Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Dr. Margot:
How are the body, mind, spirit related? And for the first time, that voice turned into a figure. And it was a massive, massive, like silhouette figure in my living room. And I said, well, how are the body, mind, spirit related? And it said, you have five dimensions of self, not just three. You have a body, a mind, a spirit, a soul, and oneness.

Guy:
My awesome guest today is Dr. Margot McKinnon, and she had a near-death experience, which I always love exploring, and she shares her experience beautifully. And from that, she started having visions and downloads about a framework for spirituality and living in the spiritual, the earthly plane, which she calls the dominance theory. And what I liked about this podcast is it’s actually quite a practical podcast and a framework she’s created to help people. I was fascinated by it. That’s why I reached out to her and got her on the podcast today. If, of course, you do enjoy these shows and you enjoy this one in particular, please be sure to let me know. in the comments below and where you are in the world. I love connecting with you as the YouTube continues to grow and get out there and so does the podcast. Also, our Bali retreat has sold out. If you are coming, I look forward to meeting you in person. We have one more retreat in Australia this year, 2024, in September for five days and we have one more retreat in Croatia in October 2024 as well. All our retreats are selling out. I certainly hope you come along where the rubber meets the road and join us in person for five days. You won’t regret it. Anyway, much love from me. Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Margo. It’s beautiful. Margot, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Dr. Margot:
Such a pleasure, Guy. Lovely to meet you.

Guy:
I stumbled across you. I don’t know where it was. I’m always kind of on the, slowly keep one eye out for future guests and things like that. And it’s not often I just jump out and go and buy, order a book instantly from a podcast. And you did that. And like I mentioned off until I had my second child, I was about a third of the way through and just love what you’re doing. Love the message that you’re bringing to the world. And I just wanted to be able to pay it forward as well and have you on the podcast today. And the first question I ask everyone is, though, if you were at an intimate dinner party and a stranger asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Dr. Margot:
That’s such a hard question. Sometimes I would say, I’m a writer. Then I say, oh. I. I came upon this personality model It depends on who’s at my dinner party. If they’re a bunch of mind dominant people at the dinner party, do I go into the whole spiritual stuff? You know, so now I you know, that’s a hard question. I change it depending on who’s sitting at that table. And I think that’s something we can talk about. Throughout this podcast today. You know, we have to see who’s sitting there, who’s going to relate to what we do. How do we get our message out there so that people can pick up on it and actually be a catalyst for change? Because that’s what you and I are trying to be, right?

Guy:
Absolutely. And of course, I purposely asked that question because the guests that I have on always struggle, and it’s always a fascinating place to see where to start from, I find. And I can assure you the people, if all the listeners were at the dinner table right now, they’d want to cut straight to the chase and talk about the spirit aspect of this with what you got in your model and your book. So Which leads me to, do you mind taking us back, because you mentioned straight off the bat in your book about having a near-death experience, and I’ve had many people on the podcast talk about theirs, and I always find them fascinating conversations from those experiences, so do you mind if we go there first?

Dr. Margot:
We can, but I think you can’t know me for five minutes without knowing that I’ve always had a connection to spirit, I guide my whole life by this one particular very deep voice that speaks to me and guides me, and it’s my best therapist, friend, counselor, you know, teacher. So you can’t know me for five minutes without knowing that. So I’d have to say my experiences didn’t start with a near death. It started, I was born this way. like I was born hearing this voice. My mom tells me that when I was a baby, I would be just talking in my crib, like as if I were really talking to people, like Babble, little baby Babble. So I would have to start with when I was four years old. And when I was four years old, I was putting my little doll, Michael, to bed. And I heard this very deep voice say, you are to be a teacher.” And my little four-year-old self said, okay. And I always thought, like, that would be a high school teacher. So I became a high school teacher, and I taught for 25 years. I’m not teaching high school anymore, but I’m teaching the whole spirit side of life. So I’ve always had that voice with me, and I’ve had numerous, just like your viewers, I’ve had numerous experiences. So when I did have my near-death experience, and I would say I had two, but I’m gonna focus on the second one. When I did have my near-death experience, it was a continuation of all the experiences I’ve had. So when I had this experience, I was in, It’s hard to explain because I don’t know how much to tell, but I was in Indigenous ceremony and it was a fasting ceremony. So there were no drugs. There was actually no food, no water involved. So it was a fasting ceremony. And it was about day three of the fasting ceremony. And there was a certain part of the ceremony and I felt myself just, well, I didn’t realize my body had dropped. My body dropped, but my spirit went way up into, like, out of my body. So, some people might think that this is an out-of-body experience, but for me, it was a near-death experience. I wasn’t in a hospital. I can’t have, you know, a doctor confirm that my heart had stopped, but I went out and my spirit went out to the most beautiful unconditional love I’ve ever experienced in my life. And in fact, I had to open up my eyes. I remember thinking, open your eyes really big so you can see how big this unconditional love is. And then I thought, if I open my mouth bigger, I can get more of this unconditional love in me. It was like I was, it was coming in through me and fused through my whole body. And I was like, going up like this into this whiteness of unconditional love. And then my mom came down, but I could see other spirits going up. I could see them going up around me. And then my mom came down and my mom had passed about two years earlier. She came down, my mom had this smile that went like this. And so her smile was there. And then she said, you can’t come up any further than here. You have to go back. So I came back. And I got in my body really quick, and my body had dropped. I was on the ground. And when I came to, I was like… And I was with my mom when she passed, and that’s what her face looked like when she passed. And then, so when I had that experience, I thought, oh, now I know what she was looking at. I know why her mouth was wide open. She was looking at the most beautiful unconditional love and she was soaking it in and going to the other side. And that’s not to say if your loved one didn’t pass that way, that they didn’t go into unconditional love. I think I was shown it that way so that I would understand what my mom went through. Because most of us who have somebody who has passed, we want to know they’re okay. We want to know that they passed into the light. We want to know that they’re in the unconditional love, that they’re at peace. So I think mine was shown to me that way. But it, like all near death experiences, they change who you are. And when I came to, and I remember having to get to my feet again, and at the time I was thinking, I looked around and I thought, I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who I am. I didn’t know this was my hand. I didn’t know, you know, and I had to kind of bring myself back. And then that voice that talks to me, it said, you’re Margo McKinnon, a teacher. So it’s like that teacher, that sole purpose always reminds me who I am as this incarnation. And I thought, oh yes, I’m Margo McKinnon, the teacher. And I got to my feet and I, look, you know, like, and I carried on with the ceremony. But what it did for me, Guy, was when you’ve had that beautiful experience of unconditional love, it made me find this world to be quite harsh and abrasive, unnecessarily so. And I thought, and I was a classroom teacher at the time, and I thought, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make I’m going to try and create unconditional love wherever I go. I’m going to create unconditional love for my students in the classroom. I want them to experience that white light purity of of being loved and cared about and that I really want it the best for them in their human experience. I want it to create it in my home with my own children. because I have young children at the time. And I really think about that a lot today, about how we can very consciously create that unconditional love wherever we go in life, whether it’s at work, whether it’s at home, driving in traffic.

Guy:
Yeah, no, I hear you. A couple of questions, just to close my own loops with that. How long was the fast for, and what was your intention going into that, and did that experience meet your intention, or was it much more than you were expecting?

Dr. Margot:
Well, kind of, you know, we’re not really supposed to talk about what happens in the ceremonies and everything. It’s supposed to be our own personal experience. My intention, it was a It was four years, so you do one of these ceremonies every year for four years. And then you practice in the year, so you go on to, they’re kind of like vision quests, where you go into a forest and you do a four-day fast, but on your own. And really, if you die, you die. That’s part of it. What you have to do is when you’re in a fast like that, and it’s four days long, no food or water, the first day, well, as soon as they say, Marco, you’re now entering your fast, I’m starving. Even if I just had a huge buffet, I’m starving. So my body kicks in and it wants to be hungry and thirsty and tired. Then your mind kicks in and it says, why are you doing this? You don’t have to be fasting. You could be at home, lying on the couch, drinking lemonade if you want. Why are you out here on a fast? Then you have to transcend your mind, making you want to quit. And then you go into the spirit dimension, where you feel lighter than your body and you’re far beyond your mind. You go into the spirit of unconditional love and acceptance. You stay in that place, and by day four, when you finish, you really don’t even want food. So the objective is for you to have a vision. So to be able to transcend the body, transcend the mind, go into the spirit, connect with the force of oneness, God, Creator, Universe, and ask for a vision, cry for a vision. And I got my vision about unconditional love. And then when I came back down here, and I started again as a human being with my new, really, when you understand this unconditional love, and then recreating it here. But it was very soon after that that the universe brought me the vision, the big vision for my book about the five dimensions of self.

Guy:
And how did the universe bring that to you? Was that just a download?

Dr. Margot:
It was a download, but I had to do a few things. First of all, I never felt at home here as a human being. I did find this world to be unnecessarily harsh and abrasive. I had gone through a divorce. I had three little kids. I was a teacher. It was very time-consuming. I felt really alone. And I had lost myself. Like, I had lost who I am in kind of getting divorced and having to start all over again. And one day I was dropping my kids at their dad’s on my way to work, and I had four days that were going to be for myself. And I have to tell you this, because this all lines up with how the vision came in. And I think it will be very helpful to your listeners who are going through the same thing. So I was dropping my kids off, and they were so happy, delighted, running into their dad’s house. And they were in primary school. And I got in the car, and I was driving to work, and I was crying so hard, guy, that I couldn’t even drive my I had to pull over because I couldn’t see through my tears. And I thought, how can I live without my children for four whole days? And then that voice came in and it said to me, Margo, you can spend your four days crying, or you can spend your four days recovering yourself, getting yourself back. You’ve lost yourself. So go back and find out what you love to do. So I did. I tried artwork. I tried baking pies. I wasn’t very good at that. And I tried sewing. Not good at that either. I tried a whole bunch of things to see what I love to do again. Because I was really, I’d have to say, bland. I had no emotions. I cried myself out, it felt like. And I didn’t even know where to turn. Like if you gave me a restaurant menu, I wouldn’t even have known what to pick to eat. Like I was that sort of gone. Um, so anyway, I started every time my kids were at their dads, I worked away at myself and I, I figured out what I loved. I had to get my joy back and, uh, I reinvested in my teaching because I want it to bring this unconditional love into my classroom. And, uh, As soon as I really felt happy, my school board came to me and said, Margo, we’d like you to become a principal of a school. So you need to get your master’s degree. Oh, OK, well, if that’s not enough, I’m a single mom. I’ve got three kids. I have a house to look after, marking all night long. But master’s degree, OK. So I said, OK. So I went in to do my master’s degree. And we had to take 10 classes, and then we had to write a thesis. On the 10th class, it was called Philosophy of Mind. I took it because it was something I was interested in. I said, I’m gonna take the one I am curious about, the Philosophy of Mind. So the very first homework assignment was, how are the body, mind, spirit related? Okay, what a great question. So I went home and I cleared my space. and made sure it was nice and clean, and I lit a candle, and I got on my couch, got a notepad of paper, and then I asked that voice, and I said, tell me, what’s the answer? How are the body, mind, spirit related? And for the first time, that voice turned into a figure, and it was a massive, massive, like silhouette figure in my living room. And I was really quite surprised. I hadn’t quite expected that. And I said, well, how are the body, mind, spirit related? And it said, you have five dimensions of self, not just three. And I’m going to use my book cover because it helps to explain. This is why I made the book cover like this. So it said you have five dimensions of self, not just three. You have a body, a mind, a spirit, a soul, and oneness. Your body is your physical self. Your mind is your logical, rational self. Your spirit is your eternal self, where it came from unconditional love. It came and got inside your body. It will return to unconditional love. But it’s also Like your spirit came down here to have a human experience. So it’s that part of yourself. Your soul. So it said, you have a soul. And I thought, like I said, soul, I thought spirit and soul were the same thing. And it said, no, spirit and soul are two different parts of yourself. So your spirit is your eternal self. It remembers the unconditional love from the other side. Your soul is your purpose. Oh, okay. Oneness is your connection to me, God, and it’s also your sense of connection and belonging. Interesting. Then it said you’re born dominant in one of them, and you grow the others over time. Body-dominant people love the human experience, like the physical tangible, hair, makeup, nails, fashion, shopping, decorating. I have a body-dominant friend, and we get along great. I’m not body-dominant, but we get along great because she’s so much fun. But exercising, physical sports, rugby, football, those kinds of sports. Mind, very logic, mind-dominant, very logical, rational people, and that’s how they see the world through that lens. So they’re dominant in that area. Spirit-dominant value unconditional love and peacefulness over everything else. So they use their intuition, not their logical rational side in their mind. So those are spirit-dominant people. The problem with spirit-dominant people, I’m one of them, is that because they value unconditional love and peacefulness, They sometimes get, well not sometimes, every day they get saturated by the human experience and need a nap. And their nap is just to crawl away and just take a break from the human world. They can, when they get sick of being human, they sometimes just want to go home now. And they’ll say that, I just want to go home now. I want to go home. Like how long do I have to stay here? So they, spirit-dominant people have this recognition of being a spirit self. Soul dominance, they don’t want to do anything else that’s not on their purpose, just their purpose. So don’t ask them. I look over here because I have a full city view of, I’m an oil and gas town and all these buildings, I look out onto skyscrapers and they’re all oil and gas. they could not work in that kind of mind-dominant environment. They have to do, and quite often it’s a social justice issue, and then oneness-dominant, they value, I should say, connection and belonging above everything else. Does that make sense?

Guy:
Totally, totally, yeah. Closing a loop on many of the things that we covered as well, because I get the feeling people are leaning into this, I guess, what’s the right word? Looking for answers outside of their mind and leaning into heart more. And when you talked about your experience and having done a four-day fast, like even I went, oh, that feels, That feels challenging. I remember doing an ayahuasca ceremony. That was certainly a gateway into an opening for me many years ago, and I was terrified before going in. There’s a lot of things to come up against, and I have no doubt many people would be like, well, I don’t want to do any of these things, but I’m still yearning for that connection, for that more. And I guess, what would you say to that for people listening to this? What have you learned over the years? And even from it, maybe even within your book, what the blueprint that’s laid out in that? Because sometimes, especially as we start to dip our toe into this kind of work, it can bring a lot of things up, a lot of things that we have probably haven’t resolved. It can certainly create a lot of anxiety around actually just wanting to lean into the essence of who we are.

Dr. Margot:
That’s such a good question, because we’re all at different levels and starting points and everything. And for me, because I had that spirit dominant longing to go home, I had to start with finding a reason to stay. And so actually, this is my second book. My first book was called this one, The Exquisiteness of Being Human. So in this one, I tell exactly how that voice told me about the dominance theory. And what I find interesting is that I talk about it in this book, that it started with body and mind and then went this way, but actually that voice started over here, oneness. It said, you have oneness, a soul, a spirit, a mind, and a body. And I did that in this book, so I started with oneness in this book. I said it had oneness. But at the time, I didn’t know much about oneness, like connection and belonging, because I kind of go home. I didn’t feel connected down here as a human being. I felt like a stranger, an alien down here. And I remember one day looking at my sister, thinking, wow, and she’s body dominant. And I thought, wow, you’re at home everywhere, and I’m at home nowhere. So where was my starting point at that point in my life? I went over here. I went to the body. Because I was too over here. So I went to the body. And you know, I am physically fit person, like I like to run. And so I run by the river every day. And I do weights every other day. But I started with my body, like I thought, I should wear, maybe I should put some makeup on or something. Maybe I should get my hair cut regularly because I was spirit dominant and I didn’t care about those things. So I used to always have my hair in a ponytail and wearing all black, black t-shirt, black pants, black shoes, you know, so I didn’t really care about that part of myself. And I thought, so where can I start? Well, I’m going to start with the body. So now if you look at it, As we’re all on a spectrum, when I get out of whack over here and spend too much time in the spirit, I say, you know what, that’s doing okay. Let’s go over here. How’s your nutrition? How’s your physical fitness? How’s alcohol intake? You know, all of those things. Do you need a haircut? Do you need to go and get some new clothes? Then I’ll say, okay, well, it’s tax time here, so I don’t know if you have tax time in April, but we do. And so it’s tax time here, so I have to go into my mind dimension and get all my tax filings done. Do I want to live in a mind-dominant world? No, I don’t, guy. I don’t want a mind-dominant job either. And that’s not to say anything poorly about mind dominance. My dad’s a mind dominant man, and he is one of the most compassionate, fascinating people. He’s my greatest human mentor I’ve ever had in my whole life. He’s mind dominant, but he’s just so open to all of these dimensions. Powerful, powerful man. So to answer your question, think of yourself on a spectrum of each one of these. I do that in here. So I have a I have a scale that you can take so that you can look to see how well you’re doing. So if you say, oh, I feel really lonely. I’m having a very lonely day. Well, that means your oneness dimension is low. Connection and belonging. So go phone a friend. Have some friends in for dinner. Write some letters. Like real letters that you put a stamp on them and send them out. You know, so go to your oneness dimension. If you say, oh, you know, I just my life is meaningless. Oh, well, why don’t you do an act of service? Go and find a meaningful something where you’re serving a purpose and go and find that so so you can start working on your dimensions. So when I titled this one, the exquisiteness of being human, it’s because I didn’t know Because I was, I didn’t know that my own life was exquisite. I focused a lot of my children. I focused a lot of my students, but I really didn’t focus too much on myself. And when my, when I got my divorce, I said, and that voice said to me, Margo, go and find yourself again. And I thought I need to find the exquisiteness of my own life. And in that moment, I wrote that down in my journal book. So when the universe gave me this theory, I titled my book that. So I didn’t title this book after I wrote it. I was working on the exquisiteness of being human. And when I did that, that voice came in and gave me the theory. So I really think that working on yourself and trying to find out what it is you love about being human opens up channels for the universe to come in and talk to you.

Guy:
I love that, love it. The question that is coming for me here is that when you experienced this, you spoke about being divorced and then how many children was it, three? Three. Three children, I believe. Three, wow, like I’ve got two now. two young ones, four and nearly four and four and a half months old. And I’m curious to know from this framework how that helped you then not only identify within yourself, but as a parent with your children. And it’s probably a selfish question because I’m there right now. You know, kids are just. Yes. Unbelievable. And for me, one thing I feel being a bit of an older parent, because I had to find my own way first within myself before I ever became a parent, which I’m so grateful I did. That was right for me. And I try to be as conscious as I can, but kids are just these unique little souls that just And I don’t want to squash any of it. I want to nurture it where I can. I want to present the unconditional love and not make it conditional and punishing. And this is right, this is wrong. And it’s like, wow, it’s a minefield. And nobody gives you a license before you do it. You just have to get on with it. So I’m curious from what you’ve experienced, what you’ve learned through these teachings.

Dr. Margot:
I love that question so much. And I take it from being a parent myself plus this model, plus having taught 5,000 teenagers. So, I have a few things to say, Guy. Number one, I always, always was a mother, even when I was a little girl. I had all my dolls, and I used to think, I have children, they just haven’t been born yet. So I always was a little mother from the time I was a little kid. When I had my children, the first one I found quite difficult. It’s quite shocking how much time little kids take up. It’s quite shocking how exhausting it is. And it’s quite shocking how temper tantrums can happen. how you have to deal with them, and then you really don’t know how to deal with this temper tantrum. You see, I didn’t know this theory when my kids were little, and I put a parenting section at the end of chapters, Skye, to have a look at. My first one, now I know he was a spirit dominant. He’s 36 years old now, but I can see him now as a spirit dominant. because he was a little kid that, it was a little bit more of a struggle to be human. Like his clothes were always itchy, owie, food tasted terrible. He could smell everything, like he was super sensitive to his environment. And then by the time he was about three, he was already seeing spirits and talking to them and everything. And then, So, and it was just really hard to parent him because, and here I am telling on him and everything, but he always says to me, Mom, my stories are your stories. If they help somebody, go ahead. I found him quite challenging. And because I didn’t, I couldn’t really relate to temper tantrums because I don’t, I don’t have a temper. Like I don’t, I’ve never, I don’t know if I’ve ever yelled at anyone in my whole life. And my kids say to me, they’re all in their thirties now, but they say to me, mom, we don’t remember you ever yelling at us. So I had to really, and that was something that I really wanted as a mom was I didn’t want to yell at my kids. So how do you do it? I had plenty of times with my two-year-old in the football hold while I’m trying to pay for groceries, while he’s kicking and screaming. But I realized that I had to, with him, I had to look out for what he was super sensitive about, smells and tastes and his clothes, and I adapted that in the beginning. But when he became a teenager, it was much harder because he was kind of getting off the rails when he was a teenager, sort of grade nine. And and not not seriously, but, you know, your typical sort of grade nine, grade 10 stuff. And so nothing like it was worrying me, but it wasn’t like compared to other people. It wasn’t. It just was seemed seemed for me because I was dealing with it. But anyway, I remember one time I had to ground them. And I don’t know if you, do you use that term to ground your kids? Yeah, there’s a term, yeah, for sure. What does it mean to you to ground a child?

Guy:
That’s a good question. Grounding would be putting restrictions on certain aspects of their freedom.

Dr. Margot:
Okay, so here’s what I did, and it made the absolute world of difference. The first time I grounded him with the restrictions that were kind of harsh, but then the second time I thought, you know what? The reason why he’s off the rails and behaving like this is because he’s not happy in his life. So why Why would I make his life harder when he’s already finding life hard? And when he was a little boy, when he was having these core meltdown temper tantrums, I used to just take my arms around him and pull him in like this and just whisper softly in his ear, I love you. And I could just feel all of his muscles start to relax, you know? But as a teenager, I thought, I can’t make his life more miserable. So what I did instead was do what I did for myself when I was off the rails, when I was going through my divorce. And I said, okay, you’re going to have the restrictions. So no television, no computer, no talking to your friends on the phone. You have to come straight home from work. And of course, I was teaching and I said, you have to come in the door and phone me on the house line to my cell phone. And then I’m going to come straight home. We’re going to go for a run along the river. We’re going to have healthy, high vibration, nutritious food. We’re going to do our homework quietly with tea, homemade cookies. We’re going to talk. We’re going to just talk as a family. Like we’re big, we do that anyway, but when he was off the rails, we’re going to talk. We’re going to go to the bookstore and get you a bunch of books that you want to read. And then on the weekends, we’re going to drive. We live near the Rocky Mountains. We’re going to drive to the mountains. We’re going to get fresh air. We’re going to go on a hike. We’re going to come back and then talk some more and read. and lie around and just talk about life. And I remember one time saying to him, if you had the life entirely the way you want it, what would that look like? And he said, I would work in the forest and I would be driving a pickup truck. I have clients and I go with my truck. And I have a log cabin and horses in the back. Oh, so I got him a job for the summer, working up north, driving a pickup truck. He was an archeologist’s assistant. He connected up with my friend who worked up there, who was building a log home and had horses in the back. So what I was trying to do with him was recover his spirit. He had lost his way. He had lost his spirit. And your spirit is unconditional love for yourself and for others. It’s your passion, it’s the things you wanna do. Have you created the life? Your spirit came here to live. So what I did was I made his life beautiful in the groundings. And I was telling this story at a teacher’s convention because I do these talks at conventions. And I was telling that and one teacher put her hand up and she said, I see what you were doing. You were grounding his spirit back into his body. I thought, oh, that’s what I was doing. That’s what a grounding is. It’s not making your child’s life more miserable. It’s reminding them about how life can be so good. So it’s really watching out, like when your children are having behavioral issues, just, you know, don’t pile it on. Now, I have a daughter who’s mind dominant. And she tells the story about how I impacted her terribly when she was eight years old because she wanted to help me make a stir fry. And she said to me, how do you want me to cut the carrot? And I said, oh, any way you want. And she said, yeah, but what if I cut it wrong? And I said, well, it’s impossible to cut it wrong because no matter which way you cut it, it will still taste like a carrot.” And she said, yeah, but what if I don’t like it? And I said, well, next time cut it a different way until you get the shape you like. She told me when she was 26, she said, you know what, mom? In that moment, I thought my mom doesn’t love me. She won’t even show me how to cut a carrot. And I carried that around with me, mom. Until today, because she boned me from Toronto, the other side of the country. She said, I had a eureka moment. I carried that that you didn’t love me because you didn’t show me how to cut a carrot. And then I realized, no, mom was letting me make decisions for myself early in life. So by the time I’m 26, I don’t have to worry about small decisions. Those are easy. I can make the bigger ones now. So it’s a complicated thing, Guy, but you watch your child and this book really, really helps, right? Like you can say, is this a mind dominant? You know, if I were reliving that moment, Guy, when she asked me to cut the carrot and I knew she was a mind dominant, I would have said, and this is how you cut the carrot, just like this. And then next time I might say, hey, shall we try a different shape this way? But instead, I’m a spirit dominant, which means there are so many ways to cut a carrot. Let’s try them all.

Guy:
Totally, yeah. Does that help at all? Yeah, it does. And everything you just shared resonates so deeply because, you know, when it comes to children anyway, it’s the challenge is I don’t know what’s going through their mind, how they’re going to receive that information and receive it totally different. And, you know, one thing I feel as a parent is What I’ve noticed is that when you’re done with parenting, it’s very easy to fall into just habits of how you were parented or how the grandparents parented your parents, and those behavioral patterns are there. So we have to work on ourselves and become self-aware. and be in that space of awareness. Otherwise, it just trickles on into, you know, paying it forward, really, in sometimes not the right ways. It’s just fascinating.

Dr. Margot:
And if you use this, I’m telling you, it’s really magical. I wish I’d known it when they were small, but I knew enough with my older boy by the time he was grade nine, I knew about this. And now he’s 36 and a couple of years ago. I went he lives on way on the other side of country so I went for Christmas for two weeks and So I arrived and it was just the two of us for two weeks and he has a sweet little log house Just like a spirit wanted when he was in Greece sweet little log house on two and a half acres of property With forest all around it. Just what a spirit needs to be happy And so I went for two weeks, and the first day this Amazon box arrives, big box like this, and he said, oh, I think your bathrobe’s arrived. And he gave it to me, and it’s this thick, plush bathrobe, you know, with the hood on it and everything. And he said, it gets cold here on this side of the country. And I thought, what I want to do with my mom for two weeks is to lie on the couch and talk and talk and read and read poetry to each, and he’s in the military, by the way. So this is a guy, he’s six foot four, military, buff, forward motion. But what does he want to do? He wants to do on his two week vacation, what a grounding looked like for him. Reading, like we read our books and say, oh, listen to this passage, listen to this poem. What do you think about this idea? So for two weeks, we sat on the couch with our bathrobes, reading, talking, eating great food, laughing. And it was fun to go back for him to tell me what his childhood was like for him, now that he could articulate it as an adult. How beautiful. I know it was really and isn’t that your dream to be able to have that?

Guy:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing your insights. I’m just kind of aware of the time on the podcast today. Time is flying. It’s unbelievable. But I do want to ask you before we wrap it up about the Garden of Eden because that caught my eye when you sent some notes through as well. So I’m going to give you the floor for a moment if you could share.

Dr. Margot:
I’m so glad because I’ve been on a few podcasts. have been reaching out to me, and I’m talking to people all over the world. So this one man in Scotland, he said, hey, Marco, why do you think that voice comes in for you so strongly? And I heard myself say, and this is how I say it when I know that it’s not me talking. I heard myself say, well, if the Garden of Eden were real, I wouldn’t have eaten the apple. And he said, what do you mean? Well, I listen to that voice above everything. And when that voice tells me to do something, go get your master’s degree, be a teacher. This is how you’re to raise your children. I listen to it and I do whatever it says. So if it said, you can eat everything here, just not this. I would have said, okay. So I was telling that to my friend and he said, you won’t even eat the chocolate out of your advent calendar a day early. I don’t, I’m very disciplined person, you know? So anyway, I got thinking about that idea and I thought, isn’t that interesting? What if, and I was using unconditional love, but what I always thought the Garden of Eden story was how women got the raw end of the deal. about being human. And I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if we all thought about recreating the Garden of Eden, beautiful, lush, fertile, beautiful, lush, fertile, abundant. You take care of it and you create that Garden of Eden wherever you go. So start with your own body. Make sure your own body is its own lush, beautiful, flourishing self. Create your own space where you live. Now, I’m a condo chair. I’m the chair of a condominium corporation. And we had a lot of toxic people in the building who are really running the building down. Well, anyway, we managed to remove them. And I said to my team, let’s recreate the Garden of Eden around this building. Let’s make this a fertile, beautiful, lush, peaceful place for everybody. So when they walk up the front of our building, they go, I’m home. and I love to be home, which is important to me because I spent so many years pining to go home. And so for everybody to feel, I feel totally at home here. I love to come home. And so we’re even going to do plantings. We’re going to have herb gardens and beautiful flowers. We’re recreating the whole thing, Guy, all around how it can be for our condo. Well, Two days ago, the pressure got to me of running this building. And I have to say, I slipped. I was thinking about resigning as the Condo Corps. And I didn’t think it meant very much to my team, because I don’t actually think I’m, I just think I’m little Margo McKinnon from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. So anyway, I said to my team, You know, I don’t know, the pressure’s so much, I’ve got so much to do, I’m thinking about resigning. I looked around and there were tears. Tears. And I thought, and they said, but what about our Garden of Eden? I thought the vision was to recreate where we can all feel abundant, loved, and cared for. and this is gonna be a spiritual place where we can all flourish. You’re heading that vision, Margo, you can’t resign. So I’m real back in, guy. But if we think about all of your viewers, how can you create the most beautiful, I call it spirit-dominant leadership, actually, but spirit-dominant leadership, where you know everything, everybody in your family, everybody you work with and for, all your neighbors, we’re all having a human experience. Why don’t we take the lead and whatever way we can, we make that experience beautiful for others and really put that front and center. How can we create a more beautiful experience for everyone wherever we go?

Guy:
Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it. Thank you for sharing. I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. How could the world change?

Dr. Margot:
I am. You know, I run meetup groups and I run a spirit dominant leadership one. I have webinars. I’m going to have some new webinars coming up in May, but it’s spirit dominant leadership. But it takes courage, Guy. You know, so maybe to start with your first question that you asked me, If you were at a dinner party, what would you say you do? I would say I’m leading out a spirit-dominant leadership movement because we’ve had mind-dominant leadership for so long. Very logical. Our schools are mind-dominant institutions, and our kids’ spirit and soul are getting crushed. Why do you think we have so much anxiety and depression and suicidal ideation or any of these things. Why? It’s too mind-dominant. It’s too restricting. And our spirits are getting crushed. Our soul purpose is getting crushed. So a spirit-dominant leader, we have to have courage to rise up to that challenge of being open about that people, that we want to create a better experience for everybody with unconditional love.

Guy:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Honestly, you know, reflecting back on my life, Margo, I mentioned off air about the natural supplement company I ran. But that, honestly, I’d never run a company before, I had no idea what I was doing. And it was all heart and intent of actually making a change. And I truly believe the success came off the back of that because of that spirit dominant, like it really was, it wasn’t coming from a mind based place. If I tried to figure it out from the mind and have a business plan and do the perceived way of running a business, it would have failed 10 times over. I just couldn’t even go there. And I feel it’s hugely lacking in so many businesses and infrastructures at this moment in time. But there’s a lot popping up and rising as well.

Dr. Margot:
It’s true. And, you know, if we go back to that Garden of Eden, when I said I wouldn’t have eaten the apple, I listened to that voice. And when I don’t, and some people might call it their own intuition, their own guide, they know what’s right and wrong for themselves. When I follow the voice, everything works out. When I don’t listen, that’s when misery starts. And I think that’s what that story was all about. So spirit-dominant leadership is getting people just what you’re doing. Like you are such a great advocate for this, you know? You’re leading it out yourself. So this idea, let’s get back in touch with our spirit and understand that other people have a spirit. they’re having their own experience, too. So getting back in touch with our spirit, getting back in touch with what we know is right and what, you know, is wrong, because we want to follow the path of unconditional love, like the beautiful meaning and purpose in life. We want to be that force of oneness in our lives. But at the same time, we bring it down to the physical, the body and the mind world.

Guy:
Absolutely, absolutely. Margo, where can people go and grab your book?

Dr. Margot:
They can go on my website, which is www.drmargomckinnon.com. So it’s all one, D-R, and then my name. I think it’ll be listed on here, will it? Drmargomckinnon.com. You can Google me, look it up. You can find me on my website, and I’ll pack a book for you straight away, and send it off in the mail to you.

Guy:
Good on you, thank you so much. Yeah, the link will be in the show notes, and I definitely encourage people to check out your book, that’s for sure, I’m getting a lot out of it. Great. Even though I did stop reading it once my son Alice was born. Yeah. But I’ll pick it up.

Dr. Margot:
Well, and I love emails, so if your viewers wanna send me an email, ask a question, just send me an email, it’s drmarguemckinnon at gmail.com. Send me an email, love to hear from you.

Guy:
That’s very kind of you, thank you. And last question I wrap up the show every week is, with everything we’ve covered today, which is quite a lot, is there anything you’d like to leave the listeners to ponder on?

Dr.
Margot: Yes, I’d like you to think about, have you created the life your spirit came here to live? And then so go and ask your spirit, go and lie down on the grass and look up at the sky and say, what is it that I really want to do with my life? And then make it make an effort to go out and even do one thing that your spirit wants to do today. Maybe your spirit wants a big ice cream cone. Who knows? But whatever, you know, whatever your spirit Whatever the life your spirit wants to live, go and put one step forward to it.

Guy:
Wow. That’s a great question to ask. That’s a great way to end the show. Margot, thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Margot:
Well, thank you so much for inviting me. What a pleasure.

Guy:
You’re very welcome. Lovely to connect.