Awakened Conscious Conversations
Healing the world one episode at a time by offering realistic solutions to the journey of life. Both self hosted ( By The Gentle Yoga Warrior) and guest episodes.
Many of our guests have overcome significant obstacles and transformed their lives.
Rich with deep talks and solo endeavours, often offering tips on living a more conscious life.
Many episodes include a bonus optional meditation!
Awakened Conscious Conversations
To Be or Not To Be: Reclaiming Humanity in an Age of Contraction
The paradox of modern life is that we've never been more connected yet never felt more disconnected. This profound tension sits at the heart of our latest episode, "To Be or Not To Be," where we explore how reclaiming the lost art of simply being might be our most revolutionary act.
Have you noticed how the world seems to be contracting rather than expanding? From political systems that appear misaligned with public welfare to the tangible decline in biodiversity (remember when country drives meant insect-splattered windshields?), something essential feels like it's slipping away. What's being lost is our capacity to fully inhabit our humanity—to learn life's lessons while simultaneously experiencing beauty, joy, and magic.
The culprit isn't just external circumstances but our relationship with technology and constant stimulation. When we endlessly scroll through social media, remain perpetually available through our devices, or fill every moment with content consumption, we sacrifice the sovereignty of our souls.
Ready to reclaim your capacity for being? Join us for this transformative conversation, complete with a guided visualisation meditation designed to help you walk the path from where you are to where your dreams await. .
Start for FREE
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
A note for every episode: we do not necessary agree with all the views on our podcast and leave listeners to make their own mind up with what they do or don't agree with.
Want to be a guest on Awakened Conscious Conversations? Send The Gentle Yoga Warrior a message on PodMatch, here:
Hello, dear listeners, I'm your host, the Gentle Yoga Warrior, and this is Awaken Conscious Conversations podcast. And we are in our fifth year of broadcasting. We hit our fifth birthday. Start of June, and celebrations all round, because without you, dear listeners, I don't have a show. Big special shout out to our sponsors. You are such a blessing, so thank you.
Speaker 1:And today's show is inspired by Hamlet, but not based on Hamlet's Shakespearean tragedy, and it's To Be or Not to Be is the title of this episode. I will explain more, but it's not in the context of the play, but rather of how we can evolve as humans To be or not to be. How can we evolve as humans? If I look back in all honesty at this last decade I've been around for a while I would say that this is probably one of my least favorite decades, in a sense that I feel the world is becoming more contracted rather than expanded, and it's. It could be quite easy just to look at all the things that are wrong, like how the world feels, that feels like it's run by people that don't have our best interests. The cost of living has gone up so much. We have so little freedoms compared to what we used to, and what makes me particularly sad is the decline in the insects, and that's not from reading scientific papers, but from seeing it. And, as awful as it was when you used to drive along the country roads, the, the windscreen used to get splattered, unfortunately, with insects, but it showed that there was an abundance of insects and and and all those little creatures that help keep this world wonderful and and going. But because of our lack of being think that is another thing that has kind of happened where we're affecting nature by our lack of being.
Speaker 1:I feel To have the autonomy of being what it is, to be a human, which I feel is to learn lessons but have beauty and joy and magic in our life. Learn lessons, but have beauty and joy and magic in our life, and it feels like all the joy has been sucked out of the UK. That's how it feels sometimes, but, of course, if we're going to kind of go down the route of looking at how things are politically, financially, it could appear to be that, but I'm here to let you know, regardless of where you're joining us from. That to be is the answer. To navigate through all of this when I am still and I ideas, when I'm busy when I'm skimming Instagram, all things like this.
Speaker 1:I find that all these things would be great in moderation, but like a fine chocolate, or not so fine chocolate, maybe a not so good nice chocolate, but either way they can have an addictive quality that takes us away from the sovereignty of our soul of being, and being is where we connect with ourself, our higher self, and whatever it is you believe in. Maybe you believe in god, maybe believe in a universe, maybe maybe you don't believe in, but you believe in the progression of the human civilization. Whatever it is, on those moments to be is where we get ourselves back, and if we, as humans, will find the easy way not to do stuff because, you know, if we're in such dire straits of where the world is here and then there's some appalling things going on all around the world, then we're not going to work on our self-development and we're going to go into our habits and, like I said, a habit is it's all about kind of moderation. So maybe you relax watching something on tv, but maybe it's become the norm that every night after a hard day, that's what you'll do and some days you will need that, but by finding these ways not to be with ourselves or kind of to find the stillness within ourselves. It stops us from reaching our goals and our dreams. So maybe there's something that you want to achieve, and achieving something could be something as simple as making nice bread, to wanting to be the next CEO of a big corporation, which, whatever floats your boat, is what you may want to do.
Speaker 1:But the way the world, this technology, has become so fast and I've read in several articles that the AI when you ask AI something, it's actually taken our resources, our water. It uses so much water Like I'm not a scientist, but I've read in different places and that it's taken up so much of our resources by using this and I thought all this stuff was meant to make our life easier, but yet people are stressed, overwhelmed and we're not doing the things anymore that we like doing, we're exhausted and stuff like that. But I'm sharing this with you and I, for someone who has struggled a lot with trying to make bring things into fruitation, is the moments when I start to sit still and be in the moments when there's big change. And then one day I sat down for an hour because I had the time and I kind of just sat and watched nature for an hour. I understand how an hour might feel quite a long time and it's just something you work up towards, but it felt it really kind of helped me. But you can stop by doing a few few minutes. But whatever you're doing, please allow yourself to have time to be bored.
Speaker 1:I see, whenever I get a train or public transport, there's people are just glued to their phone. Okay, they might be reading a novel on it, but half the time people might just be scrolling between all these these things that are on Instagram or other social media platforms, facebook, etc. And you know, I did also hear somewhere that we're going to spend an average of 25 years of our life on our smartphones, which is, do you think, whatever made us or why, why we're here? That was what we meant to be, but I really don't. And yet we need them for work. Lots of offices expect people to be on them. Lots of way people contact us, people think we should be able to contact it 24 7, that we're tracked, we're targeted all this by adverts, etc.
Speaker 1:It can feel quite a very dark, contracted place. So to the way to pull back these, these shackles of of life that have kind of stopped us from wanting that deep, loving connection and seeing the humanness and each of us in a loving way, understanding that we're not all going to agree on the same thing, but allowing people to make their own paths and not live in the same way as we want to live. But I think what happens is the ego gets involved and then people think their way is better than someone else's and then, before you know it, there's wars and all kinds of evil things that happen, which is which is very sad. But the way we can help ourselves with these is injecting these bite-sized moments of being so to be or not to be. To be for sure, of course we have to not be and be in this electronic world sometimes to navigate ourselves through our work etc.
Speaker 1:But the way you're going to get your peace back is if perhaps you you get a bus and then a train and you really enjoy reading your book. But maybe on the bus you could just look out the window and take in the nature, or maybe you could read the book for half of the journey and then just like look around and out the window and see what is happening outside, and maybe you are so rushing from A to B, that you forget to see what's in between, and so maybe you walk the same way every day. But can you start to take in things? Because if we're all looking at phones we're going to miss that connection. And I come from the days before people would text, when we used to actually phone people and speak on the phone in the good old-fashioned way and we had such a thing, which is kind of disappearing a bit now, which is called critical thinking, where we would listen to different people's opinions and then form our own for our own critical thinking, whereas it seems to be that there's a culture of thinking the same as everyone else.
Speaker 1:And I just think if we were all meant to think exactly the same, wouldn't we all be the same. So to be or not to be, the moments that we be are the moments that we can cherish and be within ourselves. Could we well have a family meal around a table instead of everyone watching the tv. Maybe you want to do that on the weekend, but could there be times where? Or on a weekday, but could there be times where you all sit around the table as a family, or even if you're single, could you just sit and enjoy the food. If you're struggling financially to meet and be with people because it is such pressing times, could you go for a picnic with friends, or could you all have a dinner party, but you all make a course each and you do it. That way could you find some connection. Like you know, sometimes those generation can get a bit cranky sometimes. But could we make an effort maybe to speak to them more often and not just kind of like forget about them and the what and spend time in and doing stuff we love?
Speaker 1:Maybe you've always dreamed of painting, but you don't think you're good enough. Do the art because you want to do it for your soul's development. Doesn't matter, it might become great work, it might not, but do it because it's really to be or not to be. So to be is to find time to meditate, and we could have a big resistance to that. But I will leave you with meditation at the end of this. But meditation is a really important way to be. To be or not to be? To be is if you've got a goal. The mind will try and trick you a bit because you will think oh yes, I want to do this goal and you might have every desire to go for it.
Speaker 1:But then you look at your social media, you start scrolling or you may need to look something up on the internet and before you know it, 20 minutes is gone. So if there's something you want to make a dream towards, could you set your alarm for, say, half an hour and I know there's busy working parents there, so could you? If you can't, maybe you can do it once a week. Maybe you say to your family I'm going to a cafe by myself early on a Saturday morning for a bit, and then I'll meet up with you. And that's when you do it.
Speaker 1:You write a plan, you see how you can take action steps towards it, but knowing that life doesn't always work out how we want to, so being adaptable. But you won't get that kind of like juice to do that if you're not being. Of course, if we just did being and there was no not being then we wouldn't achieve things either. So it's a balance of stillness, that ah moment, and then also action. But the trouble is with so much action and of course it's going to be so much easier right to scroll and watch funny cat videos than it is to pick up that pen and paper and and work towards your dream, but in the long run, what is going to serve you best and what is going to serve humankind best by you doing that? So these are just foods for thoughts and, as always, here's a meditation inspired by today's show.
Speaker 1:I'll be back next week with a brand new season and enjoy the rest of your summer, or maybe it's coming to the end of your winter. But wherever you are, enjoy, and here is the meditation. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back always nice to sit on a block or a cushion or that's not available for you you sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching and if you're doing something that requires your concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, let's begin. So hello, dear listeners, for our being meditation.
Speaker 1:Today it's going to be a visualized meditation, so to be, to be as you be in your imagination, and in your imagination only. You will take a walk down this beautiful, beautiful grassy hill. There's gentle buttercups growing around you and in the distance you see this beautiful dragon kite. So you play with a kite and you just watch it swirl backwards and forwards. Play with a kite and you just watch it swirl backwards and forwards. And as you walk along this magical place, some rabbits run past you, but they're fast as can be.
Speaker 1:In the distance, you hear the sound of a dog barking. You hear the swirl of a waterfall behind you, you touch the texture of the soft grass and your imagination. You hear the song of a beautiful bird. You see the beautiful golden corn in a field in the distance, glistening in the sun, and you think I'm on this hill now and there's just grass. But one day I want to harvest the corn of my desires, my wishes, but that corn in that wonderful field, with the sun glistening on it and, of course, you're on a hill. The grass may be short, but it's a bit like life. You're starting, the seas are starting to grow up, but you could just get focused on staring at the grass and thinking I need to be here, here, here.
Speaker 1:But instead, in this meditation, you just allow the grass to grow at its own rate, but you just take in the beauty that you see as you come down this hill. So you just take one step in front of the other. Of each step you will notice something in your imagination. So just look up into this imaginary sky. What do you see? Listen with your ears, what do you hear.
Speaker 1:Imagine you taste the air. How does it taste to you? Imagine you touch the ground. How does it feel to you? And all the time you're being, you're being as you walk slowly towards your dream and your goal, and the wonderful field looks a bit closer. But to get to that field you need to navigate some action steps, but not from a place of force, but from being, from being, from being so slowly come back into the moment, come back into the room. So for your homework in this meditation is you're going to try and listen to this meditation every day in a quiet place and then you're going to pick up your journal. You're going to see your goal as where you want to be, as this golden field of corn. You are on your hill of your possibility and you're going to write action steps, what you can do each month to get from the hill to this golden field of your dreams and possibilities. And let me know how you get on with that meditation and, if you want to, you can sit quietly for a few moments now.
