Chelan Harkin Transcript

Chelan Harkin Interview

Summary:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We’ve done over 600 of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com B-a-t-g-a-p and look under the past interviews menu. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the website. And there’s also a donation page which suggests alternatives to PayPal. My guest today is Chelan Harkin. Welcome, Chelan.

Chelan:  Thanks, Rick.

Rick: Yeah, we had a Senator Tom Harkin in Iowa for years any relation?

Chelan: Not that I know of.

Rick: He was really nice. Anyway, I first heard about Chelan from Mary Reed, who was on BatGap several years ago. She sent an email and she said “I saw on the BatGap website that you have hundreds of suggestions for guests, so I’m just checking to see if the intuitive poet Chelan is in your queue. She’s causing a major stir right now in spiritual circles with the recent release of her first book, ‘Susceptible to Light’”. I’ll just show the cover of that book on the page here. “Susceptible to Light”. She’s frequently compared to Hafez, Rumi, and Rilke, so much so that Daniel Ledinsky, renowned author of seven books on the great mystic poets, reached out to her personally and has generously endorsed her book. Her second book is due to be published next month, just five months after her first. And that’s now, because her second book, “Let us Dance”, which I’ll show on the screen, is coming out today, isn’t it?

Chelan: Yeah, this morning

Rick: This morning? Cool.

Chelan:  It became available.

Rick: Good. Yeah, good timing. And that wasn’t actually pre-planned, was it? I mean, in terms of having coincided with this interview.

Chelan: There’s a little story about that.  Okay. We’ll talk later, maybe?

Rick: Okay, good. But first, let’s hear a little story about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And very soon in this interview, within the next few minutes, I want to have you read a poem. But let’s start by just telling us how you got to what you’re doing now?

Chelan: Sure. Yeah. The last seven months have been completely transformational in all kinds of ways. So, rewind to November 2020. I had a big collection of my poetry that I’d been sitting on for about 12 years and had kind of vaguely been thinking, maybe someday it would be nice to publish a book, and it was kind of just a dream that didn’t really have legs. And I had all kinds of inhibitions about what that process might reveal. And I was scared to move forward with it. So I was in this just paralysis mode with moving forward. And then the energies catalyzed in this just the precise by design feeling way, in which my motivation really became activated to move forward and to treat the process of publishing as an experiment rather than a success/fail. And so I just started taking these steps forward and reached out to everyone even in my very distant circle who had any know-how about publishing and things started moving and doors started opening at such an incredible rate. And I decided to self-publish this first book, “Susceptible to Light”, and I didn’t know anything about that process. So I bought two books that I’d loved dearly, both written by Daniel Ladinsky, these Hafez books. And I was deeply inspired by them again, and the books have beautiful formatting. So I wanted to just be inspired by that formatting. And then I did another experiment. I decided to pray to Hafez every night and ask for inspiration, and ask for publishing help. And I just really went for it with this prayer. And I asked that Hafez find all the delegates in the spirit world and all the delegates in this world to be my marketing team. And every night I had this intense focused prayer, I would go on a night walk, and just chat with Hafez, and my poetic inspiration started flowing through me like never before. It was really just so noteworthy that something had changed. Anyhow, long story short, it’s not even that long of a story. But three weeks into that prayer, Daniel Ladinsky discovered my book and reached out to me and all kinds of things have opened since then.

Rick: Yeah, you and I were talking yesterday and we were recollecting a quote. I looked it up and here it is, it’s from English explorer W.H Murray. He said, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I’ve learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s concepts. ‘whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it’” So that’s what you did. Another part of Mary Reid’s email was, she said, “your story of connection to the great Muse is inspiring.” Was that what you mean by Hafez? Is Hafez sort of your muse?

Chelan: Good question. So I learned about Hafez’s poetry. For those who might not be familiar, Hafez is a mystic Persian poet.

Rick: Kind of like Rumi and sort of in that genre, right.

Chelan: Yeah, yeah. Maybe a little bit more irreverent, but very similar. Yeah. And I don’t actually remember when he lived. But anyway, so I heard a Hafez poem in a therapy session when I was I think 20 years old. And it was so potent, it was really penetrating and it really had a major impact on just shifting the way I thought about God and spirituality. So that Hafez poetry has been an inspiration for a long time. But my poetic process really began a while a long time ago, when I was about 21.

Rick: Long time ago, 11 years ago, yeah.

Chelan: Yeah, 11, it feels like a while. And poetry had been an important part of my life. But there was a lot of efforting involved in it. And then, I don’t know, one day, I just decided again, to just do kind of an experiment, and I committed to writing what I said was a bad poem for 30 days and sharing it every day. And that commitment just really kind of loosened me up, and it gave me some permission to explore and just let things flow more. And so on the second day of that experiment, something just really just cracked open wide in me, and a poem just came pouring through. So rather than this like effortful process that would take weeks or months to finally scramble a poem together, this just came through as quickly as I could write it. And that’s been my process ever since.

Rick: Which poem was that that came streaming through?

Chelan: Should I read it?

Rick: Yeah

Chelan:  I’ve marked it.

Rick: Which one is that?

Chelan: It’s called, ‘Say Wow.’

Rick: I think I have that one here. Yeah, I do. Okay, ‘Say Wow’. I’ve got show it on the screen, go for it.

Chelan: Okay, great. ‘Say Wow’. Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity and the shapes of our lives, click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes. Before hunger knocks from our bellies like a cantankerous old man, and the duties of the day stack up like dishes, and the architecture of our basic needs commissions all thought to construct the four-door sedan of safety before gravity clings to our skin like a cumbersome parasite. And the colored dust of dreams sweeps itself obscure in the vacuum of reason. Each morning, before we wrestle the world, and our hearts into the shape of our brain, look around and say, ‘Wow.’ Feed yourself fire scoop up the day entire, like a planet-sized bouquet of marvels sent by the universe directly into your arms and say, ‘Wow,’ break yourself down into the basic components of primitive awe. And let the crescendo of each moment carbonate every capillary and say, ‘Wow.’ Yes, before our poems become calloused with revision. Let them shriek off the page of spontaneity. And before our metaphors get too regular, let the sun stay a conflagration of homing pigeons that fights through fire each day to find us.

Rick: Wow, I have to say that was great.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah. And so that you say it kind of poured through and you just scribbled it down as fast as you could. Try to elaborate on the subjective experience. Like you’re taking a walk or something and this whole thing came to you. I’ve heard of things like that. For instance, Mozart said that sometimes the whole symphony would come to him in a flash. And then he would have to sit down and write it all out for all the different instruments, but the whole thing was like cognized in seed form or something.

Chelan: So yeah, I was in my college computer lab. And I’d made this commitment. So I was going to write my poem. And yeah, it really just happened. And what still happens is it’s like I’m retuned to a different frequency. There’s a buzz that comes over me and the words just start coming. And it kind of feels like they’re pouring through. And so that’s how it felt. And there was kind of an urgency to it. I just needed to write it down as quickly as I could. And what I’ve learned is that if I don’t do that, if I don’t find a pen, or if I don’t get to a computer, it’s gone, the magic is gone. I can remember the basic theme of the poem, but there’s no life to it.

Rick: Do you fiddle with it and tweak it and refine it? Or do you just pretty much write it down the way it came and that’s it?

Chelan: Yeah, good question. Just ever so slightly, not much at all. So this book of poems that I just put out, well, both of them are this way, but this book that I just put out today, so “let us dance”. It’s all poems that have come through in the last seven months. And for every poem that came through probably five to 10 others have, but the ones in this book are the ones that needed almost no edits at all.

Rick: So the best ones tend not to need edits.

Chelan: Yeah. Exactly.

Rick: And when you feel a poem coming, is it sort of like the beginnings of labor pains? Or you get a tingling in your toes? Or is there some kind of feeling like, oh, here comes one?

Chelan: It’s always really exciting when one comes, and they come a lot. So it’s a very familiar feeling. Yeah, there’s a tingle. There’s a full-body tingle to it.

Rick: And you’re not trying to make it come, you’re just kind of like minding your own business and all of a sudden here come a poem.

Chelan: Totally. Exactly. Yeah, I’ve noticed walking can bring them on though. Walking and being in the shower can also bring them on. And driving also. And there’s an urgency to it, and almost a slight sense that the experience is very pleasant.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Chelan: But there’s an urgency to it. And it would be a little uncomfortable to not write it down.

Rick: Interesting. Speaking of taking a shower, I was taking a shower a couple of hours ago, and I was listening to the radio, and they had a story on NPR, about this guy who had suffered some kind of brain injury. And he was perfectly articulate, he could talk perfectly well. And but what happened was, he suddenly could play the piano and he’d never played before. And they were playing stuff that he plays. And it was fantastic, complicated, beautiful stuff. He took his mother into a music store, and he sat down at a piano and just started playing this amazing stuff. And the salesperson in the store came over and said, “Wow, how long have you been playing?” He said, “Just a few hours.”

Chelan: Oh my God!

Rick: So where does that come from? And in the case of poems, where does that come from? Do you feel like there’s some kind of transcendent or celestial source of intelligence? Like I guess a muse is supposed to be, some higher being that is your muse? Or what?

Chelan: Yes, yes. So it feels like there’s a mingling of me, my spirit, I guess, and something else, because if I were just to try to sit down and write a poem right now, it wouldn’t be that great. It wouldn’t, there wouldn’t be that much to it. So it definitely feels that way. And you asked, like, How do you crack that open? How do you access them?  And I don’t know if there’s any kind of formula to that. But before this cracked open in me, I was really in a place of acute suffering, and I felt that there was no space in the world where I could share my heart and my voice authentically. And really my primary desire in life was to be able to do that, but I had all kinds of conditioning and really repressive tendencies. So I was unable to do that. And it was so painful. So I feel like I was kind of walking around constantly with this deep prayer of “please, I need to be able to do this.” And so in some ways, I think it had to do with that. Just a really, really deep desire for a really potent, true, deepest level of connection with something.

Rick: Yeah, I have a feeling that everybody in the world has sort of genius locked up in them.

Chelan: Right, easily.

Rick: And certainly, the routines and the pressures of the world kind of kills that genius, or represses it or dampens it down.

Chelan: Yes

Rick: And there’s this sort of deep, repressed yearning, which I think perhaps accounts for a lot of the suffering people experience. Because they’re like multimillionaires, who are just begging for change on the street.

Chelan: Yes, and yeah, perfectionism, too, has I think a lot to do with kind of clamping that down. There’s in my experience, just a cracking open to a willingness to get out of control to some degree to allow that to happen. And there’s also, I think, just such a deep preciousness about where this genius lies. I think it’s our most intimate self and we still want that to be beautifully received. And then we have trauma around ways people have related to our creative expression in the past.

Rick: In other words, they told you to go get a job as an accountant or something and forget all this poetry stuff and that kind of thing.

Chelan: Yeah, yeah, but I agree with you. I really do think that we all have some kind of genius that wants to express itself in its unique way, that all of us have that.

Rick: Yeah. Often when I think along these lines, I always extrapolate it out and think what would the world be like if everybody in the world unlocked their full genius, their full potential?

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: The world would be so radically different.

Chelan: Oh, totally. Yes. Well said. I have a poem that kind of speaks to that.

Rick: Yeah, let’s do that

Chelan: That’s actually not one of the ones we have written down.

Rick: Okay. It doesn’t matter.

Chelan: I’ll just go with it. Okay, it’s called, ‘Probing Joy’.

Rick: Which book is this from?

Chelan: This is from, ‘Let us Dance’.

Rick: Okay, your new one.

Chelan: Okay, ‘Probing Joy’. I can’t keep quiet when there are still so many hearts that need resuscitation. So much buried power and truth, so many gifts to be resurrected. The richness waiting in you to be tapped is the inspired ink into which I dip my pen. Like a scientist who cannot stop penetrating new frontiers of this universe, my pen cannot stop probing the farthest reaches of joy. To prove again and again, there are countless dimensions of you yet to be discovered. I cannot stop revealing the evidence that within every darkness can be found universes of whirling light.

Rick: Great, love it.

Chelan: Thanks.

Rick: And, you know, on this theme of everybody having repressed genius, I think a lot of people sort of externalize the blame, although perhaps some of it can be externalized. In other words, they might say, “Well, that was my parents,” or “it was the educational system”, “it’s the government” or “it’s the deep state” or whatever. And maybe there’s some blame to be assigned to external influences. But ultimately, you can take it from here, ultimately, I think we’re the ones who have to kind of take the initiative to unlock that inner potentiality no matter what, no matter why it has been locked up.

Chelan: Yes, yeah. And actually, the degrees to which I felt really stuck, stifled and stymied with this deep, deep level authentic expression, the suffering of all that, and just my lack of contact with that, is really, I think, it was like my voice was in this incubation period. And now that it’s busted out, it does so with such gusto. And such a joy, and such verve and excitement and such a deep belief that this capacity exists in all people. And just a really potent desire to share that. And I don’t know that I would have had all of those beautiful benefits without the struggle of not having that for so long.

Rick: Yeah, if you help a chick out of its egg, you probably gonna kill it, or if you help the butterfly out of the chrysalis. So there’s a certain struggle and having to make that effort to escape that confinement oneself. But you end up at least in these examples, the little being ends up healthier as a result or ends up living as some kind of see.

Chelan: Yeah, yeah

Rick:  I mean, were there birth pains associated with this blossoming of creativity? Did you have to like go through some kind of purgatory in order to clear stuff out?

Chelan: Oh, hell, hell. Yeah. Major. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m 32 now but in my 20s there was just this really beautiful gauntlet of just intensely healing and to heal means to encounter your pain, is the way I describe it and move through it. And, anyhow, yeah, just intense healing and then intense creativity,

Rick: Were you doing spiritual practices and seeking and reading or what?

Chelan: Mostly was embodied practices.

Rick: Such as?

Chelan: Hypnotherapy was my primary tool.

Rick: Oh, that’s right. You became a professional hypnotherapist?

Chelan: Yep. But personally, too, I just would use that all the time. I spent a lot of my 20s hypnotized. And it was so interesting. Because you said, does the Muse feel like it comes from a celestial kind of out there, maybe source or something? But then also, when I would crack open my heart really and do a big cathartic release, almost always under that would be a poem. And then also, more recently, when I decided to publish this book, it was like this rapid-fire, skin shedding and burning through all the reasons that I hadn’t published it before. Of which there were many, all kinds of limiting assumptions and just old, old frameworks that I needed to move through, and that is not comfortable. And that’s why so many of us don’t pursue the things we most care about, because it’s painful. It is painful. Totally worthwhile, but there’s pain associated with it

Rick: When you were being hypnotized a lot, can you explain a bit what that experience was like? Most people don’t probably have a really clear understanding. And have you ever been hypnotized into a deep meditative state? Go ahead. You elaborate.

Chelan: Sure. Yeah, well, I like to say I had a boyfriend in high school whose mom was a hypnotherapist, and she was always trying to convince me to get sessions and I thought she was so wacky, I thought it sounded so wacky. I wasn’t really exposed to alternative modes of therapy at all. Until I was.  So I like to say that, because I think a lot of people have all kinds of kind of wacky assumptions about what hypnotherapy is or can do. And I empathize with that.

Rick: You think about stage hypnotists and all who make people look like a chicken or something.

Chelan: Exactly. It can feel like manipulative and stuff. But then I was in such an acute just a desperate and acute constant state of distress, that I became more open to anything that might help

Rick: Why were you in such a state of distress?

Chelan: Well, I related to my suffering as though there was something wrong with me. And I didn’t know how to share my pain with others. And I’m a sensitive, perceptive person who just  really needs to live in a profoundly transparent and open and embodied truthful way. And I didn’t know how to do that. So really it was agony.

Rick: And that was causing the suffering. Yeah.

Chelan: Oh, yeah. And so, one of my good friends told me about a mutual friend who had been trying hypnotherapy. And I got this hypnotherapist’s number right away. And I did a long-distance session with him that night, and that first session transformed my life. Yeah, so basically, it’s an extremely beautiful method of hypnotherapy that really affirms that we all have an essential inherent part of us that has always been healthy and happy and whole and inherently worthy of love and acceptance. So that’s kind of the premise, and that we all have all the wisdom within us that we need to heal. And so I really got in touch with that part of myself. And through getting in touch with this part of myself, that was not only not broken, but inherently just totally worthy of love, I just really dismantled so much in it. And for the first time in my adult life, my consciousness was kind of unlocked from all these pain stories. And I was able to sink deeper into true, true connection with a much more true self. So I think all healing is really a process of the development of consciousness.

Rick: It sounds a lot like my experience in meditation, it’s just a different way or different angles of going deep, exploring those finer levels and of clearing out the detritus that is accumulated.

Chelan: Exactly. Yep, yep.

Rick: Interesting. This theme that we brought up a couple of times now keeps coming back. There’s a  phrase in the Brahma Sutras or someplace that says “there’s no joy in smallness”. And as I’m talking to you, I keep thinking of that. That being constricted, being forced to run on one cylinder when you’re an eight-cylinder engine causes pain. And you think about the opioid epidemic and all people are in pain because they’re bottled up there. They can’t express their full potential and they take the wrong angle trying to just block things out even more. But I think it’s a core issue.

Chelan: Should I read a poem about that?

Rick: Yeah, please. Is it one we have down or do you just want to grab one?

Chelan: We have it. It’s just about encouraging the fullness itself. And it’s called, ‘I’m too much’.

Rick: Got it.

Chelan: This one reads well. Okay, let me make sure I have the right. one Yeah. And there’s a lot of societal ideas about being too much and too big and arrogant.

Rick: Yeah

Chelan: Whatever

Rick: Too big for your britches.

Chelan: Too big for your britches. And of course, but when we’re just all that we are in sharing our full light, it’s just beautiful. And it’s nourishing to others and doesn’t take from others. And so this poem is just reframing and reclaiming the phrase, ‘I’m too much’. Here we go. I’ll let the poem speak for itself. I am too much. It’s time to reframe and reclaim the phrase, I am too much. It’s time to practice being okay with it, lathering ourselves in it, and basking in all that we are here goes, I’m too much. I want to devour suns for breakfast and kiss the center of every heart. I’m too much for niceties. All I want is to experience the inmost nectar of the soul. I’m too much. I’m divorcing myself from the timid ongoingly gray life of a repressed sky. Let’s dive in to the center of our storms. I’m too much for small ideologies to encourage me to live in the margins of the heart on the outskirts of life. I’m too much to be appropriately tipsy. I want to pop the cork off this world and make all things intoxicated with glee. I’m too much I want to stock God all the way home to the center of every beauty and sweetness. Go forth glorious too much ones and pour your rivers of light that quench the world. Go forth and feed every ravenous soul from the generous table of your heart. Knowing your essence is one of feast, not famine. Go forth and live in a way that reminds people how abundantly luminous each night is bedecked in her stars. Let your too much Nadis be your devotion. God after all, is the queen of too much polyamorous with every religion and every heart as she is. And she does not stop making her point after only one galaxy. Yes, by all means be too much. Your heart was made to be a gong Not a penny whistle. Your beauty is a downpour not a sprinkle. Your voice is a nourishing meal for this hungry world, not a garnish. Your too much has been a tight judgment that tries to tie down your vastness and constrain the cosmos within you reclaim it and pour forth your stars, reclaim it and become just the right size to hold the universe.

Rick: That is so good. Thank you. Yeah, you know the whole notion of enlightenment is realizing one’s essential nature as Brahman. Brahman actually means great. That’s what the Sanskrit word means, the word means “the great”. And the idea is that you engulf the universe. I mean that what you truly are, the universe is a speck of dust within that vastness, or that greatness. So that’s cool. I don’t mean to sound so dry and intellectual in response to these, but now they just remind me of these types of things. You know, they ping other thoughts. And obviously you’re capturing something which the saints and sages had experienced and understood and written down in various scriptures. So it’s a perennial wisdom, and you’re expressing it beautifully.

Chelan: Thank you so much, Rick.

Rick: Yeah. I listened to a couple of your interviews, like the one Mary Reed did you with you, I think, and another one or two. And there was one where you said you felt like the top of your head was gonna blow off or something because there’s so much energy coming through. Has that settled down and been integrated?

Chelan: Yes, it has. So about a couple of months ago I just really had to have a talking to with this muse. And I told it I needed a little bit of a vacation. And it’s actually calmed down a little bit since then. But really, wow, the intense feeling where it actually started to hurt a little bit was when it was right in the beginning stages of the process of publishing this book “Susceptible to Light”, and that was when I was going on these night walks and asking Hafez for inspiration. And it was just really it was torrential, it felt like a tap was just turned-on full blast.

Rick: Kind of sounds like our crown chakra is opening or something?

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: Do you feel like in a way that you’re a kind of sense organ of the infinite or one of God’s appendages, serving a particular function?

Chelan: Oh, wow, that’s a really nice way to think of it. I’m really grateful. I love this experience so, so much. And really my experience of my poetry is I have such incredible trust in it. Whereas I struggle with plenty of self-doubt in other areas. But with poetry, it’s just like, oh, I just completely trust it. And I know it needs to be shared, and that there’s value in sharing that and I’m so grateful for that experience. And then I’ve worked really hard, I’ve really done a tremendous amount of just being on this path, which is messy and hard and intense. But I’ve just really tried to keep my heart open. And then going into all the reasons it’s closed, and then opening it again. So there’s something about that, that I think can be more universalized. I think blessings and just cool, cool Grace can come to people from doing that. But  I don’t think I’ve gotten too lofty about  it.

Rick: No, I’m not saying that you think you’re God’s gift to humanity or something. But I mean, I have the same sense. That you’re kind of a servant, and you’re serving a particular function within your particular skill set. And it’s having an influence on the world. And because you’re doing that, it’s like the powers that be, the gods, whatever, they say, “Okay, we got a live one here. Let’s, yeah, give her some juice.”

Chelan: Yes. And it’s intensified so much since I just started taking it seriously. And validating the process more, as I did when I started publishing my work.

Rick: And we haven’t mentioned it, but you are a young mother. How old are your kids?

Chelan: Four and one,

Rick: Four, and one. So it’s not like you’re sitting around twiddling your thumbs. You’ve probably got a lot to do with them. And what does your husband do?

Chelan: He’s an audio engineer.

Rick: Oh, great. Wow.

Chelan: Yeah. So he helped me a lot with the setup.

Rick: Handy.

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: And I imagine that all of that helps to open your heart. You mentioned trying to keep your heart open. I’m sure that they are nice little heart openers.

Chelan: Yeah. Parenting is all just be really transparent about it. Parenting is hard for me.

Rick: Is it?

Chelan: They are heart openers, and they’re my motivation to open my heart more than anything else. Do you have kids Rick?

Rick:  No, just animals.

Chelan: Okay, right on. Yeah, I mean, not everyone feels this way. But for me, kids bring it all up. It surfaces all the limitations that want to come up to be cleared because you do just want perfect unconditional love for your kids. And so all the escapist tendencies and all the issues with intimacy and all of that surfaces. I call it accelerated growth, being a parent, because there’s more motivation to do the work but it also like it’s so it’s deeply humbling, because it just puts your face in it.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, relationships of all kinds kind of put your face in it.

Chelan: Yes, yes.

Rick: Sometimes people with a monastic inclination regard that as a quagmire that serious spiritual seekers should avoid, but I think for the vast majority of people, that’s exactly what we need.

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: And without that, you can become very self-absorbed and idiosyncratic.

Chelan: Yes

Rick: You don’t have the mirror that you need to reflect your stuff back to.

Chelan: Yes. You said it. And kids are such fine-tuned mirrors.

Rick: Yeah. Have your kids inspired any poems?

Chelan: No.

Rick: Some kid poems?

Chelan: Actually maybe one or two? Maybe they’re not in the book. No, I don’t feel that anything really inspires my poems. In the past, a couple of people have asked me to write poems for this or that, custom-written poems, and it feels awkward.

Rick: So if you’re asked to be the poet for the next presidential inauguration, you’ll decline?

Chelan: No, I would accept. And I would read one of the poems that came through on its own, but that felt like it most fit the occasion.

Rick: Okay, do you want to read another one now?

Chelan: Sure. I’ll read the one that really took off in quite a wild way. And really, I have a lot to thank it for why I’m here with you right now. It’s what connected me with Mary Reed. And it just went viral.

Rick: What’s it called?

Chelan: It’s called, ‘The Worst Thing’

Rick: Oh, yeah. Heard of this. Good.

Chelan: And I’ll just share a little bit before I read it. So, before sharing this poem, I would get like 35 likes on my poems on Facebook. 50 was amazing. And three people sharing it was really cool. Stuff like that. And then I shared this one and 30,000 people shared it.

Rick: Wow. Took off.

Chelan: Yeah, just totally, totally took off. And it’s so interesting. One person, in particular, shared this poem. And 10,000 people found it on her page. And then I got curious the other day, and I went back to her page to look at other posts, and her other posts get 10 likes or whatever. It was just, every single thing about this process was like the forces of the universe were like, “this is happening”. And it all just went. So anyway, I’m so grateful for this poem. So so grateful. I wouldn’t have connected with Daniel Ladinsky. This is the one, ‘The Worst Thing’

Rick: Yeah, I guess in the intro, we explained who Daniel Ladinsky is.

Chelan: Yeah, I can talk more about that. That’s a really cool story

Rick: Ok, we’ll do that later.

Chelan: Sure. So, ‘The Worst Thing,’

The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach

pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.

The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.

The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.

The worst thing we ever did, was put God in the sky out of reach, pulling the divinity from the leaf, sifting out the holy from our bones, insisting God isn’t bursting dazzle meant, through everything. We’ve made a hard commitment to see as ordinary, stripping the sacred from everywhere to put in a cloud man elsewhere. prying closeness from your heart. The worst thing we ever did was take the dance and the song out of prayer. Made it sit up straight and cross its legs, removed it of rejoicing. wiped clean its hips sway its questions. It’s ecstatic yowl. Its tears. The worst thing we ever did is pretend to God isn’t the easiest thing in this universe, available to every soul in every breath.

Rick: Great. Love it.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah, I’ll send you a song later.  If I’d thought of it, we could even have played it now. It’s called, ‘Everything is Holy Now’. I forget the name of the songwriter, but basically, it talks about when he was a boy at school, going to church, God was this distant thing. And now everything is holy, every leaf every bird song every everything and I think is really the reality. I think the whole universe would come to a screeching halt if God were not functional in every little subatomic particle,

Chelan: Yes. Wow, yes.

Rick: Yeah, next week, I’m going to interview a guy about intelligent design, which I had had a sort of a skeptical attitude toward. It has this sort of pseudo-scientific connotation. But he’s right on. He explains in great, great detail scientifically, how we really couldn’t have a universe if there were not some guiding intelligence.

Chelan: Interesting. Yeah, it’s a real paradigm, where it’s a way of living and relating to all things, this othering of God, and outsiding God and we are disconnected from our bodies, ourselves or wisdom, everything, there’s an alienation of experience in this paradigm. And that’s one that my poetry is really doing a lot to try to crack open.

Rick: Yeah. And there’s a kind of a popular bias, people are ostracized and ridiculed for speaking the way we’re speaking right now, in certain circles in scientific circles, and many others. The ‘New Atheists’ are all the rage and very popular, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and people like that. So there’s some kind of a theme in the culture that feels that appreciating everything as holy is somehow old fashioned and superstitious, or something like that.

Chelan: There’s so much, and all the conditioning that we have in our society around opening our heart. Because all the sacred scriptures talk about the heart, that it’s the seat of God, whatever. But the thing is, “open your heart” sounds like such a nice thing to say, but we don’t, because there’s so much pain in there, and there’s so much to move through. And there’s so many ideas that we’re not allowed to feel, we’re not allowed to go into all the feelings that we find, when we really do open our hearts and connect with what’s in there. And there’s so much beauty and wisdom in there. And there’s also pain before you’re allowed to get to the beauty and the wisdom and the good stuff. But sometimes the pain is too much, so there’s I think there is a lot in all kinds of ways that shuts us down from really connecting with this implanted divinity within us And then when our heart is shut down, we’re screwed from connecting with beauty and love, which I do think is built into every part of the natural world.

Rick: Yeah. Well, let’s play with this one for a few minutes. As you were saying that, I was thinking of crabs and snails and conchs, and things like that, who need their shell. They would be so vulnerable without their shell. But they also have to venture out of it in order to get food and stuff. And I don’t know how good an analogy that is for human beings. But you can see why hearts get shut down. Because we’re battered by so much, and we need to protect that tender thing.

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: But then, on the other hand, that entraps us.  Because as we’ve been saying earlier, we’re meant to be the universe – we’re meant to be vast, and yet we get hung up in a little shell. So how does one navigate the metamorphosis? So that one can be utterly open, and yet not vulnerable in the sense of being damaged by that openness?

Chelan: That’s such a good question. Well, how to open it all in the first place. I feel like we just really need either a very deeply safe environment, or even just another person around us, because the reason that we don’t open to the hard stuff or share our full stuff is because it’s been presented to us as if we were struggling too much. We’ve been told that that will be a liability to our belonging, and we’re so wired for belonging that we need to play these roles that we think would get us the belonging that we also want. So we need loving people around to know that it’s safe to go into our messy painful stuff and that people will still just totally cherish us and love us. For me with hypnotherapy, I was able in that state to create a safe enough place inside of myself and really connect with this part of me that was like, ‘Oh, I’m good. Actually at the deepest level, I’m okay’. And that didn’t obliterate all of my limitations and foibles and shadows and things, but then it actually allowed me to encounter them and move through them rather than just stay stuck in them because I thought they were me. Does that make sense?

Rick: Yeah. And I’m glad you mentioned hypnotherapy because I was thinking, there are processes, which enable a person to you know, simultaneously culture both strength and sensitivity. As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago, I interviewed Anita Moorjani. And her new book is called, ‘Sensitive is the New Strong’.

Chelan: Oh, yeah.

Rick: And it’s kind of a contradiction in terms because sensitive seems vulnerable. And how could sensitive be strong? But I think we can perhaps understand how it could be, and maybe we could even elaborate the point a bit

Chelan: I would love to talk about that point. Yes, I really deeply, deeply believe that I am sensitive to truth. And I think a good synonym for sensitive can be just being very perceptive. And when things aren’t aligned with truth and feeling, that hurts, because we are so sensitive to love and truth. And that’s so important. And then it’s a journey and just finding a way to address those things that isn’t coming from being victimized by those things, but that we can speak about them.

Rick: Well, this image comes to my mind of the strong man, he’s like the bully. “Man, get out of my way.” He barges his way through the crowd, nobody gets in his way. And then it doesn’t matter who he tramples on, he’s strong. But really such a person is weak, they’re just expressing a sort of an inner inadequacy that they’re trying to compensate for by being a big bully. And there have been such people who have conquered nations and who have done big things on the world stage. But I think the people we most admire, the great geniuses, the scientists, the composers, the poets, are people who were acutely sensitive. And they’re the ones who really tapped into some deeper genius, and whose work has stood the test of time.

Chelan: And, yeah, I think it feels safer to be open, when you know, that you that we also as humans have the capacity to move through pain. And so then when we find tools to be able to do that, then we’re more resilient. And we’re just not as afraid of what comes at us. So it’s easier to just say here I am to the world. And I think also when we really can open our heart in that sensitive and strong way that we challenge the assumption that we will be hurt. And maybe we won’t be as much as we once thought.

Rick: No, I know what you mean.I was just reading something yesterday, I think Susanne Marie’s Facebook page, and she wrote this thing about how she has been on BatGap. About how when the individual sense of self drops off and is no longer predominant. Then one knows oneself as cosmic being, then everything is passing through you. The good, the bad, and the ugly but it doesn’t shake your status as cosmic being. There’s a saying that Brahman is the eater of everything, that container of everything has the capacity to contain all extremes of the universe without in itself being perturbed.

Chelan: Totally, I have a good poem for this moment, shall I?

Rick: Yeah, which one?

Chelan: Okay, actually it’s another one that I didn’t give you. I had a cool, really cool experience recently. I said a prayer – just this whole journey has just been an incredible experience, experiment and experience with prayer. And I said a prayer. Recently, I just was like, I want to level up. Just I wanted to get out fast, out of some old patterns. And then the next day, this lady reached out to me who I’d never met, who was like, “Hey, I found your poetry and can I give you a four-hour session and this type of healing I never heard of”, and she was for free. So I was, oh, sure, okay. And it was incredibly potent and powerful. And there have been really two times in my life where I’ve had these extremely profound kind of just experiencing the I am from a totally different vantage point. And this was one of those. This was about two months ago, and then this poem came out right after. It’s called, ‘There’s an Essence’. There’s an essence within you that can neither be enhanced nor diminished. It spans universes and embraces the minuscule, the infinitesimal. It is infinite in the way that the numbers between zero and one are infinite, which is completely and wonderfully, eternally satisfying, and yet allows for infinitely more infinities. It is the exultation of the hermit crab, when it ceases to need to scurry from shell to shell to find respite. This essence dips into pools of intergalactic radiance for play and restoration. It tickles the stars and high fives the suns, it has no need to bypass the trappings of the small mind, but nor does it take them too seriously. There is nothing to prove or do or please to earn this. This is your birthright that I solemnly swear. No joyfully exclaim all humanity is growing into.

Rick: That’s great.

Chelan: Thank you

Rick: Reminds me of another Vedic saying. It goes. Anoraneeyan Mahato Maheeyan, which means small, smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest.

Chelan: Yeah, that was a very, very profound, profound experience. The main thing I came away with was that first line that ‘there’s an essence within us that can neither be enhanced to nor diminished’. it is just completely satisfied in its own nature. Like, there’s nothing you have to do to get to exactly where you want to be. And that also, this inherent essence is just sewn with the also profoundly satisfying experience of connection like that. There is nothing again that you need to do or try for to earn or whenconnection, but it’s just, we just have it within us and can drink it in and totally enjoy it.

Rick: If you have infinity and subtract 100 from it, you still have infinity. If you add a 100 to it, you still have infinity.

Chelan: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Rick: So what were you saying about Daniel Ladinsky? There was some interesting story about him.

Chelan: Yes, yes. So,mostly he was really a he’s my primary poetic inspiration. He is really the only poet that I feel has influenced my work. So yeah, I bought these two books of his because I liked the format and I needed ideas for my books. And then basically, Daniel Ladinsky does all of the English renderings of Hafez poetry, which is originally written in Farsi.

Rick: So does he translate from the Farsi?

Chelan: No. He actually doesn’t even speak Farsi. But he uses the translations, and then he’s an incredible poet in and of his own self and he had a mystical experience with Hafez that inspired his writing, and so he kind of takes the translations and kind of infuses them with what he believes is the original intended spirit sounds.

Rick: Seems like Hafez is messing with people. First he messed with Daniel, then he messed with you.

Chelan: I think he’s a total trickster. Yeah. And so anyway, so I bought these books that are Hafez books rendered by Daniel Ladinsky and that’s really what started cracking this process open. And so yes, after three weeks of intense and joyful conversation with Hafez like Daniel Ladinsky, I get an email from him in my inbox.

Rick: How did he even get your email?

Chelan: I have no idea. I actually don’t think I’ve even asked him. I should ask. So he found me and he said, “Hey Chelan, I found your book. Congratulations. Seems like it’s doing really phenomenally well, even internationally.” And just he was so generous and kind and celebratory. And then I had used a quote of his in my Amazon description that I had miscited. So he was totally relaxed about it. This was late December. So he said sometime next year, at your leisure, just if you could amend that. So then I wrote him back this like, totally unfiltered email because I was in just this complete state of awe that he had reached out to me after I had been praying to Hafez, and I just told him, the whole story. I said, “Oh, my God, Daniel, I’ve got to tell you this whole story.” So I did. And I told him, I had this ‘A’ team of dead authors, and Hafez was in charge of them. And I sent him a poem that I felt was particularly inspired by Hafez. And then it was my commitment to myself to just really ask for the things that I wanted. And so I said, “Daniel, while I have you, could I send you my book? And if you’re genuinely moved to do it, would you consider endorsing it?” So I just sent that off on a wing and a prayer. I assumed he had all this fan mail, he might never respond to me. And then that night, I got an email back from him that said, so Chelan, this is strange on so many levels, because I’m you know, I rarely reach out to people. People miscite my work 1000s of times every day. So it really must have been Hafez that nudged me to connect with you.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: And he said, and this is extremely rare. I’ve never done this before, but I just really feel that you and I need to coauthor a book together.

Rick: That’s cool.

Chelan: So that was just like, it was like the skies opened then it was pure bliss. I just had this hysterical moment.

Rick: So he wrote some kind of intro to one of your books, but are you actually going to coauthor one with him?

Chelan: So we started and then that just launched us into this extraordinary few months of intense collaboration. And we were both just inspiring each other. It was like this wild poetic dance, talking, we’d send each other like 20 emails a day, it was like a poem that kept evolving. And so we started working on a book together called, ‘Letters to and from a Young Poet’. And there’s a German poet Rilke, he wrote a classic, called “Letters to a Young Poet”, so we’re gonna kind of spin-off of that and modernize it, but it was going to be more back and forth. And we made really wonderful headway with that. And then we also started working on a book of Haiku called, “Two Zucchinis Dancing: Sweet Haiku from the Kitchen.” So it’s all just haiku about food. And it was just so fun. It was the most exhilarating, joyful experience of my life. And then we also dabbled in some other ones. So those are kind of shelved in terms of really bringing them all the way home for now. But yeah, he wrote me a foreword for my book. And he’s just a good good friend.

Rick: That’s great. That’s exciting.  It’s really incredible. Not just that it happened, but what was incredible about it was the way that it happened.

Chelan: Can I read that poem that I sent him?  Rick: Yeah, please. Do I have that one here?

Chelan: I think so, it’s called ‘Hafez was Generous and Susceptible to Light’. So this is the poem I’m reading from Let us dance. Okay, “Hafez was generous. Hafez was generous. I asked him for help. helped with my poetry and he stuffed my heart with 1000 suns for starters, he poured a collection of instruments into my soul and announced play. He spit-shined my inner eye that it might see Wild Magic everywhere winking back at it. I asked Hafez for help with my poetry and he responded, it’s about time you asked. I’ve been waiting with a stampede of Muses to unleash upon you. I’ve been waiting with a cosmos of roses to hand to you to bring forth even the shyest part of your love and get it dancing. I asked Hafez for help with my poetry, he said, All poems already are like luminous birds in the spirit realm, you simply must summon them. And he started wildly throwing bird food directly into my soul. There’s a secret trapdoor in heaven, when you pull on that string, God topples down upon you. I asked Hafez for help with my poetry and he pushed God out that door to land right on top of my heart.

Rick: That’s great.

Chelan: Thank you.  Really nice.  Thanks.

Rick: Do you mean this literally? We’ve sort of touched on it, but new-agey type people often think of there being sort of Ascended Masters or some celestial beings or whatever that are interceding in human affairs in various ways. And, you know, perhaps using certain individuals as representatives of their intentions, or as mouthpieces through which they can speak. So do you literally feel like something like that is going on?  With Hafez, or this ‘A’ team you mentioned?

Chelan: Well, it’s so interesting. I mean it’s hard to deny it anymore.

Rick: Yeah. I’m not Pooh poohing the idea. I kind of believe it works that way. But I’m just asking if you do.

Chelan: Well, we have so many layers to us. And one part of me is totally like, rah, rah, let’s ask, Dead Poets for help. And then the other part of me also, kind of stubbornly, has a doubt about the mystical and things like that. But yeah, after this experience, I’ll say, I find myself experimenting with it more. Yeah. And I think that’s all I can really say. But I mean, self-published poetry, I had essentially no connections with anybody. I had no marketing team. And just the way that this has expanded, it’s hard to understand why things would have happened like this without some kind of influence.

Rick: No, I think the universe works that way, personally.

Chelan: But I kind of like not being certain about it.

Rick: Yeah. No, that’s good.

Chelan: There is a dynamic edge to like, Okay, I’m gonna keep trying this. Let’s see how it goes now. And getting information as we try these things.

Rick: I have a lot of respect for the scientific method and for the relationship between science and spirituality. I think they each possess qualities which the other needs. And what spirituality needs from science is the sort of empirical, a little bit skeptical, not being blindly faithful kind of attitude. Taking things as hypotheses which should be tested rather than things that you need to believe in.

Chelan: Yeah. And that’s very important. Yeah.

Rick: And then what science needs from spirituality is the whole toolkit of being able to explore these subtle dimensions, which materialist science doesn’t have a clue about.

Chelan: Yeah, totally.

Rick: Couple of questions came in, and anything pops to mind or poem you want to read, don’t wait for me to ask you just go for it. But I’m here now. Does Mary Reed live in Washington, DC?

Chelan: Bethesda.

Rick: Bethesda.

Chelan: Maryland,

Rick: Alright.

Chelan: Not Bethesda, Maryland, right on the border.

Rick: So I think this is from Mary. She says, “it would be interesting to know about Chelan’s spiritual upbringing”.

Chelan: Oh, sure. Sure, yeah. So I grew up in the Baha’i faith.

Rick: Oh, boy. Yeah. Seals and Crofts.

Chelan: Yeah. So the Bahai for those who aren’t familiar with the Bahai teachings, is basically just really a beautiful worldview, a really unitive worldview, that all people are inherently just very, very interconnected. And that for the kind of the crowning point of our maturity as human people is to be able to operate harmoniously worldwide as a global society. And that all religions come from the same source and their purpose is to help humanity develop both spiritually and socially. So, anyway, there’s a lot of just real beauty there. And I’m so grateful, for I think it really helped me have a trajectory for my mind and heart, and it gave me even just the concept of God and the concept of prayer. And but then also, interestingly, the Baha’i teaching says that you can’t inherit a religion from your parents. It just doesn’t work. And so no matter how beautiful your faith is, you really need to go through the process of really finding your own relationship there. And so, for the last 10 years or so, also, I’ve been really in a process with that, and shedding a lot of pieces of that, and re-finding some pieces.

Rick: You still love them?

Chelan: That’s a very nice mature thing for religion to say, because usually they’re very possessive. And if you leave the fold your fallen and so on. I think a lot of people in the Baha’i community would do well to take that advice.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: So it’s funny how our conditioning around religion can even be a stronger player than the teachings themselves sometimes.

Rick: Sure.

Chelan: So I don’t know. And the community is continuing to evolve, which is wonderful. But I’ll just leave it at that.

Rick: Yeah. Well, I think most people in every religion would do well to actually heed the advice of its founder, you know.

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: It’s the exception rather than the rule.

Chelan: Just point. Yes.

Rick: It’s interesting that you grew up in the Baha’i faith because that that came out of Persia, which is modern day Iran. And that’s where Hafez was.

Chelan: Yeah, that is interesting.

Rick: I don’t know. You were probably Hafez’s wife in that life.

Chelan: Maybe. That would have been an interesting life. He was exiled several times. I’d have been down for that.

Rick: Maybe you were his mother. I don’t know.

Chelan: Ah, that’s hilarious. Maybe I was him.

Rick: Yeah, that’s what I mean. Of course, you could have been.

Chelan: The title for this book, “Let us Dance”,  actually was given to me at a really profound moment. I was on Baha’i pilgrimage when I was 21. The whole Baha’i Holy Land is in Israel. And it’s a nine-day pilgrimage, going to visit all these holy sites. And the place I was most excited to go to was the prison cell of Bahala, who’s the founder of the Baha’i faith. And so this big group and I went to this prison cell, and there was always time to meditate and pray and such. So I closed my eyes for really what felt like an instant. I’ve never had an experience like this one, I opened my eyes and everyone had left the prison cell and the door was closed. I was alone in this prison cell. And at that time, my relationship with the Baha’i faith was very complex. And really, I feel like the primary tension was like, needing to listen to my own inner voice and intuition and guidance system and wondering if that was okay, and anyway, so I opened my eyes, I was alone in this prison cell. And I really heard without ears a very clear voice inside of me that I took to be Bahala that said, “Let us Dance”. And what that communicated to me was, I was invited to go on a really authentic, dynamic journey with God. And I just cracked my heart open and I started singing, and there were these amazing acoustics, and I knew that was gonna be the name of a book of poetry one day.

Rick: That’s fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Experiences like that, I take it very seriously and quite literally but with a grain of salt. But that could have been Bahala. I think that kind of thing has happened to so many people. I mean, Muhammad had some kind of visitation from angels, which cracked him open, and he kickstarted his whole spiritual trip that he went on.There are many examples throughout history. So this kind of stuff happens.

Chelan: Yeah. And yeah, whether or not you know, it had an effect.

Rick: Yeah, for sure. That’s really interesting. Did you ever figure out how long you had actually been in the cell with their eyes closed?

Chelan: Well, it’s interesting, because there were a lot of Persians in my group. And they would pray for so long in all these spots. And I was really hoping to get some time alone. And there was like, There’s no way. So I imagine it was a while.

Rick: And you must have gotten really deep because you didn’t even hear them leave.

Chelan: Didn’t hear them leave. Didn’t hear the door close. Nothing.

Rick: Wow.

Chelan: It’s bizarre. Yeah

Rick: That’s really cool.

Chelan: It was really bizarre. And the trip to Israel came a month after. You mentioned the guy with the brain trauma that started playing piano, right? It happened a month after. Surprise brain surgery.

Rick: You had brain surgery?

Chelan: Yeah, for an aneurysm in the central artery of my brain. And that they found accidentally,

Rick: Were you having symptoms?

Chelan: No symptoms, no health issues.

Rick: So they did a CT scan for some reason?

Chelan: Yeah, I had a sort of a jaw issue. And I don’t even know why I got it. So weird. I went to get an MRI for jaw issue because it was pretty low-key. It doesn’t make sense. And they were like, “oh, your jaw is fine. But you’ve got a blurry area in your brain. And it might be an aneurysm, you might want to follow up on that.” And I did. It was this gigantic aneurysm and they said I wouldn’t have lived to be 30. So that was just a very dramatic time in my life, and it was shortly after all of that, that poetry really like cracked open wide for me, and just interesting things that all play a part.

Rick: That is very interesting. Was it very deep in the brain?

Chelan: It was in the central artery of my brain. Behind my left eye. I’ve got an excellent scar from here to here. And yeah, it was pretty well in there.

Rick: Geez.

Chelan: Yeah, no joke.

Rick: That’s very interesting.Well, I’m glad they found it.

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: Okay, a few nice little questions have come in here. Here’s one from Andrea Gutfleisch in Mannheim, Germany. Where do I find this amazing poem, it really goes deep. We’d love to read it again. Love to hear about how Chelan was unpacking her gift.

Chelan: Which one? Which poem?

Rick: I’m not sure. But they’re all amazing. So, you know, you have two books, and a lot of your poems are on your Facebook page. And I will put links on BatGap to both of your books on Amazon that people can just click on.

Chelan: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Rick: Can they get the physical one or is it a Kindle or what?

Chelan: Yep, it’s an eBook. Both are on Amazon. And then also there will be signed copies of both books at my local independent mom-owned bookstore. It’s called Waucoma bookstore W-A-U-C-O-M-A

Rick: Out there in Oregon. You mean?

Chelan: Yep. And it’d be really fun to blast them with sales. They’re so great. Yeah.

Rick: And yeah, so if everybody listening could just fly to Oregon and buy it there?

Chelan: They ship them around the world,

Rick: They ship them. So send me information about that. And I’ll put that on your page also.

Chelan: Yeah. And then I’d love to stay in touch too, with listeners. I’m still sharing new poems pretty much every day. So Facebook is the main platform I use for that.

Rick: You know, another thing you might want to do, I’m listening right now to a book on Audible, from a guy I’m going to interview. I said, if I have to read the book, I’m not going to get through it. But if you can send me an audible version, I’ll listen to a couple hours a day. And so I really enjoy it. So you could actually consider making an audible version of your book.

Chelan: I know I will down the road. There are two people that are doing that for me at this time. So I think I’ll use those until I like the idea of being my voice reading them. But yes, that will happen. then for sure.

Rick: Good. Someone named Anwat Bradley in Santa Cruz asks: “Any plans for audiobook versions of both the books? Hearing you recite your beautiful poetry sends a love light and joy vibration straight to my heart. Thank you and bless you”.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: So there’s a sign from the universe.

Chelan: Yeah. Right.

Rick: And here’s another question that came in from Angelika Kollin in Tampa, Florida.  “Has Chelan experienced that consumption of certain foods or exposure to modern-day “noise” like social media or tv has had a negative impact on her ability to download these poems? And equally, are there some beneficial practices or way of living that can increase one’s ability to be an open and clear channel?

Chelan: Oh, what a good question.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: So. Well, regarding the first sort of a two-part question. The last seven months, I’ve lived off of a steady diet of peanut butter toast and hemp mochas. So no, I don’t think so with the diet, and that’s just because I was just focusing on such a pace. Like being a mother and writing poetry, and I just couldn’t be bothered with food prep. So I mean, I eat other things, too. But that’s to say that I don’t think that’s a factor for me. And then I’ve also I’ve never consumed so much social media, because I’ve just been in this intense beautiful communication with people about my work and but at Facebook, these things are tools, and they can be used in all kinds of ways. And when you’re putting out love, and you’re just not letting the stuff in that bothers you, you can just hide people’s posts and stuff, so you can really just create a beautiful, nourishing virtual garden for your heart. So it has been that experience for me being on Facebook. But then in terms of other practices, anything that just continues to open my heart and trying to grow in strength to be able to be more, like wisely vulnerable, like sharing, opening when it feels right. And so I do a lot of healing work of all kinds. So anything that really works for you, I think, to really allow you to let go of old energies and perceptions that have been kind of stuck in you. That’s profoundly helpful for me.

Rick: Yeah. And there are so many things, as exemplified by all the people I’ve interviewed. There are just so many different paths and practices and teachers and teachings.

Chelan: Of course

Rick: And I just have the attitude of just finding what resonates with you, what works for you.

Chelan: Yes, because it can be overwhelming. There’s so many different methods of healing practices, and meditation practices, and this and that, so I think yeah, doing your best to just start trying, if that’s what you’re looking for. And then whatever works for you keep going with that.

Rick: And you need to sometimes dedicate yourself to something and not just be not be a dilettante that just flips from one thing to the next. But on the other hand, if you dig your heels in and just stick with one thing that isn’t working and just persist with it for years and years, you could actually waste time so you have to kind of find the balance.

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: Mirabai Starr gave a nice talk one time called “Bees in the Garden” and how she felt that the way bees go from flower to flower and extract nectar from each one, we can do that as spiritual practitioners without being dilettante, without being superficial dabblers.

Chelan: Yeah. Cool.

Rick: Want to read another poem?

Chelan: Yeah. Let me do that. Let’s see, I’ve got all these poems flagged. Maybe I’ll just open to one of them. Oh, this one actually feels appropriate. So there was a time when I really thought I needed to read all these sacred scriptures and I needed to be very well versed intellectually to, I guess, to merit to be worthy of like spiritual joy. So, this poem kind of speaks to that. It’s called, ‘Name-drop Gods’. Okay. “For years, I thought I had to name-drop Hindu gods for my poetry to be valid, but I hadn’t really met any yet. I thought I needed to read all the sacred scriptures, but they were all so dense and cumbersome. Perhaps if I listed a couple of yoga pose names, yes, any kind of Sanskrit must be the key to making my words spiritual and enlightened, be a bit more esoteric Chelan. A bit harder to unravel. Make your poetry a necklace of tangled prayer beads, your readers will want to extract God more from your poetry for not being able to access it. Well, thank God all that changed. And thank God, it turns out all scripture, every spiritual encounter, every holy ordinance is repeating the same universal simplicity over and over and over. It’s either saying Open your heart or nothing at all.” And I think there can be a really beautiful thirst for knowledge. And that can be a very beautiful and enlivening thing. But then I think there’s another way to relate to the kind of academic pursuit of spirituality where it is kind of putting our destination like out there, like if we read enough, you know, so that’s the one I’m speaking to you there.

Rick: Yeah. Also, it’s a personal proclivity kind of thing. I mean, some people are inclined to do certain things, and some people are inclined to do others. But I think a universal thing is that there really has to be the experiential component, whether or not you garnish it with intellectual understandings. Yeah, the experience is really what those understandings are all about anyway. So you should make sure to get that.

Chelan: Yeah. And some intellectual understandings can unlock us and open us to that experience. But then there can also be like a collecting of intellectual experience, that doesn’t necessarily get us where we want to go.

Rick: Yeah, I’d say they serve a couple of functions. One is to just alert us to the fact that certain possibilities exist, which we might not otherwise be aware of. And another is to kind of safeguard the path and in a way so that we don’t mistake some certain experience for something else. Or have a certain level of experience and assume we’re finished, for instance, which I’ve actually heard some people say, whereas if we had a little bit better understanding, we’d realize that there’s so much more.

Chelan: Yeah, it’s a harmonious relationship between

Rick: Balance.

Chelan:  The experiential is a nice way to go.

Rick: There’s a cook named Bobby Flay, and he has his own TV show, and he’s really good. And a really good cook has a good balance between a lot of knowledge about cooking, and also kind of an intuitive, creative approach to it, so that he’s not strictly bound by that knowledge.

Chelan: Yeah, and I feel I enjoy kind of just being an advocate for this experiential way. And more of my poetry is geared toward that because I don’t think it gets enough cred. Or enough just really potent advocacy about like this process of experienced spirituality or embodied spirituality, you could say.

Rick: yeah, so I like talking about that. Let’s just see here. Yeah, maybe you could read one or more of these which kind of jumped out at me. “The Sacred Wears a Good Costume”, “Heart Warriors” or “Our Great Cocoon”, if you’d feel inclined to read one or another of those.

Chelan: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s see. Well, I’ll read “The Sacred Wears a Good Costume”.

Rick:  Okay.

Chelan: For starters anyway, and I’ll also plug this dear friend Mary Reed, our mutual connection. She’s going to put out an incredible film sometime in the nearish future and my poetry will be part of that film. And, and this will be in there this one. “The Sacred Wears a Good Costume”. “The sacred wears a good costume, She loves to dress up as the ordinary. Sometimes like a queen in peasant clothes, she cloaks herself in the mundane to get a break from all that fawning. So how do you know it’s her in there? Look closer at things when you can and to your heart, she’ll give a certain knowing wink”.

Rick: For those who are just listening to the audio, Chelan just winked.

Chelan: I’m actually not a good winker.

Rick: You did okay.

Chelan: Yeah, okay. Oh, thanks. I can only wink with my right eye.

Rick: Because of the brain surgery?

Chelan: Oh, no, I don’t think so. Can you wink with both?

Rick: Yeah I can.

Chelan: Oh, yeah. Oh, nice. What a great capacity. Can you raise both eyebrows?

Rick: Yeah, I can.

Chelan: I mean one at a time.

Rick: I don’t think so. No, I can’t do that. I can scrunch up one side of my face. See that?

Chelan: Oh, that’s great. Yeah.

Rick: That’s my mother used to call it my Buffalo face because we visited relatives in Buffalo and I started doing it then.

Chelan: Funny. Can you frown? Some people can’t frown.

Rick: Yeah, sure.

Chelan: Oh, that’s not much of a frown. That’s more of a scowl. But you can’t do the downturn lift.

Rick: No no you try that. Let me show you that. Okay, let’s see. Yeah, that was a good poem, “The Great Cocoon”. It kind of harkens back to our theme of God hiding in plain sight. We didn’t use that exact phrase, but well, there’s a nice phrase, God is in everything, and everything is in God. It works both ways. You know? But I feel it’s literally true. And that means everything. I mean, this Kombucha bottle or whatever, if you could see it, in its true nature, you’d be looking at God. God’s not some puppeteer on some cloud, pulling strings. He’s totally infused into everything.

Chelan: Isn’t it amazing how dense we can be? This quality of divinity can be everywhere. And we can have such blinders on. It’s such an interesting dynamic.

Rick: It’s amazing. Yeah, the power of Maya, the power of illusion. That deludes God, God herself, you know, because if God is really the ultimate and complete, all-pervading reality, then then we’re God. And yet we have forgotten it. So somehow, we’re God having forgotten who we are, or what we are.

Chelan: Yeah. And it’s a juicy waking up experience, though. Let me read a poem. This is called, “I No Longer Pray’ and it’s it kind of touches on this. So I was just really frustrated with prayer all my life like it just felt kind of abstract and vague. Like is anybody out there? Is anybody listening to me? Like, maybe something would happen? In some very deluded very vague way, I didn’t feel connected to it intensely or potently, and I was frustrated with that But I also felt like, if there’s something that works, if there is a universal force or a network in which we can connect with that and ask for our soul’s desires, or ask for help or whatever, that is the master key. And it’s free and it’s universal and so I really wanted to tap the power of prayer and just didn’t really have a clue. But I’ve had some really extraordinary prayer experiences just really being direct with God, really being about all the things, my anger with God and my frustrations and my desires. And this experience in the last seven months was my first time of really feeling like I was plugged in and like things were actually being received and shifting because of these prayers. So here we go. This is called “I No Longer Pray”. “I no longer pray. Now I drink dark chocolate and let the moon sing to me. I no longer pray. I let my ancestors dance through my hips at the slightest provocation. I no longer pray. I go to the river and howl my ancient pain into the current. I no longer pray. I ache I desire I say yes to my longing. I no longer pray as I was taught. But as the stars crawl onto my lap, like soft animals at nighttime, and God tucks my hair behind my ears with the gentle fingers of her wind, and a new intimacy is uncovered in everything. Perhaps it’s that I’m finally learning how to pray.

Rick: Very nice.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah, that’s great. I couldn’t begin to write poems like this.

Chelan: No?

Rick: I don’t think so. I mean, we all have our gifts, you know,

Chelan: But I couldn’t begin to interview. Yeah, exactly. We were talking about this a little bit yesterday, one of your magical capacities is to interview people.

Rick: Yeah, I’m perfectly happy with that. I mean, I’m not going to become an NBA basketball star either.

Chelan: Yep.

Rick: No regrets about that.

Chelan: Exactly. We don’t have to do it all.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: Yeah. But it is satisfying, you know, if there is something implanted in there that we really want to do to pursue that.

Rick: And that’s an interesting point in itself. I interviewed a guy named Steven Cope a few weeks ago, and we were talking about dharma. Dharma meaning, that course of action which is most evolutionary and most appropriate for each individual, given their gifts, and what they can do to serve? And I think everybody has one. And it’s not necessarily going to make your world-famous or rich or anything like that. But everybody has one. And when you find it, it can be extremely gratifying.

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: And life can be very fulfilled. Like we were saying an hour ago, the suffering is very often a consequence of our not having found our dharma and not having unlocked the inner gift which we intuitively know is there.

Chelan: Yeah, I wonder. I mean, I don’t feel either way, ultimately about this. But if there’s always a thing, sometimes it’s just kind of infusing our experience, whatever it is, with our joy. I don’t know if it’s, like a really distinct thing. Maybe they do. I don’t, maybe they do.

Rick: Well, when I was interviewing him, we were talking about people who work at Amazon warehouses or Walmart or something. And yeah, you know, could that really be their dharma? And I gave, an example of a woman who works at our local Walmart, who is just so much fun to interact with,

Chelan: Totally.

Rick: She’s always laughing and helping people. And she seems to be having a grand old time.

Chelan: Totally. I have a really distinct memory of a guy working at the airport as the guy who would give you your tickets. And I was like, “Man, this guy’s totally enlightened”.  He was just filled with light and sharing it with everybody. And for those people their work is transcendent above what they do because they’re showing with their way and their actions that that kind of radiant joy can be had in any space.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: And it’s pretty profound when people are able to do that.

Rick: But he probably sees, you know, a couple of thousand people a day or whatever, and uplifts every one of them.

Chelan: Exactly. But I do have a poem about what you were talking about. It’s so spot-on, I must read it.

Rick: Please. What’s it called?

Chelan: Well, before I read it, I think, we all have things that bring us joy, for sure. And then when we can put meaning behind what brings us joy through sharing that in some way, in a way that benefits others then that, I think that’s our dharma. Like it doesn’t have to be that complex. I think we can demystify that. To some degree it’s just the path of what really brings us joy, because whatever it is, if we’re coming from that place that activates that in those that we make contact with, and that’s such a potent gift. Okay, so here’s “The Thing that Makes your Heart Sing” as this poem is called. “The thing that makes your heart sing might be quirky as hell, it might not do anything for capitalism, no one might buy it. You’ve probably written this thing off countless times for those reasons, and because you probably should do the dishes or something more practical like that instead. But this thing that makes your heart sing is the thing inside of you that most wants to topple your kingdom of shoulds that wants deeply and burningly to be prioritized and for no particular reason, but that it brings so much light and wants to look you straight in the eye and say, let’s do this baby, even if it’s drilling holes in seashells and stringing them to fishing line, even if it’s drawing anatomical pictures of a flower with great care that are never meant to be hung in an art gallery, but to be pressed into the precious pages of your heart, even if it’s making a new kind of cookie each week and devouring them with relish on your couch by yourself, a sweet sacrament just meant to share with your tastebuds. This thing that makes your heart sing will resurrect parts of your life and restore a sacred nutrient to your days. It can be muted, but never silenced. If you’re not sure what it is, just listen for the reoccurring whispers in your chest of that flame that will not die. The paradox is this. While the thing itself might seem simple, this thing that makes your heart sing will create a luminosity so bright, you’ll be the envy of all the stars and they’ll want to jump into your body to feel it.

Rick: Wonderful. Love it.

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: It’s really good.

Chelan: It’s nice how our conversation is just naturally brought up these thematically aligned poems.

Rick: Yeah, it’s cool how a certain point will come up and then you’ll say “I’ve got a poem for that”. And you really nailed a lot of these different subtle points in beautiful verse. There’s another one I want you to read. It’s “The God who Made the Octopus.”

Chelan: Oh, sure. That’s a fun one.

Rick: I like that one.

Chelan: That one came through right after this incredible Satsang that I was invited to participate in with Mary Reed. And I think she sent you that video.

Rick: I’ve listened to that. Yeah.

Chelan: Ah, you have listened to it? So yeah, I’m so glad

Rick: I don’t usually watch videos. I listen. I extract the audio from them and listen to them while I walk in the woods.

Chelan: Yeah, okay, here we go. “The God who Made the Octopus”?

Rick:  Yeah.

Chelan: Is that the one? Okay, “The God who Made the Octopus”. Awesome. So, “The God who Made the Octopus”. “If you think the eccentric God who made the octopus is gonna judge you for your sins, I’m afraid you’ve missed the mark. If you think this wild God that spins galaxies as a pastime, cares to get fussy about your mistakes, or has ever made anything that wasn’t born perfect and luminous, you might need to repent. If you can’t yet admit how lovable and infinitely worthy the fullness of your human nature is, and if you think God wants to do anything but perpetually pour an abundance of love gifts upon you. Well, my dear, your soul just might need to go to confession.”

Rick: Very nice. Have you seen “My Octopus Teacher”, by the way?

Chelan: Oh, recently. And I loved it so much.

Rick: Yeah, it’s great

Chelan: I loved it.

Rick: It’s a documentary, for those who don’t know, it won the Oscar for Best Documentary. But everybody who watches it just told me they loved it. I think it’s on Netflix.

Chelan: Can I tell you about the process of publishing the second book?

Rick: Sure. You can tell me anything.

Chelan: Cool. Great. So, this book is roughly 100 pages longer than my first book. And all the poems have come through just in the last seven months, which has just been incredible. But I wasn’t really sure when to an end. Oh, another thing that’s just important to mention is this whole journey has just been completely easeful. Like there’s been no pushing or forcing or stress. It’s been very amazing like that. But then I wasn’t sure when I was gonna get around to publishing this next book, and it didn’t feel like there was any climactic moment. I didn’t have anything planned for that. And can we show the picture of it again, Rick?

Rick: The picture of what?

Chelan: Of “Let us Dance”.

Rick:  Yeah, sure.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: Okay, I’m showing it now.

Chelan: Oh, cool. So you see that beautiful fire woman dancing in the middle. I had found that picture. And I thought that I would need to have an artist kind of remake it, so it wasn’t plagiarism, or that I didn’t have to pay a whole bunch for it. And so that was really my main hold up with publishing this book. And then a generous person reached out to me to offer to make me a website pretty much for free. And she said, “Hey, I know you don’t have a cover yet. But can you just give me a picture that can be like a stand-in?” And this was two weeks before today. And so I got her that middle picture of that fire woman dancing. And while I was doing that, I saw that it’s free for commercial use! So then I was like, oh, man, I felt like I got a cosmic wallop in that moment. And it was like “Chelan, this is free, you need to run with this. And you need to have it done by July 3, your interview time with Rick, so you can announce it at Buddha at the Gas Pump.” And so then it was like, just like that poem or that passage, you read about how everything comes together when you commit, so really this last two weeks, I put together this book. And it was useful, even though it was intense. So I’m so grateful to have had this motivation, and just the way all the things aligned is just very cool.

Rick: Yeah. The whole principle of effortless action is, I think significant.

Chelan: Yes.

Rick: I mean, maybe some things need to be a little difficult for some reason, but I think for the most part, if you’re really in tune, action is always gonna be useful, because nature operates according to a principle of least effort. Like, if you throw a ball, there are an infinite number of trajectories the ball could take. But the ball takes the most efficient trajectory, it takes the one with the least expenditure of energy, at least effort. And a human being can function in tune with the laws of nature. And in a similar way such that nature supports your activity, and you’re not sort of pushing and pulling against the flow of nature’s intentions. And then every action is effortless.

Chelan: Totally. And yeah, sometimes I think people can interpret that as just pure passivity.

Rick: No, no, it can be dynamic.

Chelan: You could be a participant, it’s dynamic. It feels to me like, like surfing a wave.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: And you have to learn some skills, and then you just get out there and wait for that beautiful wave. And then it flows you to places you couldn’t have imagined.

Rick: Surfing is a good example, because surfers, or any really top-notch athletes, there’s an effortlessness about their performance, which is part of the reason we love to watch them. It’s sort of so artful, because it’s so natural, and there’s no sort of awkwardness or clunkiness, you know, just smooth.

Chelan: Totally. And that actually well describes how it feels. When a poem is coming through, it’s like a wave’s coming. Need to get ready for it.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: And the equivalent of standing up on the board would be just, I need to get a pen really fast.

Rick: Yeah. Hangin’ 10.

Chelan: Yeah,

Rick: Do you still write them most days?

Chelan: Almost every day. Yeah, the last two days. Because it was just this, you know,

Rick: getting your book finished?

Chelan: getting it all finished and stuff. But it was respectful. It was like, “I’m not gonna bother you today”. The Muse. But yeah, almost daily.

Rick: That’s great. It’s daily. Do you feel a sort of a maturation or an evolution taking place?

Chelan: Oh, I’m so glad you asked. Yes. “Let us Dance” feels like it has a very different tone than “Susceptible to Light”. And they both at the heart have this intention to liberate expression and affirm inherent light and help people navigate their shadows. And I got so much affirmation with ‘Susceptible to Light’ that it encouraged me to kind of expand and try new things and speak more boldly. It just really empowered my voice. So I would make experiments, I would do more. It was very much a process of experimenting. And so I would make experiments and see how they were received. And they were well received. So that emboldened me further, so I would say there’s a bolder tone in ‘Let us Dance’. And my writing really, really transformed through working with Daniel Ladinsky too, because I was writing like 60 hours a week, like never before, just pulling from the depths, right?

Rick: Like what? Just poems or all kinds of stuff that was

Chelan: Mostly this book, “Letters to and from a Young Poet”, a lot of time was poured into that. And then it was then

Rick: Was there prose in that? Or is it just all poems?

Chelan: It’s almost all prose.

Rick: That’s gonna be very interesting, yeah.

Chelan: Yeah. It’s really it’s a potent book. I hope it completes someday.

Rick: Oh, it probably will, just in time for you to go on the Oprah show.

Chelan: There you go. And then just a ton of poetry. And then I was also working on a book that he was encouraging, that also will come to life someday. It’s called, “Becoming the Full Moon; The Many Phases of Love, Creative Expression, and Wholeness”.

Rick: Wow.

Chelan: That’s another book of prose.

Rick: Yeah. I look forward to reading this stuff. We’ll have to do another interview.

Chelan: Thank you so much

Rick: One of these days.

Chelan: I’d love that. Yeah. So it was really through that process, working with him, that I really, really reidentified as, “Oh, I am a poet. This isn’t a side gig. This is what I do. And this is what I’m here for, really connecting with that dharma sense in a very potent way.” So it’s transformational.

Rick: It’s great.

Chelan: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, so is there anything else that we want to talk about? Or certain poems that you’re gonna kick yourself if you don’t read?

Chelan: Good question. Are there any more questions?

Rick: No other questions have come in from people that I know of. Irene would have sent them over. And in terms of the poems you sent me, let’s see. “Susceptible”, no. “A more loving candidate”, “Crown Chakra”, “Hafez was generous”. You already read that one. “Don’t know what to call”. No. “Make your love visible”. “The soul’s homeland”, “Things are about to get interesting”. Those are some of the ones.

Chelan: That I haven’t read yet. I’ll read one more of those.

Rick: Okay, which one do you want to read?

Chelan: I’ll read “The Soul’s Homeland.”

Rick: Okay, good.

Chelan: I did a little editing actually, of this poem today. So I’ll read this printout here.

Rick: I’ll show it on the screen. But there will be a few edits.

Chelan: No problem. Yeah. Okay, “The Soul’s Homeland”. “Sometimes my soul feels itself to be in great exile from its homeland. But then I remember my mother tongue is the poetry my heart is so fluent in. It’s dialect, laughter and tears. My other native language is rising early to praise all the great things the sun falls upon. My national song is a geyser of joy, hitting the highest notes of ecstasy and breaking every glass ceiling in the mind that once trapped God inside. My anthem is the feisty love parade that marches gaily from my heart to yours. My religion is the untying of old knots that once kept my soul hitched to rigidity and smallness. And my doctrine is whatever comes after that, when the soul’s full range of movement is restored. My flag is every mood of the moon that reflects my inmost heart. My ancestry is the collection of radiance from morning dew, passed down by blades of grass as they stand vigil in silent reverence to be part of the wonderment of receiving the ancient inheritance of each new morning. My DNA is the encrypted love notes written in the luminous ink from the stars. My soul is an ancient heritage of love songs from God. And whatever it is I’m doing here has mostly to do with pledging allegiance to this glorious anthem. Whatever I’m doing here has mostly to do with expressing my devotion for the borderless birthplace deep in my chest, where beauty, again and again, takes her first breath.

Rick: Awesome. Very nice.

Chelan: Thank you.

Rick: So this is really cool. I’m really glad we got a chance to do this.

Chelan: Wow. And the two hours flew by. At the outset, that seems like a lot but no, no problem there.

Rick: It always flies by, you know. As Kermit the frog said, time, time is fun when you’re having flies.

Chelan: Yeah, and again, Rick, I just so appreciate the lack of lack of spiritual egotism that you bring, and just the authenticity.

Rick: I’ve had it beaten out of me over the decades.

Chelan: But it’s not prominent in you, and just how good that feels and how I love – it’s so nice to connect with people. It’s just on such a human level. You bring a lot of this wonderful human authentic stuff forward.

Rick: Well thanks.

Chelan: I really appreciate you.

Rick: So do you, that’s why people like you so much, because you’re so genuine and unpretentious.

Chelan: Oh, good. I’m glad that I come over that way.

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: You never know, it’s always hard to know.

Rick: You’re kind of buoyant, you’re like that guy at the airport that just cheers up whoever you encounter.

Chelan: Thank you. Thank you. That’s nice to hear.

Rick: You are a light in the world

Chelan: Oh, thank you so much, Rick. Backatya.

Rick: And we need more lights like you.

Chelan: Oh, can I talk about what’s coming up?

Rick: Yeah, sure.

Chelan: Yeah. So, let’s see. So, gosh, I wish I could remember the dates. So my friend Mary and I are doing a live-streamed series of episodes in which we’ll be diving into themes around just the experience of coming out as kind of a mystic, you could say, and just embracing the messiness of that process. And about trying to be on the path of living authentic truth. And there’s more. One of the episodes is going to be called “Redefining God”.

Rick: You mean like video webinar, Zoom type things, right?

Chelan: Yeah. So people can sign up to be part of this, and it’s on my website. I’m glad to remember that. So Chelanharkin, first and last name .com. You can find it there. It’d be so nice to have you. It’s going to be wonderful. Mary’s the coolest person ever.

Rick: I’ll link to that from your page on batgap. And also, probably you can put it on Facebook, too. And Mary will probably have it on her web page or Facebook or whatever.

Chelan: Fantastic.

Rick: Yeah, I assume.

Chelan: And then in the coming months, I’m also going to be putting out an album of my music.

Rick: Whoa music? Alright, I see a little guitar on the wall.

Chelan: Oh, yeah. That’s mine

Rick: You didn’t tell us about that.

Chelan: Such a great guitar. Small guitar, big sound. Yeah, singing and poetry are my two main avenues.

Rick: You should put some of your poems to song.

Chelan: I haven’t found a way to make that work. I would love to be able to do that. But poetry and song poetry are different things,

Rick: Yeah.

Chelan: Like you can get away with kind of cheesy rhymes in song poetry. That because the melody is so nice. That works.

Rick: There are a couple of people who did that well. Dylan obviously had some incredibly poetic songs. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years ago.

Chelan: Wow,

Rick: Donovan had some really great poetic songs. And there was a group called the Incredible String Band whom you’ve probably never heard of, but I’ll have to send you a song or two.

Chelan: My favorite musical poets are the Indigo Girls.

Rick: Oh, yeah.

Chelan: Incredible lyricism. And the Abbott Brothers. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him or them.

Rick: Never heard of them.

Chelan: Really beautiful music. So that’ll be coming out. And then also I am going to be a panelist with the Center for Contemporary Mysticism in October. That’s going to be fun, just a q&a about all kinds of different juicy subjects.

Rick: Neat. Well, you’re not running out of things to do. You mentioned that somebody paid you $500 to come and give a talk. What was that all about?

Chelan: Oh, yeah. Well, that was really cool. So my four-year-old son, it’s hard to get him to sleep at night. So sometimes when we’re not feeling very patient, we just take him on a long drive. And I was on one of these long drives not more than a few months ago. And I just said a little prayer, quietly because he was sleeping in the back, for speaking opportunities. And I’ve really never done any public speaking. And then like, two days later, I heard from two people who wanted me to be on a podcast and then this other person who just was like, “Hey, I’d love to pay you. I have this organization and we want to the theme is moving forward with grace. Can you be the keynote speaker for 500 bucks?”

Rick: Wow.

Chelan: Okay. Well, sure. So I’ve just really been saying yes to all the things that open, so that’s just been a capacity I’ve been wanting to develop and I still want to develop so if anybody has things that they would like to invite me to join them in. Any of the listeners. I’m open. I’m excited.

Rick: Right

Chelan: That was a really good experience. And these three podcasts before this one, Rick, I feel I wouldn’t have been ready for this without those.

Rick: Neat.

Chelan:  So I’m grateful for that process.

Rick: Well, Mary said in her email to me, I don’t think I read this part. She said, “Your listeners would very much enjoy having the chance to hear from her before fame swallows her up. I’m not exaggerating”. So it seems like you’re on a roll.

Chelan: We’ll see what happens. I’m saying yes to all the things. I do want my work to reach people.

Rick: Sure.

Chelan: It’s had a very beautiful effect. And I’m so grateful for those words. So nourishing. It’s the coolest thing imaginable for me for my work to reach people, especially because I had held it close for so long and hadn’t shared it. So I would love it to have as wide a reach as it possibly might. So we’ll see what comes with that.

Rick: Yeah, I think there’s a deep human tendency to want to expand one’s territory of influence. And that can have a dark side to it or a light side to it, you know?

Chelan: Yes. Absolutely.

Rick: But it’s one of those natural human drives. I think.

Chelan: That’s interesting.

Rick: Yeah,

Chelan: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, kind of assessing my motivations and things and thinking about how attachment to fame just really comes from feeling, from a sense of…

Rick: Smallness.

Chelan: Like a not-enoughness, and wanting to lean on that crutch of other people’s approval, or whatever. And that doesn’t help. That doesn’t help anyone, let alone ourselves.

Rick: But it’s if the impulse is pure, and if the motivation is pure, then you can utilize that natural tendency for good.

Chelan: It’s exciting. And it’s fun. It’s really fun to have a platform to share, love and truth, and joy and liberation. It’s great. So anyway, gosh, like, well, I don’t want to say goodbye.

Rick: Yeah, well, we’ll be in touch. And I’ll be putting up that batgap page. But if new things come up, I don’t put up people’s announcements of every new event or something but a book or a new website, or something of permanent nature. We add them to people’s batgap pages if they want. And so for those listening or watching, there’ll be several links on your batgap page that they can follow you like. A link to your Facebook and to your website and all. Obviously people know how to sign up for emails and become your Facebook friend, and all that kind of stuff. We’re going to work on that Facebook friend thing.

Chelan: Oh, yeah.

Rick: You’re maxed out.

Chelan: Yes, thank you so much for all your support, I deeply, deeply appreciate it

Rick: Yeah. Well, thank you for doing this. It’s been a lot of fun.

Chelan: Totally fun.

Rick: And we will be talking to each other again.

Chelan: Okay, thanks so, so much. I wish you just all the best and all the good that there is.

Rick: Yeah. And same for you.  And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. And as I mentioned earlier, next week, I’m gonna be interviewing a guy about intelligent design, which I find fascinating. And I don’t care if some people think it’s pseudoscience or something. I think there’s something to it, and this guy expresses it brilliantly. And so that should be an interesting conversation, kind of science-y. But if you hang in there with us, I think you’ll learn stuff. I certainly have been in preparing for it. So see you next time. Talk to you later.

Chelan: Thanks.  Bye. Thanks to all the listeners. Thanks. Nice talking with you.

Rick: Yeah, bye bye.