who don't see these things, which is perfect. Absolutely fine. Allow them to be where they are.
Jeffrey Aylor:So let's go into the next one here, talking about the Earth as a living system. So what shifts in your perception when you consider the Earth, not just as matter, dead matter, right? But as a dynamic interconnected living system.
Joel Aylor:So when I consider food as a gift from the earth rather than a product on a shelf or something given to me. Something shifts. It slows me down. Gratitude usually replaces the transaction, and nourishment becomes relational and not mechanical. I connect with my food.
Joel Aylor:I learn to appreciate where it came from. I learn to enjoy it more. That's my life slows down, and gratitude takes its place. I realize what that food is there for. It's there to nourish this body.
Joel Aylor:It's there to replenish and replace, repair this body. It's not just I'm I'm fixing my hunger, because we tend to eat in this country just to basically get rid of hunger. We don't realize it's so that's why fast food is so prevalent and why processed food is so prevalent, because in order, you know, just to satisfy my my hunger, I just grab something off the shelf and eat it instead of having an actual relationship with that food. So when you slow down and you want grow your own food, you have an appreciation for it because you know how much work it took to get that food. When you slow down and you actually take the time to cook your own meals, you realize how long it takes to actually prepare this food to have it taste the way we that that tastes and make it taste good.
Joel Aylor:It slows you down, you realize how and appreciate just how much if you energetically appreciate the food you're eating, it affects your body in a positive way. It becomes healing, and that's where food becomes medicine. So it's a it's a slowing down, saying gratitude and appreciation for where it came from and what it took to get from ground into your body.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, I love the term you use that it's having a relationship with the food. And, you know, people people can look at food in in two different ways. One is, I eat to live. Right? Right.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's transactional, I need to live. And then there's others who go to the other extreme polarity, where they live to eat. Right. And I think that can go too far to the point where you actually worship the food, as opposed to value it and love it and and appreciate it. Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:There's that that beautiful balance between between them. And think about how many people, how much conflict their world exists because of food, and decisions around food. Talk about, hey, where do you want to go to eat while we went for dinner? The conflict
Joel Aylor:Well, that's the that was the gist of the entire book, the omnivore's dilemma, was the question, what's for dinner? What are we gonna eat? Right? And speaking of Michael Pollan, basically, he says eating is an agricultural act. It's you're you're you're having an effect agriculturally by choosing what you're going to eat and and where you get it from.
Joel Aylor:K? So, I mean, to quote Gandhi again on this, I have quote here. It says he says, to forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yep. We are because we are the earth.
Joel Aylor:And everything even when just choosing what we eat for dinner has an effect on everything more than we realize. The ripple effect on where it came from and how we how we interact when with the Earth is is huge. And, I mean, it's a that that's a whole whole rabbit hole discussion there too. Are no rabbit holes. Nope.
Joel Aylor:That's right.
Jeffrey Aylor:There are no tangents. Right. Someone told me that a few weeks ago. So with that concept, you know, I always we've always historically prayed over our food and for thanks, you know, as we eat. This is one of the things I let your mother is is that's a major part of her worship is to do that.
Jeffrey Aylor:And I think it's all went in and I was raised that way. But I've changed the way I I'm starting to be thankful for that. And it's not just that I'm thankful for the food. I'm thankful for all the people that were involved in it, in its creation, its growth. It's it, you know, the whole the whole chain to your point, I love the fact that a lot of people don't like to cook.
Jeffrey Aylor:Why? It's a lot of work. It is. You have to know a lot to do that and do it well. It's hard to garden.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's hard to grow things.
Joel Aylor:Not easy.
Jeffrey Aylor:Not easy. Hard work.
Joel Aylor:Yes. And But that's where we come kind of relational relationally to to to nature. Basically, it's where we can come up to it. The garden is kind of where we meet. Where Earth and us come together is in a garden.
Jeffrey Aylor:It is the bridge of heaven and earth. Correct. Right.
Joel Aylor:So that that interaction there has completely gone away from our society where 1% less than 1% of our population feeds the other 99. But it didn't used to be that way. Used to be half and half. People had their own gardens. They they store their own foods.
Joel Aylor:Right? They had connection with their food. And, I mean, that was so the omnivore dilemma book is the one thing that kinda really opened my eyes to this connection and this relationship with Earth, and that where's your food come from? That's essentially what he's getting getting to. It's like, where does it come from?
Joel Aylor:And he
Joe Dermody:goes through and he, you know, he's, know, looks
Joel Aylor:at the cattle farms and and and any number of different things on where our food comes from and realizes this this is a disconnect, and there's a reason we're paying the price for it.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yep. That's awesome.
Joe Dermody:So I was just jotting some notes here too. So in the in the past, I was definitely one of those people that would, you know, I I I lived to eat. I I loved it. It I would eat way too much and the wrong types of food. I definitely appreciate what you guys are saying here too about eating, you know, eating the you guys have the wrong food.
Joe Dermody:You have cooking as hard. You have farming as hard. It's it is a spiritual experience to grow the food, to cook your own food, but it's hard. And most people don't have the willingness or they don't take the time to do those. Would it be better if everybody did?
Joe Dermody:Well, sure. It'd be, you know, better for every you know, for those people that grew their own food, but it's hard and not easy, so people aren't gonna do it. Not everybody. I have grown some food, and I find that I am not very good at it. That is not one of my skill sets.
Joe Dermody:It is hard for me to keep things alive. Should not have a memory. I have a brown thumb when it comes to growing food, as does my wife. We are just not good about remembering stuff to, like, water, to feed, you know, the plants what it needs. And our soil is not very good here.
Joe Dermody:We have a lot of clay and not good food growing soil here. Could we make it better? Of course, we could. But we we choose not to. But I can also appreciate what goes into growing our food.
Joe Dermody:And as I'm going through this journey now, it's more prevalent to me what goes into growing our food and not just the physical parts that go into it from the people that are tending our food, but the spiritual aspect of it too. And I appreciate that more on both levels, both from the people and from the earth that's providing this to us. And it's very important to me what I'm eating now. I've also lost a lot of weight, that's both to medicine and to what I'm putting into my body, also medicine, food wise. And I'm very appreciative to both and I don't live to eat anymore.
Joe Dermody:Now I do see it much more of I am eating to live. I have to remind myself to eat now. I'm I'm normally not hungry, and a lot of that is attributed to the pharmaceuticals I'm taking. But it's also a mental thing for me. And I think even without the medicine now, I'd be just fine, to tell you the truth.
Joe Dermody:And I'm looking at coming off those medicines later this year, which is fantastic. I'm excited about that. And I have the mental fortitude, I believe, now to sustain this or will shortly. So but when I get off of all of this and even now, I'm starting to look more on the preservatives and the stuff that we're adding to our food that I don't think should be there. You look over in Europe, and I spent time there.
Joe Dermody:It's been a long time, twenty some years ago now. And when I was over there and they're getting their food fresh, I think you got we all talked about this a couple weeks ago as well, and and buying their food fresh because if you don't, it goes bad. And it's amazing. My I like this story. My brother bought an apple pie one holiday, and they forgot to eat it.
Joe Dermody:Okay? And so it sat on his fridge for months, months on the top of his fridge. And he pulled it down, and they looked at it, and it looked as fresh as the day he bought it. And that is scary. It's Freaking food.
Joe Dermody:It's freaking food. Right? And and needless to say, don't buy apple pie from that place anymore. Mhmm. But that's that's that's frightening.
Joe Dermody:And we bought, you know, bread in Spain, and if you don't eat it in a couple days, it it goes bad as food should. And it tastes so much better.
Joel Aylor:It does.
Joe Dermody:So much and and it's beautiful. It's beautiful food. We had salad every day, and that salad was the greenest green. The tomatoes were the reddest red. It it tasted fantastic all put together, and I miss that.
Joe Dermody:Here, food is is good, and especially if you have someone that can cook it fantastically, and that's that's wonderful. I can cook, not like some people, but I can cook alright, and and I enjoy cooking.
Jeffrey Aylor:But To
Joel Aylor:to that point, I mean, the I mean, you can grow a garden, and you can grow your own tomatoes, and there's nothing better than a homegrown tomato.
Joe Dermody:I know. And I can actually grow tomatoes?
Joel Aylor:Yeah. Go to the grocery store, and they look beautiful. Uh-huh. But there is
Jeffrey Aylor:a reason.
Joel Aylor:They they're they're picked young, and they're put a chemical put on them just to turn red all at the same time. Mhmm. So they look pretty, but they haven't ripened. There's no nutritional value to them. They taste terrible.
Joe Dermody:Like water, if that.
Joel Aylor:If that. If you're lucky.
Joe Dermody:Yep. And and there that's one thing that I
Joel Aylor:really opened my eyes to when we started gardening during COVID when things shut down. And getting that first tomato and tasting, I was like, what is this? This is what it's supposed to taste like? Has never had one like this.
Jeffrey Aylor:We were having a discussion at lunch at work a few weeks ago. Our CEO who was sitting at the table with us, who is from Europe. He was born in Europe, and he's been spent a significant amount of his life in Europe. His parents own a home in the South Of France. Darn.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's the breadbasket of France, you know, and and he was talking about the difference in the food and just the quality of a tomato. I mean, could see his eyes light up, and his mouth start watering talking about
Joe Dermody:The the Italians take a whole month off to enjoy them. Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Dermody:They they the month of August, it's it's tomato season. They're they're
Joel Aylor:taking vacation, and they're enjoying their food.
Jeffrey Aylor:Oh my gosh. Yeah. We're eating the bounty of the the earth at this time, and, you know, I do think I do think that there's there's something to be said that if and then we may get forced, to be very honest, over time back into that kind of an agrarian mindset and economy and mentality. We'll see, but I don't necessarily think that all progress is better. In fact, I think there's there could even be conscious effort on some people's part to separate us from those things.
Jeffrey Aylor:Alright. So Sherry, we're gonna just get your thoughts on this.
Sherri Keys:On food?
Jeffrey Aylor:Yes, food.
Sherri Keys:Let me do a full disclosure. I am probably not the best cook there is. So the joy of cooking and probably even gardening probably isn't probably my first things. But I do enjoy the taste of really good food. Hence why I really like being around Jeff as he puts together these wonderful things.
Sherri Keys:It gives you the it allows you to kind of step back and really enjoy food. And I think I kind of share the thought with everyone else is like, at some point in life, you're just eating to exist and not really understanding and enjoying the blessing, right? So I find that my, you know, I've been in that mold, even today, like I just eat too, because you need it for your body. But you do realize that as you're going through that journey that, you know, food can really play havoc on you, because some things you eat don't really make you feel well. And so I'm coming to an awareness of that.
Sherri Keys:Takes your energy, there's just a lot of things that I'm stepping back in my awareness more to think about what you know, what types of foods that I provide for myself. And even when I'm preparing something for my family, I used to always and I think this goes back to Joel's point, my husband's grandmother, she lived to be 99, almost 100. And I just swore that must have been the bananas because all I saw or eat was bananas. But as I look back in family history, a lot of my uncles and things like that, I mean, they're in their upper 80s. My mother-in-law is 87.
Sherri Keys:As my understanding, they grew their food. They made all of everything. They boil their water, did all these things. And I truly do think that has a huge impact. And how we feel today, and the food that we're in taking.
Sherri Keys:I think spiritually, just as a point of reference, I wish I can met, we've got this beautiful spiritual being earth. And I don't I'm still trying to figure out like, how can anyone ever go hungry? And I wish I can manifest the ability to feed everyone. So hunger is never an issue. So I might have gotten off topic a little bit, but that was kind of something.
Jeffrey Aylor:I think that's a beautiful point. I do believe that there's more than I believe in abundance. I don't believe in scarcity. And I am confident that there's enough food in the world to feed everybody. More so
Joel Aylor:than you have more than
Jeffrey Aylor:enough to feed everybody. That in some cases, I think scarcity is forced or allowed, and it's highly inappropriate. And now at this point, I consider it inhuman to allow that. I'm now I mean, I also believe that in some cases, people in certain parts of the world have hurt their food keep growing capabilities for one reason or another, and have created the famine or the circumstances in which food is not available for them, because I do believe the earth is abundant, and able to provide food for all of its inhabitants. And the food is different from parts of one part of the world to the next, try to think everybody's going to eat the same food, that the earth is providing the exact same food for everybody.
Jeffrey Aylor:I don't think that's appropriate either. And if you think about this, go to a grocery store, and if you saw exactly where all that food came from, very little of it comes from your local area. You're eating food grown in parts of the world, where that foods not native to them. And that food that they eat is not necessarily native to us. Nor is it in season.
Jeffrey Aylor:Nor is it in season, right? So it's not natural for that food to be growing at that time of the year. There there were specific foods that were made available to us. Think of the squashes and pumpkins and things that are available to you throughout the entire winter that you can eat that we don't preserve right naturally through all that.
Joel Aylor:You can just keep on your counter.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right. And they spit out. They don't require refrigeration. Yet we don't eat those types of things. In fact, we don't know how to cook them anyways.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right?
Joel Aylor:So Well, that goes back to your point there. Basically, we're we weren't taught how to handle these things. We weren't taught to grow our own gardens when we were young, especially this generation now has basically not been given the tools to grow their own food if they had to. There's a complete disconnect there, and there's no and they don't know how to prepare it, like you're saying.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's We tend to do what's easy, not what's right. Yes. And this is a problem, I think, for all of us as as humans. And if I were to describe like for the, you know, what's the difference between the food culture in other countries around the world, especially Europe and and in Asia, the love they have for their food in in India, I've traveled to India, and they're passionate about their food. Here, not so much.
Jeffrey Aylor:We lost that from our European roots.
Joel Aylor:Food is all about convenience. Right? We lost the sacredness of it.
Jeffrey Aylor:It absolutely so you know, people would go even if they went out to restaurant, they would go out for an hour, hour and a half. They would enjoy. But now food, you know, going to a restaurant and sitting down and being served is a one hour solution to what most people see as a thirty minute problem. It only takes me thirty minutes to eat, get food and eat, and then I can go on. If it's convenient.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well to create that convenience, there have been things done to that food that make it quite honestly no longer even food. Franken food. Yeah, Franken food. It's a great way of putting it. Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:And that's going to show in our body. 100%. Because you can't separate the the what the earth provide. You think about the Garden of Eden, even as a in the Judeo Christian beliefs, the Garden of Eden was designed to be totally self providing. And and, Joe, I love the point you were talking about, you know, as you're in nature, not only do you benefit from nature, nature benefits from you.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, every tree and plant that uses carbon dioxide, where do they get that? Where a lot of that comes from our breath. We breathe their breath, they breathe our breath. They give off oxygen, we breathe it in, we give off carbon dioxide, they breathe that in. And it's a mutual relationship.
Jeffrey Aylor:It it is a balanced relationship. And every time we get in trouble is when we go to an extreme, an extreme in this way or an extreme in that way, the polarities. And it's all everything was created in in designed for balance. Symbiotic. Symbiotic.
Jeffrey Aylor:Another great term. Moderation. To your your to your point, Joe, about how much we eat, you know, we have a strong tendency, especially here in The United States, to to consume too much food.
Joe Dermody:But we have to consume it. You know, we have to consume it, though, because we stripped all the nutrients out. So our body wants to eat more and more and more in order to get the nutrients it needs.
Jeffrey Aylor:Ah, very true. Didn't he even thought about that, that it requires more food to get, you know, the same amount of nutrition from it is what you would have gotten if the food had been more dense in nutrients. So healthy food, whole foods tend to be more satisfying, you don't have to eat as much.
Joel Aylor:You feel full longer.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yeah, you feel full longer, you're going to get more significant value out of it. And I hope that as as as this whole concept of awakening heaven on earth continues to develop way beyond this podcast, way beyond all the other parts of this, it's it's our nonprofit that I'm really excited about seeing come to life, where we center on being able to teach these principles to people in a in a community method and way, and then help bring the local food resources together for people so it does become more convenient for them to get it. And then let someone like me who's a classically trained chef teach people how to cook it and prepare it so that we so that we take away that lack of knowledge of how to do the cooking. And here's another beautiful thing. And and again, I think this is about the balance and the sharing and the one person when they cook can feed a multitude of people.
Jeffrey Aylor:Not everybody has to be a cook. Cooks love good eaters. Right? When you garden, I can tell you right now your garden even if it's small will grow more food than you can consume. Yep.
Jeffrey Aylor:Guess what that means? Time to spare it. Exactly. Because not everybody can garden. So Joe, you and your brown thumb.
Jeffrey Aylor:Jerry, are you a gardener? Are you good at growing things? She may not be.
Sherri Keys:Well, I am totally not.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's to you know, there is nothing. I
Sherri Keys:could be taught.
Jeffrey Aylor:See, you can. You absolutely can. There is nothing more satisfying to a chef than to see people eat their food and love it. Sure. It's worth the time.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's worth the energy. When someone puts that food in their mouth and they go, Oh, you know that, that that just sends chills down a chef's spine to see that kind of a reaction to food. And food doesn't have to be complicated. Here's
Joel Aylor:one of
Jeffrey Aylor:the I love Italian food. Because the concept behind Italian food is the less you touch it, the less you do to it, the better. Where other other cooking techniques and and and culinary approaches to food, France, although France has a beautiful food culture, their food processes are and their preparation are so much more complicated.
Joe Dermody:But so good.
Jeffrey Aylor:But so good.
Joe Dermody:So good.
Jeffrey Aylor:And they and they eat so much less. They, they're get more satisfaction out of it. They eat slower. The quality of the ingredients are higher. And they get out and they walk.
Jeffrey Aylor:Anyone who's traveled to Europe knows that you've got to walk a lot more just naturally to get around and do what you're going to do. And that all of those things combined, make for I think an overall healthier environment. And you know, much as I and I do love, I do love my country. I do love The United States. We are a a beautiful country, but we have allowed certain things to creep in to our culture that are not healthy.
Joel Aylor:And we It's just not healthy. Yeah. And a lot of that stems from our agricultural approach. I mean, we live in Ohio, which is known for, what, two things, corn and soybeans. Right?
Joel Aylor:The fields you see, they're not growing anything but corn or soybeans. So we have an abundance of corn. We don't eat corn that often, but it goes into everything else. It goes into our drinks. It goes into our food, and it's not in a healthy way.
Joel Aylor:It's it's in fact, it's extremely damaging to our health, the use of that excess corn. Yet But we keep doing it because we're just subsidizing it. We're just subsidizing the farmers so they can make a living instead of figuring out a way, hey. We have this land. We have a ton of it.
Joel Aylor:How can we use it to grow a diverse, you know, ecology of of of different foods? How can we
Jeffrey Aylor:do it differently, but we don't because of money mainly? Well, this is where my continuous improvement background and mindset kick in, and that is the fact that I believe there's always a better way. There's always a better way to approach this. So where in daily life do you most easily forget your connection with the Earth, and where do you naturally remember it? Joel?
Joel Aylor:I remember when I slow down. When life becomes too fast or too digital or too abstract, I I I lose my connection with my food and with Earth in in general. But, you know, like Joe said, loves to play video games and stay inside and do different things. I'm the same way. I especially in, you know, even during this wintertime when we've had a lot of snow.
Joel Aylor:I enjoy being inside and reading a book and doing nothing and relax. And and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a time to rest and relax and and regenerate myself to to handle, you know, the the rest of the year. But I tend to basically lose my connection because I'm staying indoors too much. And same thing goes for for food.
Joel Aylor:It becomes well, I don't really you know, I'm tired. I don't feel like doing anything. I I basically reach for whatever is easiest and most convenient as opposed to getting something that I can you know, like your like, to your point, an acorn squash and turning it into something really, really yummy. Knowing learning how to do that. Take the time to learn to do that and cook it and try it out.
Joel Aylor:Take the time to slowly prepare my food and enjoy it more. That's when when life slows down, when I can let life slow down, I enjoy it more, and I feel more connected to my food and to the earth and things like that. So it just awareness is the biggest part of it.
Jeffrey Aylor:Joe?
Joe Dermody:So I forget about it, honestly, almost daily when I'm at work or when I come back and I plug in to the digital side. I'm playing on the computer. So that that's the easy answer because it happens so often, unfortunately. When do I remember? Honestly, when I when I stop to meditate, when I make sure that I'm grounded, when I take the time to focus and stop and think.
Joe Dermody:But, also, in the summertime, when I'm outside, when I help my wife in, you know, the the outside stuff that we do. We go out. We we mow the yard. We take care of the the the beds, outside. We don't have a lot of flowers, but we have some.
Joe Dermody:My wife, who I would have thought wouldn't like to be out there taking care of the plants and the flower beds and who always said, I don't want any plants. I don't wanna do this. And now she tells me, you know, weeding is kinda calming and relaxing.
Joel Aylor:Use it as a meditation.
Joe Dermody:Right? Yeah. And I'm like, well, that blows my mind, but that's fantastic.
Joel Aylor:No matter how esoteric you get, you it's nothing's you know you know, it's not gonna weed your garden or fold your laundry. You still have do that. You just gotta learn how to do those things in a in a in a meditation of sorts or in
Joe Dermody:a in a present moment.
Jeffrey Aylor:You can't you mean your mind can't do that for you? Right. Just for that. Right.
Joe Dermody:Well, I do not I do not, and I don't see myself ever enjoying weeding.
Joel Aylor:Well, I'm saying you do. You just learned it.
Joe Dermody:Yeah. But I do enjoy I do enjoy mowing the lawn. I I and that's something else I never thought I would do and enjoy. I I knew I would always do it. I didn't think I would enjoy it.
Joe Dermody:I do enjoy mowing the lawn. And, yeah, it's not bad at all, especially on a nice sunny day and going out and enjoying mowing the lawn. So that's when I remember, though. And even now, it's it means even more. So yeah.
Joe Dermody:Sure. Even shoveling snow this year wasn't bad. So
Jeffrey Aylor:I heard that plenty.
Joe Dermody:Yeah. Amazing what happens when I get in a little better shape, and I don't feel like I'm dying when I'm out there mowing or shoveling snow. It's fantastic. But, yeah. Alright.
Joe Dermody:Sorry. I'm done.
Sherri Keys:That's awesome. I guess for me, I I realized it way past when I should because when I realized it, I've let life manage me instead of me managing life. So then at that point, then I realized that, it's time for me to get that get into that quiet space, and that space doesn't always necessarily. Actually the space that I enjoy the most is like being in the back on our patio and just kinda just sitting there. And it's interesting to me because I kind of formalized see visions of shapes in the clouds.
Sherri Keys:I know that probably getting a little too deep with you guys.
Joel Aylor:Not here. But yes. Deep enough.
Sherri Keys:It's very calming. And and it allows me to kind of slow down and kind of just realize, you know, what's most important. And to me, that's being around it, being, you know, understanding the, like, getting outside of the hairball, as we're often taught, I like that term, and just getting, you know, more in alignment with what's most important. And so, and, you know, sometimes interesting enough when I'm in that space, I am not a planner. I do buy plants that are kind of already done a little bit to full disclosure in terms of potting.
Sherri Keys:But I actually found myself enjoying adding to those things and just again, just kind of watching how it grows. I did like this amazing arrangement last year and again, no green thumb, but for whatever reason, that arrangement grew so big, so beautiful. I don't know, it was just I felt loved. But, yeah, I usually realize it when it's too late, but when I do realize that I've lost that level of managing myself and being more grounded. My my comfort space is hanging out outside, clouds looking, and also my newfound love is kind of when appropriate, kind of getting into planting.
Jeffrey Aylor:That's beautiful. You know, we all have a different relationship with the earth. So it's not a that's right or this is wrong or this is good and that is bad. Again, that gets back to the the judging or that my way of enjoying the earth is right and yours is wrong. My way is the way to do it.
Jeffrey Aylor:I think all of you know, me at this point that are on this podcast, that I love to be outside. We eat outside. If the weather is the least bit conducive, we will eat outside every chance we get. We will sit outside and enjoy the air, the sun, the people that are moving around. I love to see the life in the I love to see our neighborhood moving and people out enjoying things.
Jeffrey Aylor:I love to see kids out playing, and I would especially it's fun because when my granddaughters come over in the summer now, they'll say, can we take our shoes off and walk into grass? Can we go out and grab? So that's become a fun thing to do, and we we just recently, as we get closer to retirement age and knowing that we're going to spend more and more time around our home during a day, you know, we've tried to create space spaces around our home outside that are designed to enjoy. Our front of our home, porch, the back of our home, a beautiful patio with a pond. Now we have a beautiful pond with running water, and beautiful large fish, and meditation stone, and all the things that it that will allow us to be able to sit in nature under beautiful trees and enjoy, just absorb all those elements which are in us.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, I I become a big fan and believer of the basic concepts of the Essenes, which was the third Jewish sect in ancient times. There were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, and the Essenes are more than likely the Jewish sect from which John the Baptist came from and Jesus was raised among the Essene culture. But their big thing is is is all about the importance of nature and their food and their connection to Earth because we are from the Earth. We are of the Earth. We are not separate from the earth.
Jeffrey Aylor:The earth and there are natural laws that govern us, and there are spiritual laws that govern us. And if you go against the natural law and cycles and circuits, you're gonna find yourself in difficulty.
Joel Aylor:We feel that just when we do time change. Yeah. What is that,
Jeffrey Aylor:by the way?
Joel Aylor:Yeah. All it takes is that one hour to feel that, that disconnect.
Jeffrey Aylor:So they're just to me, there's just so many different elements to enjoying Earth and as a relationship, and we all have different relationships. And and just like any relationship, you hope over time it gets deeper, and I wanna have a deeper, reverent relationship if we can. Right? That's to me, that's beautiful. It brings us together too.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's there's a there's a a sense of community in Earth that I think is also beautiful. So let's go to our last question here, and it's again centered around the concept of seeing the earth with sacred vision. If I begin seeing and extending the same compassion and dignity toward the earth that I hope to extend towards people, other people. In other words, if I treat the earth as a person, how does that begin to change how I see the earth and the world, the natural world?
Joel Aylor:So the same dignity that you would give to the earth that you try to extend to others, basically, that your consumption becomes a relationship, and extraction becomes stewardship. You stop asking, what can I get? And start asking, how can I participate responsibly? You know, you get out of a relationship what you put into it often. There's ways of handling, you know, a relationship with somebody and saying and no no no different than than how we treat the earth.
Joel Aylor:And, you know, once we realize that that the earth is alive and the earth is key is sustaining us and it is our responsibility to take care of it and to and to to heal it and to produce from it, then we start to basically realize that, you know, we get the same we we get out what we put into it. And I think that's where our disconnect is. We're basically just trying to pull, pull, pull out of this relationship with the earth, consume instead of putting stuff back into it. You know, we have to heal the soil because if we if we heal the soil, we can heal ourselves. And that is one thing that we do so poorly in this country.
Joel Aylor:We basically just, you know, feed the we we basically constantly bombard the soil with just chemicals to basically make up for the fact that we haven't basically done the natural cycle of healing the ground.
Jeffrey Aylor:The rest periods, the you know, the rotation
Joel Aylor:The rotation of Right. We're just basically pulling from the earth, and then we're forcing things back into it just to grow some more. And we're not even again, it's not it's not for benefit. I mean, like I've mentioned before, we're from Ohio where it's all corn and soybean. Who eats soybeans?
Joel Aylor:Do you guys eat soybeans? I don't.
Joe Dermody:I do. In in Edamame.
Joel Aylor:Right. Okay. Fine. And very, very few for as much as we produce, we don't eat. And the corn that we see usually in our fields, we don't eat it either.
Joel Aylor:We feed it to our livestock. It's mainly for our cows. You know? Yeah. What did cows eat before we grew their corn for them?
Joel Aylor:I mean, come on. Course, mean, they didn't, you know, they didn't survive, didn't they? We have to feed them corn. It's not our natural it's not a natural food source for a cow or a horse or whatever. But the vast majority of what we see here is being fed to animals, and then we either consume the animals or making those animals sick.
Joel Aylor:And we see it over and over, and it's just there there that relationship sometimes is just gone, and our soil has got can deplete. And here's the thing. Where do we go once that soil is gone? We can't the world, you know, at this point is pretty populated. We know where everything's at now.
Joel Aylor:Usually, people would, you know, in history would basically
Jeffrey Aylor:Find a new place.
Joe Dermody:They would move to a different place where there
Joel Aylor:was more food or an, or an ability to grow something. We're gonna get to a point if we continue down this path where we're gonna destroy our own sustenance, our own ability to take care of ourselves. So that relation there was a it's like a relationship with someone else. Basically, if you continue to take take take out of a relationship, chances are that relationship is gonna fail. And that's where this same kind of connection with, you know, how we how we interact with others is the same thing.
Joel Aylor:If we treat the earth as a relationship Right. It has to be both ways.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's a bank account. You have to be know, you you can't just make withdrawals. You have to also deposit Correct. Effectively and manage that balance. Correct.
Joel Aylor:Right? Because it's a living being. I mean, you can you'll you're seeing the effect of what we're putting into it. Yeah. The nutrition the nutrition levels of that same pepper or that same tomato now compared to fifty to a hundred years ago is nowhere near as nutrient dense.
Joel Aylor:It's the same plant, but the soil is so depleted of anything that's actually good, we don't get the same the same nutrients out of it.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, if you think about that a bat then, the ripple of that also then moves into the quality and the value of seeds. Yeah. Pump for those plants. 100%. Because they now
Joel Aylor:Because now they're generational.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? It becomes generational, so there's a declining Correct. In the quality based on how we manage the seed too. And I know there's a lot written about how seeds are That's
Joel Aylor:a fascinating thing too as well. How seeds are controlled, but also how easy it is to basically buy up, you know, buy a plant initially, start it, grow it, whatever. The amount of seeds you get out of that plant, if you know what to do, is will feed you for the rest of your life. Literally, if you know how to get the seeds out and and hold them and and store them correctly, you can you literally don't buy your food ever again. So you can grow every your garden every year and not pay for anything.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, Sherry's tender heart and our tender heart toward people that don't have food. There we can give get them what they need so that they can create their food. It it's self perpetuating. That's how the Earth was created.
Joel Aylor:Yeah. For every plant. I mean, about how many how many we can't eat all the food here. Think how many seeds are in a in a tomato or in a pepper or in a watermelon, whatever. There are that's that's another plant.
Joel Aylor:Each one of those is another plant.
Jeffrey Aylor:It it multiplies Which is multiple. Exponentially. Correct. Yeah.
Joel Aylor:The exponential abundance factor is off the charts if we understand what to do with it.
Joe Dermody:There is And we have the old seeds.
Jeffrey Aylor:There is no reason for lack. There is nothing but abundance. Lack we create the lack in our mind, and the world is we've created this in our mind. It is what we have created. We've got that.
Jeffrey Aylor:So to change the world in that regard, I know we're not here to change the world, but we are. We have to change the way we think we have to change the way we see. We have to change the way we see.
Joel Aylor:And each of us has to take responsibility for it. But if we are But if we all do that
Jeffrey Aylor:Yes. Collective, then
Joel Aylor:It becomes exponential change there too. Absolutely. But it's not me going and forcing you to do something. It's doing it within yourself.
Joe Dermody:Yep. That's right. Joe. One light at a time. But yeah.
Joe Dermody:And I wrote down in my notes when we first asked the question, it was soil and seeds. Right? Because the seeds have been changed in a lot of cases as well. We do have access to older seeds though in that Doomsday Vault, but that's that's a whole another
Joel Aylor:Way up north in Svalbard.
Joe Dermody:That's right. Yeah. But I think the the question was, you know about if we treat the earth as we treat other people. I think we have to listen, right? It is a two way communication, and we have to stop to listen, and that's hard.
Joe Dermody:And just like you said, Joel, don't just take, but give back. That's part of that two way communication. I don't think
Jeffrey Aylor:the earth is telling us though a lot Absolutely. Things right
Joe Dermody:Yep. But we don't know how to listen, or we choose not to listen.
Joel Aylor:We choose not to.
Joe Dermody:We choose not to listen.
Jeffrey Aylor:Mhmm.
Joe Dermody:Physically, we we choose not to listen. Spiritually, I think that's another another level that people will get there or they won't, depending where they're at. But you're right. The the earth tells us and shows us signs all the time. We just have to stop, look, listen, and accept.
Jeffrey Aylor:And be consciously aware that it's communicating to us all the time.
Joe Dermody:Absolutely.
Jeffrey Aylor:All the time. Absolutely.
Joe Dermody:All the time.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yeah. I love that thought, Drew. That's beautiful. Sherry?
Sherri Keys:So so my perspective is that, you know, God has given us the earth as a beautiful gift, a gift of love, that that we should be really embracing because it gives us everything that we need, everything that we need in order to survive. And I think that as beings, that if we look at every aspect that this earth has, even the annoying bugs that we might not like, they all have a purpose. And it's if we begin to understand not only how that purpose allows us to have this on this abundance amount of nourishment that God has given us, but that how that transcends into how we look at people in our life that every plug, every creature on this earth is here to do something. They have a purpose. And if we can open our eyes up to understand that, is God what is what God is showing us in this gift of the earth, then I think it is going to go a long way if we educate everyone.
Joel Aylor:You mean that you can be on a mosquito though? Because man No. Right?
Sherri Keys:There's a purpose. God doesn't make mistakes.
Joel Aylor:That's right.
Sherri Keys:That's that's kind of kind of baseline in this. But, yeah. And I I think for me, the awareness and understanding that transcends in big ways as as we interact with people and we we touch hearts and we, you know, continue to do this great work.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's it's I need to be kind. You know, we've been doing our Reiki training as a team at work, and one of the precepts is to be kind. You know, how do how do I be kind to all living things? And the earth is living. The earth is alive.
Jeffrey Aylor:It is not dead. It is not inanimate. There's a I think a very beautiful lesson that came through the telepathy tapes, one of the telepathy tape episodes, and it talks about the consciousness of the earth. The idea I have always I didn't think that the earth could think, that it communicated and reasoned and had thought. I I thought the same thing about animals.
Jeffrey Aylor:I didn't I thought animals couldn't think, or that they didn't reason, or that they didn't have a consciousness about them, but they do. And this telepathy tapes episode really helps helps you understand and see that. There was a they were they were talking about the telepathic ability for plants to communicate. Animals have that ability. There was a great, a really wonderful story about a horse who, this professional writer, did not get this horse to jump a certain type of obstacle.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, they went through all kinds of training issues around the horse and the horse was making his mistake and the horse can't do this. Well, they they got a person who was able to communicate with the horse telepathically. And the horse said I can do it. But my rider has a is not healthy enough. She has a disease, and if I do it, it could hurt her.
Jeffrey Aylor:No idea that this person had an issue. They go, they start getting her tested, and sure enough, she had a type of arthritis that would have caused her to be injured in doing it. That horse diagnosed her illness. Wow. Consciously, and I think of a story in the Old Testament of the of is it Jeroboam or one of the anyway, he's on a mule, and the mule sees an angel that's blocking a path, and consciously chooses to protect his rider.
Jeffrey Aylor:And then the person beats the horse because he can't see the angel what the horse did. And, you know, so okay, wait a minute. So they can communicate. They can't talk. Earth can communicate.
Jeffrey Aylor:To Joe's point, it does talk to us all the time, and we are not listening. We're not listening.
Joel Aylor:Yeah. Just talking to your plants in the garden can help it grow better.
Jeffrey Aylor:There's been evidence
Joel Aylor:to show that. And there's evidence with music, like playing music. Certain types of music would make it grow better and or, you know, playing bad music or bad frequencies will cause the plant to die.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, plants so for those of you with a brown thumb, Maybe you need to talk to your plant nicer. Your energy.
Sherri Keys:Yeah, definitely the energy is.
Jeffrey Aylor:Just a little side note there. Well, this has been a ton of fun. This has been a lot of fun. Sherry, we're so glad you've joined the circle here and hope you'll join us again in the future for a number of these episodes. And we invite a number of people around in our circle to come and join us.
Jeffrey Aylor:And we certainly invite you as listeners. So as we bring this conversation toward a close, I just want to pause again and and share something very simple. The earth has always been here, quietly sustaining us, holding us up, participating in the rhythms of our lives, whether we notice it or not. But this is what I love about truth. The truth is true whether you believe or see it or not.
Jeffrey Aylor:And that is truth. Unity with Earth does not require certainty. It doesn't require any perfection. Often it starts with awareness, just knowing through your conscious mind, and seeing it with gratitude, and simply remembering that that we all belong together. We are in a relationship.
Jeffrey Aylor:So Joel, Joe, Sherry, thank you both all of you for joining, sharing your voices, your thoughts, your reflections today. And to those who are listening, this conversation in any way invited even a moment of appreciation for the ground beneath you, beneath your feet, all the things that are sustaining life in you, Let that be enough for now. And with that folks, the space between continues. As we come to a close, remember that this journey continues in many expressions. This podcast is part of a family of partner podcasts.
Jeffrey Aylor:Awakening heaven on earth. The space between heaven and earth, and Living Heaven on Earth are three companion podcasts exploring spiritual awakening from complementary perspectives. Awakening Heaven on Earth offers the core teachings and mystical reflections on unity, love, and conscious living. The space between creates room for dialogue, reflection, and lived conversation around those teachings. Living Heaven on Earth focuses on basic spiritual practices that help embody these insights in daily life.
Jeffrey Aylor:Together, they form a unified journey of understanding, experience, and integration. Inviting listeners to remember their connection with the divine, with one another, and with the living world. You can find all of them available on the same podcast streaming platforms wherever you listen. And if music helps carry these teachings deeper into the heart, The Unity Awakening Heaven on Earth album is available on all major music streaming services as a musical companion to this journey. Wherever you engage, through listening, reflection, conversation, or music.
Jeffrey Aylor:May it gently remind you, you are not separate. You belong to the one life and heaven is already unfolding within you. Until next time. Walk gently, love deeply, and embody heaven on earth.