“Your vision will only become clear when you look into your heart.” – Carl Jung
“Remember when all you wanted was what you have now,” said Brendan O’Reilly. Those words stuck to me and still give me reason to pause as they really capture the essence of the life journey. O’Reilly was one of 12 speakers who presented at the Journey On Podcast Summit in California I attended with friends from Nova Scotia on October 24-28, 2024. Robyn and Warwick Schiller were the hosts of this curated event in Paso Robles. The eclectic collection of speakers included a wildlife tracker, horse/human body workers, an athletic coach, psychotherapists, life coaches, a Mongolian shaman, EAL facilitators and a Sufi poet.
All presenters were interviewed by Warwick Schiller as part of the Journey On Podcast, described as being about “shifting perspectives beyond the narrow confines of our cultural and societal conditioning.” The Journey On Podcast Summit experience “amplifies that perspective change and provides a space to grow as you can understand deeper truths about yourself and how you can change your future.”
While all of the speakers shared nuggets of wisdom, O’Reilly’s remarks really hit home. O’Reilly is a professional mixed martial arts fighter. After getting a Bachelor of Applied Science at the University of Queensland, he began prepping for his first fight in 2008, jumping into the scene in 2009. His talents outside the ring include saddle maker, horse trainer and personal trainer. He is also an engaging public speaker who delivers his story with humility and humour. “Maybe it won’t work out but maybe seeing if it does will be the best adventure ever,” he said. “Fortune favours the brave and bold, go in search of life and love will find you.” His process: “Breath, relax, think, execute.”
While all of the speakers left us wanting just a little more, another highlight was hearing the story of Chelan Harkin. As described in her Podcast interview: “At age 21 in a time of mental/emotional anguish, Chelan Harkin had a profound mystical experience in which she was shown in no uncertain terms that she needed to live in a deeply transparent and authentic way and that she would access her gifts to the degree that she opened her heart to her whole self–her joy, her trauma, her power, her tenderness.”
“In this experience, she was also shown that she would one day create a book of poetry that would encapsulate this message. Stirred up by this experience and recognizing poetry as a key to her desired goal of unlocking authentic expression, she decided to try an experiment on herself that would change her life irreversibly. While Chelan had recognized poetry as a love and a gift, its flow was blocked by self-judgment and the paralysis of perfectionism so she decided to allow herself to write “a bad poem” every day for 30 days.”
“This permission unlocked a characteristically different creative process in her and a magnificent poetic force began to pour through her that has not stopped flowing. Her publishing journey in only two years old and has been mystical and transformational and filled with prayer experiments gone right. You can find her books on Amazon, Susceptible to Light, Let Us Dance! The Stumble and Whirl with The Beloved and pre-order her upcoming book, Wild Grace.”
One of the poems that came to Harkin in this manner was a poem called Say Wow, noted here:
“Each day before our surroundings
become flat with familiarity
and the shapes of our lives click into place,
dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes,
before hunger knocks from our bellies
like a cantankerous old man
and the duties of the day stack up like dishes
and the architecture of our basic needs
commissions all thought
to construct the 4-door sedan of safety,
before gravity clings to our skin
like a cumbersome parasite
and the colored dust of dreams
sweeps itself obscure in the vacuum of reason,
each morning before we wrestle the world
and our heart into the shape of our brain,
look around and say, “Wow!”
Feed yourself fire.
Scoop up the day entire
like a planet-sized bouquet of marvel
sent by the Universe directly into your arms
and say “Wow!”
Break yourself down
into the basic components of primitive awe
and let the crescendo of each moment
carbonate every capillary
and say, “Wow!”
Yes, before our poems become calloused with revision
let them shriek off the page of spontaneity
and before our metaphors get too regular
let the sun stay
a conflagration of homing pigeons
that fights through fire each day to find us.”
- Chelan Harkin
Having savored the beauty of Harkin’s spoken word, my takeaway task was to incorporate more poetry into The Mane Intent’s therapy practice. Words are medicine.
For more information on Warwick Schiller’s Journey On Podcast and the supporting Summit, go to www.warwickschiller.com
