Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.
Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
In this episode of Creative Status, I had an amazing conversation about DEATH (one of my favourite topics) with Myrthe Peters – a doula who helps people to go through transitions in life and specialises in helping people to ride the reality waves towards death when they know its imminent.
Death is such an important thing to talk about and reflect on from time-to-time because it reminds us what REAL LIFE is and allows us to make real choices about our time, energy, and attention.
This is a pretty invigorating conversation that will hopefully help you get some fresh perspective and to recharge your passion for truth so that you can go out there and really live it.
Thanks a bunch,
Oli
Listen using the embedded player above or go to any podcast platform!
(Scroll down for show transcript)!
—————————–
Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: anchor.fm/creativestatus
Episode Links:
Myrthe’s services: https://www.fullcircledoula.org/myservices
Myrthe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrthe.peters/
Creative Status Links:
Book a call to work with me to see if I can help you reach your goals: go.oncehub.com/olianderson
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
Show Transcript: The Creative Art of Dying
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here, you’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using your creativity as a vehicle for growing more real, allowing the true version of who you are to come to the surface so you can express something true in the world. If you don’t know, my name is Oli Anderson, I’m a Creative Performance Coach, which means I help people to bring more realness into their life and business.
That’s enough of a rambling introduction. Today’s episode of Creative Status is an interview with Myrthe Peters. She is a doula.
If you don’t know, a doula is somebody that helps people through life transitions. In the case of Myrta, we’re talking about the transition of death, dropping dead, demising, things being done and dusted. It’s a very real conversation about one of my favourite topics, which is death.
The reason that it’s one of my favourite topics is because if you can appreciate the fact that we’re all going to die one day, then it allows you to step back from any static ideas that might be causing you to hesitate in life. It allows you to appreciate that your time, energy and attention are the most important things that you have.
And it can serve as fuel for speeding up the process of making the unreal real so you can live a life that’s actually true to you and in an expression of the things that you care about, your true values and intentions. So that’s enough of an intro. Here’s the actual interview. Myrta, thank you so much for your time and everybody else.
Hope you get some good shit out of this and that it helps you live a better life. Here we go.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Myrthe.
Thank you so much for joining me today on Creative Status. You are super obsessed with one of my favourite topics of all time, which is death. And I’m hoping that we’re about to have a kind of free flowing, enjoyable conversation about what many people fear more than anything else.
But before we do that, do you feel like introducing yourself, letting people know what you do? And also, could you share what you’d like to get from this conversation as a whole?
Myrthe Peters: Thank you so much for having me here, Oli. It is really awesome to have this opportunity to speak about this topic that both of us really enjoy delving into. So yeah, my name is Myrta, and I work in the end of life space as a doula.
A doula is someone who offers practical, emotional, and spiritual support during significant transitions in life. And my area of focus is the end of life. That is obviously a very broad spectrum.
And I’m sure that we will get to know more about the different facets of that later on in our conversation. And besides that, I also work as a psychedelic facilitator. I mean, you work with psilocybin and using psilocybin as a way to access our grief and to also become familiar with death is hugely powerful. And yeah, it’s a real privilege to be working in this space.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, like, can you imagine that’s, even though, you know, a lot of people think death is depressing and everything, it’s also, I would assume, very intimate the way that you end up relating to people.
Because obviously a lot of the, you know, the things they’ve been hiding their whole lives are probably going to come to the surface, either with the mushroom stuff or just the fact that death is imminent and coming towards them. What are some of the benefits that you personally get of being a doula? Like, what do you enjoy about it?
Myrthe Peters: I really enjoy being in a space where there is an opportunity to explore the deeper emotions. For me, allowing emotions and embracing all of those as part of who we are is where all these golden nuggets lie in terms of how we live our lives, what aligns, what doesn’t, what is truth, what isn’t. And during the, when we talk about death, it’s all about that, right?
Because when we look at an end, it requires us to examine what is still unfinished. So, to be able to do that with people is really, really profound. And as you said, it’s intimate, it’s very intimate.
Yeah, lots of beautiful stuff can come from that. And it’s also really hard and that’s probably also what most people associate death with. It’s hard, it’s challenging, it’s painful and it’s all of that. But there is also this really intimate and beautiful side to it that allows for deeper connections between people and for old wounds to be healed.
Oli Anderson: Wow. I think what I find so amazing and fascinating about the whole death thing is kind of what you just alluded to. So, death always answers the question, what is the truth? What is real? And like in my work, which, you know, I do a lot of coaching and stuff like that, but it’s all about realness, which just means finding something that is real about ourselves and the world and reality.
And I have found that death and accepting death is one of the quickest doorways into understanding all that. Because, you know, there’s so much bullshit in the world, right? Like people will argue about pretty much anything, but one thing that we all agree on, let’s say 99.9 % of people agree on, because there’s always somebody that disagrees, we all agree that death is coming.
And in this form that we found ourselves in currently as individuals, it’s going to end no matter what. And as soon as you accept that, and you open up to it, it’s like life just, it gets turned on, the volume goes up, the intensity is a lot higher than it was, purely because you’ve introduced the truth. And so, is there something there around that? That actually what you’re doing, Yeah, you’re helping people with these transitions and you’re helping them to come to terms with the fact that they’re going to die and bloody, blah, all the emotions that brings up. But ultimately, are you just guiding people back to a relationship with the truth?
Myrthe Peters: 100 % and I love how you explain it. I love how you said when we come to the acceptance of the inevitability of our lives.
That is what turns up these buttons and makes us live more freely. It’s so very true because when we enter that space of something is final and it’s very final, right? Which is incredibly hard for the mind to grasp because the mind is not meant to be dealing with finality of events. But this is the most final event that we will ever encounter.
All of us will. So there’s going to have to be that point where we go, all right, let’s sit down and look at this. Let’s be with this. Let’s explore what we want this to look like. What do we want this to feel like?
Who do we want to have present? What kind of senses do we want to bring in? Grief is also a huge part of this. We can talk about, or this sounds really as if we’re only talking about death in the sense of physical death. Our physical mortality. However, it extends way beyond that because so many other things of us die. It’s old identities, it’s relationships, it’s the ending of specific life cycles. Our skin dies, our eyes die.
So it’s all of that. Death is constantly around us. I believe the more familiar we get with death and dying and grief and loss before we have to. The more profound it could be when it’s really there. And I would know this obviously until I get to that point myself.
But from the work I’ve been doing, I can see how much fuller my life is becoming. Because ultimately, we are all on this journey and our search for truth or transformation or whatever you want to call it. It’s just different names for I think the same thing. But yeah, they all go hand in hand and exploring it beyond the physical death is also a really big part of it.
Oli Anderson: Yeah, I think what it boils down to is there’s a false dichotomy which is life and death. They’re not separate things. It’s all one process.
It’s all the creative flow. Reality is constantly moving, it’s constantly undulating and flowing and expanding and blah blah blah. And the only thing that stops human beings as individuals from flowing with that is what I consider to be the only true death.
I’m saying that in scare quotes and that is the ego. As soon as you attach to a static self image that ultimately causes you to resist this flow of life and death that is constantly moving around us. As soon as you attach to that, that’s when you start to have problems in life ultimately, right? And so what you’re talking about is guiding people back to that truth ultimately, which is the truth of flux. Stasis is an illusion basically and as soon as you buy into it, then you’re going to have a bad time. And so even though I’m assuming a lot of your work as a doula is with people who are approaching the end of their lives quite quickly, all of the lessons that you guide them through in order to reach a state of acceptance, it applies to everybody else as well.
Because no matter who you are and how close death may be or may not be, it’s the same basic laws of life, which is that that flow is always guiding you towards that state of unknown finality that you’re talking about. So I guess the question is, what lessons have you learned by working with people at the very end of their lives that are applicable at all stages of life?
So I won’t put words in your mouth, but what do you think about that?
Myrthe Peters: So what I think about that is that the most or the biggest regrets for people at the end of their lives, they are the first one is that people have been scared too long to live their truth, to live their authentic selves.
So really attaching to the ego and to status and to performance and to societal structures that may not really have resonated with them. So that’s one. The other one is mending relationships late. So being stubborn and wanting to be right about something, not having the courage to apologize and losing time basically. Losing time, meaningful time for connection.
Oli: Yeah, that’s ultimately what it all boils down to. And I was kind of going to say that. So the reason that I have personally found death to be such a powerful thought in my life is, first of all, I just think it’s cool to go around talking about death. It makes me seem really edgy and everything.
But the other thing is that it makes me value my time. So I think I told you, we had a chat before the actual podcast recording and like, there was a period in my life where I was being very morbid. Like I went through some personal stuff and I was just waking up every day and I was thinking about death. I’m like, oh, I’m going to die one day. But that actually became a very empowering thing because instead of sitting around feeling miserable and like getting into a victim mindset and all that kind of stuff. the facts that I knew I was going to die one day did two things.
One, it made me really, really present. Like I can’t think about death and not just exist in the present moment because I know that I’m flowing towards it in the way that we were talking about. It puts us into that flow. But the second thing, it made me value my own time and my own energy and the choices that I made with those things. And for me, now, you know, not 100 % of the time because I’m just a flawed human being, believe it or not. But most of the time, I am aware of the choices that I’m making and what I want to do with my life.
So every day, you know, I always say to myself, I’m trying to make the choice towards wholeness rather than fragmentation. But knowing that time is precious makes that so much easier because everything has an opportunity cost. So why do you think most of us do not live in that way? So time is precious for all of us. But there’s something going on psychologically and maybe even spiritually or whatever that causes us not to value our own lives, basically, in our own time.
Myrthe: I believe that part of that is fear, fear for the unknown, fear for the innovative in why can I not pronounce this word now for the finality of it.
And it can come with a little with some dread, right? All the preparations that we really would benefit from looking into the avoidance of feelings around there. So many people are very uncomfortable with intense feelings. So they believe that when they just don’t deal with it right now, it won’t be there. And then obviously, when it comes knocking, it’s going to be way more intense because if not practice, they’ve not practiced being in that space of extreme vulnerability when holding holding space for the people around us who are going through a process or the process?
Oli: Do you think it’s possible to overcome the fear of death? Like, when we say we’re scared of death, okay, we say we’re scared of the unknown and we’re scared of the inevitable and all these things. But what are we really scared of? Like, do you think it’s deeper than that? Like, I like people are always talking about how we’re all afraid of uncertainty and we hate getting out of our comfort zones. But what are we really afraid of? Like, when that’s happening?
Myrthe: I think we are scared of life because when we look at death, we have to look at our lives.
Oli: Yes. Yeah. And it’s holding a mirror up to us. It’s showing us who we really are and what human beings really are.
And it’s showing us what’s real. And so I think if people have that fear, they only have it because they haven’t accepted the realness of themselves. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.
Myrthe: And I want to add to that. That with acknowledging or sitting with that fear with looking at what is actually scaring them from their lives or, you know, in their space in the here and the now, they don’t do that because it would mean that they have to make changes. And that takes work, that takes energy, that takes time, that takes effort.
Oli: I think there’s an element as well where I personally think you can’t lose anything real. So, you know, I’ve said a million and three times now on this podcast, and I’ve probably said it to you before, but like, human beings just have a natural drive towards wholeness, like we’re constantly moving and expanding towards wholeness.
That’s the natural state. But the ego and the identities that we carry are made of fragments, they’re made of concepts, they’re made of ideas, they’re made of fears about things like you’ve said, all these negative fragmentary things that we pick up, they cause us to go into hiding.
And so when we go into hiding, and we become fragmented, we create the ego which keeps the shadow of self at bay, and the truth becomes a threat, even though the truth is the thing that we actually all need, because the truth is wholeness, and that’s what we ultimately want to move toward. And so when we’re in that state, we pick up all of these illusions, and we need these illusions to be the truth, so that we don’t have to face, you know, all of the things that we need to hide from ourselves to keep the ego in place.
I don’t know if I’m making that too convoluted. But when we’re in that state, that’s when we pick up all these ideas that we are not human beings, that we’re something else. And by that all I mean is, you know, human beings in reality are these creatures, they keep flowing, keep expanding, keep evolving, ultimately towards death, where they just return to wholeness completely, and the system of nature that built them and all that kind of thing.
They forget that they’re human in that way, they forget that they don’t think life is what life is, because they only want to look at life and not the dichotomy of life and death, which is really the same thing. So blah, blah, blah, they pick up all these illusions, and the fear of death is actually just the fear of seeing those illusions were never real, if something like that.
And so what’s going on is when people have this fear is, you know, there’s a saying I’m always trying out as well, like what goes up must come down. And if you’ve been up in the air, like I’m cloud nine, hiding out in your illusions for a long time, then the fall back down to earth is a lot harder, basically. So is there something there?
Like I’m talking at you a lot here, I apologize, but is there something going on there that’s actually valid?
Myrthe: Yeah. What I’m also what I would like to explore further actually, is that with this, do we operate or do these beliefs and these behaviors?
Where are they actually coming from? Sometimes I really think about the society that we live in, how we lack a a specific purpose or a meaning in our day to day. Like we get up, we may have breakfast on the fly, we go to work, we sit behind the screen, I’m generalizing now.
We go home, we might go to the gym, we come home, make dinner, watch TV, go to bed, and we do that for a really long time, right? What’s the meaning in that? And how does our society feed us to stay disconnected from a bigger purpose? Because why do we go to work?
We go to work to make a paycheck because the paycheck provides us with a roof over our head, it provides us with food on our plates. So it’s kind of like this way of living that we can’t really escape, but maybe so many more people would like to, but they just are so stuck in this rut because there is no other option for them to see or to act upon.
So this ego gets… That status is maintained that way. So it’s more of a systemic fear that’s instilled upon us, more so than a human being one.
Oli: Wow, so there’s loads going on there, but I totally agree. But it’s kind of like there’s an interplay between the psychology of the people in the system and the systems that we build. And obviously there’s like socio-economic and political things going on that cause people in the system to have less power over their lives than they would if we had a more real society and all that kind of stuff.
But ultimately, the short version I would say is, society is structured around survival. It’s only about surviving. And when people are in that survival mentality, two things happen. One, it’s fear-based and scarcity-based.
And two, it’s fragmented. It’s basically a collective version of the individual ego. So the ego of individuals, I think, is created as a denial of what life actually is. So what we’re saying about everything, it been in flux and death, been an inevitable thing that happens and all that kind of stuff.
Society is built around the same fears, actually. And so when we deny the truth about life, which is that we are all gonna die and that actually there’s nothing to be afraid of, like I really believe that because you can’t lose anything real. Like when I die, like there will be no more Ollie Anderson, but Ollie Anderson is just an idea or anyway, it’s just my identity.
It never existed in the first place. But all of the things that are whole about me are just gonna return to the whole. And so when you understand that, you realize, okay, I’m gonna be here now. I’m gonna basically live my best life if I can by choosing a purpose that is aligned with what needs to be expressed from within me.
And when I express that, then I don’t have to worry about life being meaningful because purpose precedes meaning and it will become naturally meaningful. But because society is built around everybody needing to survive because they’re all scared of dying basically, which is a rational thing, I suppose if you live it in the short term.
But anyway, because society is built around that, it’s become a vacuum for purpose and meaning because really the only way that you will find as an individual, the only way you’ll find your true purpose in life is to start by accepting life for what it is.
So if you don’t accept that it’s gonna end one day, then you’re not gonna make the choices with your time, energy and attention like we were talking about. Then you’re not gonna move towards wholeness and then yeah, you’re gonna live like in the rat race ultimately just being told what to do because your life is dictated by external forces which are not reality, God or truth or wholeness or any of that stuff.
Your life is being dictated by the system basically, which is not real. And if the system is built in a survivalist way rather than something that allows you to thrive and be real, then you’re gonna have a bad time. And that’s why if you wanna escape the matrix whatever you wanna say, you have to wake up to the fact that you’re gonna die. And that is the starting point of liberation basically.
Myrthe: Yeah, I totally agree with that. You put that beautifully.
I would love to hear from you what has been your biggest tool to really live by this other than accepting death. In terms, how do you do this on a let’s say free basis?
Oli: I think it’s for me personally, I had a kickstart program I went through, let’s call it that. So I had some serious health issues. So I nearly died a few times. And well, I was in a coma and all this kind of stuff. I had a kidney transplant that went wrong.
That’s the short version. And going through that, it just showed me that, first of all, life is precious. Secondly, because I thought I was gonna die in the aftermath of that anyway, I went through this process of, just thinking about all this stuff. And then eventually it went from thinking to actually integrating it.
And then slowly over time, it just affected the choices that I made. Obviously, there’s all these basic things you can do. Like people always say, you know, you should meditate and you should journal and you should go walk in nature and I don’t know, get some crystals or something and just feel one with everything.
And you can do all that stuff. But for me, it came down ultimately to realizing my time is really precious. Like my time is so precious, I am not gonna give it to any bullshit just because that’s what I’ve been told to do. And there was a process actually that I had to go through of reconfiguring my life. Like I had, you know, arguments with people and all kinds of things who wanted me to live in the way that you’re supposed to live. And like actually what I have learned is that, like is what I just said actually, the system we have created does not want you to live your life. The system wants you to basically pay your taxes and then die. That’s ultimately what you’re educated to do if you go through the standard education system and all that stuff. And that is what a lot of people think that they have to do and they’re afraid to go against that programming. And so for me, the practical thing I did was just be stubborn to be honest.
Like initially I was very stubborn, not in a, like I didn’t ruin any relationships or anything, but I was stubborn in the sense of knowing what I wanted, like figuring out my values and then turning them into behaviors and goals and then sticking to it. And it’s not, it hasn’t been easy, like I’ll be honest, like especially in the initial transition, but… But that is ultimately it. Like it’s a test I’ve found. It’s a test of your faith in life. Because like eventually if you live in this way that we’re talking about, your faith is not put in the world. Your faith has to be in something higher.
You can call it, you know, God or saw. So all these different words people use, but you have to find a way to trust that flow. And that process of learning to trust the flow will be slightly different for all of us based on the bullshit that we’re carrying in our minds and that we have to let go of. But it’s always the same path.
So I’m always, you know, I’m a broken record. And sorry, I’m talking loads in this podcast, but it’s about going from fragmentation to wholeness. So it’s just asking yourself, what does wholeness look like in my life?
And you will never find that in the system. You have to find a way to get back on your own path, basically. So it’s figuring out what’s distracting you. And that’s ultimately why the death thing is so important, right? Because death is not a distraction. It shows you where you are distracting yourself.
Yeah.
Myrthe: And it also, this makes me think a lot about psychedelic journeys and how they are such a beautiful gateway into a deeper understanding of our psyche and exploring such a safe way. What our true values are and what is stopping us to live by those values and to, you know, even practice death during journeys. Like it’s possible for us to become very familiar with endings and that can be endings of any kind.
Oli: What are some of the main things that you’ve learned from the work you do with psychedelics? So, yeah.
Myrthe: I have learned that all of us are innocent, actually. We’re all in a way really lonely.
Oli: Wow.
Myrthe: We all experience a particular type of loneliness that is so individual. Yet there is this collective.
Oli: Wow.
Myrthe: When we come together, we all have it. And it’s like, why can we, where is this disconnect coming from?
It’s something that baffles me more and more because the loneliness, like it’s a fucking killer. Like, look at me. No, it’s like, I swear all the time. It really is. Yeah. Also when we meet elderly people and how they get through that final stage of their lives and how loneliness becomes really magnified for many of them.
Oli: Wow.
Myrthe: Because of the way that they live in our white society and nursing homes and less family time and all of that. But really, it’s also very present in our age group. .
I reckon it’s also really present in younger kids. . So where is that disconnect? How is it possible that we find it so hard to join in that and to recognize, hey, we are really all experiencing a feeling that maybe consists of a variation in frequency.
How can we join to bring that frequency into a more, yeah, into a similar range?
Oli: Wow. I really wasn’t expecting you to say what you just said about loneliness. But it’s kind of blown my mind a little bit. So are you saying this is a societal thing? Like it’s mainly in the West. There’s like everyone’s lonely and disconnected. Or are you saying that’s the human condition?
Like wherever you are, we’re all ultimately alone. Like you want to know, is that what you’re saying?
Myrthe: I am saying that the people who I’ve worked with and I’m working with, they are all experiencing that. And myself included, I have moments where I find it really hard to connect to people around me because I feel misunderstood because I feel like I don’t necessarily fit in.
Like it’s that belonging, that story belonging, where is our place in society? I’d be really interested to explore what this is like for people from different cultures. I have a few ideas because when we say, when we, for example, look at the more traditional communities, there is way more space for the collective for solving issues and challenges as a community. There is space for ritual. There is lots more nature.
Oli: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what I was thinking. So ultimately human beings are mammals. And if we’re living in accordance with that nature, then obviously we’re going to live in the way you just talked about.
We’re going to have lots of, basically we’re going to have bottom-up societies where people work together, the communities have got stronger bonds than they do in the atomized, alienated, Western industrial society we live in and all these kind of things. And either there’s two possible things that could be going on here. So either the human condition is that even in that best case scenario where we’re living like mammals, even in that case, we’re still kind of alone in the world. Like we might have moments where we feel connected to the other people in our tribe and things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s that thing we all die alone.
So that could be an option. Or maybe like in those tribal societies, like they’re all one with nature and they don’t even really appreciate there’s a big difference between me and you and blah, blah, blah, blah. And this loneliness that you’ve uncovered with the work that you do, is because in the industrial societies basically or in societies that have been informed by the structure of the industrial revolution and blah blah blah well in those societies people basically go into hiding don’t they they lose touch there’s all the stuff we were saying about the rat race they don’t they don’t value their own time because they’re supposed to go work in the factories or whatever it is they get on we that you know existential dread and boredom and all those things and it’s because they don’t know who they are they’re out of touch with themselves or it could be a bit of both so like we are all ultimately alone but we can forget about life if we live in the right way but maybe that’s the distraction so maybe the question here is there’s a thing in there like most religions will say I think I might be spreading this information but I’ve definitely heard this before that like you know we all die alone basically so like at the end of your life you might have people around you on your deathbed but it’s still just you and death or you and life death whatever you want to call it so what you know what do you think is the truth there based on what you’ve seen?
Myrthe: Well actually I wanted to add something to I would just wanted to circle back to the loneliness belonging topic because what also very often comes out of a psychedelic journey when done with purpose and intention obviously is it’s a week it’s an opportunity to reconnect to that oneness yes so yeah depending obviously on what type of medicine you use it can vary a little bit but really it’s this tool to break down the barrier the fragmentation the ego whatever you want to call it… to come closer to our authentic self or in a child or you know the elder within us – however we want to call – it and and there’s also then this magical moment where people can realize that really we are all one.
We are we are also one with whatever is going on beyond us that’s going on beyond our five senses.
Oli: Yeah yeah I personally think that is the ultimate truth like wholeness is reality and part of the reason that people feel so lonely is because you know what we’re saying they live out a pantomime basically they play in the character of the ego which is just all of that you know social conditioning and emotional conditioning to some extent or self-hypnosis in an attempt to keep their own emotional stuff at bay and you know I’m assuming like when people are doing these psychedelics ceremonies and the the ego slips away they see in those moments how they are the cause of their own loneliness how they are how they’re holding themselves back from just connecting with other people and it might be you know the way that they think about themselves the way they you know have prejudice about other people maybe they just have an emotional block like I’ve met people who I won’t name names there’s people in my family like traditionally most of the time they’re very kind of uptight and stoic and everything but if you get a few drinks in them they’ll be opening up and telling everybody how much they love everyone and stuff like that but it’s like you know it you can tell it’s weird for them to do that and I think a lot of the time that it probably just goes back to childhood programming or something like that…
Bbut the main barrier to loneliness is there is no loneliness isn’t not really in reality like in two levels like the level of other human beings there’s 8 billion of us on the planet so really if you had taken active approach to it you can probably find somebody to talk to you right if you’re lonely it might take some work obviously like they’re not just gonna knock on the door you might have to be active but okay but even I think if other human beings aren’t involved if you can connect to that wholeness if you can connect to this flow that we’re talking about it’s impossible you can’t be lonely do you know I mean like if you feel if you feel that well that is you like you connect into the real you but you’re connecting to everything else and that makes me sound like a massive API okay but like you can’t be lonely if you’ve been real because it’s not it’s not about loneliness anymore it’s about solitude do you know I mean there’s a difference?
Myrthe: There’s a difference and the differences it lies also in how we view it that we are looking very at the inner world to fill these voids and to as if we are expecting from our environment to give us the mission or to hype us up to live our true selves it’s not like that like we we are the only ones who can do that for us we put this expectation on the people around us whereas yeah yeah right to do that.
Oli: Yeah yeah yeah 100 % like I actually think loneliness just means that you are a you’re alone somewhere but it’s just you and your ego because you’ve bought into that illusion of status we were talking about so you’re alone and then your ego is saying all these things I should I should be with other people oh this thing that I did ten years ago you know I’m such an asshole whatever it is your ego is just judging you that’s what loneliness is is you sitting there with your ego solitude externally looks like the same thing like to a passive observer like you’re still there by yourself but solitude you’re alone but you with reality you’re in the present moment you’re still moving with reality you’re not holding yourself back with the ego stuff so personally I don’t think loneliness is real I think you know it’s a weird thing to say maybe I’ve never said that in my life but I don’t think loneliness is real I think you can feel lonely but if you are feeling lonely that is a sign that you need to think about death basically because if you think about death you’re gonna realize okay I need to go in this direction not that direction.
Myrthe: Yeah true I have another question for you because I’m curious how you feel about this when we talk about all of this stuff and you know how as in our society there’s not really an opportunity to live by by our truth to explore emotions to show up with all our vulnerability because we are a performance-based driven society so what do you think would happen if we would already introduce very specific work around emotions and vulnerability and having deep meaningful conversations at a very young age. So I’m thinking school, like primary school kids, they, their life could look so different if we allow them to really express themselves.
Yeah. And what do we do? We guide them into tasks where they have to draw within the lines or make like creativity in school. What does that mean? It means that we copy things. It means that we, we have limited, very limited resources.
Most resources they are inside. How is that creativity? I believe that creativity and the, the, or rather the expression of our emotions leads to more creativity.
Yeah. What does creativity bring as well? Means that we get to explore what we want our lives to look like.
Oli: So we can create ourselves. I’m really, I’m really glad that you asked this question because I totally forgot that this podcast was about creativity. So like ultimately the way that I see the creative process is about making the unconscious conscious.
That’s it. Like it can literally be anything, but ultimately it’s about putting yourself in this process we’ve been talking about of being present enough to allow what needs to emerge in life to emerge and to go with it without holding yourself back. And so whether it’s a creative conversation, like a dialogue like we’re doing now, whether you paint in a picture, whether you’re sitting down as a do-ler and you’re guiding somebody back into life so they can accept themselves, all of those things are creative, right? And all that’s going on is we’re making realities or truths that weren’t conscious because they were either out of sight or they were buried beneath the ego stuff.
We’re allowing that to come up to the surface. And the healthiest thing I believe any of us can do no matter how old we are or whatever, the healthiest thing we can do is learn to navigate that process of fragmentation to wholeness of unconscious to conscious in a way that serves us and our vision for whatever we think is going to bring meaning to our lives. And that ultimately is something that we should help children to learn.
Everybody should have those skills basically, right? But the problem is, it’s like we were saying, there’s always talk about reforming the education system and things like that. Everybody agrees that we should reform the education system. Nobody really had a nice time in school.
Nobody really thinks that the current education system is the best version, right? You learn all these facts and figures. You remember them by rote. You do some tests and then you leave and then you never use like 80 % of that information ever again in your life.
So it’s just training you to basically remember things. And because we live in the society, like you said, that is very performance driven, that is very much about ultimately getting results as an employee of a company. The education system, I think, doesn’t want kids to be doing this work that we’re talking about. If all the kids in the world were basically been taught about death and the things we’re talking about, what would they leave the education system doing? They’d leave the education system valuing their own time. Our society is not built around valuing the time of individuals.
It’s actually not. It’s built around property, valuing property, it’s built around valuing profit, all of those things. Personally, I’m not like a communist or anything.
I love capitalism if it’s like in its pure form, where people come up with a good idea and then if it works and it offers enough value to other people, then okay, they make some money from it. But now we’ve got this system where it’s corrupt. People are paying off their mates and everything, blah, blah, blah. And we don’t value the people in the system. It all comes down to what we were saying earlier. The system is designed to kill your creativity.
The system is designed to devalue your time and your life unless you step up and wake up and take your life back into your own hands. And any of us can do that. But personally, I don’t think the education system is the place to do it. I think maybe if you have kids yourself, then yeah, you can teach them this stuff.
I think all kids should learn it. But I don’t think it would be amazing if the education system did do this. But the way society is structured right now, the system is beyond just the education system. So what say we’ve introduced all these things we’re talking about to the education system. Society at large is not yet ready for people like that. So it would be amazing. But it would be revolutionary as well. I don’t know if I’m even making sense now.
I’ve had way too much coffee or something because I’ve ran lots in this podcast, way more than usual.
Myrthe: But it makes sense. And another thought that I’m having in addition to that is it has to start somewhere. I mean, it would be amazing if we have revolutionaries across the range of all ages, right? Yeah, yeah, people standing up and going for it.
Oli: Sorry, you know what it is as well. I’ve thought this before. So ultimately, what we’re talking about is in individual relationships between that being and life itself. Like at the end of the day, it’s between you and the universe, God, whatever word you want to use, right?
Yeah. And as soon as you start introducing things to the education system, or you start creating a movement around things, so you can have a revolution and all this stuff, as soon as you do that, it actually risks turning into dogma basically right because as soon as you say right we’re gonna put education into the we’re gonna put creativity into the education system this is what it’s gonna look like it will become dogmatic and so do you know what I mean and so say that again sorry that it went a bit funny yeah yeah and actually the round no conditions I think right because it’s about the unconditional relationship between you and life and so what I think and what I’ve tried to do it like actually with my some of my works in my book personal revolutions kind of talks about this but anyway at the end of the day it’s about giving individuals the tools to wake themselves up and to take control themselves and I spoke the education system can do way less damage like no question but as soon as you teach this people the same thing on mass you ultimately end up brainwashing people you because you create a culture so it’s about stepping it’s about having a culture that is beyond culture almost but you still need some traditions that are aligned with what we’re saying about nature itself natural laws awareness of you know what mammals need and all this kind of stuff but ultimately it’s a kind of wrap up my little rant it’s about it’s not about movements it’s not about revolutions it’s about waking up one on one and then you don’t need to worry about other people because I if I wake the thing that happens a lot in it like people wake up and then they try and wake everybody else up in the same way but the way that I wake up the way that I might have woken up to death and all this stuff we’re talking about real illness is a totally different path to you so if I say right well you need to meditate and then you need to just whatever I’ve said in the conversation you need to I can’t remember what I said but you know I went through this process of like basically been a bit stubborn and all this stuff that worked for me your way might be totally different like you might I don’t know it goes skip through the forest and like have a big ceremony with people where you’re taking shrooms and you’re all hugging and everything maybe that’s all you need but like the point is is giving people the tools to figure out that for themselves and yeah and I think you know we can have conversations with people and we can guide each other in that way but it’s just helping people to see themselves whatever that looks like I don’t know if I’m even making sense I’m gonna stop there.
Myrthe: yeah I think what I also hear in that is we have this individual accountability right and we can inspire each other by doing that yes yes exactly not yeah yeah yeah I think that’s the short version of what I get from from that.
Oli: Yeah so if you wake up and you do your own thing and you don’t judge other people you’re letting other people do the same thing and this is conditions we can create I guess that allow that to happen but anyway thank you thank you for interviewing me on your podcast – we’ve had a long conversation – how how would you sum all this up?
Like obviously we started talking about death we’ve gone down this rabbit hole and now basically we’ve shown I think or started to kind of question whether you know society is life-enhancing or not and it seems like it might not be… but how would you sum all this up have you got any final words wisdom and where can people find you on the internet if they want to get in touch with you?
Myrthe: Final words of wisdom wow the bit of pressure there…
Oli: FINAL
Myrthe: Yes I really invite people to start exploring this topic when they are not in a crisis yet wow so that it’s safe that it can be gentle that you can get familiar with it when you don’t have a time pressure brings us back to the value of time so that you can choose what you do with your time your time goes to what your time goes to have you sorry yeah go.
Oli: I was just gonna say have you got any like are there any exercises or something like that you know if someone’s made it this far into the podcast yeah is there anything that they could do like literally do to start acting on this?
Myrthe: Yeah totally totally and I would love to connect with people for this I host monthly gatherings to talk about the topics in a very to do this way and there’s small and intimate settings I do them in person and I do them online wow so I have that group and there’s also a practice of death meditation which can sound maybe a little bit weird but it is incredible it’s an incredible tool to become familiar with the process of the dying of the physical body wow and that gives a lot of comfort and understanding and that has been shown to also really give people this renewed sense for life.
Oli: So how do you do that you just meditate but you you know you think about how you’re going to die and everything?
Myrthe: Yeah so it’s a visualization process.
Oli: Wow okay so that’s two two quite powerful things so if people want to go to one of your you know dialogue group workshop things how do they do it?
Myrthe: Yeah um that’s a really good question I usually announce my groups through my newsletter and on Instagram right and my Instagram handle is at myrthepeters.com and I run a meetup group as well but I will make sure that you get the links to to all of that so that people can connect if they if they feel like and obviously one-to-one is also possible if it seems like a little bit overwhelming to show up in a group setting.
Oli: Wow well I’ll I’ll share all those links and everything in the show notes but this has this has been a really awesome conversation like obviously we gotta be carried away maybe but uh yeah that’s given me a lot to think about before I drop dead in a few years whatever it’s gonna be.
Myrthe: So thank you for that and uh having me it’s been a real real pleasure.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
Join the 7-Day Bare Ass Minimum (BAM) Challenge and start to implement foundational health habits and a powerful life vision only a week from now.
