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Slay Your Dragons - Malcolm Stern
"Slay your dragons with compassion"
To become equal to the dream sewn within us, our heart must break open and usually must break more than once. That’s why they say that the only heart worth having is a broken heart. For only in breaking can it open fully and reveal what is hidden within." - Michael Meade
This is a series of podcasts based on the premise explored in Malcolm Stern’s acclaimed book of the same name, that adversity provides us with the capacity to develop previously unexplored depths and is , in effect , a crucible for self reflection and awareness. Malcolm lost his daughter Melissa to suicide in 2014. It slowly dawned on him over the following few years that he was being educated and an opportunity was being presented where new insights helped him forge a path through his grief and despair. As part of that cathartic journey, he wrote “ Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020 ) where he was able to describe some of the practices that had helped him shed light on a way through the darkness.
Having run courses for a number of years for Onlinevents, he entered into a collaboration with John and Sandra Wilson, to put together a series of podcasts which featured interviews with people who had found enrichment through facing into, and ultimately overcoming adversity. The intention was to provide inspiration for its listeners to map out and challenge their own adversity. Some of his guests are well known - others less so, but each has a story to tell of courage, insight and spiritual and emotional intelligence.
More than 50 podcasts have been published so far and include Jo Berry’s moving story of transforming her fathers murder by the IRA in the Brighton bomb blast ( Sir Anthony Berry) by engaging with Pat McGee ( the man who planted the bomb) and finding forgiveness and meaning and an unlikely friendship. Andrew Patterson was an international cricketer who has found purpose and meaning after a genetic illness paralysed him and ended his sporting career. Jay Birch was an armed robber and meth addict , who woke up to his true self and now mentors and coaches other troubled individuals and Jim McCarty, a founder member of the Yardbirds , shares his story of his wife’s death from cancer and the deep spirituality he found in the wake of her passing.
All the podcasts are presented by Malcolm Stern. Who has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He is Co-Founder of Alternatives at St James’ Church in London and runs groups internationally.
Sponsored by Onlinevents
https://www.onlinevents.co.uk/
Slay Your Dragons - Malcolm Stern
Singing Fields and Silent Wisdom: Chloe Goodchild's Journey
What happens when you discover your voice is actually a gateway to spiritual awakening? In this soul-stirring conversation, Malcolm Stern welcomes singer-philosopher Chloe Goodchild, founder of The Naked Voice, for a profound exploration of sound, silence, and authentic expression.
From an unexpected beginning—childhood deafness that immersed her in the language of silence—Chloe reveals how she transformed limitation into transcendent possibility. Her journey weaves through collaborations with composer John Tavener, where she embodied "the faceless, dark sound of the lost feminine," and spiritual pioneers like Gabrielle Roth who asked her simply to "sing stillness."
The dialogue delves into life's essential questions: What if suffering offers the highest form of vitality? How might chaos serve as a catalyst for transformation? Why do some follow their soul's calling despite conventional pressures to pursue security and status? As Malcolm notes, "Inside every one of us is a daemon that will drive us nuts until we do what we were born to do."
Both hosts reflect on embracing eldership rather than retirement, continuing to expand their gifts and wisdom with age. The conversation culminates in Chloe's stunning performance of "Om Tara," a devotional piece to the Buddhist deity of compassion that embodies everything discussed—the integration of sound and silence, suffering and transcendence, individual voice and universal connection.
For anyone questioning their path, feeling silenced, or seeking deeper meaning amidst global uncertainty, this episode offers a resonant reminder that authentic expression isn't about performance but presence—a way of "restoring living presence to the ears of humanity."
Chloe Goodchild: Singer, Author, Founder of The Naked Voice (North Atlantic Books 2015)
https://www.chloegoodchild.com/ | https://www.thenakedvoice.com/
This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents
So welcome to my podcast, slay your Dragons With Compassion, which I'm doing in conjunction with my friends, john and Sandra Wilson, at online events. I have an amazing range of guests. We've done almost 60 podcasts now so far and I love doing them. And I love doing them because we hear such interesting stories and I have such amazing conversations with people, and they're often with friends and or people I've admired from a distance. But, chloe, I've admired from close up because we've actually been friends for more than 30, 40 years, I think actually so a long time and uh, and I've watched your progress, chloe, along the way and just seen how your your work is actually deeply profound. I looked at your website and it described you as a singer, philosopher, and I think that's a lovely, lovely sort of connection. But of course, we both were interested in rum dust in the early days and you actually were providing some of the voice work on rum dust retreats. You've also worked with one of my favourite composers, john Tavener. It was Mary, mother of God, was it?
Chloe Goodchild:Yes.
Malcolm Stern:And so you've really applied your voice everywhere, and I don't see you as a classic singer ie, you're not a sort of like you don't do pop music and great songs, but actually some of your, your music, especially the singing fields, which I remember very well, and and something else from that album, a very beautiful track which the name escapes me right now, but you have made some really exquisite music in your time. So I'm very delighted to explore with you what has shaped you, what's made you become who you are, as we both reach this time in our lives of our elderships as well. So, yeah, that's great, so welcome, and perhaps you say a little bit more about yourself as well, and then we can see where that runs.
Chloe Goodchild:Malcolm, it's lovely to be in conversation with you again and really looking forward to this conversation.
Chloe Goodchild:Certainly, compassion, I would say, has been the absolute ground of this work.
Chloe Goodchild:You know I was brought very intense, always three-point sermons the Power of Three is the trinity of experience and the understanding of the Power of Three as a mental and a communication process became really central in my own journey and I had to kind of battle against the institution, the institutional version of Christ, if you like, whereas I'm very rooted in an understanding of Christ, the being of Christ.
Chloe Goodchild:You know the non-institutional, non-religious Christ, you know the non-institutional, non-religious Christ, and that has been really, I would say, very influential in my choice to start exploring voice and language as a process or as a spiritual practice, but essentially as a practice of self-inquiry, because I realized that the witnessing mind was the one dimension that seemed to be really seriously lacking in the arts and music world, and so I kind of started being pulled in the direction of the music industry and then realized that I wasn't really particularly interested in making huge sums of money and, you know, becoming a kind of icon human being, you know. So, by the grace of God I was actually able to meet John Tavener, who I started to meet at his publishers actually in London in the must have been God, must have been the 80s.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Chloe Goodchild:And I was just on the hunt for anybody any sort of musician, musical practitioner, particularly working with the Voice, that really walked their talk.
Malcolm Stern:Yes, very important actually, in all the work we're doing again with alternatives, which you've spoken at many times, um, it's very much. You can see the people who are walking their talk and the ones who are spilling out empty philosophy. And we see that in the, in the whole consciousness movement, right, yes, that's so true, isn't it?
Chloe Goodchild:And so, when we're talking about the consciousness movement, to be aware that we are learning what on earth that means, because we're seeing examples, or really appalling examples, of what it means to be a leader in the mainstream world, and that clearly indicates, at a planetary level, to us, at an individual or more localized level, what, why is that? Why has that happened? You?
Malcolm Stern:know that's a very good question. I mean, I think that's actually a lovely line of inquiry. Your answer to that would be well I was hoping you were going to have a tricky enlightenment in this moment well, it's, it's, um, it is absolutely fascinating, isn't it?
Chloe Goodchild:I think I first got an inkling of it when I was about 13, because I was one of these reckless, you know, teenagers that was trying to bring down the grammar school system. I'm obviously very grateful for, you know, being having access to academic life and everything, but also aware that that also was creating a very limited perception of what true education is, which is a direct experience of, you know, the soul of one's spirit, and so I was seeing again, without knowing how to articulate it, a real experiencing, a real absence of that as a teenager. So I started, you know, the inevitable, you know, questioning everything, and I used to spend hours in my headteacher's study. She was amazing, she was so patient with me, you know, just saying why am I being taught everything but what I want to know? And she was great. She really, you know, she was very empathic about it. Great, she was very empathic about it.
Chloe Goodchild:But then it was at that point that I realized, when I was invited to conduct our reckless class of 13-year-olds hormonally driven 13-year-olds to enter this choir competition in the school, that it was the first time that I started to experience coherence and the power of music to activate and generate coherence in what is a normally a very, very anarchic group of people. So that was really fascinating to me and I in realizing that suddenly this group became this completely deep listening, sharing, collaborative field of communicators. And then not only for them to discover, and all of us to discover, that if we become like that, you know you win the show. And bizarrely that's what happened, but it was a real message to me, uh, and I I think in many ways was the beginning of of exploring, uh, a life, um, that really took me into a really deep inquiry of the nature of the voice itself that's very great, very interesting, because, as you're speaking, I'm thinking that, um, we all sort of feel like we probably have guidance in our lives.
Malcolm Stern:You know, we were born with whatever we're born with and where that comes from, and then we're drawn towards certain areas. So I was very drawn in my 30s towards psychotherapy and I knew that this was going to be my life, that this was going to be my life, I think. As you're speaking, I realise, I think everybody has a draw, but sometimes we shut the door on the draw and go with the security and the safety of fitting in with the crowd. So, from a very early age, what I'm hearing is that you actually that you were inspired by the voice, which has actually been your tool for all these years as well.
Chloe Goodchild:Yeah Well, absolutely, malcolm, and and very much for you too. I mean, I've loved, I've just loved sitting and listening to you and exploring and learning from, to dare oneself to, you know, against all odds, in many ways, you know, to pursue the question. You know, who am I, why am I here, you know, and what is mine to express? And those three questions are at the centre of our work with the Naked Voice, which is my organisation.
Malcolm Stern:And as you're speaking again, it's like you know, it's such a rich sort of understanding of things as well. So what I'm, what I'm realising as you're speaking, is that we all have our purpose as well and that actually, if we all have our purpose as well and that actually, if we're following our purpose, what's happening in the world around us, unless we are right in the thick of it and I don't want to underestimate the suffering that goes on in the world, but it would be it's very easy to look at the world and the state of the world and think what's the point, you know, and despair. But actually, when we're actually sort of tuned into something that's ours to bring through and that we're refining and honing, probably for our whole life, if not many lifetimes, um, but we won't go there for the moment, uh, but but if, if we look at that, then we, what we start to see is that purpose becomes the, the, the driving force behind us, rather than the quest for money.
Chloe Goodchild:Oh, yes, yes yeah, that's really what drives the vehicle for so many, doesn't it? And that's what has created the chaos, uh, that we're experiencing collectively, uh, you know, is the, the power, uh, you know, and the greed, uh, and the glory that apparently arises from that and that clearly is not working. And I just feel we're living in such an exciting time because, you know, without getting kind of lost in spiritual, bypassing the reality, is that what seems to be happening, according to you know, a kind of an intelligence of consciousness, you know, a kind of an intelligence of consciousness is that it knows that it has to dismantle the present regime, the present planetary kind of attempt at, you know, divide and conquer, that has to collapse and it has to re-create itself, uh, in in a new form, just as music does, you know that's interesting again.
Malcolm Stern:So it's like you know, your, your, your thinking sort of inspires my thinking as well. So I'm that we can look on the collapse as we're in terrible times, right. What the hell is this all about? But actually there's an inevitability about that happening, and I remember someone saying when, when, when Trump was elected for the second time that if Kamala Harris had been had been elected, we would have carried on as was. As it is. There's an enormous shift that's happened. Now I don't know if that's good, bad or otherwise, and actually we can't tell what's good, bad or otherwise at some level, but what I can see is that the world is changing so quickly and it can easily look like the world is disintegrating. But what I'm hearing you say is also that the world is, is about to reintegrate or can potentially reintegrate.
Chloe Goodchild:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. That's what I'm sensing and I've learned that so much from music and from improvisation, in a way, improvising with people, particularly people that think they haven't got a voice, which is most people you know when you first meet them to actually discover that your feeling, the feelings that you walk about with, literally, are music themselves, whether they're dark or light feelings, they, you know, you need both, both are required in order to create an interesting piece of music and a transformative piece of music which creates a third thing If there's enough, you know, witnessing and living presence and yeah, you know, a balancing of the emotional with the intellectual and the deep listening, we can then discover that there is something extraordinary can happen, can come out of actually not knowing what's going to come out of my mouth next, you know, which is yes exactly.
Malcolm Stern:In fact, effectively, we're all channeling all the time, every conversation we're channeling. However, we don't want to get too sort of poe about that as well, but what sort of has led you to this very philosophic understanding? I mean, obviously I'm in tune with a lot of what you're saying and I'm always enriched by the dialogues we have, and I did a podcast for you. You also run a podcast series, which is a very beautiful one as well. What took you to that place of inquiry and philosophy and an ability to look at the world through a slightly different lens than most people look at it?
Chloe Goodchild:I mean, I wonder myself, I have a narrative, that we all have narratives, don't we, which we can either buy into or not, and I carry mine quite lightly now. But there was, I think, the fact that I actually was deaf for the first between the ages of four and seven, largely deaf following traumatic surgery on my ears that in some strange way created a kind of what would be called in present jargon, a kind of disability of not being able to hear. But actually it gave me an opportunity at that time as a very unformed, open, wondrous, you know, child, to be in nature a lot, to really explore the power of the senses and the elements. So I spent quite a lot of time on my own, because my mother had the good sense to take me out of school. So that was great because I so I actually had, I would say, the greatest privilege of just being able to be in nature a lot more than I otherwise would have been.
Chloe Goodchild:But were you also terrified by your deafness? I think there has to be. I think I've probably sort of grown through a kind of terror ofies, that, a kind of yeah, the isolation factor was definitely a factor, and I'm aware that that probably had its own bearing on my dynamics within the family, because I became very identified with the etheric realm of reality and that is really what bridged into a deep reassurance and self-confidence within the field of music, Because music was like this, you know, and particularly sound and singing gave me the opportunity to really connect with myself, albeit in a quite unconventional way, because, you know, having had this early childhood experience, teenage life then became a research ground for emotional you know, emotional relationships and all of that, but silence.
Chloe Goodchild:It was always really important to me in my love affairs as a teenager that my boyfriends could be silent. That was a requirement, it was, and they were very up, you know it. In many ways that enters into the wonder of of, you know, falling in love with um, but so that had that, that fascination with the language and the consciousness of silence has been literally followed all the way through. Uh, and that's what really ultimately, ultimately, when I realized I wasn't going to be able to be a normal music teacher in a, you know, a really repressed comprehensive school, that I had to step out on my own and then I was very involved with Quakers. So the Quaker world introduced me to Martin Luther King and to Gandhi and to the whole language of nonviolence, which opened the door and gave me more confidence to realise that what I was experiencing was really important.
Malcolm Stern:Well, that's interesting because you could so easily have gone the route of becoming a hermit or removed from society, or you could have gone the route by sort of compartmentalizing yourself, so that you were squashed into being a music teacher. There was obviously a lot more that wanted to. I'm not saying anything against music teachers, by the way, but something about that you've actually. You've broadened your horizons against the odds, I would say so and you've had to trust your own internal radar in order to go there. And then you meet people like John Tavener, who's probably, in terms of modern composers, one of the greats of modern composers. I mean, he is the, along with the Bachs and Beethovens of our time. And I wonder if we could just take a look at your how that happened with John Tavener and how that that panned out for you. How did you get to meet him?
Chloe Goodchild:Well, yet more synchronicities. My father had been. He was by now a suffragan bishop in London, in Kensington, and he had managed to bring the Orthodox Russian Orthodox Church into London. And it was through that, because I was by now studying music and education at Cambridge and the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of this Russian Orthodox Church used to come and give these phenomenal sermons on mystical Christianity in Cambridge.
Malcolm Stern:Wow.
Chloe Goodchild:I was blown away by this, and then I followed him back to where he was actually living and working, which was at this church, and that was where John Taverner also went to church. And I remember going there and I remember seeing him and seeing this really tall sort of beam of light really just walking about, and I gradually made my way towards him and said I know about you, I know about your music, and I wonder if I could just we could meet and talk.
Malcolm Stern:You also have the confidence to be able to sort of go up to sort of like a celebrity type of figure and actually set yourself sort of like can we connect? And then, presumably, he said yes.
Chloe Goodchild:Well, he was very generous. He was very, very generous and also, I think, possibly quite lonely as well, because it was a. You know that the, the whole sort of musical genre that he was developing there, really arising out of ancient Pythagorean, going right back to. You know the potency of the musical modes and in a way they are the equivalent of our Indian ragas, if you like. So the musical modes you know. I said to him, how do you make this music? I mean how?
Chloe Goodchild:You know, the piece of music that I was involved in was called Mary of Egypt and he called it a musical icon rather than opera, but we performed it at the Maltings the Snape in England and literally it just involved three about the power of three. It just involved three, the power of three, three characters Mary, who was a harlot who had been thrown out of the church for you know being, you know the dark feminine, so-called at that time, and Zosima, who is this monk who was coming into the desert where Mary was. She was already going through this incredible evolutionary process of her own and it's all about the relationship between the masculine and the feminine and how it sacralizes itself in a completely unorthodox way actually Interesting that the word orthodox becomes unorthodox with John in many ways. But what he was doing there, of course, was because he brings in the animal world and he brings in the lion, and it's all of the part that I was required, was invited to sing, was was required, was invited to sing, was the Mother of God and she had to sing offstage Her voice. They mic'd the voice all around the auditorium so that you just got this experience of what John described as the faceless, dark sound of the lost feminine.
Chloe Goodchild:You know that must be returned to this world, and so I had to sing very, very low and it was an incredible practice and it was perfect, because that was just how I loved to practice was in this way. So it wasn't even a performative thing, it was a spiritual practice to work with him and I think that's how he was altogether. So he really initiated and deepened and reaffirmed my understanding that music is not about performance, you know, it's not about a performer and an audience. It's really about restoring, you know, restoring a living presence into the ears of humanity. I would say.
Malcolm Stern:That's lovely. I remember his album with Stephen Isserlis, the Connecting Veil, which was, you know, one of the albums that blew me away. It was just there was something exquisite about it, and so when I heard that you were doing something with him, I was sort of like wow, that's pretty amazing. That's also one of the, as you say, it's one of these synchronicities and these things. What I'm realizing again as as you're speaking, that these things tend to lift our confidence.
Malcolm Stern:You start to believe in yourself more when others start to believe in you, and so that sort of feels like that's happened all the way along the way. And I know that, um, that you were together for a while with with my friend and your ex-partner, roger houston, and roger was actually and you, responsible for alternatives, sort of like upping its game a lot, because you brought all these large speakers into the UK and we put them on at St James' Church, and there's something about meeting the right people. Also, another of your ex-partners is Coleman Barks, the great Rumi scholar, and so you've been touched by many sort of great souls, not literally, but so a lot of people have come your way and have added their bits to the mix, and I wonder if you can reflect on that a little bit for us too.
Chloe Goodchild:It is extraordinary, isn't it? And I know that was a great gift of Roger's to literally be able to ring people up I mean Gabrielle Roth and, you know, robert Bly and Marian Woodman and James Hillman and just to say, why are you flying from America to Germany and not stopping in England? Wow, he just had a way of, I mean, I think that really did, and thanks to your incredible expertise and gift at, you know, bringing an audience together, it was just, it was a real, really great collaboration between us and that certainly really reinforced my own sense of confidence, being essentially a very empathic and very introverted human being. You know, it's fascinating, isn't it? How we can be. Actually, I'm quite a shy person, you know. Given the opportunity, given the choice, I would be sort of living in a tower To some degree. I am actually here in Gloucestershire, but in the most glorious community.
Chloe Goodchild:But realising that, you know, if you have a vocation which is obviously what the Voice is about hence the word you just have to obey it, you have to follow it and I think, thanks to the connection and the friendship with Roger and then this wider field of new spiritual voices that were really coming through, initially through the New Age movement, but really connected with much deeper wisdom, perennial traditions, with much deeper wisdom, perennial traditions.
Chloe Goodchild:It really gave me, you know, an opportunity. I remember Gabrielle Roth just saying to me would you just sing while we dance stillness, you know? Would you just sing while we dance, you know. And so that then gave me another opportunity to research how, what happens if you actually just sing stillness. What does that sound like? It's not like. Will you sing a song, you know, or will you perform something? For us, it's more like how does this, how does this situation, how does this context sound, you know, and what can bring more presence and a deeper, more conscious listening to it. And that became my passion really was to explore that direction. And then the Naked Voice was born, very much influenced by my journey to India.
Malcolm Stern:So this life is a big journey for you to date, and still is, I think that's. The other thing that I see is that as I get older which, of course, is what we do or die you know one of the two, if it happened to us that. I see that some people retire, almost like to drop their sense of purpose, but I also feel like I'm actually sort of still and as are you still expanding into what the potential is for our gift to bring to the world.
Malcolm Stern:I'm not getting all sort of up myself in that. It's more the sort of that. Actually, what I see is the development that I bring as an older person.
Chloe Goodchild:And that actually is also a gift. Right. Oh, that's so beautiful, malcolm. You know're such a massive wisdom keeper for people you know. And of course, the wisdom keeper tradition tended to get lost in our western culture, hasn't it? You know it has we?
Malcolm Stern:we sort of look at our elders as sort of you know, people to be kept out of sight and off out off the way. But, um, but the tribal cultures, of course the elders were revered, yeah, and they were allowed to bring their gifts, they were encouraged to bring their gifts through and hence the life goes on, and goes on, and goes on.
Chloe Goodchild:I mean, the old science you know that human beings are essentially flawed is over, you know, and if you actually listen to the new science which is saying you know, and if you actually listen to the new science which is saying you know that the brain, the neurons in the brain, just keep, just keep reliving and living, and living, and living, and repeating themselves and growing and constantly reliving themselves, you know, I'm seeing people now in their 80s, 90s, moving towards 100s. Look at satish kumar. I mean just completely dynamic on it, you know, uh, and very vital, really vital. It's fascinating, isn't it? This retirement thing? Where, where did that come from, do you think?
Malcolm Stern:no idea, I know it doesn't interest me as a life insists I do it, then I may have to do it, but at the moment I'm still inspired by new directions and explorations yeah, yeah, it's interesting, is it?
Chloe Goodchild:do I wonder if it's also again related to the whole economy tradition, you know the whole economy kind of idea that you know you've got to save, you've got to, you know, get ready for the fact that you will start getting old and you will start, you know, losing it and therefore you've got to save money in order to that kind of thing. And so we get caught in a kind of mindset.
Malcolm Stern:Perhaps, you know, it's very precarious the jobs you and I have had, because certainly you know, if I was really interested in earning a living, I definitely wouldn't have taken this path. But if you're interested in evolving into all of what you could possibly be, you've taken this path. You have taken this path.
Chloe Goodchild:Exactly. You cannot afford not to right.
Malcolm Stern:Exactly. Well, james Hillman wrote that inside every one of us there's a diamond, D-A-E-M-O-N, and that diamond will drive us nuts until we do what it is we were born to do. And I think I really see that when I've tried to go for security and safety and sort sort of and shrink myself, life won't let me do that. And I'm hearing something very similar and I do recognize, of course, a kindred spirit in you.
Chloe Goodchild:Absolutely. You're reminding me, actually, of a conversation I once had, and I have no idea, I'm just trying to remember how I got into this situation, but it was another synchronicity. I think it must've been through James Hillman. He connected us with his mentor, robert Sardello, and I remember him once saying to me are you aware that suffering is the highest form of vitality?
Chloe Goodchild:whoa, I like that, that's powerful yeah, and I've that's been with me my whole life is just feeling that so often being with people in voice workshops and you know where you're really exploring the nature of the music of suffering and how it has this kind of homeopathic dimension to it which I've just literally discovered, that from listening to people, thousands of people, by simply asking them how do you feel and how does that sound, and then what quality of silence does it leave behind?
Malcolm Stern:So, in fact, you are bypassing the intellect and looking for where the gut has its say.
Chloe Goodchild:Right, which is exactly what you're up to, isn't it?
Malcolm Stern:It's like yes, I think of that. In psychotherapy, the psychotherapy groups I run, I'm not interested in getting to understand at a sort of obvious cognitive level what's going on, but to penetrate deep into what has not yet been opened. And I know I did a workshop with Thomas Hubel, the great German mystic, and it was on intergenerational trauma, and I got deeply in touch for the first time with the true suffering that was in me and rather than feeling, oh my God, I'm a wreck, it's like thank God, that's been released.
Chloe Goodchild:Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, for me, you know, if I'm really honest with you, chaos is my best friend. That's great. It's just, it seems to be the homeopathic, uh kind of partner of silence, of stillness. So it's, you know, the the eye of the storm. Um, I'm always very aware of that. You know of its role, the role of chaos, which is again what we're experiencing in the world right now, which is, I get very excited because everybody's waking up. People are really asking questions in ways that I've never known.
Malcolm Stern:Well, the truth is, we're not going to wake up. In the ordinariness, we actually need what you describe as, as we've talked about, with the suffering and what I've written about in, uh, in my book slay your dragons with compassion, which you gave me a lovely endorsement for, by the way. Thank you for that. Um but it what I realized is that, although I'd gone through the enormous suffering of losing a child which is what the book was based on and what the series is based on it wasn't all bad.
Malcolm Stern:Now that sounds terrible to even say that Actually there was something that got awakened as a result, and I think awakening is often very gradual. You know, we look at people like Eckhart Tolle who have just suddenly gone and he's awake. But I think that word awake is overused.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Malcolm Stern:Or the woke culture, but I think there is something about being moulded by our experiences, and that's what I'm hearing from you, and probably that's why you and I have these deep conversations whenever we speak or meet, and we work together in Compassion and Mental Health and in other environments as well, where we've brought our particular gifts to the fray. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to chat all day, actually, and I could do that. But actually, coming towards the end of our podcast, and the question I always ask at the end is what's the particular dragon you've had to slay, what's the obstacle you've had to overcome in order to become who you are at this stage in your life?
Chloe Goodchild:Let's see what have I had to really overcome, I would say. I would say my shyness is actually what always comes up, but this sense of being so almost painfully introverted, actually, that it's as if I, you know, I'm this calling that I've had all my life, has required me to be painfully extrovert, and yet it's something to do with really having to overcome self-doubt.
Malcolm Stern:I would say that's lovely, and what was very interesting is, before you spoke the words, you actually embodied the very thing you'd been speaking about, which is being okay with the silence. So I was genuinely okay with the silence, whereas sometimes I might want to sort of prod someone, sort of give them a bit of a nod and sort of like you know, sort of a leg up, as it were. I'm just aware that you were actually searching and then actually we could be still in that searching. So you've just lived out something you've spoken about as well.
Malcolm Stern:so that was, that was lovely, well, thank you for your listening and for the quality of your listening always, always, thank you so before you go, chloe, I thought it'd be a wonderful opportunity to hear your beautiful voice and your amazing composing skills, and there's a track that I was really deeply touched by when I heard it many, many years ago, which is a devotional track called Om Tara and to the Buddhist deity Tara, and perhaps you could play us a piece of that please.
Speaker 3:Great pleasure, so Om Tara being the goddess of compassion to race home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home home to to to to to Om Tare Ture, tare Ture so Ham Om Tare Ture Tare Turei, su'an Woman of the Wisdom Tree, goddess of Humanity, singing of the unity we long for, om tare tutare To the soul to.
Malcolm Stern:Daddy to, Daddy to you brought tears to my eyes. Chloe Bless you, thank you.
