Jaguar Dreaming - Walking the Bridge of Perception with John Perkins of the Pachamama Alliance
How can the dream of a jaguar - or any dream - help us to overcome our own fears? This week's guest, John Perkins has written a book about this. Touching the Jaguar is a memoir of an extraordinary life, and it's an invitation to walk across what he calls the Bridge of Perception to see the world differently - in his words to remember that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. Which - with slightly different vocabulary, is exactly what we're about, and what we say every week. But John is not only a shamanic practitioner with many decades of training in Ecuador and elsewhere deep in the Amazon - he's a man of many often divergent parts. If you're in the shamanic world, then you know him as the animating energy behind the Pachamama Alliance - and he describes its founding in Touching the Jaguar. Then again, if you're in the world of heterodox - which is to say not-orthodox - economics, or regenerative economics, or renegade economics or any of the various ways we explore how money works in the world, you'll know him as the author of the book, 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman.' It's not an easy read, but if you ever want proof of the utter hypocrisy of the US and the UK - of all the western countries - of the appalling damage and absolutely unacceptable behaviour our governments have promoted around the world... it's an essential read. In the early decades of his professional life, John was exactly what he says - an economic hitman who went into sovereign nations, in his case mostly in central and south America, and he offered the carrot to the nation's leadership: take our bribes, let us develop our commercial and military outposts in your country, sell us your oil, your rare earths, your land at bargain basement prices... and we'll let you live. If they refused…two of the people John worked with closely did refuse. And both are now dead in 'accidents' where their planes crashed, leaving nobody on board alive. He believes they were assassinated by the CIA and when he first decided to write about it, his young daughter was threatened and then he was bribed with a half million dollar 'consultancy' the existence of which was predicated on his not-writing his book. You can read that book today. Or you can watch the short animation of it, which covers the basics and which I watched when I was reading for the Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher... so John's been a kind of a hero since then. I didn't know he'd been poisoned and half 70% of his bowel resected and nearly died. I didn't know about the death threats or the doors that had closed in his face. I also didn't know that, alongside his work for the US government, he was being trained by a series of indigenous shamans, whose prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, required them to 'touch the jaguar' by connecting with that which they most feared - white people - and changing their perception. So - I came to this podcast thinking we'd explore Touching the Jaguar and his new book, The Art of the Steal which shows how the Trump administration brought all the old techniques that used to be used against other nations and operated them at home. But actually, this turned into something much more interesting. John spends a lot of time with indigenous peoples and they believe we're in the time between worlds, an inflection point where everything can shift. So we talked more about that. We did have some technical glitches for which I apologise - Caro and Lou have done their best with the audio and the video. In the hope that they succeed, please do enjoy this week's episode. Links John's Website John's blog: Change the Dream Confessions of an Economic Hitman (short animation version) John's Latest Book - The Art of the Steal John's previous book - Touching the Jaguar —About Accidental Gods— We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR YEAR AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 3rd January from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - Details here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price. If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
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