00:00:00.96
fsb
Welcome to the Father's Sons Brothers podcast. I am stoked to be hanging out today with a brother who I'm really getting to know on this podcast. His name is Tom Herons. Welcome to the show, bro. Thank you for being part of this.
00:00:11.79
Tom Hirons
ah Hey, thanks for having me on there. It's a delight.
00:00:15.06
fsb
Sweet.
00:00:15.28
Tom Hirons
it's it's It's Hirons, by the way. i'm I'm compelled to correct everyone, even though even so its it's a ridiculous thing to so try and correct.
00:00:19.93
fsb
Thank you.
00:00:25.47
Tom Hirons
The world is convinced that I'm Tom Hirons. sir
00:00:29.46
fsb
The other golden rule for a podcast host is to check that before he presses record. yeah ah So I realized that as I press record, I'm like, I thought I'd check. No, I'm sure I've got this.
00:00:38.85
Tom Hirons
i yeah if If I was a more graceful human being, I would have heard of let it slip past, but I'm compelled to correct people.
00:00:41.63
fsb
Turns out I don't. Apologies.
00:00:46.73
fsb
No, I appreciate it.
00:00:50.58
fsb
Welcome to the show, brother. Thank you for, thanks for being part of this.
00:00:55.55
Tom Hirons
Delighted to be here and looking forward to finding out where we go.
00:00:57.95
fsb
Yeah.
00:01:01.37
fsb
Our conversations tend to be um supporting men. And one of the areas of conversation that I like to understand is, yeah, the the human story. I think when men come together and have conversations and realize that we share similar themes and challenges, there's a lot of healing in that. And I want to get to that, but I i want to get the audience to know who you are through the lens of the roles that you've played as a father, son, and brother. Like what have those roles been for you in your life?
00:01:29.31
Tom Hirons
father son brother let's take take father first uh so i've got two two sons uh nine and five um just today i've taken them back to their their mums for a few days uh so i co-parent 50-50 with their mum, Remistainz, who's an amazing artist and lives about five or six miles away from here in South Devon in the UK.
00:01:57.40
Tom Hirons
And yeah, I mean, what can you say about being a father? have you Do you you have kids?
00:02:04.16
fsb
I don't have physical children of my own, so I've got a different timeline, but i I'm really interested in the the adventure that unfolds when you choose to go in that that path.
00:02:05.12
Tom Hirons
No. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:12.14
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:02:13.52
fsb
It's got to be one of the most, I can't even imagine the surrender that's required to be a parent and just acceptance of yourself every day.
00:02:21.46
Tom Hirons
Well, absolutely. what's What's interesting for me is trying to discern sometimes what is intrinsic to the experience of being a father and what is the experience of being a father in atomized, broken society in late stage capitalism, where you're attempting to do all the work of the village and be everything for your kids and, you know, do your thing in your nuclear family and and all of that kind of thing.
00:02:44.79
fsb
Mm hmm.
00:02:57.71
Tom Hirons
There's all of that. i I have never experienced such uh devastation as as being a father yeah um and i you know just
00:03:11.65
fsb
in what theme just because of what the world looks like, like that sort of diversity, what does it feel? What's the story behind that?
00:03:16.02
Tom Hirons
it's it's so hard It's just so hard, you know, and maybe for some folk, it's easy. I love it. You know, it's the most extraordinary thing. And, you know, could talk endlessly about the ah love and the the initiatory quality of, ah you know, becoming becoming a father, becoming a parent or even just taking that role, you know whether it's a it' a biological father or it's a stepfather or having that that caring role for someone, the way it changes you, it shifts you around round the wheel of whatever cosmological
00:03:55.79
Tom Hirons
ah map you use it shifts things you know it moves you from still being able to be focused on yourself as the primary um object of your life
00:03:58.54
fsb
Mm
00:04:08.86
Tom Hirons
And suddenly, no, you're not the most important thing anymore. And that's that's for most of us, that's a hard slap in the face that takes us the rest of our life to get over. Especially if you're essentially quite a self-centered person, as I have experienced myself to be as a creative person.
00:04:20.78
fsb
-hmm.
00:04:28.70
Tom Hirons
you know there's you know that the constant fascination with my own process, my own connection with yeah with the imaginal or with the other world and all of that and when you become a father that's that's a different thing if you've still got that going on because you're as an artist you're compelled to be to be in that creative ah whirlwind, but also it's not about you. The show isn't about you. And that that's extraordinary. So yeah.
00:05:02.60
fsb
I want to ask you something on this point because I feel like what's coming up for me is so pertinent, which is my work and message is really around the idea that my world is a reflection of the relationship that I have with myself.
00:05:05.02
Tom Hirons
and
00:05:15.28
fsb
Like prioritizing this relationship first means that's the only way that I can fill my cup enough to be in service. How do you balance what you've just shared with me with being a dad? So like, at what point are you, yeah, are you not showing up enough for yourself that you can be a dad, that your cup's empty, that you actually need to take some time away to get reconnected, fall in love with yourself, take the rest that you need versus the actual requirements of having two boys on the clock. Like, how do you balance that?
00:05:41.70
Tom Hirons
Well, yeah, it's, um so in, in my cosmology, there is, ah you know, and that relationship with yourself and how resourced you are individually. But there is also your relationship with, with your, your community. You know, so um that is another another well. ah And, you know, there's your relationship with you could call it spirit and your relationship with the the living world around us. So all of these things are are going on. um And all of those in the way that we do parenting. All of them suffer.
00:06:33.92
Tom Hirons
I paint such a bleak picture of it. um ah you know and And I think someone has to because most of the parents that I know, we're clinging on by the skin of our teeth. you know We're doing our best under ridiculous circumstances.
00:06:46.13
fsb
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:48.63
Tom Hirons
um So if your self well, your soul well is running dry and you've severed your connection to the ah wider realm of spirit ah and the land because you're too busy trying to make ends meet and your um ah connection with the community is broken or is never there in the first place, then it's it's a hard road and most of us are running on empathy. Fortunately, I'm lucky.
00:07:20.06
fsb
Mmhmm.
00:07:20.80
Tom Hirons
yeah So um able but I make my but living from writing poetry, teaching people to write poetry, running courses and things like that. So I'm able to dwell in that world. and you know do what sustains me in that world so I can i take time to go to Dartmoor, which I live on the edge of here in South Devon, um to to spend time nourishing that aspect of myself, which also feeds the poetry, to connect with the land. My connection with community comes and goes.
00:08:01.04
Tom Hirons
you know you know it's
00:08:02.68
fsb
Okay.
00:08:04.06
Tom Hirons
that's That's how it is in the 21st century.
00:08:07.41
fsb
Hmm.
00:08:07.59
Tom Hirons
I don't spend as much time with people in my kitchen, around my table, as much as I would like. But more, more and more. But it's hard. It's it's a balance all the time. But it's the same whether you have kids or not, isn't it? In that respect.
00:08:23.88
fsb
You know, my, my, my story is, is one of tracking the inner CEO in me that's continually go, go, go. And it's like, because I'm putting my world, my work into the world through this podcast and through building a team and the men's work at men's circles. some part of my internal narrative says, you're not there yet. You've chosen not to have kids. So if I can get going, like get up every single day, and I've got a strong drill drill sergeant that can take me out of the present moment.
00:08:46.41
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:08:51.86
fsb
That's yeah, I've chosen a different timeline. But another part of me is like, okay, now this has to fucking really matter or something like that, because I've chosen not to be a parent. And I made that I made that choice consciously. And part of it was selfish. I'm like, Fuck, I just love my life the way it is. It just feels so good being in this space with my partner, I've got access to resources. And, you know, it just didn't happen that kids came into my life. And we made the call my partner and I to not to not be connected and and and be parents. And so I was like, Okay, if I don't do that, then watch like, because that is a meaning piece potentially missing and a whole timeline that closes when I
00:09:30.12
fsb
made that choice. And there's a lot of mourning that has to happen. You know, I came from a world where it was expected that you got married and had kids. That's what made love meaningful. And I'm actually interested to know if my choice is true, because what I've more recently been coming up against is at some level I never, I came from a world where I never considered my ancestral line so much. I knew I had parents. I knew my grandparents. They passed away. I know it's England and Germany, more or less on my paternal and maternal side. And that's where I ended it. ah I didn't really matter too much about that. And I'm now realizing there's something quite big about that choice. If you consider that there's an ancestral line of beings that went before me to get me here, I feel a little embarrassed to say there was no consideration of them when I made my choice. It was purely about me. And so I'm like, I've been sitting a little bit with that.
00:10:22.42
Tom Hirons
That's a big one, eh? Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it, going because we connected through the the Mans ancestral healing, a terribly named um workshop that Daniel four put together.
00:10:35.26
fsb
Mm hmm.
00:10:39.22
Tom Hirons
But I was I was part of the crew of so obviously the ancestral stuff is something that's more present for you now.
00:10:40.78
fsb
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:47.38
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:10:49.08
fsb
I'd love to I'd love to go there because ah you know, ah I'm talking from our firsthand experience and from what I know from the world from which I came. there was not a lot of consideration for the power of what it meant to understand your ancestors and the role that they could play, if any, in my world in the present moment.
00:11:06.39
Tom Hirons
Thank
00:11:06.61
fsb
And so the ancestral healing piece, I think it resonated for me in some ways because I i recognize that in my partner, she's somehow more connected to to this line of work, but I see a lot of men in the West tend not to be as connected to or aware of
00:11:11.75
Tom Hirons
you.
00:11:22.68
fsb
the power or disconnection of power that we have from our ancestral land. So maybe you wanna, how did you end up in on that forum and what's your relationship with your ancestors, for example? How does that sit in your world?
00:11:36.47
Tom Hirons
There's a question these are big question.
00:11:40.35
Tom Hirons
I ended up on that. um in that workshop. um a Because Daniel ah got in touch with me and said, I've got this this idea. Do you want to do something? I think it her he'd come across one of my poems. I think maybe The Dead Fathers. um and And that turned him on to how I'm approaching uh the relation my relationship with the world not kind of necessarily of the ancestors but they the the world of yeah the underworld essentially in the shadow uh and the world of of those who have come before for sure um and interestingly it's not something that i do a lot of conscious work with and yet
00:12:36.69
Tom Hirons
I spend as much time as I can in my and my bone marrow. yeah um When I'm but i'm doing qigong, which is not as often as it used to be, ah and neigong and then these kind of things, I spend a lot of time getting into where my bones are and getting into the the bone marrow in my body, in my skeleton. and that is the place for me where
00:13:07.45
fsb
Mm hmm.
00:13:08.82
Tom Hirons
the the the kind of the the echoes of the ancestors and a feeling sense for me of that world exists.
00:13:18.21
fsb
Mm
00:13:19.04
Tom Hirons
Because I'm i'm ah um' a super imagine imagination person.
00:13:21.47
fsb
hmm.
00:13:24.32
Tom Hirons
There's a lot going on up here. yeah But I'm actually much more interested in what' what's kind of what's running in my and my muscles and my blood and my bones and all the dark and light fluids in my body and that kind of thing. And so when I go there, there are these these this sense of that place, which I guess other people work with more consciously as you know, the end the realm of the ancestors. My knowledge or my um not my knowledge, but my feeling world
00:14:02.08
Tom Hirons
doesn't really extend much beyond my grandparents.
00:14:06.50
Tom Hirons
I know some of the family tree beyond that. And and I've done you know the the DNA tests that we half of us do these days, and all the little surprises that that throws up.
00:14:11.82
fsb
Mmhmm.
00:14:21.26
Tom Hirons
But my grandfathers, I feel them not as a presence. yeah not in any kind of mystical kind of way at all but I feel my my still present hunger to be part of their circle of trust or circle of knowledge or circle of belonging yeah I didn't know them particularly well
00:14:54.12
fsb
Mm.
00:14:58.18
Tom Hirons
ah My granddad, George Hirons, grandpa Jack Callforth, he was a farmer who became a mounted policeman in Palestine ah and in Zimbabwe. ah George Hirons worked on the railways. a And when I'm writing poetry, I, this is a very roundabout way of coming to something, but trust me, had when when I'm writing poetry, I became aware over the last five years that
00:15:29.02
fsb
Go for it.
00:15:38.52
Tom Hirons
I am writing towards a number of different figures or energies or entities. yeah you know When I make a statement in a poem, and a poem i start I began to question, who am i who am I saying this to? Not my audience, but who am I actually addressing? And there was one big figure, what I call the Queen of Heaven, yeah who is
00:16:04.91
fsb
Mm
00:16:06.24
Tom Hirons
who is her own thing. Yeah. And I've just I've just I write about her and to her and she's kind of, you know, I have an intense devotional relationship to her. And I've just put this book of poetry out called The Queen of Heaven, which is all directed to her kind of her realm. But there is also there's also my sons and there's also my grandfathers.
00:16:29.57
fsb
hmm.
00:16:31.82
Tom Hirons
I'm aware not through choice but just ah yes I am addressing these words to them yeah and with my grandfathers that's partly because I want the flicker of affection and recognition and yeah the nod of you know in this country I don't know how it is elsewhere but I know a lot of male friends we uh when we we're approved of by
00:16:39.21
fsb
Mm.
00:17:00.69
Tom Hirons
the next the next generation up or the one after that so had old farmers yeah or old old guys around town and they give you the nod of yeah you did well yeah it's like gold yeah it's like it fills it fills a reservoir that nothing else can can go into uh and it's like oh god that part of me which is desperate for that that that element that nutrition that quality in my heart uh is suddenly touched and so when i when i write i'm aware of that relationship with my grandfathers and just wanting okay yeah tell me i did well and there are you know and i have a pretty honest relationship with with them or my
00:17:30.86
fsb
Yes.
00:17:50.93
Tom Hirons
my internal image of them.
00:17:57.92
fsb
Yeah, you're you're speaking into I think what is maybe at a generational difference or a more subtle realm, what is the boy crisis or masculine crisis of young boys not having that energy in their lives because they have absent fathers, because they're, you know, raised in a world where they don't have access to, to men to give them that nod when they're when they've done something well, and
00:18:22.52
Tom Hirons
yeah yeah yeah and not having not having that bringing in you know you're one of us um you know then what are we left with if we're not getting that from our you know father's generation or our grandfather's generation then all of them all that we're kind of left with is
00:18:23.10
fsb
Yeah, not having access to that is I think at the heart of what some of the challenges that masculinity is facing at the moment.
00:18:39.12
fsb
Yes. Yeah.
00:18:52.55
Tom Hirons
is kind of a harsh array of scornful judges rather than human beings ah and I was talking about this in the ancestral thing I think just this this the scorn
00:19:03.20
fsb
Mm
00:19:12.08
Tom Hirons
of our internal fathers, uncles, grandfathers, great uncles, the imagining that we have not done well in their eyes and what a weight that is on our our capacity to to live joyfully and to live with a sense of being able to stand up straight.
00:19:29.26
fsb
-hmm Mmhmm.
00:19:37.45
Tom Hirons
You know, and so many of us, you know, we've stumbled into, you know, stumbled through our adolescence into our adulthood, uh, not knowing what we're doing, but also with this vague sense that the next generation up and the one above that, and God knows about the ones before that, they're looking at us going, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. And that destroys us. Yeah.
00:20:05.77
fsb
So how do we how do we repair that part? How do we get reconnected? is there Is it past the point of saving or like how do you see what's the but the way through here?
00:20:15.27
Tom Hirons
What's the way through? I mean, work that that our generation, um if I can put this in the same generation, I don't know how old you are. ah um ah The work that that we're doing to try and you know reclaim some of our ah broken parts and look at some of this stuff. the attempt to be better um parent figures or parental figures to the generation below us and the attempt to reach out in brotherhood and
00:20:52.98
Tom Hirons
You know, go fuck, we're all in the same boat here. um You know, there's a lot of difference between our experiences, of course. But for most of us, the situation is that we don't trust each other, ah you know, or our trust has massive holes in it. You know, there might be particular to particular circumstances and things, but it's pretty broken.
00:21:12.25
fsb
Yeah.
00:21:15.81
Tom Hirons
um Our sense of, you know, what it how do I do this being a person thing? let alone how do i how do I be a man, ah you know and all these maps, these different maps I'm being handed, which are mostly just complete fragments and contradictory, ah you know all ah all of that stuff, you know the score, um to to come together and go, yeah, I'm lost.
00:21:27.64
fsb
Yep.
00:21:31.12
fsb
Mm hmm.
00:21:43.55
Tom Hirons
uh i'm lost here but you know i look i found some stepping stones over here and share a bit of bits of the map that we've explored um you know and try and stay conscious you know we we get into all the old patterns of being competitive with each other and trying to outdo each other in our you know whatever aspect of work we're doing and all of that but I believe, you know, at at the the root, in a way, is men.
00:22:10.71
fsb
Yeah.
00:22:18.74
Tom Hirons
A lot of what I say is not about men, but we're talking about men, so let's stay with it. Men coming together so together nice sky yeah to sit around a fire and just go,
00:22:25.14
fsb
Okay.
00:22:34.47
Tom Hirons
tell us Tell us how it is. Tell us how it's been. Tell us what you're hoped for. ah And to start that process of talking to each other. It doesn't have to be complicated. And that's what I'm interested in at the moment, is kind of, yeah, getting getting people to just to sit around together and talk.
00:22:58.36
fsb
I want to come back to that because it's actually a question that I want to come to. But one of the things you said in the in the Manchester video is another way of saying something that I've been saying, which is your I think your words were we come together magnificent and broken. Like, can you share what do you mean by that?
00:23:15.47
Tom Hirons
umm um All of my work really is is rooted in the the tension between poles of things. you know ah um
00:23:25.57
fsb
Yes.
00:23:26.66
Tom Hirons
I'm also an acupuncturist. I come from that Chinese medicine yin yang background.
00:23:31.81
fsb
cool
00:23:32.94
Tom Hirons
So I'm always interested in you know this, ah yes, but also but also this.
00:23:33.50
fsb
okay
00:23:39.89
Tom Hirons
And what's the relationship between those those two things? And in my writing, One of the ah qualities that I aspire to and one of the qualities that I love when I encounter it is this thing, duende.
00:23:51.41
fsb
Ah,
00:23:56.01
Tom Hirons
The force that comes into a room when when something significant is happening you know in a performance.
00:23:58.36
fsb
cool.
00:24:04.83
Tom Hirons
you know We feel that sometimes and in live music or theater or someone speaking truth, things like this, something happens, a skin.
00:24:07.74
fsb
Mmm.
00:24:15.50
Tom Hirons
hairs on our skin, stand on end and all of this kind of stuff. And Dwindig thrives in the tension between opposites. So when I speak about magnificence and brokenness, it's like, well, yeah, you know, there's aspects, that you know, the parts of us that are just radiant and vast and, you know, divine you know all of that and then there are parts of us that have been you know that are crushed and fragmented and there are parts of us that are that are mean and cowardly and not up for taking the brave step and all of that and one of my principal things you know and my experiences of what actually allows healing to occur is the welcoming of all those parts
00:25:10.71
Tom Hirons
Bring them all in. Bring them all in. Come on. Let's stop pretending. Come in. Sit by the fire. And be your shitest self. Bring them in too.
00:25:28.88
fsb
Yeah, dude, i fuck when we had when I had a new first place to have this conversation, there's so much resonance in what you're saying around them around parts, like I have my own body of work around parts integration and understanding these various parts of ourselves. And it's like, yeah, the same pieces around.
00:25:46.10
fsb
You're a god and you're fallible. Never forget either.
00:25:48.15
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:25:48.92
fsb
You know, like, don't pretend you're not don't pretend you're not a god and also don't pretend you're perfect because that neither of those build trust you know like your magnificence and your messiness is is both part of you and I agree with you I think the healing journey is less to do with actually anything to do with healing except reclaiming those parts of ourselves that we've stopped loving or abandoned or shamed or whatever those things I just bring them in and love the fuck out of them is the is the healing path from how I see it
00:25:51.63
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:26:11.43
Tom Hirons
yeah
00:26:16.80
Tom Hirons
Yeah I think largely yes I think you know there are there is healing as well and there there is the possibility of moving from states of brokenness to less brokenness but there's like this great James Hillman quote in there about um you know the therapy the the purpose of therapy not necessarily being to heal but to bless the broken parts and i love that yeah it's like to come to that for that blessing and just just to go oh yeah as you are as you are come in um yeah yeah but i'm i'm
00:26:43.64
fsb
yes yeah
00:26:57.13
fsb
that um That polarity is thinking that you're talking about is um something I'm interested as well because it feels like we're living in a world where people are calling you to be like one color or the other and there's there tends to be no gray area and that's yeah those two points of tension are the very nature of what it means to understand energetic flow, meaning like, you know, what's the right way to raise a kid? Is it super strict? Or is it give them all the space in the world? Well, it's a little bit of both. It's like, you know, you got to go in between and navigate those two polarities.
00:27:27.85
fsb
And too much of one or too much of another is neither good. You know, there isn't a good or a bad. there's ah There's a healthy balance between these two polarities. But I feel like we live in a world where it's like,
00:27:35.02
Tom Hirons
Mm
00:27:37.12
fsb
Are you an, I don't know, a red? No, I'm a blue.
00:27:39.66
Tom Hirons
-hmm.
00:27:40.19
fsb
But then you're like, you're then everything that relates to that. And it feels like that's where we go into separation where it's like, well, I'm not any of those things actually.
00:27:48.85
Tom Hirons
Yeah, well, completely. And I think, I don't know, but it feels like it's certainly been like that for a long time, that that urge towards kind of crystallization into into one aspect of ah one way of approaching the world. But, you know, for me, one of the one of the key things that I try to to track is basically and in terms of those dualities is, is the way open or is the way closed? you know when you're When you're trying to do something or your you're engaging in a situation or with someone, it's basically, is this the time? Is this not the time?
00:28:32.72
Tom Hirons
you and
00:28:34.39
fsb
How do you track that?
00:28:36.76
Tom Hirons
with with the, well, you know, we we we have the navigational tool.
00:28:37.84
fsb
That's mastery, I think. It's living in a flow state, right?
00:28:45.75
Tom Hirons
We have the the compass. I don't know. It's something's in there and there somewhere. um And, you know, we all know it. We all look back in retrospect and go, Oh, yeah, actually, yeah, what was I thinking of? I was trying to push against a locked door. Or yes, there was the moment when I could feel that there was there was an opening there. And and instead, I went for the protected
00:29:18.41
Tom Hirons
you know i put my put my armor on you know so it's like open close open close i don't know i mean i'm i'm shit at it and i get it wrong constantly but that's that's
00:29:19.86
fsb
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:29:28.07
fsb
No, breath this is I mean, it's magic. And I'm trying to understand this, because this is not this is how to do it, you know, to to really listen, because I believe that's true. You know, like we do at some level have this inner guide that's that's guiding us if we give it enough time to listen.
00:29:42.30
Tom Hirons
yeah
00:29:42.42
fsb
And I think we live in a world where we perhaps haven't given that intuition, the presence that it deserves. I know I come from a world where it's like, If I can't prove it on a spreadsheet, I'll make the decision with the data, you know, my gut didn't really play a role in it.
00:29:53.73
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:29:55.62
fsb
And I can look back now and be like, you know, if I'd listened to my guts on quite a few things, the answers were there. I just, you know, chose not to. So to cultivate that present moment awareness to be like, okay, we'll just feel into this. What is it? You know, to realize that there is a voice there and it's, it is guiding us is to live in perhaps a, I don't know, like maybe a more subtle way. Life may be a little bit more, more easy if you're listening, you know, that moment of of recognizing, yeah, where you, where something came back. And i I'll give you an example for me, like in a relationship, I was head over heels with this woman and there was this moment one day when I asked her something and her response was out.
00:30:32.33
fsb
Like she didn't want the same things I did and I could feel it in my system.
00:30:36.22
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:30:36.29
fsb
But because she had ticked so many other boxes, I just continued for a while longer. But like you said, there's that moment when you're like, and it's something I said to people that I'm working with sometimes, it's like,
00:30:44.38
Tom Hirons
No.
00:30:46.96
fsb
It might be hard, but it's not complicated. We almost always know what we need to do. It might be a hard decision to make, but when you tune in and listen, like you said, we know, but most of the time we know what we, what would be best for us.
00:31:00.12
Tom Hirons
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is complicated, though, because there are so many different parts that have conflicting needs or desires about any particular thing. And it's, you know, it's always the question of which part is is in the driver's seat or what's going to be the the result of the council of those parts coming together and deciding by committee.
00:31:12.88
fsb
Mm-hmm.
00:31:23.77
fsb
ye
00:31:26.79
Tom Hirons
but But that sense of yeah open or closed it's like I think and I don't know because I don't have mastery of anything in the kind of martial arts sense at all but it's like that that knowing is is what you develop when you're when you're working that way and for me you know the closest I get to a martial art is is poetry
00:31:47.29
fsb
Yep. Mhm.
00:31:58.49
Tom Hirons
So knowing, is this the right line to come next? Have I fallen off the path? Am I still tending to the the same energy the and following the thread that I'm trying to to follow to bring this thing you know from from the other world into this world? Or have I just started making stuff up? you know So that discernment, i think you can I think you can hone that sense in any and any art or any a and any skill, really. It just requires that honesty, doesn't it, I guess, which is what I'm trying to get better at. It's like, oh, yeah, lost it there. Refound it. Lost it again.
00:32:50.70
fsb
Do you think that creative process of being a poet for you is ah ah two polarities of nature and nurture? Or how do you see that? like is it Is it a practiced and learned skill? Or is it something that just you need to open and let come through you?
00:33:06.88
Tom Hirons
I don't know. I don't know. i All I can say is...
00:33:14.49
Tom Hirons
I wanted to be a writer from my late teens. yeah i was I was good at sciences. So I went to university and I studied theoretical physics and logic and that kind of thing. And I was shit at it. I was really clever, but I was rubbish at being a student and I just drank. I didn't really know how to be in the world like most of us. And I was really young. So I just drank and then I dropped out and then I went back to university after a while.
00:33:45.50
fsb
Thank
00:33:47.69
Tom Hirons
This was up in Scotland and dropped out again and I started writing.
00:33:49.26
fsb
you.
00:33:53.51
Tom Hirons
I was trying to write fiction. I was trying to write literary fiction so that I would be respected by people with fancy books on their shelves and that kind of thing.
00:34:06.19
fsb
Mm.
00:34:06.58
Tom Hirons
ah and Poetry didn't feature in my world really much at all. And there's a lot of stories that I could tell about how poetry came into my life. ah Ultimately, it wasn't until I did my first wilderness fast up in Snowdonia with a guy called David Wendelberry back in 2004, 20 years ago now. um That, so wilderness fast, you know, the core of which is four days and nights fasting by yourself up in the Welsh hills with just a tarp.
00:34:45.18
fsb
Snowdonia sounds cold, by the way.
00:34:47.74
Tom Hirons
It's more wet than cold, to be honest. um
00:34:51.13
fsb
Okay.
00:34:52.10
Tom Hirons
Yeah, I mean, it was it was summer, so it it wasn't cold, but ah it was it was dr it was really just, yeah, it rained a lot and wasn't at all the experience.
00:34:56.87
fsb
Okay.
00:35:01.90
fsb
So how old are you when you do this?
00:35:02.33
Tom Hirons
that so i was So I'm 51 now, so 31, I guess, yeah, when I did that.
00:35:07.96
fsb
Okay.
00:35:10.71
Tom Hirons
And it was like, you know, I took it very, very seriously. And I had this feeling of it being like a missed initiation that I was going to undertake and that I'd come out the other side of it a man in some way and you know ah my imagining of it was all very kind of mountaintop her you know looking out the rising sun and an eagle coming down and you know maybe with a scroll in its claw giving me my life's purpose
00:35:21.43
fsb
Hahaha
00:36:01.88
fsb
Okay go for it.
00:36:07.31
Tom Hirons
So um yeah, I'm thinking it's going to be this this glorious ascendant experience.
00:36:13.34
fsb
Yeah.
00:36:14.96
Tom Hirons
ah And I've prepared for it a lot. I know that I'm going towards some symbolic death rebirth experience. My soul is deeply, deeply into this. Yeah. my head is kind of struggling to catch up but it knows that something important is happening and so I go to Wales and I find my spot to do this fast in and it's beautiful it's like this oak glade in the summer sun and it's magnificent and it's just going to be like the whole thing's going to be beautiful
00:36:50.90
Tom Hirons
It's not beautiful at all, spoiler.
00:36:51.61
fsb
Yep.
00:36:53.37
Tom Hirons
ah You know, it it rains. It's just emotional torment. I break the rules. I end up eating when you're supposed to be fasting on the first day thinking I i have fucked up this this sacred rite of, you know, and all kinds of stuff and it goes it goes not how I expected it to go but I am blessed with experience possibly on third or fourth day of I can I can still picture it clear as day I'm standing just kind of on the edge of my circle there's a little bank with some some younger trees and some gnarly old ones and lots of dead wood
00:37:37.87
Tom Hirons
And, um you know, I'm peering into the into the forest because I still think that a vision is something that I'm going to see. Yeah.
00:37:46.82
fsb
Oh.
00:37:47.15
Tom Hirons
Like, a you know, I'm like a hallucinatory thing or just a parting of the veils. Yeah. You know, and and umm which I'm trying really hard, you know, my eyes.
00:38:01.40
Tom Hirons
If I just look in the right way, I'll see through And for about 20 seconds, I'm blessed with this experience where it's as if all the the layers of my being are like shells that have a little hole in them, a little aperture through which you can see.
00:38:25.86
fsb
Yeah.
00:38:27.19
Tom Hirons
And there's this kind of, you know, the outer aspects of myself and my kind of visible personality, my my outward facing self, and then all these shells and shells and shells, each with their little window. And for about 30 seconds, just out of nowhere, yeah, nowhere, having fasted and prayed and done my own self-made ceremony,
00:38:51.25
Tom Hirons
It's as if all the the shells line up and the apertures all line up so that I can see down into the middle of it. Just in turn, this is a kind of internal image experience. you know And I see down to the core, the kernel, the seed image of my of myself, I would call it these days. And I look in there, and what I see, the language for it is warrior poet.
00:39:19.91
fsb
Mmm.
00:39:23.31
Tom Hirons
And this is quite, this is on the one hand, as with most beautiful things, on the one hand, this is news to me because I don't write poetry or the poetry that I've written is really shit. Yeah. But on the other hand, of course, yeah. Poetry, real poetry, the real poetics of life was what I was always interested in. And so I take this kernel. and I take it away from the experience of the fast and I know that I have seen something of my essential identity that I am blessed to have seen and I carry it and I carry it and it changes my life for sure all that ascendant stuff I'm not there anymore I'm down in the reef
00:40:21.40
Tom Hirons
litter and the mycelium and the stank stench and stink of ah the kind of the fertile underworld everything is kind of downward downward rooting decaying for years and years and years whereas before i was i was a cosmic zoomer you know uh it was all reiki and shamanic and you know all just kind of I am undifferentiated consciousness. This was very different.
00:40:52.83
Tom Hirons
So I took that away and I started writing poetry ah in the days after that.
00:40:54.53
fsb
Just I want to ask you something this underworld journey that you're talking about is years and years of just trying to find your way with this new knowledge, your life looks like it's, is that what is that what you mean by that?
00:40:58.37
Tom Hirons
yeah the show
00:41:03.53
fsb
Or is it just this experience that you have on this?
00:41:05.06
Tom Hirons
its what i it's It's after. Yeah, after. suddenly i'm interested in and kind of compelled and constantly in the in the murkier depths of soul work rather than spirit work yeah if we can speak about that that duality of kind of an ascendant and a descending where spirit is undifferentiated consciousness and soul is you know your particular storied experience of life on this planet
00:41:25.69
fsb
and
00:41:42.48
Tom Hirons
um Yeah, and then I start trying to try to live it, you know.
00:41:47.22
fsb
What's the theme of warrior mean to you?
00:41:48.61
Tom Hirons
Okay, if that's who I am.
00:41:49.53
fsb
If you've spent some time on the poet piece, what does the warrior piece mean for you?
00:41:53.33
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:41:56.31
Tom Hirons
It means um using what skills I have in bold service. Yeah. So not just the poet as hermit, not just poet as mystic, but someone engaged in in the struggle for and not just, you know, self-realization or whatever, but for the the diminishment of suffering in the world.
00:42:36.10
Tom Hirons
for, you know, opposing desecration, um you know, standing up, speaking out, learning to use language and eloquence in ways which have effective power to ultimately slow the progress and in my wildest dreams defeat the, what I call the devouring one.
00:43:00.49
fsb
Mm-hmm.
00:43:01.01
Tom Hirons
Yeah. That, that force that is, you know,
00:43:07.66
Tom Hirons
around just eating up everything.
00:43:12.74
fsb
Your transmission has actually got got to one of the questions that I had for you today, which was, I can't remember where I saw you say that stories and words have the ability to change the world, or a version of that.
00:43:15.49
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:43:24.37
fsb
Like, how how how do you see the role of story and narrative shaping the world?
00:43:35.14
Tom Hirons
There's all sorts of levels to that, aren't there? There's there's kind of everyday levels where you know we we carry stories and the stories we tell ourselves and each other about what. what we are, what the world is, you know, they shape our experience, you know, that's there. And then there's the kind of the political ah layer of, you know, if you're being told a story about how things are happening, then you believe that story, then and that shapes your experience and narrative framing, you know, who controls the story.
00:44:08.51
Tom Hirons
you know, that's part of the information more in any conflict, for example, the stories that are told, who writes the stories afterwards as well.
00:44:17.40
fsb
Yeah.
00:44:19.35
Tom Hirons
But then, you know, what I'm interested in, there's loads more that I could say about that, but I want to skip to the particular bit that I'm interested in at the moment, you know, because I've been a storyteller, an oral storyteller for 25 years.
00:44:21.53
fsb
Uh-huh.
00:44:37.09
Tom Hirons
30 years, something like that, telling traditional folk tales. You know, I lived in a travelling storytelling theatre and travelled around, yeah, telling Russian folk tales, Romany tales, Scottish traveller tales, Welsh tales, all this kind of stuff. Very beautiful, very romantic. And those stories have their own power. Yeah, they're spirits, they're people. You share them with people and then they go away with that knowledge and that experience carrying that story and that story goes out into the world with them. And that's another thing. That's another a beautiful thing. What I'm interested in at the moment is about the ways in which throughout history there have been people in every society that I know of
00:45:28.79
Tom Hirons
or at least every sane society that's worthy of the name, a culture. There have been people who have the ability to affect external reality through the use of language directly. So for example, there was a story that a for a short time I used to tell that was a story from Siberia, Chukchi story. amazing story. I found it in a really obscure old book in the way that storytellers do when they're searching for the the next story that no one's heard.
00:46:08.32
Tom Hirons
you know It has some value ah and in that sense of acquisitive sense of you know pillaging other cultures for the good stories.
00:46:08.97
fsb
Thanks.
00:46:17.67
Tom Hirons
I did that, you know. ah And I found this story and it was great and it was weird and I knew everyone was going to love it because it kind of made my hair stand on end. And I told it a few times and then there was this niggling sense, yeah, talking about intuitions and that navigational feelings and things we ignore and things we don't. There's this niggling sense of I'm being an asshole here.
00:46:42.67
fsb
Mm.
00:46:44.50
Tom Hirons
I'm doing the thing that I least want to do in the world, you know, one of the things anyway, of just totally inappropriate cultural appropriation. So I went back to the the the text that I'd got it from and I reread it and saw what I'd seen before but had chosen to ignore as you do, that this whole story is a story that is told to calm the wind. when there's a storm in that area.
00:47:16.74
Tom Hirons
yeah And I'm telling it basically as entertainment.
00:47:19.97
fsb
Hm.
00:47:22.24
Tom Hirons
But it's not that technology.
00:47:23.51
fsb
Hm. Rod.
00:47:26.06
Tom Hirons
That's not what it's for. It's for affecting the weather.
00:47:32.18
Tom Hirons
And there have been people who do that in you know all sorts of shapes and forms all over the place.
00:47:33.29
fsb
Hmm.
00:47:37.69
Tom Hirons
yeah So that's that's kind of what I'm talking about, one of the things that I'm talking about and one of the things that I'm interested in in an age of you know climate chaos, rising fascism, and all the shit that's going down. It's like, OK, how do we work with that energy as well? If there have been spells, stroke stories for change in the weather, Then, you know, I'm just a fledgling. I'm just a an apprentice on this journey, but I'm interested in what might we do to affect things in magical ways. That's basically what we're talking about.
00:48:22.19
fsb
Fuck yes. I really love it. ah Yeah.
00:48:25.71
Tom Hirons
Fuck yes.
00:48:25.84
fsb
Yeah, so good. I'd love to invite you to share a story here and I'm gonna give you one space but it may not be the space for this particular story.
00:48:28.15
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:48:35.82
fsb
I've seen in your vortex a story about a young boy who gives half his soul to a falcon. I don't know if that's ready to be shared here or whether you have something else that you'd like to bring on this platform, but yeah, I'd rather share some of your magic.
00:48:44.35
Tom Hirons
Uh
00:48:55.05
Tom Hirons
But that's very kind and a lovely ah lovely space to be opened, Gareth. Thank you. But before I do that, I can tell you the story about the story of the the boy and the falcon, because it's been going on for quite a long time.
00:49:08.61
fsb
Cool. That's, that's a story itself. 30 years you said.
00:49:12.49
Tom Hirons
ah now And I'll do that in a minute. Yeah, yeah, ill I'll come back to that.
00:49:16.07
fsb
Okay.
00:49:17.67
Tom Hirons
But I am i have curiosity as well, um which is essentially how how did you arrive where you are now you know in whatever sense that you that you want to take that? Because it sounds like you've been on quite a journey from spreadsheets to you know interlocking hexagonal cells on the wooden wall behind you, and the the light flickering. That's that's not spreadsheet world. What happened man? Where did it go wrong?
00:49:46.33
fsb
a
00:49:49.79
fsb
Yeah, I think it was, again, this type of question has multi layers, you know, it's all just my, the stories that I've chosen to tell about myself at different times in my life, based on the upbringing that I had and the stories that I was told by my parents about certain things in the world that I grew up in in South Africa. And um Yeah, just to put it into, it was the classic hero's journey type when I ah followed the original
00:50:19.60
Tom Hirons
Mm hmm.
00:50:19.82
fsb
path to go and create what I thought would be a meaningful life and realized in my mid thirties that I'd ticked all of the boxes and I was looking down at another 35 years of doing the same stuff and I'm like, some part of me is dying and I didn't know how to say it. What it looked like in my world was, yeah, addiction, feeling very uncomfortable being by myself, always keeping busy with all the things that kept the boxes ticked, which was make money, look after the body, work out.
00:50:42.94
Tom Hirons
Hmm.
00:50:47.41
fsb
behind the scenes, connecting with as many women as possible to distract myself from myself and cocaine and alcohol and all the things. And so, yeah, I hit a bottom at some point in my mid thirties that was like, I don't know if I want to just keep doing this. And I could see a timeline where I just stayed on this path. And I hadn't found myself. And it seemed like everybody around my us in my world had, they were getting married and having kids. And I was like, whoa, i'm but I don't know if I'm there. And I didn't trust myself to get married, which seemed like the next thing to do.
00:51:13.27
Tom Hirons
Mm.
00:51:17.44
fsb
in your late 20s or early 30s, that's what we were all on this path to do. Anyway, it left it left me an opportunity to sell my business and go traveling. And yeah, just connect and fall in love with myself again and open up a whole lot of rabbit holes around. Yeah, some alternative narratives, but what was more interesting was recognizing how much of myself I had cut off and didn't have access to because I didn't want to open a box that was labeled spirituality.
00:51:44.21
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm.
00:51:45.90
fsb
that's what it was. And I think the story and the wound came from some sense of a religious upbringing, conservative Christian upbringing, which was like, you should have one partner, you should sleep with one woman, your wife.
00:51:47.75
Tom Hirons
Okay.
00:51:56.07
Tom Hirons
Mm.
00:51:56.66
fsb
And yeah, you want to make sure you keep your shit together, because otherwise you're going to be judged at some point. And I don't think that resonated with me. So in this phase of my life, I found some, I found some resonance with being an atheist. I was like, nothing fucking matters.
00:52:08.59
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:52:11.04
fsb
When the lights go out, the lights go out, so I might as well just do what I've come to do, which seemed to be make money and build my business. And I found it a hard way to live because then nothing matters. You know, there's nothing else beyond this. And so that was, yeah, I think my my soul was calling for something else and I didn't know what that was.
00:52:22.90
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm
00:52:28.47
fsb
And ah yeah, 42 countries, loads of lovers, Vipassana retreats, studying Buddhism, going to Thailand, time in India. darkness retreats and then interlocking hexagonal boxes in a candle, creating a podcast, doing men's work. That's sort of the short version. But yeah, in that journey was, was this recognition that like, holy shit, I'm the same person, the same person that I've always been. But everything that I had, like a story around money, I could change that.
00:52:59.95
fsb
And I noticed that my my reality about that particular thing shifted. And I was really interested in recognizing the role that story plays and how important the cultivation of present moment awareness is in order for me to be able to see the story.
00:53:07.33
Tom Hirons
Hmm. Hmm.
00:53:15.02
fsb
Because until I can see the story that's running, you're in a part to whoever it is that's got the microphone in that moment, that's like, ah, we're all going to die. or the part that's like, you're just fine bro, just take a breath, you'll be okay, you always have been. Like if you can catch those moments, I spend less time in the in the fear story. And I've seen how that is unfolded in my world around me.
00:53:37.13
Tom Hirons
Aha.
00:53:38.61
fsb
And I've noticed how when I've changed my story about relationship, I've manifested a partnership that I don't think I could have done with my old narrative around story.
00:53:44.19
Tom Hirons
Yeah,
00:53:46.30
fsb
So yeah, it's become the basis of wanting to have these conversations and
00:53:48.27
Tom Hirons
yeah.
00:53:50.95
fsb
And then the the angle of men's work came in because I looked back and I ah saw myself or see myself as a bridge between, I don't know, I would maybe call it the matrix and the world I'm in now, like some sense of, yeah, just not recognizing the power that we have disconnected from from some stories where we began with the conversation around our ancestors.
00:54:03.75
Tom Hirons
yeah
00:54:10.54
fsb
I think that's a story that nobody in my old world is talking about. No one's sitting around considering this stuff. and It feels like we're cutting ourselves off from those very stories that could be saving us. So yeah, that's the short version of the last 20 years.
00:54:29.92
Tom Hirons
Yeah. And Guatemala, yeah.
00:54:31.55
fsb
I'm in Guatemala um when i arrived in yeah when I arrived in Latin America for the first time.
00:54:34.34
Tom Hirons
Is it Guatemala? Yeah. yeah
00:54:36.71
fsb
i'd been in I'd been in Asia and I was like, wow, it's so different to South Africa. It felt all new and amazing. I know subsequently having studied some energy spiritual stuff that we have chakras in our body and I'm double torus, which means I'm sort of a body guy. Like I'm in my body a lot. I've got a lot of pleasures around food and intimacy and being in the body. And I understand that the world has a similar chakra system where Asia tends to be more upper chakra mental top stuff and something about coming to this part of the world when I arrived in Latin America.
00:55:09.61
fsb
some part of me just went, ah, like relax. There was just a general, and I was like, okay, this is where I need to be.
00:55:14.28
Tom Hirons
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:55:15.74
fsb
And so when I listened to that and made the decision to be in Guatemala for this time, the same, a couple of weeks later, I met my partner and this is how my life is just beautifully unfolded into with the amazing life I have.
00:55:18.91
Tom Hirons
Ah ha.
00:55:26.50
Tom Hirons
ah Hey.
00:55:30.50
Tom Hirons
Beautiful, beautiful.
00:55:30.73
fsb
Yeah.
00:55:31.48
Tom Hirons
The way it was open and and you you felt it and and there was there was play.
00:55:33.98
fsb
I made the decision at the bottom. That was the thing. Yeah, when I was feeling you know really ah really squished at the bottom and it felt like my life was collapsing, um I made the difficult decision and that was it.
00:55:39.23
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
00:55:46.91
fsb
But I've actually gone through a process of reframing even that story. you know The hero's journey is the hero who comes back home with the goods. I'm actually more like the hero was the Gareth who was like fucking burning it at both ends to try and wake me the fuck up. Like I see that version of myself as the hero because he did more work than the version of me that was lying on the beach in Thailand continually like, you know, Instagram photos, all of that stuff. Like the Gareth Bickering that was really at the bottom and like screaming and shaking like I think he's the one that I need to be celebrating. And instead, you know, I can sometimes have this decision of like,
00:56:17.06
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm
00:56:21.71
fsb
ah I don't resonate with that version of myself. you know and and' I'm not a man who makes decisions like that anymore. But that's a separation from that part. you know Instead of looking at him as being the hero, bringing him back in and like, that's really the part of me that's um that got me onto this part.
00:56:30.04
Tom Hirons
Yeah yeah
00:56:36.68
fsb
So I think there's story interwoven into all of that.
00:56:43.07
Tom Hirons
Totally, totally.
00:56:44.56
fsb
Thank you for asking.
00:56:44.94
Tom Hirons
Thank you. that That's beautiful to hear. What an adventure. What an adventure. but an adventure
00:56:49.58
fsb
Yeah.
00:56:50.70
Tom Hirons
i am that That piece at the end about, you know, othering those parts of ourselves or those selves that we've been or kind of the way that we see, yeah, who was who was the hero? What was that energy? um I reached a point I don't know, at some point over the last five years where I really saw how my attempts to live in certain ways and to be, to get it right, whatever the terms of getting it right were in any particular phase. We're just creating
00:57:38.98
Tom Hirons
more and more kind of cascading sets of exiles yeah it was like you know putting you know
00:57:44.07
fsb
Hmm.
00:57:50.90
Tom Hirons
i was I was wrong then, and I was wrong then, and I was wrong then. At some hypothetical point in the future, you know it might be now, I'm going to get it right, and then I'll have this this version of myself, which is you know which which i can you know I can take the applause. It's like, yeah, thank you very much. I'm on the podium and all of that. But actually, no, I'm still ex ah exiling parts.
00:58:13.13
fsb
Ah!
00:58:14.96
Tom Hirons
Yeah, not not that. Still creating the shadow, like or maintaining the shadow, still feeding it, creating things to put in the bag, selves to put in the bag. And I just i realized this and I was like, I'm not going to spend my whole fucking life doing this. Yeah, I'm going to bring them in. And that the poetry collection just before. ah What's the current one called Queen of Heaven is called at the orphan's door.
00:58:38.25
fsb
Queen of Heaven.
00:58:41.69
Tom Hirons
And I was working with this this internal image of this feasting hall ah in which kind of the parts of me were dwelling. Yeah, this kind of very I don't know, kind of Anglo-Saxon or Lord of the Rings kind of image of a stone, a stone hall, not much in it, but a big fire and a long table in the middle and some benches and some chairs at the fire, some stools and that kind of thing. Some stairs going up over there. I don't know where they go. But there's these big oak doors at the the front of this, this hall and
00:59:21.63
Tom Hirons
I was working with this not in a particularly therapeutic way but it was just an image sense you know kind of half image half kinesthetic kind of sense in my my front kind of from my belly up to my heart ah and Because of various circumstances, you know, separating from the mother of my kids and um starting to move in the in the world of polyamory and the the death of my mother and, you know, all sorts of life stuff happening. I started to notice when I stayed with this image that every so often there would be a kind of energetic knock at the those huge doors.
01:00:05.38
Tom Hirons
ah and I started to get quite good at hearing when when that knock was happening and I would go to those doors and there would be some orphan, some exile that had split off from my acceptable self at some point along the way and I realised that it was my job to bring them in and sit them by the fire Give them a blanket, give them food and listen to them. Yeah. And that was it. That was it. Not to put them on the throne. Yeah. Not to do anything, but just bring them in. And that became my mantra. Just bring them in, bring them in, bring them in. So that's where that kind of that parts thing of just like, just as you are and no more exiles. And it's like, can we stop creating exiled versions of ourselves?
01:01:01.75
Tom Hirons
It doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't help anyone.
01:01:05.33
fsb
Oh so good bro.
01:01:06.81
Tom Hirons
Even if they're things that we're ashamed of. It's just like, it doesn't mean we have to elevate them and kind of suggest that they're right, but that they're our kin. Bring them in.
01:01:22.84
fsb
They got us to where we are right now. And that's this I think in that is what I see as a potential shadow in the personal development space.
01:01:24.27
Tom Hirons
Bring them all in. Yeah.
01:01:27.70
Tom Hirons
yeah
01:01:30.29
fsb
Like if I'm continually rushing to be a better version of myself, I almost by default have to let go of this version or previous versions of myself because they're not good enough where I have to evolve out of those into the best version of myself. And it does exactly what you're talking about. It breaks off pieces of yourself that you're that you're not willing to integrate.
01:01:52.43
Tom Hirons
completely and and it's it's got a lot of very suspect underlying schemas or stories because it's like you know Gareth version 45.2 you know is going to be the best best so far and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna work on it and you know and it's just so linear and so devoid of any kind of connection to the natural cycles of things which seem to be a good place to go for you know understanding how our souls work that it's like well so does this mean that Gareth version you know 87.1 yeah on your deathbed let's say 99.5 is going to be the pinnacle version do we have to wait until then
01:02:44.13
Tom Hirons
What does that even mean? you know um I have a lot of so discomfort and suspicion of the the whole kind of personal development world. um ah But there's also a lot of good in it, obviously. I'm not goingnna not going to slate it. But some of those some of those assumptions and some of those those patterns there are perpetuating some really weird shit there.
01:03:07.68
fsb
Thank you for bringing that.
01:03:11.82
fsb
Yeah, thank you for bringing that because that said I've been at the basis of it is love and acceptance of ourselves exactly as we are and the recognition that all of these parts were necessary to help us survive whatever was happening in our world at the time and I love the analogy of bringing people in and it's touching on so many things for me, which is like, you know, as within so without and I know you actually have a physical
01:03:27.45
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm.
01:03:34.53
fsb
bring them in in your physical world. You have this like campfire idea that you've actually been practicing in the physical world, right? What is that program about? It seems similar-ish.
01:03:44.65
Tom Hirons
Well, it is, it is, you know, it's um It's a hypothetical thing at this stage, you know, having sat around, you know, numbers of fires with men down the years in, in men's groups and council and all that kind of thing. I'm interested in. Yeah. What is the simplest way of doing that? without making it so sacred that it becomes an obstacle to those who don't move in that kind of subculture or don't have have that sense of the world, but isn't so mundane that it doesn't have any juice as well.
01:04:17.33
fsb
Mmm.
01:04:27.50
Tom Hirons
So what I'm going to do, yeah, What I'm going to do, like I'm putting this off and I keep putting it off everything to do with men's work. I keep putting off because I keep waiting until, you know, some point where I've got it all figured out. Yeah. It's like, Oh, then I'll, then I'll be useful. And I'm not, I'm like, I can't do it now. Cause you know, I'm afraid of fucking it up and you know, whatever, whatever I get it wrong. And I don't, I don't know anything. And then, you know, men will turn on me.
01:04:56.24
fsb
and i die
01:04:57.37
Tom Hirons
that kind of fear but ever yeah totally it'll yeah it'll all be terrible but every every six months or so ah another friend of a friend who's a young man kills himself
01:05:07.62
fsb
And
01:05:15.10
Tom Hirons
And it just happens again and again.
01:05:16.02
fsb
I
01:05:16.98
Tom Hirons
I was out yesterday morning, early, just out the front of the house in a next door neighbor.
01:05:22.98
fsb
die.
01:05:24.36
Tom Hirons
Lovely, lovely guy. Looks after some woods just up on outside the town. He's in his late 70s, early 80s, I think. He was off to a funeral and I said, ah, sorry to hear that. And it was like, yeah, it's a 37-year-old man. um who killed himself recently. And every time that happens, I'm like, stop waiting for perfection. Just do what you've got to do. It might be a meager part of something good, but we, for you know, we wait and we wait and we wait. And one of the
01:06:07.89
Tom Hirons
One of the mantras of my life, I guess, increasingly, I think probably since I had kids, is don't wait. Because one of these days, you know, a piano is going to fall out of the sky, or um or the disease is going to come, or whatever. And all those things that that have been waiting then evaporate, like like steam or smoke. And it's like, what good was that? So I need to get on with it. What I want to do is is this consultation, basically. I've got a site, men'sfire dot.org. And I need to just put up a page saying, what do you think are the ingredients of goodness with brothers if you're sitting around a fire?
01:06:54.22
Tom Hirons
but what what makes for the goodness. So I'm going to do that. or maybe Maybe this conversation will be a a bit of a kick up the arse to do that.
01:07:02.99
fsb
I mean, I've got so many things coming through me. First of all, thank you.
01:07:04.80
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
01:07:06.07
fsb
Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing the tension that comes from hearing the call and realizing that you know we have a story that we can't do it now, because I think that's that's true for many of us. um And to get even more practical around it, My analogy for the men's work brand that I'm creating is anchored in a few things and hopefully some new paradigms of what it means to be a leader and to do business etc that are more anchored in collaboration rather than competition. so
01:07:41.19
fsb
actually what that looks like is some other men's circle brand actually now fills me with excitement that somebody else is doing it where there's a version of me 15 years ago that saw somebody else doing something the same as what I was doing as a direct competitor, you know, like based in scarcity, like if you get the clients, I don't get the clients and something something about that has been a significant shift.
01:07:56.35
Tom Hirons
Sure, sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:08:01.30
fsb
The second theme for me, which is what I want to talk about here is like, i I want to expand this work through the digital because I think it's it's It's got the ability to be able to do that, so it can grow really quickly. but I think it needs to be anchored in the physical. And I think that is real men sitting around real fires one-on-one. And that's the piece for me.
01:08:22.05
Tom Hirons
Yeah, yeah.
01:08:22.38
fsb
And i I've basically built the first half with the digital training program that gets men to this sort of first six month milestone. The next is giving them a playbook, which I think I love your idea of it being super simple.
01:08:32.71
Tom Hirons
who Yeah.
01:08:35.59
fsb
That's like, if you don't see a men's circle in your community, you're it, bro. You're the one who's fucking holding it. This is how you hold it.
01:08:42.74
Tom Hirons
That's it.
01:08:44.21
fsb
maybe something that you and I could create together or so you know a call or something or a simple training program to take five men out on a hike.
01:08:49.55
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm.
01:08:51.95
fsb
or just go and sit next to the lake or go and do whatever it is in your particular community that brings men together with some with some backing that gives the brother an opportunity to feel like he's got something that he can use to hold the space if he's never held the space before, while also I think not making it overly sacred like you said so that it can it can be accessible for the Gareth of 20 years ago.
01:08:57.89
Tom Hirons
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
01:09:13.90
fsb
That's what it needs.
01:09:16.94
Tom Hirons
Yeah, ah totally. Some of my favorite things that I see around are really down to earth, adverts at train stations, just kind of, you know, appeal into, you know, not wanting to use too broad brushstrokes, but just ordinary blokes. ah Just go and, you know, find a way to get them to come and talk to each other.
01:09:39.51
fsb
Yes.
01:09:42.36
Tom Hirons
That's, that's, that's beautiful to me. um But yeah, let's keep talking um and emailing and see what we can come up with because I agree that that Just that physical thing is the physical thing of being a in conversation and developing trust with people in proximity. You know, we've all had the experience, I'm sure, of being on Zoom calls and, you know, it can be as profound and um beautiful as you like, but then the connection is broken.
01:10:16.38
Tom Hirons
The call ends and you're still sitting in your little atomised world and it' sometimes that's that is a brutal shock in itself.
01:10:21.14
fsb
Mm
01:10:25.41
Tom Hirons
Um, but I'm also aware that there are, there are a lot of people doing all sorts of amazing work and have been down the years of very, very similar to this. So I'd love to, um, yeah, just get loads of voices in, uh,
01:10:43.33
Tom Hirons
to come up with basically, yeah, this kind of downloadable booklet, a package, like you say of.
01:10:45.85
fsb
hmm.
01:10:50.14
Tom Hirons
so Here's the Flatpak version. yeah this isn't This is not the the deluxe VIP you know organic permaculture thing.
01:10:57.64
fsb
Yes.
01:10:59.39
Tom Hirons
This is this is the ah had the IKEA or Aldi ah kit.
01:11:04.09
fsb
Let's take it's take it and go. Come here, take it, go, make it your own, find a way to make it work, adapt it as you need to.
01:11:05.97
Tom Hirons
ah have Yeah.
01:11:10.37
fsb
Yeah.
01:11:13.50
Tom Hirons
yeah Yeah, without it needing to be something that is monetized or a brand or, or in a anything that, but like you say, has some kind of support, uh, possibility behind it. Um, so that it's not people in isolation, but I'm imagining that that might have to be a peer support thing, uh, rather than, you know, some organization behind it. So to create a horizontal structure of kind of, you know, distributed network kind of vibe.
01:11:44.68
fsb
So good.
01:11:46.27
Tom Hirons
which is something I'm interested in.
01:11:47.67
fsb
Bro, I'm sure we could rough for ages. I would love to make sure that we yeah share something that you're working on right now that you're excited about, that people can connect with you on what's ah what's flowing through you creatively at the moment.
01:11:50.62
Tom Hirons
Juicy.
01:12:01.46
Tom Hirons
What's happening? um
01:12:06.71
Tom Hirons
ah
01:12:09.35
Tom Hirons
I can barely even remember. So I've just got this new book out, The Queen of Heaven, poetry. So I run a small press. They make beautiful books printed on 100% recycled paper produced by workers co-ops in the UK. That's feralangels dot.com. People can find the books there. um If people haven't come across my work before, then sometimes a wild god is quite a nice poem. It's quite a good way in.
01:12:40.81
Tom Hirons
You can find that there or tomhirons.com or tomhirons.com.
01:12:45.54
fsb
Tom Harrens, please.
01:12:46.17
Tom Hirons
I don't mind how you pronounce it when you tell it type it. But yeah ah but what am i what am I up to at the moment? I'm in the process of turning my my press into a workers co-op that I'm excited about. I'm writing a book on wildness. I'm trying to approach it and in know in a slightly different way i of getting away from definitions and using a different kind of thinking, looking at polarities again of where we think of wildness and unwildness.
01:13:18.22
fsb
Mm-hmm.
01:13:20.19
Tom Hirons
And then looking at the common ground of the the wild ends of each of those polarities. So, you know, you could look at, a you know, um
01:13:31.95
Tom Hirons
what could we say?
01:13:32.28
fsb
Rot.
01:13:34.00
Tom Hirons
um Yeah, chaos chaos is wild, order is unwild. Yeah, that's a kind of typical kind of kind of statement.
01:13:40.92
fsb
Mm
01:13:41.76
Tom Hirons
Or aliveness is wild, and death is unwild.
01:13:45.96
fsb
-hmm. Oh, cool.
01:13:48.08
Tom Hirons
Comparing all of these, and then kind of overlaying them to to come up with some territory. I'm really enjoying working on that. um right Working with an American storyteller called Helen Cowart on a book on the ethics of storytelling.
01:14:01.66
fsb
Ah, cool.
01:14:03.49
Tom Hirons
who gets Who gets to tell which stories and who gets to decide who tells which stories and what's that about?
01:14:09.14
fsb
Mm, wow dude.
01:14:10.99
Tom Hirons
And that's very, very exciting. And my next collection of poetry, which I'm working on now, a which is Half of it is poems in response to, and you know, the ongoing and genocide in Gaza, and generally poems about war, conflict in the outer world and in the inner world, so they're pretty strong. um And then there's this quarterly poetry magazine, print magazine called Clarion, which I need to get my arson gear to get the second issue of that out.
01:14:48.73
Tom Hirons
um So there's a fair bit going on. a Yeah.
01:14:52.47
fsb
Beautiful. I don't want to go before I ask you this question as well.
01:14:56.48
Tom Hirons
But it's summer.
01:14:56.93
fsb
Oh, Summer, are you spending time outside?
01:15:01.60
Tom Hirons
Summer trying to get out onto the moor with my boys and my partner, Rosie, as much as I can, getting them in the river, a right up on the moor and seeing in them just blossom into their the selves that they are when they're in nine and five.
01:15:17.97
fsb
How old are they?
01:15:23.41
Tom Hirons
yeah um And just how different they are. you know when they're in the house and we're doing that whole kind of domestic world and then you take them out and get them on the moor and suddenly it's like all the squabbling and the kind of you know middle world small selves that they're in just seem to fade away and suddenly they are they are just in beauty and that's that's how I plan to spend as much of this summer as I can yeah but what were you gonna say
01:15:56.52
fsb
that's a I was going to say a few things. One of them is that ah that wilderness coaching has been so valuable for me, like our office services. I live in a pretty like transient community where people come to do spiritual work and stuff. and so yeah Having people that don't have access to to wild spaces, you sort of don't have to do anything except just get outside, you know, just give them the opportunity just to be reconnected to nature and just slow the nervous system down. And so, yeah, hearing you you say that about your voice feels feels beautiful because yeah, I think that's how we're supposed to be living.
01:16:23.57
Tom Hirons
Mm hmm.
01:16:33.24
Tom Hirons
Yeah and yet you know that isn't the circumstances that most people are living in you know and that for me you know I now take people out and run wilderness fasts so we've got one coming up next year in Devon.
01:16:43.01
fsb
Oh, yes.
01:16:49.22
Tom Hirons
There's this constant question for me of you know it's an incredibly privileged situation to be able to you know take the time and then have the access to reasonably desecrated land to to have you know that kind of experience on how can we how can we work skillfully in situations where there's not a fucking chance that anyone is going to get out of the city. It's like accepting that that is, you know, we can, we can talk about how we'd like things to be or how we feel things to should be as
01:17:26.56
Tom Hirons
you know, these human animals, cosmic animals that we are, but yet, you know, how are we going to work with those millions and millions and millions and millions of people in and the cities? How does nature connection work under those circumstances? Maybe I guess it just looks like one one dandelion pushing up through the crack in the pavement and re-fearing that for a year, maybe. I don't know.
01:17:55.58
fsb
Yeah, for me, it comes down to like, you know, the the physical, kind the physical constraints of, you know, what is mine to do, because we're not disconnected from all of that pain.
01:17:58.82
Tom Hirons
it's a but It's a big question.
01:18:03.42
fsb
And so at some level, I find solace in trusting life that at some level, we're just flowing at at the level that we have access to at ah at a collective consciousness. And this is currently what it looks like. And that may feel terrible. And on a bigger time scale, you know, death is part of the inherent cycle of life and nature. And so yeah, when I really just tap into that and look at a bigger timeline, the one thing I am clear about when I see what's happening in the nature around where I live, if there were no human beings here, nature would be just fucking fine.
01:18:35.06
fsb
Like give it 10 years, this place is back to normal, all the water's fine, animals return like that.
01:18:37.86
Tom Hirons
Mmhmm.
01:18:39.85
fsb
I have no concern that nature's going to continue. And so at some level, it's really just being disconnected from the idea that we're so fucking important in this big play that we need to worry ourselves with it and just yeah live with an open heart and do the pieces that we can that feel meaningful. Tell a meaningful story about it because that's all we're doing anyway. i mean it's no It's no more meaningful to be in service of men than it is to be plumbing my house. like Just find every single moment to be yeah a gift.
01:19:07.99
Tom Hirons
Well, well, yeah, I mean, for me, I mean, this this question, you know, kind of having
01:19:17.65
Tom Hirons
and being someone who's interested in the world and you know interested in what it means to be alive. You ask the question, you know what can I do every so often, don't you?
01:19:25.91
fsb
Mm hmm. Yes.
01:19:28.43
Tom Hirons
It's at various points in your journey around the wheel. It's like, what' what should I be doing? you know should like Should I become an activist about this and that? Should I put my body there and use my skills here? Or would that be more useful in service of that? And you kind of try and do the calculations of where would the best Application B for maximum effect and what I've come to and what I come back to again and again and again is coming back to that conversation about the soul kernel and that that seed image is like if you are doing that, if you know who you are,
01:20:02.81
fsb
Mm hmm.
01:20:06.76
Tom Hirons
then things flow from that. So, you know, I constantly fit and question what I'm doing. And then I come back to this ah through this cycle upon cycle of rumination and like, ah, yeah, just know who you are and get on with it.
01:20:16.05
fsb
Beautiful.
01:20:26.89
Tom Hirons
The trouble is most of us, and this sounds like a really grandiose statement, but I'll, I'll, pretty much die on this hill most of us don't have a fucking clue who we are and we're thrashing around like orphans in you know just wondering about trying to find some sense uh trying to find some identity to to cling on to some story some sense of purpose and you know that's why i believe in the wilderness fast because it was the thing that you know after years and years of thrashing around going this or this or this or this was like
01:21:02.13
Tom Hirons
um
01:21:03.71
fsb
Hmm.
01:21:03.85
Tom Hirons
this here, take this, nourish it, work with it, that is your job, and then do it in the world, um and it has a different quality to it, so that's why I've run the the wilderness fast.
01:21:06.37
fsb
Hmm.
01:21:17.23
Tom Hirons
There's also this camp in, I think it's end of September, beginning of October, that Rosie, my partner and I, she's also a poet and facilitator, and a fearsome play fighter as well. um We're running a camp called Warrior Poet Rebel Assembly in Shropshire in the UK to basically explore what can we do you know with this image of the warrior poet? How can we galvanize one another and kind of bring to our language and our eloquence
01:21:52.78
Tom Hirons
more to bear or to bear more effectively in the worlds in which we wish to engage. So I'm really looking forward to that. People can find out about that on my website as well.
01:22:02.51
fsb
I'll definitely put your link to your website in the in the show notes. um I'd like to invite you to another co-creation which is something when I saw warrior poets on your website I was like wow. More recently hitting some of the archetypes and checking some of these um embodiments of the healthy masculine archetypes seems to be inherent in the journey of healing masculinity but the warrior archetype came up and we We found this really amazing um experience that we created, which came from what looked like one of life's like kicks in the ass where I was promoting to get some engagement in a launch that we were doing.
01:22:40.81
fsb
And we had 84 men say yes to a free men's circle that we were holding. And we ran some Facebook ads and the nature of these things is you don't always get everybody showing up, but you know if we got half of them or 40% of them, we would have been happy with like 40 people showing up.
01:22:53.32
Tom Hirons
Sure.
01:22:56.01
fsb
of the 84 that showed up, we got zero, none. And so I was like, fuck, what happened there?
01:23:01.56
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
01:23:02.22
fsb
What is it? The point was we then went into a bit of a like a post game to see what that was. And we were like, you know, maybe men don't want to come and be vulnerable because this was like, that that was sort of cold traffic for us. So they don't want to talk about it. Maybe they don't want to do another zoom thing.
01:23:16.06
Tom Hirons
who
01:23:17.38
fsb
Maybe it was too long because it was a two hour circle and, and, and what we came up with was an idea of saying, what if we made it a fun, unique experience where it was certain that the man didn't have to say anything.
01:23:22.40
Tom Hirons
Mm hmm.
01:23:29.37
fsb
So we came up with this idea of the warrior walk, which is still a zoom call, but you put headphones on,
01:23:30.74
Tom Hirons
Mm hmm.
01:23:36.07
fsb
I played some backtracks and then did sort of a 30 minute guided walking meditation for at one stage, 25 men walking around their own individual green spaces or their own individual worlds, all in a frequency because we were connected through the tech while guiding a a meditation. And I wonder if there isn't a space for us to do something like that where you share some of your poetry and an embodied experience with the themes that you and your partner are playing with at that. to the same audience because it was so fun to do. And yeah, they loved it. So ah yeah, I just want to put that out there.
01:24:10.05
Tom Hirons
who ah hu yeah Yeah, let's think on it ah and and talk more. um
01:24:20.12
Tom Hirons
Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? All the different ways that that we can use this strange situation of of having these possibilities. um you know i have a you know In me there is a a total Luddite and also a total Geek. you know these These polarities of of relationship with technology. ah But it is an extraordinary thing and the possibilities of yeah like you say casting a wider net and doing some good sounds like a good thing to me.
01:24:51.39
fsb
I'll bring it to another when I let it land. But I think there's something in yeah giving access to men having a story while staying connected in a way that for us was it was super meaningful.
01:24:53.85
Tom Hirons
yeah
01:25:00.82
fsb
It was really, really good. We ran three of them. And the first one, just to give you an example, we had 25 people confirm and 17 showed up.
01:25:04.35
Tom Hirons
Yeah, yeah.
01:25:08.41
fsb
So something was different compared to 84 and 0. percentage wise, we we realize we realized we we landed something that was different too.
01:25:12.07
Tom Hirons
Aha. Yeah, yeah.
01:25:16.58
fsb
And that was the blessing in that seemingly failed launch that we had was like, this life was pushing us in another direction, which when I did it, I was like, Oh, this is so easy. I get to DJ and God meditation, which I love to do anyway.
01:25:29.64
Tom Hirons
yeah
01:25:30.45
fsb
And yeah, and we had great success with it. So it felt, yeah, it felt like one of those gifts that we received.
01:25:39.59
Tom Hirons
Wonderful. Wonderful. OK, let's explore it more.
01:25:41.41
fsb
Okay, before I let you go, I want to ask you something else around relationship.
01:25:42.83
Tom Hirons
I'm sure we can do something.
01:25:44.78
fsb
You mentioned that you're in partnership.
01:25:46.29
Tom Hirons
Oh, yeah.
01:25:47.21
fsb
You also mentioned the word polyamory at some point in this conversation. And I'd love to get your reflection on what your current view of relationship is and what your relationship journey has been, specifically with your romantic partners, if that's something you want to drop into.
01:25:53.43
Tom Hirons
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
01:26:06.48
Tom Hirons
How long you got, man? have
01:26:11.45
Tom Hirons
out That might have to be another conversation. I didn't even tell you about the the boy and the the Peregrine Falcon. So maybe we should have another conversation. We talk about the Peregrine Falcon and relationships.
01:26:20.49
fsb
relationships. Okay, let's do that.
01:26:22.60
Tom Hirons
um yeah and so yeah But in in brief, the ah what's what's worth saying in brief about that?
01:26:31.62
fsb
I'd like to get your sense around the journey of conscious non-monogamy as a theme.
01:26:32.97
Tom Hirons
um
01:26:36.84
fsb
Was that always a laugh for you or did it come into your laugh at a later stage? And the reason I'm asking that question is it's not a very common conversation for the world that I came from. The idea that you could be openly and honestly connecting with others.
01:26:50.35
Tom Hirons
sure Sure.
01:26:51.46
fsb
However, I saw non-monogamy done unconsciously pretty commonplace, everyone cheating with everybody else. So yeah, just keen to hear if you have anything around that particular theme or style of relating.
01:27:07.71
Tom Hirons
It's been a long, long, long journey as it has been for most of us trying to figure out ah how how to do relationship and in a way where which actually works.
01:27:28.77
Tom Hirons
It's way too big to go into in in in this time, I think.
01:27:32.76
fsb
Okay.
01:27:34.80
Tom Hirons
But I have, um it's a huge piece in my own journey, which is why I don't want to just kind of skate over it or just kind of offer a meager
01:27:42.27
fsb
Okay.
01:27:47.14
fsb
Hmm.
01:27:47.96
Tom Hirons
Sandwich when i think there's actually quite quite a feast there but um yeah i've moved through various phases were in. Particularly in the last five years but also over the last. 15-20 years um with different approaches to relationship and different experiments and different agreements, different models for myself and my my partner or partners about what ah what we were doing and what was
01:28:21.91
Tom Hirons
what was right or allowable or desirable, all that kind of stuff.
01:28:26.46
fsb
Hm.
01:28:27.77
Tom Hirons
um you know Currently, I'm in. I'm absolutely committed. relationship um which we have you know mutually for the time being kind of closed to a one-to-one ah but not necessarily with a sense of that being ah being a permanent thing but for the sake of nourishing our nervous systems which as I'm sure you you'll know if you are doing non-monogamy in any kind of you know honest way and trying to do it whilst maintaining good relations is pretty monumentally intense work. you know There's no there' no shadow work like it as far as I've
01:29:15.01
fsb
Mm hmm.
01:29:15.80
Tom Hirons
encountered ah really um and and it's hard on the nervous system and if you're coming into situations of you know consensual non-monogamy with a battered nervous system as most of us are then the work of being in relationship also has to
01:29:17.05
fsb
Yeah.
01:29:40.78
Tom Hirons
also be the work of restoring some kind of nervous system health. And I think that's true if you're in a monogamous relationship anyway, but you can kind of get away with just being completely a complete mess in a monogamous relationship, whereas in a consensual non-monogamous relationship, you just have to up your game of, you know, Knowing what your, what your capacities and your needs and wants and are and staying honest, and noticing things as they occur, your know communication skills and all of those kind of things it's like fuck, this is
01:30:16.50
Tom Hirons
this is advanced level stuff to try and do well and if your nervous system is ragged you're not going to do it well or there's the possibility of not doing it well and just ending up getting even more battered than you were to begin with which doesn't help anyone. So, so there's, you know, like, like everything I'm talking about, there's this kind of bellows of kind of in and out and kind of phases of expansion, phases of contraction. And it's been a relief in many ways for, you know, the last four months or so, five or six months to go, actually, no, let's, let's close this down and just, just concentrate on the out breath.
01:31:08.53
Tom Hirons
There's a lot to talk about there.
01:31:09.21
fsb
Thank you for that. Yeah, I realized the depth of relationship.
01:31:12.08
Tom Hirons
but like I'd love to i'd love to to have that conversation.
01:31:15.13
fsb
Yeah, beautiful. I'll give you the the cliff notes for me as well. wherere Yeah, I'm also ah in a space of conscious monogamy with my partner for the same reasons. um We're on almost six years of in being in the space. And like you don't have an idea that it has to open or that it has to stay closed, but that we will be with what's true moment to moment. And so yeah, where if we've been none we've been monogamous since we connected six years ago.
01:31:38.78
Tom Hirons
Mm.
01:31:40.99
fsb
for the same reason, we want to build something solid, we want to build our relationship and really, from a real place of solid foundation, seems like the only place that conscious non monogamy would would stand a chance because, um yeah, I think outside of that, it's going to be unless it was like a couple of lovers that I didn't go too deep with, which I've had in the past, but like having a really strong, solid primary partnership, yeah, requires a level of, as you said,
01:32:04.30
Tom Hirons
Mm.
01:32:08.02
fsb
finessing self introspection, expecting that it's going to potentially be challenging and yeah, having the tools to be able to, to be messy, realize you're going to be triggered, realize it's going to hit every single one of your wounds, all your shadows will come up. Yeah. And fucking good luck, mate. Go, go with that.
01:32:25.17
Tom Hirons
Yay, yay.
01:32:27.09
fsb
yeah
01:32:28.31
Tom Hirons
Yeah, totally, totally. And and and talking talking talking about you know stories and the power of stories. If you come from a you know powerful Christian story being being central to your to your upbringing and your notions of what relationship is meant to be and all of that kind of stuff, de-storying that kind of stuff. I don't know how people do it. um so I count myself fortunate i that I didn't have that. I grew up and but how without any strong Christian story apart from you what we got in school, which wasn't much.
01:33:09.38
Tom Hirons
ah And I look at people who are still grappling with, you know, trying to try to inhabit Christianity or kind of be in relation to their Christian story. And I'm like, wow, that's what a thing to carry. That's sir it's a heavy inheritance.
01:33:24.85
fsb
And even without religion, our collective culture has a story of monogamy, like all our fairy tales, all of our movies, is you know and there's no one open relating there doing faking cozy three-way connections, nothing of that. It's like all, so you know, it was taboo. In fact, there's a show called Taboo in the UK where they spoke about non-monogamy as this like big thing, and they made it a taboo. But I know what you mean. It's like underpinned by these central core beliefs that we all have about what relationships should look like. And the idea that any thing could be outside of that hits those core beliefs in a way that makes me and some people not feel safe.
01:33:53.03
Tom Hirons
Yeah.
01:33:59.05
fsb
You know, like the first time I heard about it, I noticed a part of me completely check out like I was like, not a fact, how does that even work? And I also held a place, as I said before, of watching myself be both the cheater and the cheated with in my old life and all relationships in, you know,
01:34:06.45
Tom Hirons
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:15.16
fsb
you know, non-conscious, non-monogamy, cheating on people. And just what a mess that was.
01:34:21.28
Tom Hirons
who
01:34:22.55
fsb
Yet somehow that was the story that seemed to be okay in that phase. But being open and honest about it seems, yeah, weird. We've never seen it modeled before. I haven't seen it modeled before.
01:34:35.28
Tom Hirons
No, no, no. And yet, and yet was you know coming right back to that thing of the ancestral medicine. We think how long humans have been around and how recent this way of doing things is.
01:34:52.86
fsb
Mm-hmm.
01:34:54.09
Tom Hirons
you know It's just a thin veneer on on top of the the the great story.
01:34:55.71
fsb
Yes.
01:35:01.56
Tom Hirons
What's 10,000 years between friends?
01:35:02.60
fsb
Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah. We would have been in the same tribe making love to the same women, sharing partners, you know, raising kids together like that. Wouldn't have looked too unrealistic a few hundred years ago. Who knows? so I wasn't there.
01:35:19.19
Tom Hirons
Maybe, maybe, I don't know. I don't know.
01:35:25.12
fsb
Brother, thank you. This has been epic. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and thank you for sharing your magic with the world and for for staying true to that, Colonel.
01:35:29.24
Tom Hirons
Ah, thank you. Thank you, Gareth.
01:35:35.17
fsb
First of all, for finding it and for for tuning into that every single day. there's I think that's probably one of the gems from this episode for me, among among others, of just yeah returning to that inner peace that we've been given to to bring to the world, like to our responsibilities to find that and to bring that. So, yeah, I really appreciate that, brother. Thank you.
01:35:58.14
Tom Hirons
ay and Bless you Gareth, it's been a joy. It's been really lovely being on here and I look forward to further conversation and see on what unfolds.
01:36:08.93
fsb
beautiful man thanks again for taking the time and yeah it was great to get to know one another here and yeah i just had a sense that this was going to be epic and it was thank you till next time brother thank you
01:36:10.52
Tom Hirons
Keep doing the good work. yeah
01:36:19.16
Tom Hirons
Wonderful. wonderful
01:36:25.58
Tom Hirons
ah Hey, go well, man. Lots of love.
