Dying to Find Meaning & Purpose featuring John "Hoppy" Hopkins

In this powerful conversation, I sit down with John "Hoppy" Hopkins, found of Dying to Live With Purpose, to explore how awareness of mortality can unlock courage, clarity, and deeper meaning in life. 

Hoppy shares insights from his near-death experiences and his work as a Life & Death guide, revealing how our fear of death quietly shapes our decisions -- an how facing it can free us to live more boldly and authentically.  

We talk about: 

• Why death awareness dissolves fear 
• The connection between mortality and purpose 
• How to live with greater presence and gratitude 
• Practical ways to shift from avoidance to alignment 

This episode, and every episode is an invitation to stop postponing your life -- and start living it fully and unapologetically! 

Connect with Hoppy: 

Substack: livepurpose.co

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnhoppy93/?locale=en_GB

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhoplins-b79264aa/?isSelfProfile=true

If you're ready to bring more comfort into your daily rhythm, visit CozyEarth.com and use my code: Unapologetic for up to 20% off! 

Get Patched! 

Start Breathing & Find Your Flow! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Welcome back to today's episode of Unapologetic Living. I am excited to welcome John Hoppy Hopkins. So do you go by Hoppy?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

People call me Hoppy. They always uh that's been my nickname my whole life, but I'm I'm John Hopkins on paper.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Okay, so welcome John. John is a life and death guy. You're helping others discover life's purpose through mortality and awareness, correct? Is that what I have read?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Right, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And you also um have a new project called Dying to Live with Purpose.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yes, correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

So I was reading last night a little bit on your Substack and some of your newsletters, and I love what you're doing. I love that you have, I can't remember, did you sell everything or rent your home out and and are traveling the world for a year with your family? And uh I just think it's fantastic because I'm not a huge fan of school in a building for kids ever. There's like to me, there's almost zero reason to have that. I never thought a god would put me here to be in a building for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah.

unknown 2:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So can you uh like what brought you here? What's the backstory?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Okay, sure. Well, um, thank you firstly for having me on your show. Um I spent about 15, 20 years working in entertainment. From a young age, I always wanted to be a film director. I always wanted to make movies. And when I finished university, I started working in the film industry and I became a film director and ended up directing TV commercials, and I made a feature film which came out in 2017. And it was around that time that uh I saw a drone display in the night sky at the Korean Winter Olympics. And that inspired me to set up a company called Celestial, which is a drone display company, and we told stories in the night sky using hundreds of drones as little points of light that you can animate. And uh I was had an had an amazing roller coaster journey with this technology company about three years ago. I started to experience some quite heavy crises at work. Um and what happened was because I built this company and I had so much of my energy poured into it, when the company started to suffer, I started to suffer, and actually what happened is I started to have these panic attacks and it resurfaced these feelings of dying and that came from near-death experiences I've had in my life. And for several weeks I felt like I was dying, basically. And I was listening to one of my favourite philosophers in the evenings before going to bed to try and calm my nerves just so I could sleep through the night. And uh there's a man called Ram Das, who's no longer with us, but you may have heard his name. And yeah, he he I noticed he's he talked in a lot of his podcasts about the fact that sitting with dying people had been the highest work he had ever done. And I was like, gosh, I feel like I'm dying at the moment, and maybe I'm maybe I'm supposed to work with death was the question that popped into my head. And that was when my purpose exploded towards me, and it was like a charging rhino, and it was death, and I resisted it with every fibre of my body and it was too powerful, and I let it wash over me, and I had this amazing visceral experience of feeling in physically like my purpose deepening. And um it was both exciting and terrifying in equal measure at all at once. It was very powerful. And so from there I realized, well, if I'm gonna work with death, maybe I need to sit with dying people, like how Ram Das had described. So I then trained as a as an end-of-life guide, specifically uh a a training called so become a soul midwife, uh, which is a type of end-of-life guide. And so I started this uh very unexpected journey into mortality, which I never for in a million years thought I would do. I always thought I'd be a movie director. And um as I started to go down this journey into mortality, I started to spot that there was a correlation between um mortality and purpose. So I realized that all the fears that create limiting beliefs for us in the West and I'll only talk about the West because that's really the only the area I'm I'm familiar with. But all of these limiting beliefs that create blockages in our lives can all be traced back, they're all little fears that whisper in your ear, don't do this, or don't try this, or you know, if you do this, you'll get in trouble, or whatever it is, all these little voices, they're all little types of fears. And I realize from doing this work with death that all fears can be traced back to the fear of death. It's like the grandmother fear that sits under all other fears. And I thought this was kind of astonishing. And the more I looked into it, the more I realized that you know, no one in the West wants to talk about death. It's an inconvenient truth. Um we're not educated about it at school. There's no education throughout life, really. Death usually happens in hospitals these days. Um so we've got we're we're we're we're separate from it as a conversation. And as a result of not talking about it, and by the way, it's the only thing in life that's guaranteed. And yet it's the one thing no one wants to talk about, right? So I saw this rialisation that gosh, all our fears come from this one existential fear, and we spend billions of dollars on mental health care and trying to solve anxiety and all this stuff, and yeah, it's coming from there that no one wants to do anything about that. So I wrote a book uh explaining this link between um our fears and the opposite end of that spectrum, which is potential and purpose, because the moment you start to understand where your fears actually come from, which is the thorny conversation around mortality, then you are having this conversation and by reintroducing the com the topic of mortality, uh your fears can start to subside, they get replaced by courage, and as the courage comes in, you start to try new things, you start to take some risks, you start to discover things that you're capable of that you never realized you could do, and before you know it, you're on this path towards deeper potential alignment and purpose in life. So this is the journey I've been on the last three years, and right now I'm traveling with my family because we had an epiphany about a year ago that we've always dreamt about traveling the world as a family, but we had a million little voices whispering in our ear telling us why that was never gonna be possible, right? And so we convinced ourselves that that wasn't possible, and we had an epiphany a year ago. We saw how we can make it happen. It was one of the scariest things we've ever done, if not the scariest. We sold our house, we sold all our possessions because we wanted to be as light as possible, and we only took one carry-on bag each onto the plane, so no check-in luggage. And we're about seven months at the moment traveling around the world with three three children, and it's been an incredible experience.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, from what I can tell, it it looks incredible. It looks like it's been incredible. I was telling you, I know before we started uh recording that I my favorite movie is Captain Fantastic, and although not the same, they were removed from you know society and building, cultivating really deep connections with one another and the earth. And um, I just think uh what you're doing is amazing. And I know that so when you so I I just kind of want to back up for a second. You say fear of death is the ultimate grandmother fear. Now, would you say that that is the fear of death solely in losing the physical body?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Yes, uh, good question. Uh um so yes, I think it's well, it's it's the sort of ego. I think it's it's it's a sort of mixture of the of the ego and the physical body. So the the the ego is the thing that's baked into our DNA that is our like survival mechanism. I mean, obviously we all know that the ego serves other purposes as well, but when it boils down to it, the ego is the part inside you that does not want you to die. You know, so yeah, you could you could argue that it's it's partly the the ego will die if the physical body dies. So you could you could kind of have a debate there about which which is it that's that's that you're most scared of. Um but it's it's sort of both of them at the same time, I think.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah, because I think about anytime you're making a big life change, there isn't a part of your identity, right, that has to die in order to do that too. So it's like you are almost dying over and over and over again throughout a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

That's correct, yeah. Yes, and and and I think we all, whether we're aware of it or not, go through life and we experience lots of mini-deaths. I mean, some of us might experience death firsthand if if a loved one or a friend dies, or you know, we might witness a pet dying, for example. But on a kind of psychological level, we experience lots of little deaths as we evolve throughout our lifetime, right? And I think the better we get at recognizing that parts of us are dying away to allow something new to be born, the better you get to practice the ultimate death, which is you know at the end of your life or whenever that death happens to you, the final death. Um this is something that Carl Jung, the famous um psychologist, talked a lot about, certainly in the second half of his career, and he he believes that certainly like when you get reach midlife, uh the second part of your life should be dedicated to learning how to die well, and that includes recognizing all the mini deaths that you experience during your life.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

So okay, so when you talk about the fear of death, again being the grandmother of all fears, um and then you know, I'm just thinking, how does that um how does that you I know you said you've sat with a lot of people as they are beginning to transition all the way through the process, then are reborn into I mean to me it's also a rebirth, sort of.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, but yeah, I've I've sat with people who are dying. So I I volunteered for a couple of years and sat in hospital just to be a sort of loving presence for people who didn't have anyone else to be with them in hospital, which which by the way is quite a sad truth that a lot of people go to hospital to die. And they're alone, but there's a lot of loneliness. Yeah, there's a lot of times the people are there, and you know, there's only so many times a loved one can visit in a hospital or friends can visit. So this is what's happened in our system now. People basically just sort of go to hospital and often are there alone in those final moments, and really what everyone wants to be is is home and around loved ones, but that is often not very convenient for people, you know. Um, so I've experienced that, and I've I've I've experienced my own sort of mini-deaths, and I've had I've actually had near-death experiences. Um, you have yourself. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Now, when you say you've had near-death experiences, I had another guy on uh the show who had a near-death experience, he got the dengue fever um and became really, really sick. He was in, oh my goodness, what was he in? I forgot. But he started having this overwhelming, like these crazy dreams uh to be to start producing art. He'd never been an artist. I found him in an art show, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is just really unique, these were really unique pieces. And um, and so you know, but he remembers like leaving his body, yeah, looking down at the room and getting a very clear message, it was not time for him to leave, or maybe he was given the choice. I I don't think so, actually. And then I have another woman that I uh um saw, she was a kind of a spiritual holistic counselor uh back in um I saw her for years, uh, but she also had a near-death experience when she was 40 in the same same situation. She had, you know, a very clear message was above her body, um and that it was not her time to go. She was to come back and help counsel people. And now she looked at life through a very different lens than your traditional therapist, and that's one of the reasons I found her. And uh, you know, I have a I have a big deep belief in um reincarnation. There's something about that that resonates for me. I I was raised Methodist, I I there was something I but anyway, and I found that, you know, in my 20s. Um, and I'm I don't, but I guess when I think about little fears that I have, how do I connect them? Like uh, and I um you know, because I know we all have them, but how do I connect that with like the true fear of death?

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah, good question. Um the fear of death for most of us sits dormant, you know, right down below all the other fears that we kind of deal with on a sort of daily, weekly basis. And the fear of death only really shows itself if there is an actual incident or moment where your your true your your life is maybe threatened. And we we live now in a in a in a world and society where our lives, unless you're completely unfortunate and living somewhere like in the Ukraine or Russia right now, and there's a war going on and there are actually people dying, but for most people we're not confronted with life-threatening situations very often, if uh if at all. So we're we're dealing a lot with the superficial fears, but the grandmother fear sits under that. And a lot of people think, oh well, I'm I'm not um I'm not scared of death because they never have to deal with that fear really like showing itself in its true glory. Um and for that reason I think people dismiss it. But if you from an evolutionary point of view, you can track every modern fear, such as like the fear of public speaking, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of love, and you kind of like track trace it, you do a detector work, it always boils down to something existential. So for example, um fear of rejection or fear of failure at work can be boiled back down through our evolution to when if you did something wrong in the tribe and you were exiled from the tribe, exile meant death, right? So so we we we still have the the wiring, the ancient wiring active in us from when our lives were threatened regularly, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we really truly had to survive to stay alive. But we've now evolved to a point where we don't we're not battling saber-toothed tigers anymore and uh you know being presented with life-threatening situations the way we we used to to survive, but now we're here we find ourselves living in a time where we've got different problems, but the same wiring is still there, like the same operating system is driving our choices, and we are walking around as individuals and societies without realizing it, making the majority of our decisions based out of fear, and as we all know, when you make a decision based out of fear, it tends to be a bad decision, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Yeah, and so when I hear that, and and um I I think about okay, uh, if you're making a decision out of fear, there's no faith there. Yes, I you know, and that's and and uh or you know, uh to to me again, trusting in a higher defined source of energy, whatever you want to call it. Um and then you're also and this is one I heard in Alan on one time, you're edging God out, right? And I think it can be a difficult like to make the decision to sell all your belongings and move is huge, right? People stay stuck in these places where they can't make the decision, right? So as a body worker, I was well, a couple things come up. Um, you know, the psoas muscle connects the spine to the legs, it's the only muscle that connects the spine to the legs. You got muscles in your glutes, but there's only one muscle that is actually attaching your spine to your legs. And in through the yogic philosophy, that that muscle would be considered the seat of the soul. It's also the same muscle that Peter Levine fatigues to create the tremor, which would be your fight or flight response after you've gone through a situation. You've, you know, an animal in the wild, if chased by, let's say a rabbit is chased by a cheetah. After the scenario is over, the rabbit would go and lay down in the dirt and just tremor to release all of that adrenaline and such. And I believe, you know, that we would have done that at hum as humans at one point. We no longer do. And so all this tension and trauma gets stored, and oftentimes it's in this muscle around the psoas because it's our way to either move forward, go backward, right? And so we become paralyzed, and you've got hip pain and chronic back pain. And you know, so you were talking about too how you were having these panic attacks at work, and you know, I also very strongly believe that the body, what uh what's going on emotionally and spiritually absolutely will manifest in the physical body somehow, right? To get your attention as a wake-up call. And uh I wonder, and and this is just you know, um, I I sometimes think maybe we start to get the tap sooner. Did you feel like you were getting these taps sooner than when you actually finally decided to take action? You had to have this sort of catalyst moment, come to Jesus moment, whatever you want to call it, in order to finally say, okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I and I think I the message had been there for quite a long time. Because I felt I was feeling more and more physically sick at work. I'd built a business which on the one hand I was very proud of and you know had a lot of success. But then over time I started to feel like the purpose of the work was no longer serving me. And I started to feel stuck in something I'd built. And so it was a weird, it was almost like a trap of my own making. And I think a lot of people probably can relate to that with you know taking a job out of necessity rather than out of your your sort of sole purpose or your soul alignment. A lot of people are at jobs where deep down they feel like it's not serving me this. It's kind of making me feel sick on a very deep level. But I don't see any way out of it. I'm paying my bills, I've got a mortgage, you know, I've got X, Y, and Z that are all being paid for. So I've kind of on one level I've got I've got the life that society has sold told me I need to get. But on a deep sort of spiritual level, something not right there, and I'm not feeling alive. But I'm I don't have the tools or the confidence or the courage or the clarity to do anything about it, so I'm therefore stuck and trapped. And I think a lot of people go through life like that. And I learned a statistic the other day, which I thought was really shocking, which is something like about two-thirds of people in the West die with at least one major life regret. You know, and from my point of view, when I read that, I was like, oh my gosh, you know, it was just another really obvious truth of this problem we have, which is we don't talk about the one thing in life that is guaranteed. And because we don't talk about mortality and death, we are creating these traps and prisons for ourselves in life to the point where you might get to the end of your life and you might have led a long life. But deep down, you're like, you know, as you lie on your deathbed, you're like, oh, I wish I'd done that or had the bravery to do this. And nobody deserves to die with a major life regret. I think all regrets can be resolved. And this is something I've learned from being an end-of-life guide. It can be resolved. But I feel like I'm here now, and my life's work is to help bring this conversation into the open, make it accessible in order so that people can step more quickly into purpose and alignment and avoid having any regrets when they lie on their deathbed. So I've actually, one of the things I've done is I've got on my substack newsletter, I've got lots of tools and tips and tricks and essays all about this and guidance of how to step out of anxiety and sleep better and find deeper purpose. But one of the tools I've just designed is an AI chatbot that will ask you 10 questions about your life and then it will reverse engineer your life from how you want to feel at the end of your life, so peaceful and complete and fulfilled, and will track it all the way back to where you are today, and it will identify the major life regrets that you were headed towards and give you suggestions about how you can course correct now so that you can step into deeper alignment.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

I love that. I was actually going to ask, I know, because you said, what did you say, Carl Jung said that you need to prepare well for the last okay? So, Matt, when you uh so I drive Lyft and Uber sometimes. It's been a little bit, but I've been driving Lyft and Uber for the past um 10 years. 10 years. I'm gonna say, yeah. 20, maybe 2000. No, uh, 2000, I forget, it doesn't, 10 or 11 years. And I can I can attest 100% to the people in America right now who get into my car and are going to a job that because I when you get in my car, you're not getting just a regular old um car ride, honestly, because what I want is for people to live their soul's purpose. My kids would tell you they don't understand why I didn't, you know, teach with my master's degree in the public school system here, because it would have sucked my soul out. That's why I knew I couldn't do it. So I uh taught, I homeschooled them, I weighted tables, I brought an extra kid in. I did all the things I wanted to offer my kids the life that I really wanted them to have, which was they were home most of the time. Uh well, they were home, they weren't home most of the time, but they were home in their youthful years. So my son never went to a school until he was 10. And then my daughter was seven, and then I enrolled her in a Waldorf school, and then I found a um a private school for my son here, and it wasn't for the education, it was uh I I knew they were going to be active in the school. He was getting organic lunch, he got plenty of physical time. Well, I wouldn't say he got as much time outside as I would have liked, but compared to what our public school system offers, he was going outside every day, he was getting physical activity every single day, physical education every single day, whereas that is not taking place in a public school in our county. Um, and and um and so I did things and they still don't necessarily get it. I am a Jill of many trades. I have this podcast, I wrote a book about guy, um, but you know, even putting that book out there was a little bit scary, right? But if I didn't write it, then that would be I've always wanted to be an author. I still have another book to write, and it will get done. But you know, putting it out there was a little bit uncomfortable. But when I think about again, when I still like, okay, so had I not done that, I I still want to connect like um where the fear of death comes in. And I'm just I'm still trying to like leave it all together. Uh but and I so in the car, when I when I you know have conversations with different people who get in and out, so many people are going to a job just for the paycheck, as you say, and they don't feel like they're doing life-fulfilling work. Uh and I do wonder, because I know we also shared our ages earlier, if if sometimes we can't actually access that purpose until we get closer to midlife. You know, you get into this space where like you have to get to a place where whatever, you have there's no fucks left to give. You know?

unknown 33:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

It's that what's that book? It's like uh the the art of giving, I forget, but you know, like you I don't know if in your earlier years or in our younger years, we actually, unless you're a really old soul, have that. I guess some do. Think about these like motocross guys who get on a bike every they know they could die everything. When I got on that, when I took a mountain biking lesson, like I was afraid for sure. And I realized like I was exhausted after like two and a half hours of a lesson because all I was doing was trying to stay alive. But you know, there I could say, okay, well, the reason that I don't want to get on a mountain bike and go downhill in the Rocky Mountains is because I actually really have a fear of like this could cause my death.

unknown 34:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

You know, because that's real like that one you can wrap your head around. That could cause death.

unknown 34:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

But then when you think about like starting a business or writing a book or putting your artwork out there, it seems like more of it is a an ego death death.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

Yes. Other than, you know, you could argue something I'm I'm starting to look into a little bit more about the prevalence of, let's say, male suicides in the West. And where do those all come from? You know, so when when internally you you you know you've you've uh lost connection, you've lost alignment to such a degree. And I'm talking about sort of people in midlife, you know, and certainly over in the in the UK, there's a lot of dead men in in midlife who commit suicide. It's it's huge.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

I I think that's I think that's true here too.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

But yeah, and so I think I haven't quite made the connection yet, I haven't spent enough time on it, but uh there's there's a correlation here where uh people who are are are are so far out of alignment internally with their soul that they feel uh you know the only option for them is to tap out physically. You know, so being out of alignment with with your purpose and and and and what your soul really needs will eventually make you physically sick. It'll make you mentally sick and it'll make you physically sick. And again, there's more and more research coming out now, scientific medical research about the links between mental health and cancers. And it totally makes sense, you know. I think personally had I not had my fortunate epiphany which was both exciting and terrifying, where I realised I was supposed to work with death, I may well have developed a cancer at that point of my life because I was mentally at disease and it was making me feel physically sick, and this was going on for weeks and weeks, and the more it was going on, the more worried I was becoming that it was going to result in some sort of chronic illness, and maybe even my own death. That's how it was started to feel.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Uh, did you read uh is it Gabor Mate's book When the Body Says No? Have you read that book?

SPEAKER_02 40:37

No, but I've heard about that.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Oh, it's it's really good. Um, I haven't read it in in its entirety. I got it because um my um significant other, he actually has an MS, multiple sclerosis, and uh in chapter two, they really dive into that. But he does talk about you know how the body and the mind, body, spirit are deeply connected, and your body will tell you no if you're if you're paying attention and aware. And I I think that because we're so distracted and we're busy, busy, busy, and we're trying to produce and produce and produce, and then we numb out with whatever alcohol, drugs, TV, Netflix, uh you know, I and and or even the number of people who are on SSRIs and antidepressants, I think is alarming. And when I think, and I don't know how many men, I don't know how many men those, I don't know how many men that is uh who are on such drugs, but I do think that we are somewhat of a less resilient society because I do believe that there is, aside from not being taught about death, but recognizing and understanding the way our body feels, the sensations, what comes up when we are experiencing different emotions and being able to tune in. Anxiety feels here. When I'm sad, I feel this. This is what takes place in my body. And when you really fully understand your bodily sensations, you might notice that they are you might become more aware of what's going on sooner than many do. But we're so distracted. And I'm gonna tell you when you have a bunch of kids sitting in a classroom and a teacher is telling a child that they can't go to the bathroom and honor the bodily sensation, they are being told from very early on, don't listen to your body. Which to me is unfortunate. So I think about the men that you're talking about, and I think about the SSRIs, and I think about the ADD medication and how ADD medication often leads to the antidepressants, and then you have you know people who don't even you know that think life is just supposed to feel good all the time, and really we should be able to ride the wave and be able to embrace it all, embody all of it. And so then you hit midlife. I don't know, but I do so you were this was what you said, you had this epiphany, Howold. I'm just curious because I do know that that is a real thing, and I do think people are so I think it's by design that people are not living in alignment with their purpose. Because if everybody was living in alignment with their purpose, we wouldn't have this crazy, crazy shit going on in the world, right? Because if you're living in alignment with your purpose, to me, that's your purpose, your highest purpose is is you know again from God, good orderly direction, it would be in the highest of all highs, so we wouldn't have this madness on on earth.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

But I do want to I do wanna think I had my midlife breakthrough because I also read that your father passed, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Did I read that? He did pass.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Yeah, he he died in my arms about uh four years ago, which was a very uh powerful experience. And it was before I started training as an end-of-life guide. But it was it was a it was a big moment for me because I I for several years I've been playing around with the idea of the fear of death being one of the major issues that humanity faces without you know even realizing that it's a problem. And so I've been I've been thinking about this for several years. And through the process of sort of studying this, I started to become more and more at peace with my own mortality to the point where when Dad died in my arms and I pumped his chest for about 45 minutes, he had a heart attack. He's very weak and he had Parkinson's. Um I was really glad to be there and to be able to be present and perform the CPR I was there with my mother. She wouldn't have had the physical strength to to you know to pump his chest for 40 minutes. So I was grateful for that. But I was also just sort of grateful to be present to witness you know the passing of my father in front of my face. And for that, you know, deep, deep experience because it was it was incredibly sad. But I but I also felt like super grateful to be there, if that makes sense, and I learned so much from it, and I actually feel my dad's presence and energy every day now, and you know, it's a it's a really big, bright, shining light in the work I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

So, okay, so you said you hadn't started your your sole midwife uh course or program or certification until after his passing.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

No, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

Okay, but you had had you had been called to death prior to I'd been called to sort of explore this idea of uh why are we so scared of death? And I don't know where it came from, but for several years it was like rattling around in my head and I was thinking about it a lot. And I was writing a movie at the time where I was exploring it as a theme in the movie. And that gave me, you know, I wrote that film for about four years and and just gave me a lot of space and and time to reflect on this. I then did a um plant medicine ceremony in uh 2018, I believe it was. I had a very yes, I had a very uh profound experience of taking that question into that ceremony. So I went in there with this question we were told you know, prepare a question or something you'd like to solve inside yourself as part of this healing ceremony. And I I was like, right, I'm gonna ask the question about whether we should be scared of death or not. And um just as you know, at the peak of the ceremony, I felt like the right time was to ask the question. And I asked the question and I had this extraordinary experience as a response. And what happened was the moment I said, should we be scared of death, I suddenly the blackness of the night where I was turned into a kind of orange glow. And I could feel my body kind of curling up, I was lying on the ground, and I went into a kind of fetus position. And I suddenly realized I felt like I was back in a in a whoop. And I felt like I was a little baby in a womb. And then it hit me that this wasn't just a vision I was having, I was having a memory of being back inside my mother's womb. And the overarching feeling of being inside my mother's womb was one of safety, warmth, and love. And I realized that being back in that memory that this is where I come from and this place where I come from, fear doesn't exist. Because it's only when you're born into the world and you start to grow over time that fear bec uh uh fears enter your consciousness. And fears are man-made. So the place where we come from and the place where we return, fear does not exist. And that was the response I got from the universe that night to my question, should we be scared of death? And I I I often anytime I feel anxious or fearful, I actually use that memory as a meditation, and I invite anybody else to do the same. If you're feeling anxious or fearful, you can take five, ten minutes and imagine yourself back in your mother's womb, a place of safety, warmth, and pure love.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

I've heard memories uh of being you know in your mother's womb uh resurface for others. I I don't I haven't spoken to anybody else who necessarily has had that experience. Um so would you say, okay, so if you had a um so I had if you had a spiritual belief, what would it be? That's one question I have for you. But just so I don't forget, I had a friend. So the same woman that I was talking to, uh so right before um in 2017, I had a friend who took her life. She took her life. Life in August of 2017. But leading up to, it's just so interesting, leading up to her death, I had this hairdresser who kept giving me these books on death and the afterlife. And the same therapist was also giving me books. I read um quite a few books uh by uh Brian Weiss. Have you read his work, Many Lives, Many Masters? Um, and then he talks about he would talk, he, he, he writes about uh what happens when you take your life, a suicide. Uh and it was um, and then the the woman that I was seeing for therapy too, uh, she said, you know, she had told Tammy, because she Tammy had been talking about taking her life for a while. So it wasn't, it was not news. It wasn't really surprising either when she did take her life. Um, and it was interesting, she and I, I went, I had applied to um our seminary, our Presbyterian seminary here for their marriage and family uh counseling program, which I did not get into. And it worked out that it I should not have been in that program at that time. It wouldn't have worked out there was too much stuff going on with my kids and family. But uh we had to go in and sit down and audit a, you know, sit through a class uh and take a tour and eat lunch and um have a conversation with the director of the program. And we had to, we happened to just randomly, because Tammy and I both had applied, uh, sit in the same, we sat, well we sat in the same class, but the class was all on death and dying and suicide and I mean like I I got the like so for a while there I was reading a lot about death and the afterlife. Um and you know, the message over and over again was that there was nothing to fear. And then I read a book called The Afterlife of Billy Fingers. His his the uh author of that book was his sister, and she can she kept channeling him. And I don't know how much time we have, but she would channel him, and he led her like through these dreams to help her, you know, take her friends to specific doctors to see for healing and med, you know, it was wild stuff. Like I completely, you know, believe that there really is no, like, I believe there really is no true death. It's just that we lose the physical body and and our consciousness is still there and that and that that it is a place where there would be no fear. Um I know that I have I've driven a lot of folks and I um have um I had a few who I found uh who were in their 90s. Uh and um two of the four that I became close with driving regularly were um Jewish. And I got more of a sense of fear there because my understanding is that when you're dead, you're dead. Like there's nothing, it's over, like that's it, like lights out. And so the two folks that I became close with who were Jewish definitely had more of a fear of death, or at least spoke of it actually, than those who um had you know had more of a Christian faith background and trust that you know there's something better on the other side. Um so but I'm curious, I I'm curious what's your spiritual belief after death, because I do think for some that might that can also be a part of like helping them be less fearful. I don't know if you believe that maybe have your experience with ayahuasca helps helped you with that, but I also am curious with having sat with your father, um did did you find that he you know had one uh one of these major life regrets, as two-thirds of people do, like in in being able to walk with him through those last days was that like a mirror that you know maybe others don't get to have that allowed you to see this deeper purpose.

SPEAKER_02 56:43

Yeah, thanks. That's a good question. Um well firstly I'd say that from my spiritual standpoint, what I believe in is um from from the experiences I've had, my dear my near-death experiences, I I feel you know, I can concur with a lot of uh other people's uh descriptions of near-death experiences leaving the body feeling like it's not my time. But but in the process, aware of the fact that I have left my body and that I am aware that I am going into the light and that there is clearly something beyond the physical realm. And I feel like I've seen that first hand. Um, can I explain exactly what it is? No, I don't think so. I don't think anybody really can. But all I felt was that it was utterly beautiful and you know, I could feel the love radiating in the space. And I think you know, there's more and more scientific uh correlation that's mounting now that uh you know with it with near-death experiences and and people's descriptions of them being so uh similar that I think even the scientists are waking up to this now, realizing this has got to be taken pretty seriously. So I believe that there is an energy that you know a bit like in Star Wars that character things whether you want to call that god or or whatever the universe. I do believe in that. I do believe in that. Um and I believe that you know you can tap into that, you can tap into all the consciousnesses that there have ever been, including my my father. I I believe I can sort of tap into an access him. Um yeah, but you know, that experience with him has definitely helped shaped my confidence in the work that I'm doing today.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Yeah, I I mean I would imagine. I I uh the other um I and I don't know if this relates, but I did want to read this because it's something when when we talk about purpose. Um I don't know this one too. This is like one of my favorite books, The Way of the Superior Man. Have you read this one? Anyway, on it's almost like a reader. Um, so they're short little pages, but this one, um this one is when I think about men, okay, because it really is written for a man, but it is a great uh guide for both men and women. Um but on day three it says live as if your father were dead. A man must love his father and yet be free of his father's expectations and criticisms in order to be a free man. Imagine that your father has died or remember when he did die. Are there any feelings of relief associated with his death? Now that he is dead, is any part of you happy that you need not live up to his expectations or suffer his criticisms? How would you have lived your life differently if you had never tried to please your father? If you never tried to show your father that you were worthy, if you never felt burdened by your father's critical eye. For the next three days, do at least one activity a day that you have avoided or suppressed because of the influence of your father. In this way, practice being free of his subtle expectations, which may now reside within your own self-judgment. Practice being free in this way, once each day for three days, even if you still feel fearful, limited, unworthy, or burdened by your father's expectations. And so I think about this, and then you know what you've shared and just how many people out there, you know, this is a real thing for many, I think, don't you? Living up to their father's expectations, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

You know, and I think just listening to your words now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

Um, and I think it's harder when you're younger, right? You're in this space.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

I lost you though.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Oh no, I I can hear you. Did you you said what were you? Did you say something that I missed?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

Yeah, no, I was just saying listening to those amazing words makes me reflect not only on how my my relationship with me and my father, but also how I am right now as a father to my children. So thank you for those words. I feel like that that's brought a little bit of clarity to you know my relationship with my children.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

Yeah, I mean, it's something I think that, you know, just even as a daughter, like there's that, there's this like um, you know, I mean, we're just conditioned in so many ways, right? To to to to almost, and I'm not like almost avoid that purpose. And so I, you know, I I just I I don't know, I just um I don't know, I guess I digress, but um I so but I did want to share that because I do think, you know, um again, it's you know, it's that fear, as you said, but sometimes um it's also again fear of all the people around us, what is everybody going to think, which I guess is ultimately like what fear of the loss of ego and really like a death, and then being having the courage to be like, okay, no, I'm not gonna do it that way, despite what everyone else around me thinks. And even because, like you said, it's a it's almost um yeah, a prison, yeah, takes a trap we've created, right? It's an own, it's our own prison.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:26

Um there's an amazing quote by uh by a by an author called Joseph Campbell, who wrote The Hero's Journey. I'm not sure if you're aware of him, but uh it's a really lovely quote. And it's the quote is in the cave that you fear is the treasure that you seek.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Yeah, that's how happens to be like when I was reading your subseg, I was like, I'm gonna take a picture of that because uh it definitely wanted to be wanted, I wanted to bring it up. Yeah, I mean that says it all, right? But you have to have courage. So so in your newsletter's got really bad here. I know so so in your newsletters, because I want to make sure people can find your work. Um you talk about and you have this AI um sort of quiz, but you talk about how people can prepare for and find their purpose through awareness and mortality, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

Exactly. That I think you summed it up very neatly there. So it's it's giving people the education to understand where their fears come from. And once people know where their fears come from, then you can actually do something about it. And the the the joy of uh bringing this conversation of mortality back into the open is that it's not morbid, it's something we all have to go through, whether we like it or not. And we may as well get on with talking about it. And the huge upsides and benefits of having the conversation. From mental and physical health, health, you know, overcoming anxiety, sleeping through the night, uh, you know, clarity in your with your career, which then can lead to financial abundance and all sorts of uh uh repercussions from the the the simple act of acknowledging your mortality, and that's where it all starts.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:35

I love that. So where can people find you? I know it's I believe it's uh dying to live right or no? Am I wrong on that?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

Yeah, it's uh the the the newsletter is called dying to live with purpose and it's on Substack, and the email the the website address is livepurpose.co livepurpose.co okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

Oh well I'll make sure those links are in the show notes so that because I've really enjoyed our conversation and I'm with you. I think we definitely need to be talking about this. I know there for that same year, uh I had a friend who became a death duel here. I don't think she's stuck with it. She's now working with adults with disabilities. Um and then, and and you know, right there is a whole uh topic in and of itself around like having to face the reality that, you know, some of these individuals' parents will will will they will die and they have to be, you know, unfortunately placed in various homes or resident, you know, different residential homes. And it's a conversation that many of those parents don't want to have because there's a lot of uncertainty with where their adult child with disabilities intellectual will go, you know, when they're no longer with. So I mean, I think you're you're it's just, and so they were back then, this was like I I guess 2017, so it was all pre-COVID, but they were having regular death cafes here where people would get together and talk about a variety of things. And it was uh really um eye-opening um for me. And I, you know, again appreciate it because it was timely in connection with my friend taking her life. Um, and you know, I know she's she's you know present all all the time. It's it's wild, really. So I want to thank you, and I know it's it's almost nine, it's over, it's well it's nine o'clock there, but it's nine o'clock here, but it's morning here and night there, and I'm so appreciative of being able to share this time with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:01

Yes, thank you so much for having me with your show. It's been a real honor.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:05

Yeah, good luck with all your travels. When um when will they wrap up or what do you know what's next? Will you just keep traveling like this?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:17

Yeah, we're in Thailand, we're about to go to Vietnam. Yeah, we're we're not sure yet. We're gonna get back to Europe uh this summer and we'll see from there where we'll put down some routes. But right now, uh we're not quite sure. We're just enjoying the flow.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:32

Yeah, I just love it. I think it's just fantastic for your for you, for your wife, for your kids, for the community and all the people that um are getting to spend some time with you guys. I know there is a delay, but um I'm really amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:51

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:51

Yeah, thank you so much.