Dr. Lorne Brown:

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Today our guest is Steve Taylor, who is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and the author of several bestselling books. And I’m telling you several. He’s written many books on psychology and spirituality. Dr. Taylor has a master’s degree with distinction in consciousness and transpersonal psychology, and a PhD in psychology from Liverpool, John Moore University. He’s also the pastor of the transpersonal psychology section of the British Psychological Society. His latest book, and depending when you listen to this, this may not be his latest book, but at the time of our recording, his new book is The Adventure Step-by-Step Practices for Cultivating Spiritual Awakening, his other books as well, which include disconnected the roots of human cruelty and how connection can Heal the world. I think that’s an important one that maybe we all want to read, especially our world Leaders Extraordinary awakenings, the Clear Light Out of the Darkness, Back to Sanity, the Calm Center, the Leap and Spiritual Science.

And as I mentioned, he has many more books as well that you can check on his website in our show notes. His books have been published in 20 languages and his articles and essays have been published in over a hundred academic journals, magazines and newspapers. He also writes blogs, articles for Scientific American, the Conversation, and also for Psychology Today. And many of you have heard me reference Eckhart Toley, the author of The Power of the Now and New Earth, and he’s described Steve’s work as an important contribution to the shift in consciousness, which is happening on our planet at present. Steve lives in Manchester, England with his wife and three children. Steve, welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast by the Alone. Great to be with you. It’s kind of synchronicity. I got to tell you how this kind of came together for our audience and for you as well. I know part of it, but one of my colleagues sent me a link to your book on the extraordinary awakenings. I said, have you heard of this guy Steve Taylor? And I was like, the name’s familiar. And then I recalled that I moderated your talk for the Society for Science Exploration online back in 2020 when we hosted that on our online platform. And then I reached out to you again and here we are. So I liked how that has all come full circle for us.

Steve Taylor:

Wonderful, wonderful.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

So our audience is those trying to grow their families and also those that just want to have more happiness, more peace in their life want to manifest. And this is one of those episodes that is for everybody. This is not just for those who want to grow their family, but where this ties into fertility. You have this term you call TTT, I think it’s transformation through turmoil and how this can lead to spiritual awakening. And so many people on the fertility journey describe it as incredibly stressful fertility, stress and fertility trauma. It’s been linked or compared to getting a terminal diagnosis like cancer. So severe, and I know you’ve written lots on this, but I also see people come to our practice that have gone through a bad divorce, have gotten a serious diagnosis. And I wanted to hear a little bit more because you’ve done so much research and writing on this, on how our suffering in turmoil, there’s an opportunity for spiritual awakening and consciousness. And could you share a little bit about this and why we care about this spiritual awakening? Why would somebody be interested in this topic in general?

Steve Taylor:

Well, there’s a concept in psychology that many of listeners have probably heard of called Post-Traumatic Growth, which explains that any form of trauma can in the long run have positive after effects and trauma in the long run, even if it takes years to a few years to manifest itself, it can lead to a new sense of appreciation, a new philosophical or spiritual outlook on life, a wider sense of perspective and deeper, more authentic relationships. So that’s a very well-known concept in psychology and transformation through turmoil. It’s similar, but it’s more dramatic. I found in my research, often when people go through severe trauma over a long period of time, severe stress or depression, or sometimes it’s a diagnosis of cancer and it could be a bereavement or a long period of addiction recovery from a long period of addiction, they can undergo a shift where they feel as though they’ve taken on a new identity.

And I think what happens in those situations is that the normal ego that most of us define as us, when it goes through a period of stress and turmoil, the ego can break down, it can dissolve away, and either it sort of collapses due to the stress or there’s a long process of loss or depression, which slowly breaks it down. And it comes to a combination where the ego just collapses like a building, when you take away a certain number of bricks from a building, it just collapses. So that’s what can happen. The ego collapses under the stress, but sometimes in a minority of people, it’s almost as if there is a latent higher self, which takes over in those situations, it kind of emerges from the ashes of the old ego. It is almost as if it was always there just waiting for the opportunity to emerge.

So then it emerges and it becomes a new sense of identity. So people feel with this new sense of self, they feel completely different almost as if they’re different people living in the same body. So that’s one way of looking. And also you can look and think about it in terms of systems theory where when a system collapses due to strain or stress in some circumstances, it fuses together at a higher level of order. It waits for a while and slowly begins to fuse together and it restructures itself and it’s always at a higher level of order with a new sense of harmony. So that’s what I think happens. Well,

Dr. Lorne Brown:

There’s a little bit to unpack there. You said a few things that I’m really curious about what“““ your research has shown and your own personal experience. You talked about this higher self, and so many of the expert guests we have talk about this big C consciousness or higher self. So do you subscribe to the idea there’s more to this world than the materialistic world that we see with our five senses then?

Steve Taylor:

Certainly, yeah. I think what most human beings perceive as reality is a very limited form of reality. It is a kind of illusion that we take this for reality itself. I mean, and it’s kind of arrogant as well, because every animal has a certain view of reality, and every animal probably assumes that it’s aware of all reality. But we know because we’re more advanced than some animals, we know that we have a more refined and more intense consciousness than some other animals. But that doesn’t mean that our consciousness is whole and absolute and objective. And when we have these experiences, when we have spiritual experiences, we realize that we become aware of a more intense reality. We realize that our normal vision is a kind of shadow, that is Plato’s myth of the cave. We’re staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave, but we assume it’s real. And then we turn around and see reality. We see the brightness of reality, and it dazzles us and overwhelms us. It takes us a while to get used to it. But yeah, that’s one takeaway from these experiences, this realization that normal reality is limited.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And so when somebody has these situations in their lives, they can be viewed as opportunities. There’s a chance for growth here because we’ve familiar with the term post-traumatic stress disorder, where we’re still limited and we’re struggling from the trauma that we’ve experienced with the perceived trauma. And then you shared there’s an opportunity here for post-traumatic growth, and it sounds like that life sometimes can bring us to our knees. And you said the ego, it’s like a dissolution of ego. So we’re brought to our knees where we have to fully surrender. And when we fully surrender, this allows our higher self to come through us and there’s a new identity or a new personality. And from your research in the books you’ve written then on this topic, have people’s lives changed and have there been healing? Do you have documentation of healings as well where there’s a new identity so the body has a healing?

Steve Taylor:

Yes, yes. I mean, one thing I’ve found is that along similar lines to what you were describing there, acceptance is a really important part of the process of transformation. Everybody goes through suffering. It’s part of human life. We all go through trauma, severe trauma many times in our lives. It’s just part of reality. But obviously not everybody undergoes transformation. So one of the important factors in harnessing the transformational potential of these events is an attitude of acceptance. Well, on the one hand, it’s acknowledgement facing up to the reality of our predicament, and then it’s accepting, letting go, surrendering to the reality of our predicament. So a diagnosis of cancer is a good example. Some people do undergo massive transformations, spiritual awakenings after a diagnosis of cancer. Many people don’t. So part of that process is to acknowledge the reality of a diagnosis of cancer, acknowledge the reality that you are facing death and that you are potentially experiencing a tremendous loss. And then you accept it. You surrender or let go. You don’t resist that reality. You kind of open yourself to it and embrace it, and that’s when transformation is most likely to occur.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

You just said something that I love, but I want to continue on and then I’ll share what you made me think of.

Steve Taylor:

Oh, no, I was just going to say that I’ve investigated many cases of transformation in addicts as well, alcoholics or drug addicts. It is usually when they’re so broken down that they just give up. They kind of accept their predicament thinking, there’s nothing I can do. This is hopeless. Or they hand over their problem, which is part of the AA process, handing over your problem in half an hour. And that’s that moment of surrender, of letting go is often the moment when transformation occurs.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

So I have to share this with you. I have this approach. My listeners, if they’ve been listening to this, they’ve heard this before, people come to my practice for my conscious work and the method I have for to support this transformation, this awakening, I call NAC, notice, accept, choose again. And you just described it. So this is why I get excited because everybody I interview the books I read one day, it was just an aha moment. Like some have 10 steps, some have two steps, some have these elaborate ways of doing it. And one day it just distilled down in my mind that it seems like everybody’s doing notice except choice. Again. Notice. Notice everything that happens is neutral, and we give it meaning. And the meaning we give it is through the lens of our subconscious. So when you believe in the story, you make it real, you become the effect of it.

So the first step is you have to notice, like you said, you have to realize your situation. If you can’t notice it, then you’re at the effect of it, you’re unconscious. Second stage is accept, and I have multiple tools that can fit into this, but the accept is about surrendering, accepting what is. It doesn’t mean you’re resigned to it. It doesn’t mean you like it, but at this moment, this is how you feel. This is what your experience is. So accept it, because when you don’t accept it, you create resistance. I heard you use the word resistance, and I always say resistance. In Chinese medicine, we call that cheese stagnation. Resistance does not feel good. But when you fully accept and lean into these uncomfortable feelings, I suspect or believe that it puts you into a presence when it acts as a portal to presence. Yeah, definitely.

I imagine the brainwaves go down into alpha because you’ve surrendered. You go from sympathetic alarm to parasympathetic, and then you connect to your higher self. And when resistance drops, you now have flow and receptivity, and that feels good, and flow and receptivity, inspired thought can flow into you where you can take inspired action. And then C stands for choose again. How do you want to be in this world? Because now you’re conscious, you can choose more so how you want to be in this world, and hopefully that’s coming through or it is coming through your higher self. So just thank you for saying that. I was like, okay, there it is again. NAC.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, it’s very similar. Yeah. The way I would describe it is that when you live in a state of resistance, you create a duality between yourself and reality. You create a conflict between yourself and reality, and the conflict always creates tension. It creates a blockage. So when you enter into a mode of acceptance, that duality fades away, the blockage disappears. So suddenly there’s an opening and you become one with reality. So there’s a sense of harmony.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And when you become one with that reality, again, this is going more, not so much in the materialistic level, you’re really saying one with reality, as in you’re no longer separate and you’re connecting to your higher self, or some would say super conscious, and you’re connecting to universal chi. I dunno what we should call it, consciousness. Is that what you’re describing here? I wanted to check in with that.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I think one of the core principles of my approach is that most human beings have a sense of separation. We feel that we are separate entities living inside our mental space with the rest of the world out there on the other side. But in spiritual experiences, we realize that this sense of separation is illusory. And that comes from, that ties into acceptance as well. Resistance to reality intensifies or strengthens our sense of separation. So when we enter into acceptance, separation, that sense of separateness is phased away. It brings a sense of connection to reality. And once you’re connected to reality, on the one hand, you feel a sense of ease because you’re no longer a separate incomplete being, but you also have a greater access to the energies and the forces of the world. Your life begins to flow much more easily. It is almost as if you’re being supported by the rest of the world because you’re one with it.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And I’m curious more about when you’re one with it or you’re awakened, you’re conscious if there’s any, what we would call spontaneous healings or change.

And if you have any stories to share because just some of the stuff I’ve come across from the literature, they talk for example, of those with multiple personalities. And depending on which personality is present, one would need reading glasses and one would not. One blood test would show up that they’re diabetic and one would not, which I thought was amazing. The hardware is the same, there’s the same physical body, but the software they’re running changes how their eyes work or their blood chemistry. And you had said earlier when we started chatting about this awakening post-traumatic growth, there’s a new identity with this change in ego. And so through your research in the books you’ve read, do you have any stories or is there data on that as well that you’ve come across?

Steve Taylor:

Certainly. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, there’s a profound psychological healing which takes place. So even if people have been through really intense trauma earlier in their life, the trauma seems to dissipate and the effects of the trauma seem to disappear. One example is a woman I interviewed who I speak about in an extraordinary awakenings, a Scottish woman called Eve, who was a severe alcoholic for 29 years. And during that period, she went through all kinds of terrible incidents, violence. She was abused, she was raped. She went through lots of terrible traumatic episodes, and obviously those episodes had a traumatic effect on her. But after 29 years as an alcoholic, she was completely broken down and she wanted to die. She was homeless living on the streets, and she’d attempted to stop drinking. But so she decided she had no option but to kill herself, so she attempted to kill herself. She walked in front of a coach who was traveling at 40 miles an hour, but luckily the coach swerved and she survived, is

Dr. Lorne Brown:

A coach first Canadians over here. What do you mean by coach? Is that a train? Oh, a

Steve Taylor:

Bus.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

A bus. A bus, okay,

Steve Taylor:

Sorry. Yeah, she walked in front of a bus that was traveling from Glasgow to Edinburgh. So she survived. And in that moment of surviving her suicide attempt, something seemed to shift inside her that the police arrived and took her back to her parents’ house and her parents because they thought she was an narcotic. They gave her a drink, but she, and she picked up the glass of wine but couldn’t drink it. She kept picking it up and putting it down. She felt that somehow she couldn’t drink it. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and she didn’t recognize herself. She’s like, who is that person? That’s not me. I’m not that person anymore. And then her doctor arrived and gave her some medication to help her deal with withdrawal symptoms. And after that, she felt like she was a completely different person. The craving for alcohol had just disappeared in a miraculous way after 29 years.

And all of the trauma which she picked up through all her terrible experiences, had also dissipated. She felt this tremendous set of healing and liberation and connection. And ever since then, she’s been a completely different person. She’s never had any craving for alcohol since then. Yeah, I was just going to say on a physical level, there are also stories of people who, one example is there was a guy who had a spiritual awakening after a long period of intense stress, and he suffered from all kinds of physical symptoms like chronic digestive problems and back pain for many years, to the point where he’d been in hospital for weeks and been under medication for many years. But when he had his spiritual awakening, the symptoms just disappeared. And he was really confused. He’d been carrying these symptoms for so long, but they just miraculously dissipated a bit like Eve’s craving for alcohol, and they never returned. And that’s not uncommon. I think many conditions have a strong mental element, a strong psychosomatic element. So when your identity changes and you become a different person with a different mind and a different outlook, all of those symptoms that were created by the mind just fade away. They pass away with the old ego that’s died away.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

I think we’re seeing more and more of that becoming more mainstream. Steven Porges research on polyvagal theory, if I interpret it right, he talks about so many of our symptoms still comes from our mental emotional aspect. Oh, the author’s missing my mind right now. But the body keeps the score is another example of a lot of our physical symptoms coming from our mental health. And Chinese medicine has such a beautiful understanding of this. Your physical health impacts your mental emotional and your mental emotional impacts, your physical, which is why it’s mind, body, you treat both because they’re not separate. They look separate, but they’re not separate. They interact with each other.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

So most people, when they come for me in here for conscious work, the realization I have is they want to be happy. Some think if I have a child, I’ll be happy, or if I find this, if I get into this relationship, if I just get this job or if I just have this much money, or if I just get healthy. From your work in this awakening process and consciousness, it seems like we’re still looking for things externally from us to make us feel whole and full. Where are you on that spectrum then of, is this again then inner work that you’re talking about and that is it possible? Is this what you personally have experienced and what the people that you’ve interviewed and the research you’ve done, does it allow you then not to need the external world to be a certain way, to feel whole, to feel happy?

Steve Taylor:

There’s certainly a greater self-sufficiency, which means that people are less dependent on external circumstances. That’s really one of the essential aims of all spiritual paths and traditions. It goes back to in the bag of aGita, it says something like, the person who is enlightened is no longer dependent on pleasure or pain. He’s the same in situations of pleasure and pain, failure and success. So it doesn’t matter too much what’s happening around you. It doesn’t matter too much where you are because you become attuned to a fundamental wellbeing, which doesn’t depend on success or pleasure or other people. It is just there as a natural condition. It doesn’t mean that you become indifferent and detached from the world. In some ways, you become more involved in other people and in the world because you can become more compassionate and more altruistic.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

I was curious about that because, and I’d love your take on this. A lot of the questions I get is, well, if I have this awakening, I do this work and I become somewhat self-sufficient, then I won’t want to go out and do anything in the world. Is that the case or is it the opposite of that? Actually?

Steve Taylor:

Well, yeah, I’ve heard that a lot too. Well, it is true in a sense. One of the shifts that people describe frequently is that they don’t need to do as much. They don’t depend on activity for their identity. They become more able to do nothing. They shift from a mode of doing into a mode of being, so they’re quite happy to be alone or to do nothing in particular. So in that sense, it’s true. They’re maybe not quite as active because they don’t need to be active to keep them going and to give them an identity.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

They’re not crawling to bed and spending days in bed, or they’re not moving to the mountain for the rest of their lives. They’re having more states of being, and do they? Do they contribute to the world? Do they still get to enjoy the fruits of the world?

Steve Taylor:

Oh, they do. One of the misconceptions about spiritual awakening is that people do become isolated and detached and stop caring because in reality, people care more because they’re no longer separate, because they’re more connected to others and to the natural world. They feel more empathic, more compassionate towards others, and that compassion empathy gives rise to altruism. They feel a desire to help others, to alleviate other people’s suffering, to contribute to the world in some way. So one of the essential shifts in spiritual awakening is a shift from, I describe it as a shift from accumulation, which is when your main aim is to accumulate success or possessions or experiences, there’s a different accumulation to a mode of contribution. So then your main aim is to help your community, to help your friends and relatives, but more generally to contribute to the world. So yeah, in that sense, it is not common for spiritually awakened people to become social activists. I often suggest that the greatest social activists in world history have all been spiritually awakened. People like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Florence Nightingale, she was a very spiritually awakened person. So yeah, in that sense, it’s the opposite of detachment and indifference.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And you’re doing it consciously because as you mentioned, it’s the beingness, not the doingness. And so many of us, because we have this incompleteness inside, we’re constantly doing to create value, which it’s endless. We can’t satisfy that hole. But when you are filling a hole incomplete, when you’re connected in that beingness, that doing comes out of your beingness. So it’s the doingness that is the being behind it. And as you shared, when you fill yourself up, there’s that altruism that you want to go out and contribute. And it seems like sometimes you have universal forces behind you, synchronicity starts to happen and line up for you. Exactly. Has that been your experience?

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, exactly. That’s a really good way of describing it. Yeah, because action no longer comes from your personal ego. It’s no longer rooted in a desire for attention or to accumulate power and possessions or simply to keep yourself busy, to distract yourself. It comes from a deeper place. It doesn’t really come from you. It comes from somewhere beyond you. So your life becomes the expression of higher forces, and you still feel a purpose, but your purpose is no longer a personal purpose. It’s a purpose which is flowing through you, which is carrying. You may not be really clear about what it is, but you’re just content to allow this purpose to manifest through you.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And it seems like you’re not so much attached to the form outcome, the materialistic aspect of it. And that circles back to then, I guess there’d be very little resistance, which allows the flow and receptivity to happen because you’re doing it out of just the pure joy of it, the journey of it, not so focused on the destination. And yet as you shared this force, which I think people are describing as consciousness, if you got that behind you, then that’s a pretty good team to have on your side.

Steve Taylor:

Oh, yeah. It relates to Daoism, doesn’t it? The concept of the Dao, you live in harmony with the Dao and the Dao expresses itself through you, and therefore, yeah, you can’t go wrong. As long as you keep yourself aligned with it and don’t allow your personal ego to take over, then your life flows very gracefully and very purposefully.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Looking at our world at the time of recording this, some described this as we’re near the end of apocalyptic times and it looks scary out there. Others, I’ve heard Eckhart share, often awakening comes from suffering. So one perception is we’re screwed. We’re all going to die. And another perspective is we’re having a collective awakening because through suffering, the weak can awaken. And it’s kind of our, I guess it’s paradoxical, but you kind of talk about this in your book, I think disconnected when you’re disconnected. This is when you’re very ego-based, and we start to see what we’re seeing in the wars that are happening around the world and the protests happening around the world. Some protests are protesting more hate and death to other people, not peace, but it’s that unconsciousness that leads to suffering. So being disconnected leads to suffering, and then that suffering leads to awakening paradoxically.

But can you talk a little bit about, and I’m going to add one other thing from a colleague, a psychologist that we’ve had on as well, Vanessa LA Point, unconscious parenting. She’s a big on consciousness and attachment parenting. So awakening or conscious parenting, and the way she described it, so many of our problems that we see in the world is because our children weren’t attached to, they didn’t have that conscious parenting. And so they need to do drugs like they become addicted, they got to join gangs, they got to do cutting suicide to numb the pain. And she shares that in one generation, if the parents are attached to their children, then they would heal and they would feel connected, and they wouldn’t have a desire to compete or go to war and kill because they felt connected. That reminded me, I haven’t read your book disconnected yet, but I’ve listened to videos and some papers you’ve written on it, and it seems like that’s aligned to your thinking as well, but I thought you could elaborate on that.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, it is very close. Yeah, that sounds brilliant. The views that you’re describing sound fantastic. But yeah, that’s in my book, disconnected. I look into the causes of disconnection and it is rooted in childhood experiences. I look into the most disconnected people who I call hyper disconnected people, and they’re the people who become well, who are psychopaths or severe narcissists, unfortunately, they often become politicians.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Isn’t that crazy? They’re the ones we voted to power go on.

Steve Taylor:

So that

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Proves the point that we want to suffer so we can awaken unconsciously inherently, because why else should we do this

Steve Taylor:

Possibly. But those people, if you look at the most psychopathic politicians, the most brutal dictators, and also the most brutal criminals, serial killers and other violent criminals, they always have really disturbed childhoods, a lot of trauma in their childhoods, a lack of attachment to parents. And it is clear that they’ve become so disconnected in response to those childhood experiences. And also, I talk about social disconnection. There are lots of societies in the world that could be described as disconnected societies that are very hierarchical, very patriarchal, brutal punishments and a lack of empathy. And those societies also have very harsh child rearing practices. Children are meant to be obedient. Parents have a lot of authority, and they physically punish their children. So there’s a connection to that. When children are brought up in that environment, they do develop a lack of empathy and a sense of selfishness and competitiveness. So I completely agree that if children were brought up in completely harmonious conditions with a strong attachment to their parents with harmony around them, then it would produce a generation of connected people who would bring a lot more harmony into the world.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Yeah, my hope, and what I think is a possibility here is that we’ll have more and more, we’re seeing the disconnectedness right now with the suffering, and therefore the opportunity exists for awakening on a mass level, but it still comes down to individuals doing their work. And if we reach that critical mass of awakening, we may see a shift in our world. And I was curious what you see as the next evolution of humanity. If we are currently having a collective awakening, what’s the possibility?

Steve Taylor:

I do believe that. Yeah. I suggested that in my book, the Leap and by the leap. The leap refers to the individual shift into awakening, but also refers to the collective shift. The human races collectively shift into awakening, and I do believe that there are certain trends in the world that suggest that people are slowly awakening. There is a wave of spiritual awakening slowly intensifying in the world. One example is that s research suggests that spiritual experiences are becoming more common over the last few decades. The second aspect relates to my research into transformation through turmoil. I think there are so many people who are undergoing this spontaneous shift into a spiritually awakened state through turmoil. It’s almost as if there is a latent spiritual state in all in the human race collectively, which is slowly manifesting itself in individuals. So it is almost ready to emerge, and it is slowly emerging in more and more individuals.

And there are some social trends as well. Over the past 300, 400 years, there’s been a trend towards increasing compassion in societies, increasing empathy. It may not seem like it, but if you compare societies now to 500 years ago, there is a lot more empathy and compassion. And like you say, as you described so well, I think we do need to wake up to survive as a species, and that these crises themselves are having an awakening effect. So I compare it to an individual person who’s diagnosed with cancer. It is a jolt, it’s a shift. It changes their perspective on reality. So in a sense, all of the crises we’re facing collectively, including the potential threat of a species, death, extinction as a species that’s having a similar effect. I think particularly young people. More and more young people are waking up to the reality of our predicament and shifting their perspective as a result.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And people like you are writing so many articles, essays and books, and there’s so many videos from you and so many others on this idea of awakening consciousness. And so we’re seeing it. It’s more accessible to people that you can read it and there’s some science behind it, like you have a scientific background. So it’s not just people that have not to take away from them, but those that were just awakened and could connect to that wisdom, which you don’t need to go to school for, but they weren’t taken seriously because they didn’t have the credibility. But now the materialist world, those that have gone and did the academics and have the intellectual side of it and can speak the language of our society, which a couple hundred years ago, if somebody said God said this, then it was taken as is. Now, if there’s a study on it, it’s taken as is, and I don’t know what the next transformation will be, but right now, people like you that have a PhD and teach in universities are bringing this information to a greater population. So thanks for doing that as well.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I mean, I think the internet is quite a welcome development in this respect because if you had a spiritual awakening, maybe let’s say 50 years ago, you wouldn’t understand what’s happened to you, particularly if you didn’t know anything about eastern spiritual traditions, you’d think, what’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so different? But now through the internet and through the general growing, general growing awareness about spirituality, you can understand what’s happened and you can make sense of it. So you bypass that stage of confusion.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

I want to ask you a little bit about psychedelics because it’s becoming much more popular again now, and I got my own personal experience. So I’ll tell you my bias. I didn’t have a good experience. So maybe you’ll talk about the dark night of the soul. I think that’s what they describe what I got to experience, but I do think for many it’s going to have great healing. I’ve seen for people that have had serious addictions who’ve done two or three psychedelic journeys and they’re not addicts anymore, it’s transformed their lives. I also had people come to my practice, and I’ve had that experience where we thought we went to hell, and the experience was quite traumatic for me, but it accelerated my journey because of that turmoil, the suffering, and not understanding what happened and made me go deeper into this work and get support to go through my transformation. But I’m curious because of your background and what you’ve probably come across this a lot. What are your thoughts on psychedelics for spiritual awakening? What are the pros and cons and risk factors?

Steve Taylor:

My view is that psychedelics can be really useful and transformational initially, that I think they’re really effective value. They have a therapeutic value, which is really important. And for general spiritual seekers, they can be really useful in giving them a glimpse of this spiritually awakened landscape. And for people who’ve never experienced it before, it is revelatory. It changes their perspective on reality. It gives them a new sense of humility, a new sense of meaning, and a new sense of positivity. That’s fantastic. It can cause a real shift in values. But I don’t think that psychedelics themselves can provide a route to enlightenment. I don’t think they can bring enlightenment in themselves, maybe in conjunction with other forms of spiritual practice like meditation. But psychedelics do have risks. If you take them regularly over a long period, there’s a chance that they will dissolve your psychological structures and cause psychological issues, which has happened to many people, particularly early on in the psychedelic era when people weren’t really aware of the dangers. So I mean, I don’t think you need psychedelics. I think once you’ve had that glimpse, once you know that realm of spiritual awakening exists, I don’t think you need psychedelics. I think then you can transfer to more organic types of spiritual practice, which don’t have the same risks. As I agree with Alan Watts once famously said about psychedelics, once you get the message hang up,

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Right, I like that there’s that balance of moderation. So it can accelerate, but it’s not something that you need. What I’m hearing is you don’t need to continue doing it. And some of the others, you’ve mentioned meditation. One of my favorite mods, I’m wondering if you’ve ever experienced this. I love the Stan Goth, Roth breathwork. I have found that quite transformational. And through my meditative practices, I can have these, what I’ll call non-ordinary states, and sometimes you could activate some serious fear or shame or guilt in there, right? The darkness of the soul. What I love about these natural methods is if it’s really uncomfortable, you just have to open your eyes and it’s over. With psychedelics, you got to ride that ride.

Steve Taylor:

You were away for seven hours for it to wear off.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

When I first got into spirituality, I was quite naive that it was all love and light and that you wake up and it’s awesome. And my experience through waking up was not awesome. It was really, really uncomfortable. And then people I work with, it’s really, really uncomfortable. The process, when they do the work, it’s worth it. And they come to a place where they’re so happy through all of the turmoil they have, but they call it the dark night of the soul. And do you have something to share on that, or is that also something that you’ve experienced or you notice other people experience that they almost have to activate and bring up these feelings of fear, shame, guilt, anger, whatever it is to be released to get to another level of consciousness?

Steve Taylor:

When you undergo a spiritual awakening, you could also refer to it as a spiritual opening. It’s almost as if you are, when you’re living in a bind, really ego in some ways, life is quite easy. You are contained within yourself. You’re separate from your unconscious mind. So life can feel quite easy. You don’t feel as much as, well, you kind of slightly cut off from events and experiences, but when you want to go spiritual opening, it’s as if the boundaries of your ego become soft and everything suddenly seeps through. You have material from your unconscious mind, maybe repressed memories, repressed trauma that rises. You have a lot of, from the world around you, you become sensitive to other people’s sufferings. So you’ve been bombarded with a lot of new material, which you were previously cut off from. So it can feel a little bit overwhelming.

It can be destabilizing, and you become very sensitive. So it can even be a bit disturbing because you’re sensing other people’s sufferings. You become more aware of the problems in the world, the crises in the world. So you have to root yourself, you have to ground yourself in order to deal with this. You have to. That’s why in that initial phase after spiritual awakening, it’s really important to be grounded and to spend a lot of time alone, to not be so active, just so that you can allow yourself to stabilize. You can stop yourself being overwhelmed by all of this new information. And because that does involve trauma and repressed material from within your own psyche, that can cause darkness, that can throw shadows over your mind, but it’s part of a process. It is important to remember. It is a process. Does this

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Include intergenerational trauma? Because many have talked that there’s not just your life but you, and we see this in research, that it tags the DN, it seems that your couple generations past can be brought forward into this lifetime. It’s not just like talking karma, reincarnation. I’m actually talking that from an epigenetic perspective, it seems like trauma can be brought forward. And so you’re talking of that as well. That could happen. Yeah,

Steve Taylor:

It can definitely include that. I mean, again, when you’re living within an enclosed ego, you’re separate from all of that. You’re cut off from all of that. So in some ways, life is quite simple, even though it’s very gray and quite miserable and it’s full of suffering, it’s quite simple. But when you open up, there’s so much that you potentially open up to. So it can be difficult, but it’s important to remember that in my experience, in my research, it always settles down eventually. It’s a process that needs to play itself out. But even if it takes months, even if it takes years, eventually you begin to integrate these experiences, the process plays itself out, and eventually you come to a point of stability and harmony again.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And I’ll share personally that I have found reading your material, your videos and your book, the one that I read, that it brought some comfort to understand what was going on and what had gone on. For me, it helped. And then obviously I’m a believer that you just can’t read about this stuff that helps. But there’s experiential work that leads to the transformation. And so again, Steve, thanks for sharing that information.

Steve Taylor:

You’re welcome.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And are you willing to share your story? How does somebody like you get into transpersonal psychology and writing the books you’ve written? You must have had some personal experience to give you this passion and desire to do what you’re doing in the world. I

Steve Taylor:

Have had personal spiritual experiences, but for me, it was really something that was innate from a young age, looking back when I was 16 or 17 years old, I had spiritual experiences. I was definitely orientated towards spirituality at that age. But even though I didn’t understand what it was and I didn’t understand the experiences I was having, so it seemed to be something that was may be carried over from a previous life that was just inside me waiting to express itself. But I was confused for a long time. I spent my teenage years in a state of depression and confusion. I just didn’t understand myself. I didn’t understand why I was different from people around me and why I couldn’t seem to fit in with other people. It was only when I was in my early twenties, I discovered books about mysticism and spirituality, and I thought, wow, I’m not crazy after all. And I had a framework to make sense of myself also. But because I’d always been sort of slightly intellectual, I guess you’d say. So I realized fairly early on that I wanted to study spirituality from a psychological or intellectual perspective. I wanted to understand my own experiences and understand why they occurred and wanted to find out how common they were in other people. So yeah, I think my whole life has really been an unfolding of something that was always there.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

So thanks for sharing a bit about your personal story. And this awakening has a spiritual context to it. I think you’ve talked before about how it’s very possible to be both scientific and spiritual at the same time. You even had, is it pan spiritualism? Is that

Steve Taylor:

What do I remember? Spiritism?

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Can you talk a little about that as well?

Steve Taylor:

Pan spiritism is a philosophical approach that I’ve developed and written about, and it’s an alternative way of looking at the world, an alternative way of explaining the world. The standard worldview in our society is what you could call materialism or physicalism. And the basic idea is that the only reality is physical. And everything that appears to be mental actually has a physical origin. So thoughts are really just the activity of brain cells. Feelings are just the activity of molecules in our brains, and everything is just physical, but it doesn’t really explain the world very well. Physicalism can’t make sense of consciousness. It can’t make sense of the influence of the mind over the body. Psychosomatic conditions, for example, can’t explain altruism. You can’t really explain evolution. I wrote a book, Spiritual Science, in which I explained how physicalism can’t explain all of these basic things.

And also physicalism certainly can’t explain near-death experiences, si experiences near-death experiences. But if you, what I do in Pan Spiritism, I suggest that the basic reality of the world is not physical. It’s spiritual. So the basic reality of the world is a spiritual energy or force. And the world emerges from this force. I sometimes call it fundamental consciousness or just spirit. If you posit the idea that the fundamental reality is spirit, then you can explain everything. You can explain consciousness, you can explain the influence of the mind of the body. You can explain spiritual experiences, altruism, and so forth. So pan spiritism, in a word or in a sentence, is the idea that the fundamental reality of the world is spirit.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

So it’s a perception shift. And what I think when you share this is when back when we thought the world was flat, we thought the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth, it made sense because if you looked, it looks flat and you can live your whole life on your wagons walking. And the world view of it being flat works. It works for most things. And when you look up in the sky, yep, it’s obvious that the sun is going around the earth. You can see it. And then we have a shift in perception, and now we can see and get how the earth is going around the sun, and it is round, and it gives us a better view on how to function a universe in a different way. It sounds like we’re gone from Newtonian, you call it materialism or physicalness.

And then if you take the view of consciousness or spiritualism, it gives you an opportunity. I would suggest, I’m curious if you agree with this. Most people are suffering. This has been my experience, myself included. I got to this work because of some anxiety, even though everything in the physical world was awesome, if you looked at it on the inside, it wasn’t. And it was this shift that brought more joy into my life. And when people come to me, their stories are very different. Their different genders, different careers, cultures, financials. Some are very, don’t make a lot. Some are multimillionaires. And when you distill it down, there’s fear, shame, guilt. There’s not enough programs running and there’s not enough in the material world that can fill that up. I actually have the most compassion for those that I see that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And people go, how could you feel? Well, because when you make minimal money, you have hope that if I just make this much money, I’ll be happy. So you still have hope that you can be happy. But the person that makes a hundred million dollars a year, they have it. And now they’re like, now what? Right? They don’t have hope anymore. They really have the awakening because they couldn’t get it. They got all the toys and they’re still feeling the same as before they had the material stuff. And so this idea of pan spiritualism and seeing it a different way, I believe, then it will shift your perception and you’ll start to do the inner work. And through that, you’ll experience more peace and general happiness in your life when you’re doing nothing. And you’ll take that into the world as you said, and there’ll be altruism.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah, definitely. Your fundamental perspective is that you’re not a separate being. You’re connected to everything. And if you believe that you are an individual, that you’re separate from everybody, then that view makes you more selfish. You feel that you’re entitled to satisfy your desires to mistreat other people. And it doesn’t really matter because you’re just a separate individual trying to get as much as you can out of the world. But if you sense that you are connected, then on the one hand it gives you a sense of responsibility to the world. It gives you empathy and compassion towards others, and it makes you less self-centered. And you realize that true joy does not come from fulfilling your own desires, but from helping and supporting other people and through contributing to the world. So life becomes infinitely richer.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

And for those that want to have that infinite, richer life, we’re curious about some of your steps and methods to support awakening. And I kind of want to give another little metaphor here as you prepare to answer this, because in your books, when you talk about transformation through turmoil, I wouldn’t wish upon anybody to have to have turmoil to awaken. And you don’t have to wish for it. The world just seems to be designed that way. It’s going to come to you anyhow at some point in time. But the metaphor I usually explain when I do the conscious work in my practice is you’re in the shallow end, but you’re not aware. You’re in the shallow end and your knees are bent and your arms are just wailing away because you think you’re drowning and you’re getting exhausted because you don’t know how to swim, and you’re just flapping your arms.

Your knees are bending the shallow end, and you are getting exhausted, and you are afraid, and eventually you fully surrender. You’re exhausted. You can’t move your arms anymore. So you finally give up, and as you give up, you sink to the shallow end floor. Your knees hit the floor and you realize your nose is above the water and you can breathe. You’re okay. That’s the transformation through turmoil. And I would like the idea of I’m in the shallow end. I start to wave my arms and I realize I’m in the shallow end and I stand up. So for those of us that would like to start to develop practices or steps to awaken that, just want to stand up shallowly and not have to hit that moment of being brought to your knees, what suggestions do you have? So we don’t have to wait to get a disease, a divorce, a death or infertility diagnosis, please.

Steve Taylor:

Yeah. This is the basic idea of my new book. The Adventure is that you can consciously cultivate spiritual awakening without going through turmoil. What I do in the adventure is I identify eight basic qualities of spiritual awakening, and I suggest a number of exercises and meditations and contemplative techniques to cultivate all of those eight qualities. I won’t go through all eight qualities, but just to give an example, one is gratitude. So you can cultivate a sense of gratitude through certain techniques. And another one is presence. So I offer certain techniques to increase people’s capability to be present. Another one is acceptance, which we spoke about earlier. So I have exercises to cultivate acceptance. So my idea is that if you cultivate all of these eight qualities through certain techniques and meditations, then you will inevitably move towards spiritual awakening because that’s what spiritual awakening is. It’s made up of these eight qualities.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Well then on that note, let’s direct people to your website where Steve has books, including his latest book at the time of this recording called The Adventure, where he goes through his eight steps. He has many essays and articles, even poems and videos on his website as well. And he also offers an online course that is based on the book, the Adventure as well. So you can check out for his online courses as well and join that. And his website is steven m taylor.com. Steve, you go by Steve, but your website Steven. So I wanted to emphasize to people, it’s Steven because it may be hard to find him if you do Steve Taylor. So you got to do steven m taylor.com, and we’ll put that link in the show notes as well.

Steve Taylor:

The problem is there are so many Steve Taylors, it’s a very common name. I should really change my name too late now. Too

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Late now. So again, Steve, thanks. Thank you very much for making time today. I really appreciate it. And again, check out his website, this idea on gratitude. Again, I think about what I’ve kind of fallen into through my years of practice and training that I notice except Choose again. Gratitude’s a big part of it. By the way, Steve and I love the research, how it shows your brain rewires, and then you start to see more opportunities that can even bring you more gratitude. And the acceptance seems to be what all the sages and so many of the conscious teachers teach about letting go. Acceptance. And it is a practice. It’s not an intellectual pursuit, I don’t think you can think your way through this, which is why I really recommend checking out Steven’s website, steven m taylor.com for his articles, his books, his videos, and his online course. Thank you very much, Steve. I really appreciate our time today.

Steve Taylor:

It’s excellent. Me too. Thank you.

Speaker:

If you’re looking for support to Grow your family, contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance, they help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to Acubalance ca. That’s Acubalance.ca.

Dr. Lorne Brown:

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites, Lorne Brown.com and Acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.