Bridger of Worlds
The Bridger of Worlds podcast is an in-depth walkthrough between the world of matter and world of spirit. I struggled with porn addiction for close to fifteen years, and all of this led me to discovering some very crucial and beautiful things about not only the physicality of my existence, but the spirituality of it as well. Since then, I‘ve been building bridges that have served me in feeling more whole and well-integrated. I’ve now made it my mission to share with you whatever it is I’ve learned.
Themes, topics and healing modalities such as spiritual embodiment, psychosomatic practices, Shadow Work, Masculine/Feminine energetics, conscious sexuality and archetypal meanings are brought to the forefront in order to raise awareness around what is out of sight because it is only from there that new life can ever emerge.
The greatest paradox of the human condition is to live amongst duality as we seek unity. This is a podcast honoring both and in doing so, creating the loving connections and honest-to-raw conversations we so desire in our lifetimes.
Bridger of Worlds
A Call To The Inner Wild I: Soul, Shadow Work, and Spiritual Awakening
In this insightful episode, Ioannis Kokkinos explores the vital connection between our wild nature and the soul — also known as the daemon. Drawing from Jungian psychology, Platonic teachings, and personal experience, he breaks down how reconnecting with our inner wilderness supports emotional healing, spiritual growth, and the integration of shadow.
This conversation is a call to remember who you are beneath conditioning — a deeper self that is both instinctual and sacred.
In this episode, we explore:
- The difference between the soul and the shadow, and why both are essential for growth
- How the daemon acts as a guide toward wholeness and purpose
- Why emotional healing begins by embracing both light and dark within
- Nature as a mirror of our inner landscape and a tool for spiritual awakening
- The soul’s innate drive to grow through the integration of joy, pain, and truth
- Practical reflections on embodiment, instinct, and listening to the inner call
This episode invites you to reawaken your relationship with nature — not just the forests and rivers outside, but the untamed, ancient intelligence within.
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host, Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcast platforms, thank you for tuning in as well.
Exploring the Wild: The Animal, the Self, and the Soul
So today I wanna talk about one of my all time favorite topics, and that is the wild.
The animal, the self, the soul, the daemon,
the one that entrusts us with the lessons that we've signed up for. The beast, the inner wilderness, the forest, the mountain, the sea, the elemental one. This part of us is probably the most important part that we need to connect with in our lifetime for a few reasons, and I'll be getting into some of those reasons in today's episode.
The Daemon and the Shadow
So last week I did mention the daemon from the Platonic teachings. I made the distinction between the daemon and the Demon. I did say that the daemon is our soul. What is within us that drives us to our purpose and to fulfill whatever destiny it is we signed up for. And how this is different from the shadow, which is, let's say, synonymous with the demon.
Connecting with Our Wild Nature
So today I want to elaborate on the wild, on the soul, on the daemon. These are all different words that mean the same thing because I think that healing, giving attention, witnessing and connecting with this part of ourselves, this animal part of ourselves is probably the most important starting point in our healing journeys.
Our animal is responsible for emoting, for feeling, 📍 for crying, for processing any type of emotion.
For raging, for screaming, for expressing anger, for grieving, mourning, right? So our emotive nature is our animal nature.
The Role of Emotions and the Shadow
Now, the animal has a shadow. But I think over many years of cultural conditioning, religious programming, social norms in general, we've equated the shadow or the denied, rejected part of us as our animal. That does hold some truth because it is our animal that is also denied and rejected, but our animal is only hurting because of its perception of separation. That is the shadow. So. The shadow is encompassed within the wild, the wild nature of our human condition, but it is not solely the wild.
The Importance of Balance in Our Wild Nature
Why it is pivotal that we connect with our wild nature is because, yes, first and foremost this is what allows us to get access to our emotions. This is what allows us to feel a sense of aliveness in the world that we're living in. It is, of course, root chakra based. This is the foundational work that I keep talking about, right?
Being in this energy center that sets the stage for the rest of the chakras. In order to access our spiritual nature, we have to start with our animal nature, and this includes our body. This includes our emotion. This includes our feelings, this includes our impulses, this includes our instincts.
We have to learn how to discern when our wild self or our soul self is wanting to do something and our shadow is wanting to do something. Now, the self as part of Jungian psychology is synonymous with the soul. It's the center of our psyche.
The shadow is one means to access the soul because it is through shadow work that we get to our soul. So already by the Jungian School of Thought, we know that the soul does not equate to the shadow, but we can use our shadow. We can work with our shadow, the denied and the rejected part of us to access our soul.
Now, I talked about the daemon last week, which is our inner call. It's our inner wild that drives us to make certain choices, to deep dive into the unknown, to challenge ourselves through the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar, because this is the only space where the soul can grow. So, of course the shadow will be activated, will be triggered when we are moving through the unknown and the uncomfortable, the shadow's sole reason for existence is the existence of duality, and this existence of duality is what pains it.
The Soul's Journey and Spiritual Awakening
Now the soul on the other hand, or the wild one knows duality exists, but also knows that oneness exists because the soul's main mission at the base level is to realize oneness as part of the human condition.
We were soul before we incarnated into this body. Once we incarnate into this body, we forget everything, right? We forget the source. We forget creator. We forget that we were at once United with oneness, that we were merged with everything and everyone as energy, as consciousness.
So we forget all of that when we come into the body. Our egos forget that. Our shadow forgets that, but our soul remembers and it's very unconscious, and we are here to remember and realize oneness as part of our human condition. And it is our soul that is driving us to remember that. And that is our wild nature.
The soul is the animal because when we look toward the nature world, when we look toward the elements, when we look towards the flora and the fauna, we look at how the synergy of all the nature world is actually working together, even in destruction, even in separation, even in death, right? There's a lot of death in the nature world through decay, through disintegration, through animals hunting, and being hunted, right?
It does not mean that it's all roses and butterflies because we're talking about the wild nature and we're talking about the soul, but the soul actually knows how all of this serves oneness.
The shadow does not have any knowledge about this, right? The shadow knows separation and the shadow will do whatever it can to keep separation alive. This is why compulsions, addictions, harmful behaviors, toxicity, toxic anything is associated with the shadow, but the shadow's not necessarily the villain.
Yes, it can wreck our lives. It can cause a lot of havoc and can cause a lot of damage toward ourselves, towards the relationships of our lives. But the shadow holds our repressed and denied pain.
The Interconnection of Soul, Spirit, and Shadow
So we actually need to go in there. We need to work with the shadow in order to access the repressed.
And as that gets reintegrated within ourselves, we actually move closer to our soul, and the soul and the shadow are both wild, right? The shadow can be very wild as well because , it's the repressed, it's the denied, it's emotion, it's feeling, it's instinct, it's impulse, but that is actually a part of our inner wilderness because our wild will ask us to be hungry, you know, in some way, shape, or form. We need a healthy level of hunger in our lives because this is what drives us and motivates us to get things done.
Our hunger can go to extreme levels. We see this with addiction. We see this with compulsion. We see this with toxic behavior. We see this with greed, right? With gluttony, with excess, with inflation. That is when our hunger goes to very high levels.
But here we're talking about the shadow. We're no longer talking about the wild, because the wild is also very much synced to balance, right? When we look to the nature world, everything is happening in balance. We see the changing of the seasons. We see how many animal species have their phases throughout the year, right? There are mating seasons, hibernation seasons, hunting seasons, fasting seasons, migration seasons, right? Everything is serving the balance. So that is also how we know that the soul or the wild one is not the shadow because the shadow is completely about the imbalance of our lives, right?
When we are chasing something at very high and intense levels, when we are wanting to gratify ourselves at very intense levels. This very much has to do with an imbalance present within our psyche.
So I want to talk about this today.
Practical Steps to Connect with Nature
I wanna bring this to the table because I think the message in general is that the wild is bad. And that couldn't be further from the truth.
It's just work is definitely needed here because yes, as I said, the wild can render us to do a lot of damage and hurt ourselves, hurt others.
It render us less healthy, less, uh, present in our lives.
But by ignoring all of that, it just renders us more imbalanced. By giving attention to our wild, to our inner wilderness, to our animal is to first and foremost, love it because it is a part of us and it is not going anywhere. No matter what religious doctrine we follow, our animal nature will always be a part of us and there's nothing that we can do to make it go away. We don't want it to go away. We need to be part animal because as I said, it is our foundational nature. We need to access our emotions. We need to access our feelings. We need to access our life force, our creative energy, our sexual energy. All of this is a part of our animal nature.
It's a part of our soul nature because essentially the soul is inside this body in order to experience the physical experience. If it was not important to have a body, the soul would not incarnate. The soul would stay as a soul, would stay up in the higher realms, would stay merged with the source. know that everything and everyone is one ,right, bask in that.
That's nirvana, that's bliss. But the soul incarnates into the body to feel and it wants and needs to feel pleasure as much as it wants and needs to feel pain, and especially pain because it is through the pain that we grow into love and into strength. It is pain that strengthens us and it is where we learn the most about love, is when we actually let ourselves feel the pain in our bodies, in our systems, and in our hearts. That is how we healthily access our wild nature, and that is how we actually move closer to our soul self, to our daemon. And remember, this is very much about also realizing a certain purpose that we've come here to experience.
Our wild is constantly seeking evolution and change, but the specific evolution and change that we've signed up for, so it will tell us to go on a certain trip. It will tell us to move to a certain country. It will tell us to talk to a certain person. Because this is where the soul will grow, and this does not mean that there won't be ordeal or strife or struggle because the soul knows it's here to struggle.
We are here to struggle to a certain extent, but we cannot stay in that struggle that that's not the idea, right? , To constantly be suffering, and to constantly feel strife. It is by denying all of that, that we constantly feel that, but when we actually give ourselves space and we hold space for struggle and strife in our lives, it will subside.
It will transform. We do release it. We are here to let go. We have been made to let go, and that is what the soul is here to do. Another very important distinction between the shadow and the soul, the shadow refuses to let go. The soul is all about letting go because the shadow holds on in order to keep basically separation alive.
It has realized duality and it is trying to protect itself from this perception of separation. The soul let goes. And within that separation of the letting go, oneness is realized and then the soul spiritually awakens. The soul and the spirit are two sides of the same coin.
So I talked about this in the four Pillars of manifestation episode. So do touch base with that. It's impossible to talk about soul and not have spirit in the picture and vice versa. So just a little review. Uh, soul basically is a thread of spirit. Soul has personality, soul has character. And spirit is the fuel spirit is that life force that drives all of creation. The soul has to spiritually awaken when we have a spiritual awakening in our lifetime. It's the soul that spiritually awakens because the soul finally remembers it's one true home.
It remembers the source and once soul and spirit start interweaving as part of our human condition. Then all sorts of beautiful healing and amazing manifestations happen. Now a spiritual awakening also is not all roses and butterflies. In fact, most of the time it's an absolute shit show, but it's a part of the process because we are here to remember who we truly are. And we are here to feel a sense of home, a feel a sense of safety, feel a sense of love, feel a sense of truth within our bodies, within ourselves. We are here to connect with the world around us, with the people around us.
We are here to serve and to support and to help and to be served, and to be supported, and to be helped.
We remember this wild, when we look to the wilderness, when we look to the nature world and we remember how God is there, God is in the nature world, the way everything just works together and is really a miracle in itself, right?
Like we just look at life. We don't necessarily have to look at the wilderness really, when we just step outside and we see the trees, we see the fields, right? The wind, rain, clouds, sun, precipitation, restart, the changing of the seasons. It's all a miracle, right? This is the infinite intelligence that has created everything, and that is a reflection of what exists within us, and that reflection is our soul, not our shadow, but our soul.
Our shadow resists all of this because it believes that duality is the only thing that exists, right? Like that separation between duality. There's no oneness there. There's no spirituality. There's no love. There's no consciousness. It's just an empty space between the dual nature of things, but that empty space is actually filled with God and the soul knows that.
And this is what we are here to basically remember as part of our humanity. So don't ignore the wild. Don't ignore your inner wilderness. If this is something that is very triggering or activating within you because of not just cultural and even religious programming in your lifetime, but ancestral programming and conditioning that the wild is bad, negative, or evil.
Just spend time in nature. Spend time in a forest, in a park, by a river, by a sea. Wherever you are in the world, just spend time in nature and just attune and focus or just have an awareness around how everything is connecting, how everything is working together, how this is our creator, God, source, spirit intended it to be, and that all of this is reflected within our humanity, our animal nature, because it is the animals out there in the wilderness that are making everything happen. And yes, there is animals hunting and being hunted. There is death, there is suffering, there's turmoil, there are poisonous plants and flowers.
There are avalanches, there are earthquakes. There are tornadoes, right? There are tsunamis, right? Like the nature world is destructive as it is regenerative, but the whole point of this is to know that there is no death and that everything just transforms. That is soul knowledge.
That is the wild self. The wild self that is awakened, the animal self that is a part of our, not just human nature, but also our spiritual nature because we still need to go to the bathroom. We still need to eat. We still need to drink. We still need to fuck. We still need to self-pleasure. We still need to make money. We still need to keep warm. We still need to find comfort in our homes. We still need to nurture ourselves. We still need to put a bandaid on when we cut ourselves, right?
It's all a part of the grand design that is creation. So it's all spiritual, everything. It's all spiritual. So.
Personal Reflections and Experiences
I wanted to bring this to the table because this has been such pivotal piece in my journey, right? And it ties into some things I've talked about. Obviously, my journey with sexuality, with porn addiction, my body, my injury, why I moved to Greece. Just being so, so connected to the nature world here was really, I think coming to Greece, moving to Greece was really just the wilderness that called me. It was just for me to be around mountains and sea and , all sorts of incredible landscapes.
Don't get me wrong, Canada is beautiful as well. Uh, incredible nature, but it was very much city life. It's not something I was very much attuned to growing up in Montreal. Now obviously going back, I can definitely attune to the nature world a lot more, but it was really the wild that called me to Greece as well as my ancestors of course. The wild and the ancestors are very much intimately connected. Our ancestors did a lot of things in the wild. They prayed, they danced, they sang, they made eros. They cooked, they cleaned, right? So much of the wilderness was interweaved into their lives. So by connecting to the wilderness, we also connect to our ancestors. By connecting to our ancestors. We also connect to the wild.
So I'm glad this episode came through at the time that it did, because I did come back from an incredible place today in Crete. I went to the only natural lake here in Crete, just outside of Rethymno, and it was just magic. I mean, just the scenery is just the water, the mountains.
It was pure bliss. I did want to record this episode yesterday. Didn't happen. So felt like I needed to go to the lake today. Touch base with the water there, the mountains , the trees, the wind, the dragon flies. The dragon and uh, yeah.
Conclusion and Call to Action
I'm gonna leave it here. I think that's enough food for thought for today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you're on YouTube, please hit that like subscribe button. I so greatly appreciate that. Share the content if you feel called, if you're on one of the podcast platforms, please share the content as well.
You can send me a text. I'd love to hear from you. You can also find me on Threads, Facebook, Bridger of Worlds, instagram with my full name. I'd love to hear from you over there and see you over there as well. Please leave any comments that you'd like. Please share any insight and experiences that you may have had.
I will be back next week, of course, with a brand new episode every Thursday here on Bridger of Worlds. And in closing, please remember that you are the medicine and I am just the messenger. Thank you very much.