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

James:
You are reality. Reality is single, there’s only what is, and it’s always blossoming forth with no separations. And it’s radically intimate, radically unbounded, infinite, and it’s utterly peaceful. And utterly absorbing and it’s totally free of suffering totally free of any concern for anything and meaningless in the most wonderful way It’s just complete play and expressiveness.

And then there’s there’s this impression that there’s a you who thinks it’s bad or good And then if you stop resisting You realize that there isn’t actually a separate self a separate thing. There’s just what’s here And without judgment, it’s utterly perfect, utterly whole, utterly complete, utterly free from suffering.

That’s a kind of an irony is that a level of shifting the struggle, stopping the struggle with reality to do that at the deepest level, we actually need to fall in love with the world exactly as it is.

Guy:
Guy here. My awesome guest today is Dr. James Cooke, and I believe we have something truly extraordinary, extraordinary for you today. Let me get my words out. It’s not every day that you meet a neuroscientist who is immersed in the rigor of academic work, academic science, who has also experienced a profound spiritual awakening, right?

So it is, and his journey of awakening and how it reshaped his understanding of the mind. The body and reality itself now, but it doesn’t stop there either because he challenges conventional ideas around mental health, trauma, and healing. Look, it’s a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed it. It’s one that makes more sense when you listen to it in this entirety.

Definitely take notes on this one because some of the conversation gets dense, but when it sinks in, it’s very powerful. So the journey through science of spirituality, the nature of healing, and we dive into the future of humanity itself as well. And if we all embraced these very things that we discuss in the conversation today.

Be sure to let me know in the comments below where you are in the world. If you enjoy it make sure you hit the thumbs up. If you feel it’s worthy of a like. Share it with a loved one, a friend. Let me know where you are. Connect. Hit the comments.

And of course links are below if you want to find out what we’re up to in 2025 through our retreats and one day events within australia Bali and Croatia it is all happening much love from me. I hope I get to meet you in person one day soon Enjoy this podcast.

Guy:
James welcome to the podcast my man

James:
Thanks, it’s great to be here.

Guy:
I know you’re you’re in Portugal at the moment, which is a absolutely gorgeous place sitting in your retreat center there I was like we were speaking off air. I was only there last year, but What I like I find it fascinating with your background what you do And or where you’ve ended up and what you’ve ended up doing really as well and your exploration along the way So i’m gonna ask you the first question I ask everyone is that If you were at an intimate dinner party right now and you sat next to a stranger And they asked you what you did for a living.

How would you respond?

James:
That’s uh, it’s a good way to phrase it because I feel like I have two different answers, well probably many answers, but if it’s just your, you know, run of the mill answer. Person you, random person you’re sitting next to. I probably have a different answer than I would give to you or to the people listening who are already kind of down the rabbit hole to some extent.

So, um, I can try and give a short one of both, you know, and to the average person who’s not, like, actively into this stuff. Um, yeah, I would say I’m, I’m a, neuroscientist and uh writer and I The way I typically say to not scare people off is that I kind of talk about meditation and and how it’s not you know supernatural it’s kind of deepens you into reality and science can really show how that’s the case and um, so yeah science is spirituality, but then um To someone who’s more who’s signaled they’re on the the same kind of wavelength.

I would talk about how as a teenager I had a an awakening and um that really has been the kind of through line of my life that I went to science because It was, it was, it was a deep, it was a discovery of the real, of waking up to reality. It wasn’t, uh, anything taking me away from reality. It was deepening me into reality.

And so I was like, wow, like science has got to like, given that this is real, like it seems, you know, so real science presumably has got a lot to say about this. So that’s kind of what made me interested in the mind and consciousness and science. Um, And yeah, so now I have a retreat center and I write, I have a book coming out, Dawn of Mind, and um, yeah, I’m a science spirituality guy, basically.

Yeah, mentioned neuroscience as well. And and why did you go into that modality of study and How would you best explain it for the layman? And also then how is that supporting?The the deeper exploration that why we’re on this podcast, you know, what is consciousness?

Guy:
What is reality? And how do we play a part in it?

James:
Yeah, so my journey’s always, has, I’ve always kind of trusted a kind of organic, intuitive, step by step thing of following what feels right. So my, my undergraduate was initially.

To study I had the option of either doing psychology and philosophy or what’s called experimental psychology, which isn’t just like wacky crazy psychology, but it’s um, uh when it’s it’s grounded in experiments in like very so like brain scans like the really rigorous stuff that we We didn’t cover any freud.

We didn’t any anything. You can’t like tech like dream stuff Like if you can’t test it, it’s not included in the syllabus So, um, so I basically studied that kind of like neuroscientific psychology because I was interested in the mind And then the more I took the neuroscience modules. I was like, this is so cool like I also have a bit of a kind of, like, kind of like electrical engineering y type, like I go into like circuits and stuff like that, I like, and so that it really, I was like, this is so powerful, like it’s so cool that we can actually start to crack the code of the brain.

So there was part of me, the neuroscience wasn’t solely, Secondary to, um, the spirituality, there was also just a thing of like, this is so cool, like, I want to discover how the brain works, you know, on a, yeah, just curiosity level, um, because it seemed like, if you’re going to spend your time studying anything, like, that’s one of the big unsolved things, and it’s at the core of, you know, who we are, in some sense, um, yeah, but then it, it all kind of came together, and it’s, yeah, that’s what I mean about the organic intuitive way of stepping forward, because it, I couldn’t tell you why I did it because solely for this reason or this reason or this reason it’s just like everything converges to be like this is, I’m where I need to be, you know, everything’s coming together.

Guy:
If you had to then describe the study of neuroscience, then would you just say it’s it’s a study of the nervous system in relation to the brain and body or

James:
Yes, exactly. Study of the nervous system is a great way to describe it because the brain is a sub Part of the nervous system. You know, the nervous system spreads the whole body. You know, if you’re feeling any sensations in your fingertips, that’s because nerves are responding and sending signals to the brain. Um, so yeah, it’s, uh, Yeah. The kind, you know, I, I wasn’t like a clinician or anything like that. I was doing academic research in university. Um, and so that’s very much like, we need to figure out how the brain works. So you can run studies with brain scans and that kind of stuff. Or sometimes people do stuff in dishes with your, like, it goes all the way down from like genes, all the way up to whole brain areas.

And, um, so yeah, it’s, it’s a very, uh, it’s a cool field. Cause it’s really at the intersection of like,

You could say it’s a form of biology But a lot of people studying and coming to it from like computer science. I mean AI came out of out of um Neuroscience research computational neuroscience and people doing kind of models of how the brain works. That is literally it’s like, okay You’ve got the brain that’s intelligent. Here’s a model of the brain Oh, wait a minute now my model is intelligent because I’ve successfully modeled aspects of the brain great Now we can sell this as AI. Um, that’s basically the story of how we got the modern AI so yeah, it’s a very cool and important field

Guy:
I’d have to ask you as well, like relating back to my journey and yours. if I was sitting at that dinner table, I’d have to ask you then around the relationship between trauma, the nervous system, and how we perceive reality. Because I know for a fact that you mentioned you had skin conditions. I believe as a kid you had, gut issues, and I’m sure other emotional issues as well, like myself.

I, I kind of grew up with that. And, and I’m fascinated to hear your perspective. on How that is affecting the body how we perceive reality and why is the body holding it? Like please share a bit your story and then what you’ve learned along that journey as

James:
Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, so when it comes to the scientific explanation around it, there’s, there’s a weird, um, People, mean, sometimes forget that scientists are humans. They are apes like the rest of us that are, have their own biases and instincts and stuff. And there’s a kind of groupthink that, you know, that kind of thing. Groupthink emerges in any place, but the kind of person who’s interested in science often In my experience the stereotypes are true that there’s a kind of spectrum the more kind of uh People who are more in the kind of emotional stuff and and the kind of stuff we’ll be talking about today Are less well represented in science often is people are very heady in my own experience I think part of the reason I was a good I was good at the analytical stuff was because I was so uncomfortable in my Embodied experience as someone with a lot of trauma so I can extrapolate from my own Experience and you know, this is speculative.

I’m not gonna pretend. I know what’s going well Everyone’s motivation is for studying stuff, but in my own experience um Yeah, trauma leading to chronic tension, chronic, so this gets into the science you’re asking about. When you have, the reason I mention this is that the conventional neuroscientific explanation, especially say like 10 years ago before things like The Body Keeps the Score and these, these books are now popular, became more mainstream, would have been very much that, um, yeah, kind of trauma is something to do with memories being stored in the brain, very brain centered and like very disembodied, um, and so You might understand flashbacks about how like memory parts of the brain are connecting with visual parts of the brain But where the way I understand it, especially having gone through a healing process It’s in a far more embodied way where the the body is and your relationship to the world and the meaning that’s there is really important.

So You know, you take something like having low mood which I did as a result of which I now understand was as a result of carrying trauma that was unresolved the thing we’re told in in science is that You know a plausible explanation of that is you just have low serotonin. Maybe you’ve got some your brains, you know on this side of the spectrum and And that’s why you’re depressed. That’s just made up like that doesn’t have any scientific backing like no one actually who studies Like really in the science thinks that’s what’s what depression is It does relate to modulators But that simple idea that serotonin is a happy hormone that that goes up that is low in some people and it’s a low The depression is low serotonin disorder. That’s that’s like a pr thing for pharma companies and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way Just like literally is so You know in my own case what I discovered was that my low mood was meaningful. I’d grown up in a situation where Um, as most of us do, the networks of care that are supposed to be there, that humans have had throughout the vast majority of evolutionary history, where there would be dozens of people you’re intimately connected with who, in a culture that has wisdom of healing traditions and connection with nature, that just wasn’t there, you know, so in growing up in an individualistic, Culture with lots of intergenerational trauma and stresses and, you know, personal things going on in my family of origin meant that I was in a very tense, very hyper vigilant activated state.

And so that would correspond with outside the brain. We have other branches of the nervous system, like the sympathetic nervous system is the one that makes your heart beat fast and the kind of fight flight, you know, mobilizes you to respond. So I was living in a kind of. Chronic sympathetic activation in the sense, you know shallow breathing into the chest tension around the stomach not not breathing in a relaxed calm way but it was the the funny thing is I mean, it’s not funny, but the the weird thing is that um, That chronic bodily tension, which I think we all have to some extent just a kind of a tonic Vigilance is is so tied up with our perception of kind of subject object difference of being being a self in the world and that You That you, you kind of, you don’t even notice it as You objectify the body and feel that well, this is just my my body.

I’ve got back pain. That’s not meaningful. It’s just it’s tense It’s like an object that’s that’s broken in some way. It’s not yeah, it’s not meaningful And then this path is about part of it is about realizing that you are the body in a sense I mean, it’s like a full stack of what you are. But the body can can go from feeling like an object and you’re in the head and you’re the owner of the body to feeling like you are the embodied subject you are like a uh, you know, think of an organism like a slug or a worm something where its whole body is clearly So intimately connected with the wider world as it’s feeling its way through We’re obviously like that with our skin being our biggest organ Like you are that is as much you as as your brain is you so we’re not it’s not that we are the brain You know, we are the whole the whole thing and more um In terms of you stretching out into the wider world. So I think the, for me, my secondary, you know being chronically stressed out. Yeah, mainstream science and mainstream medicine didn’t have any explanation as to why I had asthma and eczema and irritable bowel syndrome and just like a whole litany of of Issues and all of them were speculated to be oh, there’s just again. There was never really an explanation given It’s just like okay you have this disorder like you’re you’re physiologically disordered Presumably because of some genetic thing or some just you know, bad luck of the draw And then they all resolved as I You You know reduced my chronic stress as I healed trauma and I became more embodied and I let go of this tension they went away and it and it Totally fits with the science like it.

I do think we have well I was gonna say I do think we have to there has to be a paradigm shift coming because it’s so simple once you’ve gone through this to see What health is and what healing is but then the thing I mentioned before the group think of science if we keep having The scientists be the people who don’t want to go on this journey Maybe they might not come over and actually see it the way that we’re seeing because they refuse to because the healing stuff can be hard, right?

So I think it honestly from my biased opinion I feel it needs to be fundamental because surely as a scientist we need All we’re after is the truth, right? You ultimately at the end of the day, or what is, and that keeps evolving and expanding and challenging the current paradigm, which propels us forward.

Guy:
So,

James:
See, I mean the the thing I said about scientists and groupthink and being fallible humans The thing I love about science is that the method is a corrective to that It’s you know everywhere else actually you get to just revel in your unconscious biases Science actually at least tries to hold us to account.

It’s not perfect at it But so I do think I have some hope that yeah, you

Guy:
Okay, no, no, that’s fine because I’d love it if we were to explore that emotional embodied aspect of cell as well as the analytical because we have at our retreats we’ve had definitely very analytical people come in and all they’ve ever done is use thought and the thinking mind to to work through a linear time frame in their entire life and that’s all you know and that’s how we depend and will Which is very normal when I was quite the opposite.

I was a very kind of feel into you know into everything And I don’t trust my thoughts at all half the time but But once you have that shift and that experience and that feeling that’s like it’s like the floodgates start to open And then it it allows us to see something from a very different perspective, which of course will influence the mind in a different way. Yeah

James:
and I think the the thing I mentioned before about the childhood stuff of lacking networks of care, I think that’s a really We’re a social species who are meant to have some kind of holding some some You know as you move towards this healing stuff It’s hard to do it alone and it’s good to have people who’ve gone on the path ahead of you To reassure you and to hold that space so things like retreats those kinds of things are absolutely crucial for The kind of thing we’re talking about it can’t be done just through You Understanding intellectual it can be done, but it’s a slower and harder more arduous process Um, so yeah, I think that that basic human connection and the in person physical Connection that takes you into the body into your mean into the meaning making in a relational way is really really important with this stuff

Guy:
I want to tap into a little bit more of your trauma in a moment, but just out of, from your, your experience and study, like, what about ancestral trauma and, you know, have you looked at that and, and the impact.

James:
Yeah Yeah, I mean in my own personal journey, um, yeah something i’m not speaking about much but I have a kind of I’ve been very interested in my family lineage because there’s like multiple lineages of um, Yeah, of trauma. Um and you know like the maternal side is all kind of working class londoners and that’s a very kind of you know traumatic thing over the course of hundreds of years and then um, I’ve got irish who’ve you know, you know, kind of the result english colonization is a lot of trauma there and then jewish as well and uh yeah, so there’s like a a lot of ancestral wounding that kind of comes down the line and the We now see in the science that there’s uh Epigenetics is the main way that this is studied which is to so when we look at life The thing we’re talking about in terms of the analytical reduction is looking at the parts versus looking at the organization of of the whole of kind of meaning making and being in relationship to the world that Thing also plays out with how people think about life where to me it’s obvious that a living cell is as a holistic integrated thing where the life process is kind of at the fore and and the genes are like the instruction book that is being read out And the genes are pretty kind of secondary to the process of of living and there are people who think this way in biology, but because of the dominance of the kind of reductionist uh, analytical, heady way of looking at parts. We actually, as soon as the kind of, you know, DNA was discovered, for the rest of the 20th century, the emphasis really became, great, DNA, like the rule book, let’s just look at this, this is what life is, life is just DNA. It’s like it, and it’s, and that was, that was never the case, like that was always a, you know, people thought that the human genome project was going to figure out all of biology, and then we code everything, we’re like, oh actually, this is really complicated, because we’re not factoring in the whole kind of complex loopy systems that these, um, These codes are being read out in so the um I think with With epigenetics, it’s it’s a corrective to basically say that it’s saying other factors that influence the expression of genes That aren’t just it’s not just the case You’ve got a rule book and it’s read out in a really step by a simple way you have you you’re in this this evolving context and so I mean if you think of the fact that I think it’s correct that the egg that we all you know came from is You It existed women are born with all their eggs So that egg was actually present in the body of one’s grandmother because the the you know, the fetus of of your mother is was in there with all the eggs, so If your grandmother experiences something stressful It’s there’s a physical continuity between that experience and then you now there’s like, uh, you know Literally the egg is in there you become that.

I mean that egg becomes you so You Over the course of like a century you could have an event that happens and then you, you, you were basically there in some form when that event happened. And so we now know that stresses like this can activate different genes and cause different, you know, trajectories of the, um, development of the organism. So, but even But even deeper than that it seems that This stuff can get kind of echoed through the generations in terms of these these changes You don’t actually have to physically be there like in the sperm as well. You can get signaling that happens um so yeah, I think there’s a huge amount the science is really bearing out the idea that Ancestral trauma does kind of carry down through, through the ages.

Guy:
Wow, that’s incredible. Thanks. I’ve not heard that that is this mind blowing when you put you when you put your mind to it How that could be influencing our state of being from? from the get go So On your journey then i’d love to tap into that because I believe you had an experience when you were about 13 Is is that correct? and

James:
Yeah, see

Guy:
and when you spoke about the um, you know You you’re always in your head and and disassociation Like and that that stress was that from as far back as you could remember as a child as well Was all that there then leading into your teens?

James:
There was a single Yeah, so I think the um Yeah, it’s it’s not like there was a single Event that was a trauma that you know, like it was in the car crash or something like that. You know, there was there was an atmosphere of I think of this embodied stress. There’s just an atmosphere of trauma basically and you you wouldn’t know that at the kind of heady level Um, but on that embodied level of like picking up on safety and stuff like that. It’s just yeah, there was I think we have this this kind of distribution of you know Some people get lucky and don’t have too much of this and there are places in reality Where on our planet where people are just crushed by trauma from from all sides um So yeah, I think As far back as I can remember, there was a vigilance, there was a kind of a feeling of dis ease and like being ill at ease.

And yeah, I think, I mean, you know, the stuff I was just describing, stuff can get picked up in the womb as well, you know. If a mother has a stressful event when the baby’s in the womb, that can also start this kind of process. So yeah, I think people can, you know, You know, it’s, I don’t want to overstate it as well, because it’s never true, it’s always true that we’re in a balance of, with trauma it’s kind of like a closing down, a guardedness, uh, you know, like the muscle tension is, you know, I’m separating off from the world to try and protect my survival process, um, so that’s an aspect of it, but it’s always true that we are, Fundamentally open and connected with the world at all times even the most traumatized person who feels most disconnected is receiving support from the rest of the earth from the oxygen that the plants are making from You know unseen Hands of like humans who have you know built the roads they drive on like there is We we are our circumstances one where we are embedded in networks of care Even if there’s a fault in the system or a failure when it comes to just the basic homo sapien You know the things we would hope for in terms of people people caring for us Um, so I don’t want to overstate it to say that, you know, we’re not way of looking at this is we’re never broken, you know It can feel like with trauma that we’re broken It can feel like there’s some especially with trauma is often shame and there can be this narrative this self critical narrative Just like something’s wrong with me, you know, and that can the the truth that something’s not right can be powerful to drive you to be To to make change but that can be a toxic belief system that leads you to believe in this actually something wrong with you where?

It’s always a reality is whole and perfect and it’s it’s like You On the absolute level it’s all interconnected and just exactly as it’s As it is it takes a mind to judge and to say that’s wrong. That’s not right So all of the conditioning that came to make you is exactly It’s hard to put into words when you’re talking about this because it’s like I wouldn’t say kind of it’s exactly as it’s supposed To be but I don’t mean like in a fate way.

It’s just like it’s you know It all comes together exactly as it comes together and it’s perfect. So, um, So yeah, that’s just a

Guy:
That makes sense, uh to buy into the narrative of brokenness too much Yeah. So, so what, so what happened when you were 13

James:
Sorry, Yeah, that’s all

Guy:
right.

James:
So, um, yeah, so I, I was raised in the Irish Catholic kind of side of my family and in terms of religion and with all this stress and, um, trauma, I was again very heady and, but I was also very conscientious, I was quite, you know, again, hypervigilant, threat, averse, so when I learned that there was supposedly this all powerful God who was going to.

And at this point I didn’t have blind faith, like I was about, yeah, 13 and I, I was starting to think about this stuff and I was like, all right, is there a god? Like, I’m questioning it, I don’t, it isn’t obvious to me there is, like, I need some evidence. And so I was like, oh, but I, but I’ve been told I have to have blind faith, and if I don’t have blind faith, this supposedly benevolent god is going to torture me in hell forever.

But he’s made me this way, but I can’t have blind faith like I can’t find it anywhere like but yeah He’s supposed to be benevolent And and so I went around and around in a loop trying to figure this out and just pouring all of my emotional I was like the deepest rumination ever just like utterly absorbed in this in this thing because I just had to figure it out as I was not going to start thinking about it until i’d figured it out because what i’m just gonna get on with my day and then the possibility of hell for infinity is just like on the table Like no like I need to solve this one way or another um and Because I remember the infinity aspect of it was really palpable to me in the sense of like if I don’t figure this out That’s it for all time.

Like there’s you know, so, um I yeah, I was wrestling with this and my Kind of emotional state my my investment in the thinking and it hit such a climax where And also because there was no, um, solution to it, something happened where I just stopped thinking and there was just a kind of a complete like dead end.

And yeah, I think this is like in Zen Buddhism they use koans like this, paradoxes that can’t be figured out with the rational mind, that people are supposed to chew on like intellectually until they get this kind of stopping where like the thoughts just stop. And then in that moment there was just the most radical, um, I didn’t do anything in that moment.

There was no, there was a, I stopped doing. The thinking the the kind of the identification with thought And then it was just really obvious What are circumstances like what’s really going on? When we’re thinking we think what’s really going on is well I’m really this body or i’m inside this body and and the world is out there and i’m navigating in the world And that’s really what’s going on but On one level on one level that you can say that that’s true.

But on a deeper level in your experience at all times I would I would suggest what’s really going on Is that You are reality. Reality is single, there’s only what is, and it’s always blossoming forth with no separations, and it’s radically intimate, radically, um, unbounded, infinite, and it’s utterly peaceful, and utterly absorbing, and it’s our voices. It’s not even it, you can’t objectify it, because it’s everything, and it’s totally free of suffering, totally free of any concern for anything, any, it’s, you know, meaningless in the most wonderful way, it’s just complete play and expressiveness. Um, and so I went from this, like, being on the verge of tears, like, you know, probably just staring to the middle distance, looking down in my lap, like, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, and then it stopped.

And then there was just the most I remember like wanting to like shout with joy because I was just like oh my god Like it’s fine. Like I was I was doing this to my like the whole thought paradigm I was I was doing it to myself the the suffering the feeling of bondage the feeling of like i’m suffering and this is bad and And this is weighing heavily on me.

There wasn’t even a me like that was also an interpretation. There’s like, you know, again There’s a body that’s like an energetic process, you know but like that the james that that takes ownership in the mental space of like You know, well, this is bad because james thinks it’s bad like any judgment has that subject object character where there’s a thing that’s like and then there’s, there’s this impression that there’s a you who thinks it’s bad or good. And then if you stop resisting, you realize that there isn’t actually a separate self, a separate thing. There’s just what’s here. And without judgment, it’s utterly perfect, utterly whole, utterly complete, utterly free from suffering. Um, And so yeah, there was just this most the most profound thing ever And that’s why I was like I want more people to have access to this and as a teenager who was put off by the dogma of catholicism I don’t think I would have found my way to spirituality through the way it’s often spoken about um I wanted I wanted to lay down a path for people who were more like me who were quite alienated and traumatized and scared And wanted the scientific you know Being held by the hand getting to this stuff because if people are making You Outrageous claims or if there are like, you know, abusive guru and cult leaders like that whole vibe was just like no I would never would have found this well being personally as someone who was coming from that state So I was like, I know there are people like me out there who won’t find this stuff unless someone like them Can try and be like it’s okay.

Like this is real. It’s important. We can show our working with science so you don’t have to trust me like, you know, again, the whole rejecting dogma thing was like The deeper the deepest commitment for me was never to be like You I’m special, like, listen to me, just trust me, like, I had a cool experience, it’s always, like, show my working, this isn’t about me, this is about what I’m trying to communicate, um, So that’s, that’s really what’s fueled me my entire life, really, to, to try and understand the stuff and try and communicate it.

Guy:
And do you feel, thank you for sharing by the way, um, do you feel then from your own experiences, there’s a direct relationship in healing your own traumas, like what we’ve already spoken about, to then the spiritual relationship with reality, our experience. Yeah.

James:
Yeah, so, so, I think in my case, um, It’s, you know, it’s, I said how the sense of having a separate self is an interpretation or it’s an idea, it’s like it’s not really there, it’s like, uh, yeah, so it’s, it’s, That functions, When it comes to the paradigm of thinking from the mind, that’s the first foundation stone.

That’s the thing you, like, the mind stands on and says, all right, the first thing I know is that there’s a duality here. There’s not just oneness, there’s me and the world. And from that point, I’m going to start building up this whole conceptual map of reality. And so, The reason it doesn’t feel like we can just opt out of the bondage of suffering is because we’re seeing we don’t we don’t question the assumption that we’re separate We don’t question until we do until we start doing this stuff And so the average person is is in that mental paradigm of thinking their thoughts their interpretations reality are literally real Rather than realizing it’s all mental stuff and it’s all mental stuff arising in boundlessness and freedom, which is always yeah how reality is. So when you have that The awakening is fundamentally like the bottom dropping out of that mental paradigm of like this the sense of self I mean the whole thing kind of crumbles, but you could emphasize that It’s because that bottom piece is crumbled and now you’re you’re in the free flow of reality There is no longer this hard stop of like Yeah, I guess it’s like the mind thinks there are hard stops in existence It thinks that the you are the body and when the body dies like that’s a hard stop for your reality and like this is like or yeah your likes and dislikes There’s like a hard stop with like who you are and how you relate to the world And it’s like a discovering there aren’t no hard stops in reality.

Your true nature is beingless and it will always just keep changing and flowing so When you do that and that that flowing open nature means the traumas I think can You pass through and be resolved in a way that you can’t do as thoroughly if you’re trying to keep holding that that foundation stone of feeling like a separate self in place So I think that’s why conventional therapy It doesn’t challenge and question that Separate self and so it’s you’re standing on your fundamental repression mechanism because that’s kind of what it is.

It’s a way of Not having all your traumas and you know stuff flow through at all times, which is useful for functioning. I’m not you know You Putting it down um But yeah, it’s good to know there’s a reason we use different language, even though this stuff is still having an experience, you know, there’s a reason we talk about spirituality is different to um therapy or usual psychology Because it is this existential reckoning where you can come into some deep homeostatic kind of rebalancing with reality and I think that’s why my symptoms resolved and um, and why From the perspective of science of people who are standing from that view of self Um This stuff sounds kind of kooky and weird and they’re like, oh what you had spontaneous healing Like what is this some kind of miracle?

And but again from going through it You’re like, oh no, this is just what the body does the body can heal like if you cut your hand It you know, it heals up right? It’s it’s it looks miraculous It kind of is but it that’s the principle of life. That’s that’s what I was referring to earlier with the the core thing of life isn’t isn’t It’s not that the genes are like the star of the show that I think if there is a star on the show The whole thing hangs together.

So it’s not really but you should what seems salient to me Is that wholeness that healing that tendency towards homeostasis, which is this term we use for this keeping everything in the The right range for life, you know, so having a cut isn’t conducive to having To staying alive over a long time. So that’s why it heals because we just have this tendency towards wholeness So it makes sense that with healing Yeah, this stuff comes out and um, you know I think that’s why trauma is something people talk about a lot in the spirituality space, because it’s when you disrupt the self, you’re disrupting your fundamental repression mechanism.

Guy:
So here’s a question for you then, because I know, let’s say somebody’s listening to this, and they’re definitely diving down the rabbit hole and open to everything we’re chatting about, but they might have children with skin conditions, they might have somebody in the family with asthma or gut issues, you know, and the things that you spoke about, the symptoms healing up once you address the trauma, what are you feeling is the fundamental linchpin, if you like, to allow the body To like, like the cut in the arm to rework itself.

That might be seem miraculous. But it’s actually just the body getting back to its natural state.

James:
So the, the key word I would say is surrender, which is a kind of, uh, or or opening. So the, those are two kind of the same movement I’m pointing to, which is that the, the separate self feeling is, is one of, of feeling separate and guarded and, and yeah, like you have to defend yourself. Whereas, and so that’s why there’s a kind of like a struggling or trying to take a position with reality. Whereas if you can surrender and let just. Let reality be reality, let it flow through and not resist it. Um, which is the same as opening to it, connecting to it, again, it’s not really in here, it’s separate to us, it’s just this, this movement of openness. Yeah, I think that’s the direction that healing happens in. And so I should also clarify that, you know, with the current medical model that’s really excessive, where it’s, you know, everything, everything including mental health disorders are basically meaningless, they’re just physical aberrations, there’s nothing to see here when it comes to your traumas, your personal history, like that’s the kind of, um, the message. I don’t think a lot of the time and then when you discover that so much stuff can be based in trauma Like basically all of my stuff was based in trauma. It seems um then You can really swing to the opposite direction and be like, okay. Nothing has any kind of random physical Basis, that’s all a lie, but it’s not quite true.

I should you know, I should point out that like Someone, someone could behave in a antisocial way because they’re like a, they’ve had childhood trauma and they’re really defensive and they’re aggressive, like all this stuff. Someone could also just have been exposed to lead and it literally just stopped their, like impaired their brain development, like that, that can happen.

Like, so I’m just mentioning that because I’m not dismissing that someone with like a rare genetic disorder is having something that really does arise just from a genetic disorder. But we’ve taken, like, those things are quite rare and we’ve taken that principle in general because it feels more, um, Sometimes people don’t want to go through the pain of healing, they want to have a story that allows them just to be like, oh my, my IBS isn’t um, chronic anxiety, because that would make me, I’d have to go to therapy, I’d have to think about my mom and my dad and all that stuff, it’s actually, it’s just some, oh it’s a garlic, that’s it, I can’t eat garlic, that’s the, it’s not that the garlic is triggering, uh, you know, there’s some complex interaction, no, it’s, it’s just a physical random thing. Um, so yeah, I’m just mentioning that because we shouldn’t put the message out that, or I don’t want to put the message out that, Absolutely everything is healable through Innerwork, but I think people would be surprised about the amount of stuff that is.

Guy:
It’s a, it’s a large percentage, isn’t it? I mean, if you look at the world today, is, yeah.

I mean, honestly, I don’t watch TV, right? But if I do, if I, Catch it, you know, if i’m walking in to get a coffee and there’s a tv on in the background or walks It’s like the world’s gone crazy, mate Like when i’m seeing it from this perspective like the it has gone absolutely mental like in the the fear that’s projected Constantly and I just wonder I mean, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on this But what would the world look like if we openly started to address?

These very things that we spoke about from, to politicians, to, to the medical system, to scientists, to everyone who said that this is actually something we need to bring to the table.

James:
The way, so the way that I tend to work with like the book that I’ve written and the ones I plan to write in the future is, I’ve got basically like three, but two more books that I’ve got in me that I’ve already kind of planned and they all kind of came about because of this journey of surrendering, you know, like after the awakening it took a few decades for me to really get deep into the The healing the trauma and um, you know, I wasn’t doing trauma work when I was like 14, you know, it took it took a while um And really what’s happened is as I was doing that work The mind was was trying to make sense of the world and my position of what happened And that’s what on the way led to insights and I wrote those insights down and they saw how they came together in that so that that’s kind of what my writing is is really I think of it almost like um, The way a snake leaves like a shell or like leaves sheds its skin and then the you know, so I’ve grown Into the present moment into groundedness and all this intellectual stuff has kind of come off as like this this detritus That’s uh, I mean not not to make it sound negative, but it’s uh, because it’s I think hopefully they’re good maps You know that can help people go on similar journeys um, and so one of the things I was really My mind really chewed on a lot was this social piece, this like political, social, you know, healing the world, like what the heck is wrong with us, collective trauma, collective ego.

So yeah, I, I like talking about this stuff. And um, it’s funny that like after putting all these different pieces together, I realized, yeah, like what, Again that thing I mentioned of surrender like the message really is, you know You said how from this perspective the world is crazy And because we’re talking here about a very simple somatic groundedness of like being able to just kind of stop be present and like, you know, I can’t remember who was he said there’s like All of the world’s problems stems from man’s inability to sit alone with himself in a quiet room um, and like it’s that thing of like we we can’t just be at peace and like if we can just physically relax and be at peace um That When you’ve tasted that and when you can live from that It’s really clear that not doing that is just the engine of suffering and discord and chaos in in the world at all levels um I mean, again, caveat, apart from the hurricanes, whatever, but, um, but even that is feedback through climate change.

And so our collective psyche is, um, it really comes down to separation. You know, that this first foundation stone of not feeling at home in the world, there’s a kind of assumption that I’m something alienated separate that needs to defend itself, that my, the death of the body is the ultimate, most important thing and all the other meanings are scaffolded on top of that.

And so I think. To get to a better world, there needs to be a reckoning with that. You can’t just have political change and without a spiritual, like a deep reckoning with our existential situation and reckoning with ourselves. We need to look at ourselves in the mirror and face reality, uh, in my opinion, in order to kind of shed the struggle.

You know, like we’re in this struggle and, um, Yeah, we need to basically stop doing that and a world like that I think would look like it wouldn’t it’s not just a case of Individuals doing I mentioned retreats and in person stuff. I think we would need communities of care like communities where people really come together and and prioritize The good stuff in life that’s always free like like connection You know creativity spending time in nature all that stuff and to see that The, the systems we currently live in, the consumerism, you know, you mentioned TV, like, that stuff is, is meant to disempower you, it’s meant to, I don’t mean there’s some kind of, this is intentionally done, it’s like, oh, if we do this, then this will disempower people, but it’s more, it just evolves in an organic way of like, uh, people that like, you work at the job, you know, for someone else to then give your money, Uh, to the comp to another company to buy something that will entertain you so you can like numb yourself while you You know because of the stress of the job.

It’s a treadmill of disempowerment and we I think a better world would be one in which people woke up to be like this isn’t it like this isn’t life like What life is being present is being connected is living community. And yeah, so I think it would be radically Empowered like people would just impact choose to wake up to that empowerment But it’s it’s a hard road because it forces you to face your traumas and you need that that care piece I think so the I think to to ignite that better world There needs to be a critical mass of wise People who are genuinely wise and caring and can hold space for people not who just claim they can but like literally on a you’re in the room with these people and nervous system to nervous system.

You can feel it’s like no bullshit Like this is a a safe person. We just we need enough healed people like that so that people can start to go Okay, like this feels safe enough that I can I can join this movement of in this direction and it’s you know passing or saying is that it’s It’s basically that thing of the body and the tension The tension I noticed in myself, you know, I did a lot of kind of psychedelic work to heal the trauma stuff and there were times when I would be in a real clench of like stress of like being in the trauma and say like the breathing was like a freeze state and I remember, you know, the mind would be like how am I going to get out of this?

Like I just feel, I’m just in it, I’m like, you’re opening to it to process it, turning towards the shadow stuff, so I don’t want to struggle with it, I want to open to it. I’m just in this like complete freeze, I’m just like, I have nothing I can do, I can’t get out of it, I can’t get out of it and then suddenly something maybe it’s just a hand opens, like starts to relax, and then the, the, the arm relaxes, and then it washes over the whole body. And you see this when you look at image, like imaging of electrical signaling in tissues, it’s how it works, like waves of, like, So much stuff is communicated in waves of energy and electrical activity through the body. And it’s like, you just need that little starting point, and then it sends the signal through the whole system, and it can relax, and it’s like, okay, now I’m breathing, I think the same thing is kind of what I’m describing on a social level.

If you think of each of us as like a cell in a superorganism of the human creature that’s so tensed and reactive, we need, we need some like small area where there’s enough of this signal, like this is working. Okay, like we’ve figured it out. We’ve, we’ve found how to, to ground and then that needs to spread. Um, and I, yeah, I think it has to happen at some point. Um, but, uh, There could be a lot of bumps on the way, you know, like it’s it’s like a disillusion that would lead to a better thing so there would be a lot of Chaos, I think in that transition, but at the same time I mean, maybe not because we’re talking about moving towards a grounding, a holding, you know. Anyway, those are my kind of thoughts on what that would look like

Guy:
Yeah, no, beautiful. Thank you for sharing. It’s funny, like, that’s exactly what happens at our retreats. It’s, it, that very process you said, and then it, it just rushes through towards the end and it’s like, whoof, and there’s a huge

James:
The whole system wants it, it’s like this gravitational pull to surrender to relax, but it just can’t figure it out and it just needs a little, needs to be seeded I guess is the word, to seed it and then it spreads.

Guy:
Yeah. But I feel what you mentioned as well, that we all need to look ourselves in the mirror and really take ownership of it. I think that’s definitely key, isn’t it? And realize that we are actually, we can contribute to the greater whole. And if we start, stop throwing rocks at everything that’s wrong with the world and actually start bringing, pointing ourselves back in.

James:
The reason I, you’re absolutely right that that’s the, that’s the kind of, the mechanism is, is the looking ourselves in the mirror. And I used to think like that was the kind of, Yeah, like that’s the thing I used to talk about. It’s like we need to face ourselves. And then I kind of realized the reason I leave now we’re talking about community and holding spaces. I think it’s a bit like It’s it’s easy to kind of finger wag and say like, you know, say someone who’s behaving in a really toxic way You’d be like you you really need to take responsibility and stop doing that like that’s a that’s a reasonable sentiment but then if you think of you don’t know what their traumas are and what their history is and what their Social support is like and so if you imagine someone Who’s like psychotic with like, they’re so stressed or they’ve hit this like psychotic point and they’re like delusional and they’re trying to like attack and they’re like, they’re they’re cornered and they’re like lashing out people. If, if that person, like I said, they’ve got a knife or something, if you’re just like, you need to face yourself and stop doing this, like the finger wagging is like, what’s that got to do?

Come on, like that’s doing nothing. Like you need to, And this comes out of a kind of empathy thing of not othering and being like even the most harmful people Are us with different conditioning. That’s the thing of seeing through the self thing There is no magical extra ingredient of james That means that if you put james in some evil dictator’s body that I wouldn’t be that evil dictator I would be like it’s just the conditioning. There’s no extra Extra ingredient, um, and so when you see that you see like, okay, well, what would have had to have happened to me?

What would be have been my circumstances to make me behave like that because we do all have this this I believe this like fundamental desire to like Orient towards the best possible situation. And so if the if the situation is bad, it’s probably because you’re what you feel is on offer is There isn’t a good range and I say what you feel off is off it because often you can be offering someone something a really good way out, but they don’t see it because the way the mind we kind of we see our past experiences really filter How reality looks to us, you know So someone could be coming to you with a real offer of support and it could look very threatening to you And you don’t think you’re it looks threatening.

You just think it is threatening your perception is so clouded by your past traumas and stuff. I mean, that’s just how perception works Um, so yeah, that’s why I always think to that that piece of like what’s the what’s the causes and conditions we could change here Instead of putting on the individual to allow that person to then face themselves. Yeah. is then for that person within themselves? Is it the willingness to change? That needs to be the first step in terms of, you know what, I’m ready because otherwise we continue in to try and take the, the horse to water, but they’re just not going to drink,

Guy:
you know? Yeah.

James:
There’s another way. That like, when you’re, you’re so thrown down the tunnel, that like, you know, for me, again, the awakening just hit me over the head and, and if someone, again, if someone had said to me, Say there was like a clone of me at exactly the same age in the you know and they’d said like oh I just had this cool experience like and it relieved my suffering and you should Maybe you should get into zen or like, you know Like I think again through that if I was still that that wound up person before the awakening I probably would have looked at that person and been like I don’t trust you You’re probably trying to like you’re probably trying to hit my money or you’re gonna I just don’t trust I don’t believe you basically i’m you know so I think that’s the the thing is you can’t.

Yeah, I mean, that’s why in things like Buddhism they talk about evil being delusion, basically, that there is no, it’s just that mechanism by which we misperceive reality in a, and we see things in a deluded way, we’re not seeing clearly, um, that is the problem. And so, there is, yeah, I guess I think of it like, um, the thing to do is, um, I mentioned there’s like this gravitational pull to surrender, it’s a bit like, you know, water running downstream, the best you can do is carve channels to make things easier for people.

So if you tell, if you, if you go to someone and be like, you should do this, I’ve got, I know what you need, or that’s like, that’s not it. Whereas if you show up and you support people, and perhaps if you, if you just let yourself be an example for your, you know, If you carry yourself in a way where you’re like, that person seems to have figured something out, like, you know, let people pick up on it that way. And it’s, it requires a kind of non attachment or a non, like, needing to fix the world. And that’s a kind of, an irony is that, I think the, I think the, the level of shedding the struggle, you know, I mentioned earlier is like, Stopping the struggle with reality to do that the deepest level We actually need to fall in love with the world exactly as it is.

We need to not be in that ego thing that’s like No, like I can’t deal with this It’s too much for me because it makes because always what that is is saying There’s a bit of me that I don’t feel up for facing right now because it’s triggering some part of me I don’t want to face and it is possible to to face yourself so deeply that you can go.

Wow, like, you know Climate change is really going to be absolutely horrific and you can just feel the grief of that And see it as a kind of obvious thing and it doesn’t have to be a second thing of the mind being like no but I don’t want it just like this whole Struggling with it and I think that is how we put out the fire of separation and of ego and of struggle is To accept to first grieve and accept and open to ourselves fully and from there you did from there. You don’t it’s not non attachment.

Like I don’t care what’s gonna happen Then again as it’s attested to in Buddhism from that state compassion arises and you just you do what you can know in the most grounded You Wise way possible to, to help, to put out the fires.

Guy:
Mate, that quote you just said really, really, um, landed. We need to fall in love for the world exactly the way it is. That um,

James:
I don’t say that lightly. I mean, you know,

Guy:
I know I know

James:
I’ve faced that again and again. I’ve been like, Nah, do I though? Like, maybe I can find an angle on this, maybe, right? And then again, I guess, like, nope, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. I feel I feel like because the the podcast i’m running out of time But I feel like there’s so many topics we haven’t covered today and we’ve literally just well, that flew with you. I know right like 15 minutes in.

Guy:
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Um, but I I I want to just Instead of diving into new topics. I want to actually ask you a question around surrender then and It’s such a big word, uh, or for people to even lean into that concept.

How do you live your life now on a daily basis with surrender in mind? Because you’re living in Portugal, you’re, I don’t know if you finished your retreat center of you, is it open? Is it ready?

James:
It’s very close to being finished

Guy:
you know,

James:
be open 2025.

Guy:
A guy from London living in Portugal Putting you know, I have no doubt there’s a lot of surrender and trust going into what you’re doing Right now, which is amazing. You got a book coming out You know, there’s all these things that we tend to Love the idea of but we don’t we stay in our day job and we go forward. So i’m just curious How you live your life? with that in

James:
Yeah, it’s funny because I, I, I do think what you point to here is that I wouldn’t, if I was operating from the small self, James, that I’d like, if I thought that was real, I probably wouldn’t be doing all this because the stress needs to be able to move through and, as I mentioned before, like for me, these trauma release exercises from David Buscelli were really powerful where you do learn to like tremor and so now You know, I I live in a very you know constantly somatically opening state where like the moment there’s any stress to say that’s like Something special happens and there’s like a gasp or, you know, a tension in the chest. There’s immediately an orienting to that, softening, opening, becoming mindful. So there’s this like, it’s like any knots of resistance are constantly being unraveled. Um, and so my spiritual practice, my path is not different to life. Like it’s, it’s completely, there’s no separation between them. It’s just this constant opening.

And I think that it does come down to this, to that opening to experience in an embodied way, stopping surrendering. Um, but yeah, it’s funny. It just, I don’t know. Practical level like the when we start this project. I’m lucky that my wife isn’t a similar You know She wanted to do something similar and you have to be with a similar kind of you know Like minded person to do something like this and when we started we both had this thing of like, you know, we don’t want to um We don’t want to be like old and and be like, oh, you know We wanted to do that thing, but we never like did it like we we didn’t do enough We never lived life fully enough and it’s about a year ago as we were finishing Like the the main phase of the construction of this and it was so stressful And I was just like, you know what like I’m not I know now that I’ve reached my limit Like I’ve overshot like I’ve done enough I’m not going to look back when I’m older and be like I didn’t live fully enough like I’ve I really took on a lot with this um So yeah, it’s it’s on a on a basic human level.

It’s nice to acknowledge that like this is a It’s anyone who wants to who wants to renovate a ruin in the middle of the mountains and build a retreat center. It’s it’s no joke

Guy:
Yeah, I don’t doubt it. Do you feel that in some way I’m just trying to think of the right question and around it so if it doesn’t come out but that you’re being guided that there’s an intuitive aspect to you that you develop and it’s like if I listen to this and lean into this as opposed to just my analytical mind process and everything then everything is going to work out in like nature it just works out in this incredible beautiful form. so I mentioned the, yeah, the thing before that, everything I do, it happens in a very organic or intuitive way, is the way I would say it, where like, it’s um, I never resist what, you know, if, if things are showing me like there’s a block here, like I’m not gonna, you know, struggle with it. Like in the Dao, they talk about the power of water that can kind of carve through mountains, because it doesn’t struggle.

James:
If it’s not going to try and go uphill, like it goes where the cracks are, and it’s, you know, so I feel like, you know, I, I, listen to reality and I, I, um, I let it, yeah, do what it’s going to do. Um, and the good thing is, is again, it’s like early when I want, I was trying to articulate the perfection of, of, reality and I want to say like, everything’s where it needs to be, but it’s not that it actually needs to be anywhere because I don’t, you know, think about it in those kind of terms of like, as you were saying, like, but it’s more like, everything is where it is and if you don’t judge it, it’s perfect.

So it’s a bit like, even if, so say like, no one. Like say the retreat center was a failure or something and then we sold it we did something else and like the journey goes on like there is no it doesn’t have to be that you trust and hey Everyone becomes a millionaire because I trusted and you know like stuff like that when you’re in that state of doing what’s aligned sure like Amazing things can happen because you are where you’re supposed to be and you’re being authentic and so people resonate with it but at the same time like yeah, it’s It’s life.

There are no guarantees with life. It’s just uh To me I guess it’s just the only way to be is to be in this to in the openness and non resistance the to let reality do its thing Um, because it’s always going to do what it’s going to do and to try and position yourself as a small self That’s fighting with it. I’ve found is just it’s a losing game. So I don’t recommend it

Guy:
Yeah. No, thank you. And, um, last, last thing I want to mention, you got a new [00:54:00] book coming out, The Dawn of Mind. Uh, you got a two year old, you said. You’ve been building a retreat center. How did you find the time to write this book? I’m curious as

James:
I think when my mother in law came to visit there was a that was when I got a good chunk of it so shout out to her for. Yeah, it’s, um, the book itself is very, um, it’s very much kind of reckoning with reality and our place within it. So it’s, I’m not really talking about, it’s kind of like a good foundation if you’re intellectually curious for the kind of stuff we’ve been talking about, and that’s, I plan to talk more about the more practical.

Self help, you know stuff in future and the social stuff better. But yeah, this book is very much like what is going on with reality Um, which I find as again as people are surrendering into reality We do become curious about especially as you wake up to it not being the way you thought it was It’s natural to be like, well, what is going on? So it’s it’s in that That kind of aspect of the path

Guy:
Yeah, fantastic. Well, congratulations. I hope everyone listening to this will go out and grab a copy of that book and and It’s a perfect gift as well. I see these things as windows in to To support not only ourselves but people that we care about around us that might be starting to become curious, right?

James:
It’s out before Christmas so, uh, why not buy five copies for everyone, you know

Guy:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly Look, uh, look and website as well if we can people buy the book’s going to be available everywhere.

James:
Book is available everywhere. Yeah. Amazon. Wherever you want to get it and um, yeah, the main My handle on every platform basically is dr. James cook with the on the end. Um, there’s drjamescooke.com but then my main project at the moment is innerspaceinstitute.org, which is a kind of Um, it’s what I’m have all these different projects. I’m doing like the book and the writing and I have a podcast called living mirrors and uh, Really retreats and I made a bunch of kind of guided meditations and I wanted to bring them all together into a single thing where um, yeah, if you’re interested in any of this stuff check out innerspaceinstitute.org, especially if you’re interested in The more self help practical I mean self help maybe isn’t the right word, but inner work I guess is the best word for it, you know, like, um, the practical stuff to do with awakening and non duality and Yeah, waking up to our place in existence because I have a lot of resources there Free and there’s also a membership option where people can kind of take part in the community and help build into a bigger project Uh, yeah, those are the main places I’d point to people.

Guy:
Beautiful. Well, congratulations on everything you’re doing mate. It really is wonderful. And uh, I certainly hope this podcast brings some much needed awareness to what you’re doing as well mate I feel there’s so many questions. I wanted to dive topics. I wanted to dive into today What is consciousness reality?

Beyond our perceptions even my own kundalini awakening like with the nervous system There’s so many things but maybe you can come back on next year sometime

James:
Yeah, I’d love

Guy:
We could dive into the mystical Aspects of things and what you’ve learned and the psychedelic journey ayahuasca. Oh my god. It’s just

James:
Yeah,

Guy:
on

James:
about.

Guy:
Leslie horn, but uh james, thanks so much mate. I really enjoyed. Thank you

James:
Thanks really enjoyed it.