Healing the Intimate Divide – Savita Veera – Transcript

Savita Veera interview

Summary:

• Savita Veera is a Western Australia-based spiritual teacher and healer who experienced spontaneous awakenings triggered by childhood trauma and the sudden death of a mentor—without formal spiritual seeking
• She emphasizes that nervous system regulation is essential for authentic embodiment; spiritual openings alone don’t automatically clear stored trauma, which explains why some awakened teachers still exhibit problematic behavior
• Her work integrates horses as mirrors and teachers, helping clients come into present-moment awareness and recognize when they’re dysregulated or “out of sync with linear time”
• She uses compassionate awareness and imagination as bridges to help people access unconditional love without overwhelming their nervous systems
• The conversation covers shadow work, the balance between sensitivity and groundedness, subtle guidance from other realms, and how personal healing creates ripple effects for collective consciousness

Key Takeaways:

• Awakening doesn’t automatically heal trauma. Spiritual openings can happen spontaneously, but stored trauma remains in the nervous system until consciously addressed. This is why shadow work and somatic healing matter even after profound realizations.
• The nervous system must be “in sync with linear time.” When dysregulated, people get stuck in past or future. Horses and grounding practices help bring awareness back to the present moment, which is where embodiment actually happens.
• Horses serve as honest mirrors. They immediately sense and reflect back when someone is out of alignment, making them powerful teachers for nervous system regulation and authentic presence.
• Healing happens in manageable doses. Opening fully to unconditional love can overwhelm a contracted nervous system. Using imagination and safe “bridges” allows gradual access to deeper healing without retraumatization.
• Personal shadow work benefits the collective. Attending to what’s unconscious in ourselves isn’t selfish—it reduces the contractions that cause unconscious, harmful behavior and creates ripple effects that uplift others.

Full interview, edited for readability:

Savita: If somebody’s really contracted and their nervous system’s really dysregulated– they were to open fully to redemptive love, completely, it might actually be too overwhelming. Sometimes it has to be taken in bit by bit.

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with, or conversations rather, with spiritually awakening people. And we’ve done over 700 of them now. So, if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones–you know, you can just poke around on the YouTube channel itself. But if you go to batgap.com you’ll find everything organized in various ways that are much easier to search than on batgap.com. Please consider subscribing to the channel. It helps in terms of YouTube’s algorithm and all that, bringing the show to more people. And this whole thing is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So, if you appreciate it and would like to help support it financially, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website. And there are also some volunteer opportunities. So you can get in touch with us about that. They mainly involve proofreading transcripts. But there’s some other things, too. We have a volunteers’ page where you’ll see some of the people who are volunteering and what they’re doing. So, my guest today is Savita Veerna. Is that the way to pronounce it?

Savita: Veera.

Rick: Veera–Savita Veera, sorry.

Savita: No, that’s okay.

Rick: She is in Western Australia. So it’s like 8 in the morning for her, 7 in the evening for me. She’s a spiritual teacher, a mentor, an embodiment facilitator, and a healer. We’ll be getting into all this in detail, but she experienced a profound shift in consciousness after great tragedy, followed by years of further spiritual openings, mystical experiences, and deep healing. And she meets people as a teacher with generosity, humor, and grounded practicality, providing a safe space for them to open to their own divine light and inner wisdom. Okay, so you didn’t write a book, so I didn’t read a book like I often do, but I listened to everything you had on your YouTube channel. And I also did an interesting thing. I transcribed everything you have that I could find– other interviews you’ve done, talks you gave. And I fed it all into AI along with the notes you gave me and I said,, give me talking points and questions for an interview on this content, and bingo, within a minute I had four pages of notes printed out with questions.

Savita: You plugged me into the matrix.

Rick: I did, yeah. So I’ve been doing that lately. It’s kind of handy. So, I’m kind of coming up with some questions I wouldn’t ordinarily have thought to ask. Plus I throw in a bunch of my own questions that the AI didn’t give me. So it’s not just an AI thing. Anyway, what I’ve gathered is that one of the main themes of your journey is awakening through adversity. And it began with a childhood trauma and was catalyzed by the sudden loss of a mentor, leading you from a place of unconscious seeking to becoming a trauma-specialized spiritual guide. And of course, there are a lot of steps in between those two things. And this path seems to be the foundation of what you call authentic empowerment. Is that a fair synopsis?

Savita: Yeah. Sure.

Rick: Okay. Good. So, you mentioned some tragedy very early in life that kind of kick-started your seeking. What was that?

Savita: Yeah, well, I had a difficult childhood, so there was that sort of background of that.

Rick: Welcome to the club.

Savita: And, you know, in hindsight, yeah, that’s right. Most of us do. There’s a few lucky ones. So, you know you look back in hindsight and you can see that seeking, trying to get away from suffering, but not even necessarily being so conscious of the suffering.

Rick: Yeah. I’ve had a long conversation.

Savita: You can be numbed out to it.

Rick: Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. What were you saying?

Savita: You can be sort of numbed out to it because that’s part of that coping strategy of not even realizing, how much is actually there. But little breadcrumbs, little snippets, you know, that come along, that just like, Oh, go this way, go this way.” And that sort of happened through my 20s. I’d be directed to books, and I didn’t have any sort of religious upbringing. I didn’t have a spiritual community or any sort of deep connection with spirituality, but there was something in me that just–buy a Buddhist book or buy a book on healing. Little bits of your…

Rick: Impulses.

Savita: Yeah, little impulses. I remember going to… I only went a couple of times in my 20s to Buddhist meditation and I just thought, “There’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something here”, and I think it was like a counting meditation or something.

Rick: Counting your breaths?

Savita: Yeah, it was something like that. And there was one lady in the group afterwards that said that she got to 10 like it was totally easy–you know, it just happened and Something in me knew that it wasn’t true, and I knew that the… I don’t know what you even call it–the nun running the meditation. I knew that she knew as well, but I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know what it was, the underlying thing, but it’s like that radar for truth.

Rick: In other words, the woman was being inauthentic, and you picked up on it.

Savita: Yeah, well, you know, just innocent. Innocent.

Rick: I see. And people might be wondering, like, what’s the big deal? I can count to 10. But I think what you’re referring to is a meditation where you’re supposed to just count the breaths without your mind wandering off. And, you know, if you try that sometime, you might find that you might be surprised at how readily your mind wanders off when trying to do a simple thing like that.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. And how it gets caught. Caught in thought. So that was kind of my early years mixed with lots of different… just lots of different experience. Really saw lots of the extremes, in life, from the poorest and some of the most traumatized sectors of society to some of the wealthiest, just by chance. Not because I’ve got any connection to that in particular, but– and all the suffering that comes with that. So, fast forward a little bit.

Rick: Before we fast forward too much, let me just…

Savita: Okay.

Rick: I had a long conversation with a friend the other day, whom I have long conversation with often. And we’re contemplating how a very traumatic childhood can result in rather ardent spiritual seeking a little bit later on. On the other hand, like the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, says that if you’re really fortunate you’ll be born in a pure and illustrious family, or even a family of yogis–although that’s more difficult to attain on Earth. And so you’ve got it easy. And the Buddha, in fact, was born a king and grew up in a palace. And yet, when he realized how much suffering there was in the world, he left all that and became an extremely ardent seeker, and just enlightenment or bust. And so we’re just contemplating, like, which one is most advantageous? Not that we get to choose. And are we just burning off a load of karma if we have a very traumatic childhood, and then after that’s burned off, we’re free to soar high on our spiritual quest? Or is there some advantage to suffering? Because the desire to get out of it becomes so strong that you just don’t take your spiritual practice for granted. You just go at it with all your might, or whatever. What are your thoughts on that?

Savita: The pressure cooker. I don’t think that we can ever take one person’s awakening or unfolding or whatever you want to call it and then kind of make a

Rick: generalization?

Savita: Yeah not even the Buddha’s, as much as we love him. You know, because it’s probably far more nuanced and complex.

It’s probably far more nuanced and complex than our human mind can make of it.

Rick: Yeah, you’re probably right. I mean you can’t.

Savita: Than our human mind can make of it.

Rick: I mean, you can’t generalize too much.

Savita: No, because for me, it wasn’t ardent spiritual seeking. It just happened. So, you know, spontaneous. So you could say, well, it was the pressure, the contraction. The contractions were so great that then the expansion happened. And that seems to have been my thing. I get put in these koans where I’m backs against the wall, or seemingly so, and then that lets go onto a bigger awareness. But yeah, I think because our minds like to have it all wrapped up, you know. Our minds like to say, “Well, what is this? It was so curious.” And that’s beautiful. It just is, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah. Well, you make a good point, which is that there are as many paths as there are people, and it is a little foolish to generalize. Although you do sometimes see patterns, you know.

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. So we’ll get into that more as we go along. So, I don’t know–you don’t need to go into specifics if you don’t want to. But how do you feel your personal experiences with trauma and tragedy led to your first profound spiritual openings?

Savita: Well, the first opening was a glimpse. And the first one was the death of the mentor.

Rick: Yeah, you had a mentor who got in a car accident.

Savita: Yeah, and mentor with horsemanship, not a spiritual mentor.

Rick: I see.

When Tragedy Opens the Door to Peace

Savita: No, I wasn’t doing any seeking spiritually or, you know, otherwise. And the shock of that, you know, the suddenness of it. And his girlfriend at the time died as well in the same accident. They were both passengers in the car. And he left behind children from a previous marriage and it was a pretty rough time. And so that period of grieving and shock, and all of that–that’s what led to that first just really simple opening and a really simple moment of hanging out clothes on the line. And just all that contraction, all that grief, all that… just even a me just fell away. And it was just this intimacy. This beautiful, simple, peaceful intimacy. And that was like the first crack, the first opening, and

Rick: How long did that last?

Savita: I don’t know. It’s… it’s just there’s no sort of sense of how long I was there for it could have been

Rick: I mean it wasn’t like weeks and weeks and weeks of peace, but it was…

Savita: No, no.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick: Yeah. Um, I guess you were… Susanne Marie was one of your mentors, wasn’t she? Or–

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah. And she had something similar where her brother died unexpectedly, and it really kind of shifted her into profound realization, as traumatic as that was. And obviously, that’s not the kind of impetus most of us would want to undergo, to have a profound realization. But what do you think it is about a shock like that, that can catalyze an opening?

Savita: I think it’s probably a few things. The mind can kind of give up because it can’t make sense of it and it can’t fix it. There’s nothing it can do. So death like that is like a koan in itself, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: There’s no controlling, there’s no… there’s nothing but surrender. So I think that’s part of it. I think the other part of it is fully allowing ourselves to feel. I’ve had that experience many times later, where when I fully went into the grief, then the peace and the joy and the bliss would open.

Rick: There’s a couple of things in there.

Savita: Right in the center of it.

Rick: No, finish your thought. I thought you were stopping.

Savita: Yeah, no, just how it’s… and it’s so bizarre, you know, because in the past you’d grieve or you had grief and it’s just, it’s all awful. You know, who would have thought that right at the center if you fully let go into it, that there it is.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. There’s a couple things in there that kind of jump out at me. One is there’s this whole little section near the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita where Arjuna, the hero of the story, feels like, “I’ve got this. I’m in control. I can do this. Let me at these guys.” And then he undergoes this shift where he all of a sudden realizes he doesn’t have it, and he’s not in control. And at that point, he surrenders to his master, to the Lord. Krishna was supposed to be an avatar. And the commentary I read was like– in life for all of us, as long as you think that you can do it, you’re in charge. You’re the controller. You don’t tend to surrender or look for some higher guidance or higher wisdom. But can if you reach that point at which you know you’re not in charge. Then you kind of fall on your knees, so to speak, and seek higher guidance.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that can be a really nuanced space for embodiment and trauma. Because often in a kind of native way, people with childhood trauma or any sort of abuse or boundary violations, there’s that loss of volition, and all that comes with that. So there’s some real nuance in healing that to a place where the understanding is that the infinite is safe. And that really is… can take some time. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Rick: No, it does. And in a few minutes we’re going to get into talking about shadow work and healing and things. I wanted to just ask you a couple of quick questions before that, because you mentioned a minute ago going into grief and then finding peace after going through it. So we want to talk about that. But I just want to ask you–the idea of authentic realization and authentic empowerment seem to be central to your work. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I got that impression. Do you have the impression that there’s a lot of inauthentic realization and empowerment going on? Is that why you emphasize authenticity?

Savita: I think that there is probably a lot more that needs to clear that people realize in that way. You know, I think that, that it’s really easy for stuff to still be stored there in that sort of power center, and for that to grab on even with the openings that have happened. You know even though there might be a lot of clarity, there might have been lots of openings, there might be some embodiment that can kind of really sort of grab on to it and create another sort of identity.

Rick: I think that’s really important, actually. There are so many examples of very impressive teachers who seem to have had profound awakenings, and yet then their behavior becomes very inappropriate and harmful to people. And you kind of realize– I don’t know– my sense of it is that there is a lot of buried stuff that they never had to confront. And it’s kind of coming back to bite them, you know?

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: And in some cases, the behavior becomes much more exaggerated in its inappropriateness than even that of a normal person.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, because that whole outsourcing, you know… if students outsource their life to… well, it’s the guru up there and that whole hierarchy thing.

Rick: It empowers them.

Authentic Power vs. Spiritual Intoxication

Savita: Yeah, and people can get drunk on that.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: People can get really intoxicated with it.

People can get really intoxicated with it.

Rick: Goes to their heads.

Savita: But it’s so much more… Sorry, go on.

Rick: That saying of, “It goes to their heads,” all the adulation. It’s like, “Ooh, I must be special. Everybody loves me.” [Laughter]

Savita: Yeah, exactly. And it’s so much more… it’s more quiet than that. The authentic power when it comes through. And it’s really all our contractions and stuff that gets in the way of it moving. It just knows which way to move. It could be in a boundary setting. And when it comes through, it happens so fast, that the mind has to catch up with it. It’s not something that comes from thinking our way through it.

The authentic power when it comes through. And it’s really all our contractions and stuff that gets in the way of it moving.

Rick: Explain that a little bit. I’m not sure exactly what you mean there.

Savita: So if, for instance, there was a situation where there needed to be like, “This is this incarnation here, and that’s that one over there,” the distinction, it just will move. What needs to be said, what needs to come through, just comes through. Rather than having to think about it, you know, an intellectual exercise of, “Oh, I need to do this,” or “I need to navigate it,” because that’s the separateness, navigating it, rather than it just like moving.

Rick: I see. So you’re speaking of spontaneous right action, I suppose, that being in tune with, you know, divine consciousness or whatever you want to call it then spontaneously behavior flows in an appropriate way, or hopefully does.

Savita: Yeah, yeah… and it’s a loving, you know… it’s a loving thing. It comes from that deep, infinite, unconditional love for everyone involved. So, yeah, and you can’t, it’s… It’s not a predicted thing. It’s not a… understood by the mind thing.

Rick: Yeah, obviously we have a mind and we can use it, but the ramifications of every action are far more intricate than the mind could possibly comprehend. So if the mind had to figure out all the ripple effects that would result from every, action, it would be totally overwhelmed by the complexity. So what you’re saying is simple, spontaneous, right action can flow from being grounded in a deep enough realization. And that divine intelligence, which can comprehend all the complexities of the universe, can– that could be the– there’s a saying in the Vedas, “Brahman is the charioteer.” So if that’s running the show, then our behavior can be as it would be if we had some sort of omniscience, which is beyond human capability anyway.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. And then the human just catches up and goes, “Oh, that was interesting.”

Rick: Yeah, “Wow. How did that come out of my mouth?” [LAUGHTER]

Savita: That’s it. Kind of fun.

Rick: Yeah. So this next question, what we’ve just been discussing might be one of the answers to it. But you mentioned that coming home to our authentic selves leaves us open to a world of possibilities. Is this what we’ve just been discussing, the kind of possibility you’re alluding to there?

Savita: Yeah, in each moment, like that freshness, that newness.

Rick: So let’s talk about shadow work and healing and compassion for a while. You emphasize the necessity of healing past trauma to reach our full potential. And this involves shadow work. You know, turning towards the unconscious aspects we don’t want to see and cultivating deep compassion for ourselves and others to break cycles of suffering. And of course, many people are now familiar with the term shadow work. I’ve interviewed people such as Connie Zweig, who wrote a whole book about it. How do you define it and what is its role in healing?

Savita: I define it as, what’s unconscious. What hasn’t been brought to conscious awareness.

Rick: I think it was the Jungian term originally, wasn’t it?

Savita: Yeah, I think so. And the term itself, you know, it probably has a lot of baggage. Everything has energy, doesn’t it? Everything has kind of like what the collective have put on it. So it probably has that sort of baggage of something a bit heavy and frightening, when really it’s not. And it’s wanting to… life’s wanting to have those parts of ourselves rejoin. You know, that movement of rejoining. So yes, it can be anything from beliefs to stuck emotions to patterns of behavior.

Rick: And you mentioned that for you at least it felt less like work and more like life was working on you, rather than you were having to work to, to, you know, work something out. Is… did I get that right? I mean, can you elaborate on that?

Shadow Work: Life Working on You

Savita: Yeah, I think it was both. Because, it was happening, you know, unconscious that, you know, Pandora’s box had just been opened up. So, it was, it was flowing, it was coming up. But at the same time, there had to be that human portion, that willingness to meet what was arising, and the willingness to really engage in deep healing.

Rick: So on a day-to-day basis, was just all kinds of negative emotions or traumas that you had forgotten and things like that welling up? And did it make it difficult for you to function or hold down a job or things like that?

Savita: It was kind of like contraction, expansion, contraction, expansion. So I would have these really big heart openings and unconditional love flowing. I’d be looking at strangers and there would just be unconditional love and all sorts of bliss and joy, and then there would just be a plunge back into suffering and contractions.

I would have these really big heart openings and unconditional love flowing. I’d be looking at strangers and there would just be unconditional love and all sorts of bliss and joy, and then there would just be a plunge back into suffering and contractions.

Rick: I think that’s natural. I think that happens to a lot of people.

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Yeah, quite wild. And then other times where just emptiness was looking, there wasn’t any unconditional love feeling or any of that. It was just pure witnessing. So that would kind of go and then there would be the next contraction that would come. But I engaged in deep somatic-based healing because my nervous system… because I’m extremely sensitive, which is one of my gifts. But my nervous system had gotten so dysregulated through traumas just kind of piling up on top of each other. So I really needed that, you know, that phase when it’s wanting to come in and embody and have all the fragmented… because trauma really fragments us. So all those fragmented parts like, yeah, you too, you as well. And that’s the compassion. That compassion that wants all the parts of us that feel separate and lost and in pain and in confusion.

Rick: Were you doing some formal somatic healing work under some kind of trained person?

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Like, so therapeutic sessions in which you do something or other?

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. Yeah. So, through the body. Accessing unconscious…

Rick: Was it mainly talk type stuff or was there like physical massage or acupuncture, you know, those kind of things?

Healing the Nervous System in Small Doses

Savita: A little bit of acupuncture, yeah, but more being with the body, creating, you know, the bridge of safety, because that’s what’s lost, isn’t it? When we go through these things, it’s that feeling of that we’re safe. So being with it, creating that bridge and getting the nervous system to come back down into some sort of…

Rick: The excitation, yeah.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, that presence, then allowing bits to come up. But it can’t all come up all at once.

Rick: Oh no.

Savita: That’s too much… for the nervous system. So just in little bits, and then, you know, you’re kind of emptying the jar bit by bit, and then more can come up and more can be released. And so body movements and the body wanting to do at the time.

You’re kind of emptying the jar bit by bit, and then more can come up and more can be released.

Rick: Yeah. You mean like fears?

Savita: Got frozen? No, like through whatever happened at the time. It wanted to push a boundary or it needed to fight or it needed to… you know, all the kind of primal survival instincts that are stuck. It’s the energy that’s just gotten really stuck.

Rick: Yeah. So this is a cycle of expansion and contraction that you went through. Did you get the feeling that the expansion phases were kind of like a solvent where, you know, once you’re exposed to that vastness for a little while, all these tight things begin to loosen up and release. And then of course you go into contraction as they release and then once they’ve sort of fizzled out in terms of that particular batch releasing, you open up to perhaps an even broader expansion which triggers another release… like you say, you keep going through this cycle.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. I like that a lot.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Yeah absolutely. And you know it’s not… some stuff will get burnt up just through grace. I had the inexperience of… because I had chronic illness as well, as a result of all the trauma and everything that had happened, I had an experience of the lady I was working with, with the somatic work, saying, “Oh, I think we need to slow down.”

Rick: You thought it might be too much for you?

Savita: Yeah, because my nervous system was so sensitive, and so it’s like, “Yeah, I think maybe we need to slow down.” And I thought, “Oh, shit, I’m going to slow down. Let’s get this stuff out of here.”

Rick: “Let’s get it over with.”

Savita: Yeah, yeah, let’s get it over with. And I was going through another sort of koan in my life where I was living at the time. The land wasn’t able to support my horses in a way that they would be as healthy as I would have liked them to have been. So I was looking for somewhere else and you just couldn’t… bang up against… It’s not working. I can’t find anywhere. So those two sort of things were happening simultaneously. And then just out to lunch one day and another… just massive opening happened. The food was blissful. Just so beautiful, you know. You want to go in and kiss the chefs… like the gratitude, you know. And that gave my nervous system enough of a relaxation for the healing, and shifting whatever else was there to continue. So you know how much that burnt up or chewed up, we don’t know, but…

Rick: I bet you the horses have been very healing for you. How long have you been around horses? I mean, ever since a young age?

Horses as Teachers and Mirrors

Savita: The horse? No. I wasn’t born into a family that was horse orientated at all. I literally was born in with that calling, I suppose. You know, when I was two, I asked for… it was the first toy that I asked for, was a life, you know, like a, what do you call it? Like a life…

Rick: Life-like.

Savita: True to life form of a horse, you know? Yeah. And, and I just took that everywhere with me. Just absolutely loved it. And when I was really young my favorite book was War Horse.

Rick: Oh yeah, I saw the movie.

Savita: So it didn’t come from Yeah, right. I haven’t actually seen the movie. But, yeah, so I don’t know whether that was brought in from past lives, probably.

Rick: Yeah. I never worked with horses. In fact, I had a very early experience of falling off a horse at a state fair, or something like that. I was doing the horse ride so many times, getting to ride on a real horse, that the guys got kind of casually sort of threw me up on the saddle and I went right off the other side. But anyway, I did have an opportunity to work around cows for a while. Quite a few months of shoveling cow manure and just building fences and taking care of the cows. And they just had such a vibe about them that you kind of entrain with their vibe. And I found it very profound and beautiful. It was really calming.

Savita: Yeah, well that’s it, isn’t it? It’s like, it’s common for, I think a lot of us that when we start having openings or that call comes or whatever, we want to go and be more in nature.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Like our wildness calls to us. It’s part of it. But yeah, so with the horses, it wasn’t really until I was older that I had sort of opportunity, you know my teenage years, to start having stuff to do with them. And then I worked up north on a cattle station and worked with horses there. And then just through my life, they’d sort of come in and out with it, sort of like through my 20s. And then when I found my mentor with horsemanship, that was like when I fully entered into… and I’ve been with them ever since. But man, they can teach you some stuff.

Rick: Yeah, really.

Savita: Yeah, we really are the students.

Rick: Yeah, I can think of a number of examples. I’ve seen programs for prison inmates working with horses, and it’s very therapeutic for them. I have a friend who has an autistic daughter, and her daughter goes to horse camp where the horses work with the autistic kids and it has a great effect. And there’s programs here in the US where kids who are in the inner cities… you know slum kind of areas: very high crime, high stress. They get to go out to the country and be with horses for a while. So I can probably think of a couple more examples, but it’s a known healing modality.

Savita: Yeah, and I mean, I sort of, you know, I work with people, obviously online with awakening and healing, but I also have clients where I work with their horses… for helping the horses with the horse’s trauma, and the person with what’s happening for them, and then finding that sort of meeting point. So it’s less about the horse necessarily being the healing force, but it being a mirror for consciousness.

I work with people, obviously online with awakening and healing, but I also have clients where I work with their horses… for helping the horses with their healing.

Rick: Yeah, kind of a mutual healing.

Savita: More of a mutual meeting.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. Because like with anything, I think there’s some horses that would be at a soul level willing to participate in that and then there’s others that aren’t. So when I’ve used them in that capacity with clients, it’s more as they just be themselves exactly as they are, and what is it that you’re drawn to in them, and then that is like a mirror for the person’s own wisdom to come forward for what they might need in that moment. If that makes sense.

Rick: Yeah. There’s a guy in the U.S. named Cesar Millan who is called the Dog Whisperer and his motto is… and people call him because they have problems with their dogs, And … but his motto is “Better human, better dog” because he usually has to fix the human and then that solves the dog’s problem.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I think that there’s probably soul contracts going on, you know?

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Savita: Where it’s like, we’re going to help highlight this for you. And really, I’m just a translator, to help sort of translate that. And they help us to slow down and to actually take notice. They remind… For me, they remind me of my wildness. You know that natural part, and I think that that whole embodiment thing is like our wildness and the… and the transcendent wisdom meeting and collapsing.

Rick: You state that anxiety is often a symptom of past trauma, which is not surprising. And that you mention that bringing compassionate awareness to these unresolved and incomplete fight-or-flight energies help to complete them. So how does one conjure up compassionate awareness if that’s the solution to healing certain kinds of trauma or anxiety? But what if you’re not feeling compassionate awareness? How do you turn it up so as to have it help heal these things?

Savita: Well, you can’t because that’s us trying to manipulate it. It’s there, it’s available.

Rick: How do you locate it, I should say? It’s already there, right? So how do you tune into it so as to…

Savita: It’s already there. Yeah. Yeah. Well you may need a bridge or a conduit, or, you know…

Rick: Such as?

Savita: Someone in support of you that can mirror that back to you. It could be any sort of practice that feels right for you. Even just using imagination as a bridge can be helpful. It can start to relax the nervous system enough that maybe there’s a “Oh there’s some safety here that I can open to.”

Rick: Give me an example of how that might work.

Using Imagination as a Bridge to Love

Savita: So, if somebody’s like really contracted and their nervous system is really dysregulated–they were to open fully to redemptive love completely, it might actually be too overwhelming. Sometimes it has to be taken in bit by bit rather than all at once. So, if we can create a space for someone, even in their imagination, that is peaceful and they’re held. You know, it’s a relative thing, but it’s got a thread back to the absolute, that’s safe.

Rick: So let’s say you had a loving grandmother or something, but she’s passed away. And so you might say, “Okay, imagine your grandmother is here with you now, and she’s holding you, and she’s singing you a lullaby or something. ” So you mean that kind of thing?

Savita: Yeah, you could do that and that could be a bridge.

Rick: Okay.

Savita: That could be using the imagination as a bridge, for sure.

Rick: Good. So grief… we’ve talked about anxiety. Grief, that’s an emotion that many people try to avoid. You connect it to love, saying that there is no grief without love. How does allowing ourselves to fully experience grief open the door to compassion? And I guess you know grief without love does that mean like… you know, if you didn’t love your dog you wouldn’t be grieving if it died or something like that. If your heart is sort of cold and closed, then… and you’re not experiencing much love, then you don’t grieve for the people in Gaza or you know, other situations, whereas a more sensitive person feels such others’ pain very acutely.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there’s like the human element to it, you know, like our human hearts. And then, of course, there’s like the infinite heart that can just hold all that suffering. There’s no limit to it. So, yeah. But, you know, that’s not to say that if someone was to die and there was just infinite joy for their passing, that there’s no love there, because there is, you know. There is unconditional love. So it’s not like a hard and fast rule. I guess what I’m just pointing to is not to contract or fear that grief because it is an expression of love.

Rick: Yeah. And it’s a natural thing. You know, we shouldn’t stifle it.

Savita: No, and we’ve been so conditioned to.

Rick: Right.

Savita: You know, so conditioned to collectively.

Rick: And even spiritual people sometimes intellectualize things away, like somebody dies and you think, “Oh, they’ve just gone on to heaven or another lokah or something like that.” And if someone is grieving, they might say, “Oh, you shouldn’t be grieving.” There’s even a verse in the Gita which says, “Certain indeed is birth for the dead and certain is death for the born. Therefore, over the inevitable, you should not grieve.” But, you know, that can become…

Savita: They’re guilty as well!

Rick: Yeah, it can be kind of an unnatural heartlessness or something if you try to force yourself to abide by such admonitions.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. And it’s not in truth, you know, what’s really there. What’s really true is that there’s a human as well.

Rick: I suppose one way of wrapping up this point is just to be authentic. You know, I think that that term came up 15 minutes ago. If you’re feeling grief, feel grief. You know, don’t try to rationalize it as being unspiritual and you shouldn’t be feeling it or something.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it.

Rick: Be a human being… you’re a human being. You’re not just a divine the humanness because it just… there’s an allowance in that. You know… there’s such an allowance for… let’s all just be human.

Rick: Yeah. You noted that when faced with their own shadow, people can often react with unconscious and cruel behavior, and I I found that point very timely. There’s a lot of that in the world today. And I’m reminded of Jesus saying, “Forgive them Father. They know not what they do.” And I think here in the US, there’s a lot of cruelty going on right now with people being captured and sent to third countries, and put in, basically, hell holes of prisons in El Salvador and stuff like this. And they’re not actually really guilty of anything. They’re just being shuffled away like that. And so I think as a nation, we in particular, and many other nations, need to cultivate the capacity for compassion and not succumb to unconscious and cruel behavior. Whole nations do succumb to that. Nazi Germany is an example. But obviously, anything that a nation is doing, it’s doing because enough people in that nation are doing it. And so there needs to be a kind of a national healing. But you can only start with yourself. So, we keep coming back to this theme. But how can one be less unconscious and thus more kind and compassionate and sensitive to, you know, the suffering of others?

Savita: Yeah, I think it’s just a willingness. A willingness to face that… face everything within us. You know. And that comes back to the… what we were talking about before with the compassion. Like compassion for what’s here, unconscious within us. It naturally then flows out. We don’t have to force it. It’s just a natural, natural moment. So, yeah.

Rick: You mentioned that you’re a very sensitive person, and that’s good. Is there a way that… I suppose you just, you’re just wired that way. You didn’t do anything to sensitize yourself necessarily. But I think, spiritual practice can and does sensitize one. You know, you just become more refined, more delicate in a way, less crude, less blind to your own shadows, since we’re using that term.

Savita: Yeah, well it’s dropping into the wisdom of the heart, isn’t it?

Rick: Yeah, that’s the key, I guess… is just dropping into the wisdom of the heart. And at the same time, you know, you need to balance sensitivity with strength, do you not? Because if you became so sensitive that you couldn’t go to the store. And I’ve known people who are like that. In fact, I’ve been like that on long meditation courses where you’ve been meditating for months on end. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t possibly walk into town to buy a toothbrush. It’s just like too much.”

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nervous system’s so heightened. It’s like picking up on everything.

Rick: So there’s an integration factor that you have to somehow balance out with increased sensitivity. It’s paradoxical, but yeah, sensitivity and strength, the two.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it, yeah. And I think that before we were talking about the wildness meets the wisdom, kind of we throw in there in the sensitivity as well. Because I think that grounding, you know, like when you’re talking about being with the cows and, being with nature and being with the horses, and that grounding really helps with that strength. That real like connection to the earth and being here.

Rick: Yeah, connection to the earth. That’s a good one. I mean, I think that sometimes… Well, I remember when I first… I had interviewed Susanne Marie. And then a couple of years later, we were at this conference in California. And I was just totally wigged out by all the people and the energy. And I had like six interviews and a panel discussion and talk to give. And there was unlimited chocolate cake at lunch. And you know… And I was like, “Yeah, yeah.” And I remember she said, “Let’s take a walk.” And so we took a walk around through this little wooded area, and she said, “Let’s take our shoes off and walk in the grass.” So we walked in the grass, and then finally I just lay down in the grass and like, “Oh!”

Savita: That’s so funny. Your opinion on the cow and the chocolate cake, too.

Rick: But, you know, spiritual people are notorious for getting ungrounded. And so, you know… Personally I’ve kind of gotten into a routine of plenty of exercise, plenty of sleep. You know, just nice grounding things in addition to meditating a couple hours a day.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Rick: Okay, let’s talk for a while about awakening itself. We’ve talked… anything more you want to say right now about shadow and healing trauma and that kind of thing?

Savita: Nah, I don’t think so.

Rick: Okay. We can always come back to it if you think of something.

Savita: Yeah, sure.

Rick: Let’s talk about the nature of awakening. Your teachings point to it. You’ve used the word nuance, and I’ve detected that in what I’ve heard you say. “A nuanced understanding of awakening. I think this is important. It’s not about escaping our humanity [very important] but finding the simplicity of truth within the complexity of life. And it involves devotion, finding safety in our divine nature, and learning to sync with… ” This last sentence I don’t understand quite so well, maybe you can explain it… “learning to sync with linear time to experience the timeless.” So comment on everything I just said in that little statement.

Savita: Yeah, okay. Well, syncing with linear time, I’m really talking about our nervous systems. Because when our nervous systems are dysregulated, we’re really stuck. We’re stuck in the past or trying to rush towards some future point. And so, syncing with it would be getting our nervous Systems… you know, and that’s that whole embodiment thing, hey? Like getting our nervous systems to come into that point of balance and then we can experience the timeless here.

Rick: So would it be a “be here now” kind of a thing, to quote Ram Dass?

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: “The power of now,” to quote Eckhart Tolle?

Savita: Yeah, because we can have these openings, transcendent. that when the movement comes back in for embodiment, if our nervous systems are out of time, you’ll see it. You’ll go into a cafe or something and the person serving is under massive stress and their nervous system’s like pinging. It’s on fast forward. They’re out of sync with time or conversely the opposite, when there’s depression or collapse or just like shut down. And so the nervous system’s like really stuck. And so either one is not lining up… it’s not in sync with the moment. And so we take care of that, so that it can come and be here.

Rick: So in your own life… describe your own experience with regard to time. I could elaborate on that question, but see what you get from what I just said.

Savita: Well, certainly experience being out of sync with it. You know, when the nervous system’s like that… when it was going too fast, when it was going too slow.

Rick: You mean in the past for you?

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s not to say that the nervous system isn’t going to spike, and it’s not going to have its fluctuations. It’s not like it just goes into this dead zone of nothing happening. No one’s there. There’s still that… the body that’s… that you can be with… can be with that. You know you can be with the fluctuations rather than leaving. Because that’s what happens when it’s too overwhelming. We sort of… we leave… we leave ourselves. We fragment.

Rick: Okay. My sense of… Did you ever read a book by someone named– I think it was Suzanne Siegel called Collision with the Infinite? Interesting book. She was this woman who had this spontaneous awakening, and it was quite radical. And she couldn’t really find any sense of personal self after that, and it terrified her. And she went through like 10 years of trying to find a personal self before she finally gave up and realized something good had happened. But her motto became, “Do the next obvious thing. ” And that, to a great extent, is my motto. Not that I think about it all the time. But kind of nature presents the next obvious thing to you, and then you do it. Without a lot of– we’ve talked about this earlier– without a lot of complexity, without a lot of intellectualization. It’s like you can almost trust that you’re going to be presented with what is supposed to be next, and then you can do… then you just do that. So that’s what came to mind when I started thinking about this topic of time.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the horses are great for that because when you get out of alignment with that, they’re gonna let you know.

Rick: They pick up on it, right?

Savita: Oh yeah, absolutely. You were talking before about the other part of my work that I do. I’m always trying to put myself as much as I can in the hooves, or the shoes, of the horse… Their awareness… And that varies depending on the horse and their makeup and all that sort of stuff. But it’s just because we spend so much time in our thoughts or our minds, our awareness compared to theirs, they’re helping lead us home with that. I’ve had clients that when I first met them, there’s so many fragmented parts of themselves that they haven’t seen me and I’ve seen them, and they’ve gotten quite close and I think, “Oh, they still haven’t seen me.” And then I know how the horses feel. When we’re going to interact with a horse and we’re fragmented or we’re not there, we’re not home, we’re not in the moment, they’re like, “Oh, that person’s not home.”

Rick: Yeah, they don’t like it.

Savita: They know. They really do. I forgot where we started with that.

Rick: So you find that horses can…

Savita: We got lost in it.

Rick: Yeah, do you find that you can– either you, yourself, or people that you work with with horses, you can help them to entrain their consciousness to the consciousness of the horse, and thereby become more simple? Which is not to say we become like a horse in terms of our perception or our consciousness, but that’s what I was saying about the cows. There was something so simple and grounded about the cows, that just hanging out with them all day, I just entrained with their consciousness and just got into this like really subtle, settled state, even though I was working hard, shoveling manure and building fences and stuff. I think probably a lot of people can relate to this. That’s why we love animals so much. They’re not just cute and cuddly, but they actually have a good effect on our mentality, our consciousness.

Savita: Yeah, come into resonance.

Rick: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the word, good one.

Savita: In resonance with unity.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Savita: Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: I’m sure there’s some interesting stories here that one could tell, I don’t know them, but about native peoples, aborigines in Australia or Native Americans or whatever, and their affinity–almost like a psychic affinity with animals.

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Oh, as a matter of fact, I heard a story about this where this–it was some sort of indigenous hunter or something like that. And he not only had to worry about the scent he might be leaving, depending on where he was and which way the wind was going and stuff, but he had to worry about– not worry, but he had to be mindful of his moods and thoughts and so on, because animals could pick up on it.

Savita: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love that. That connection back to our wildness and, like you say, indigenous people–that connection to all our gifts. Because as you know, the gifts that can open with awakening, they’re there in everyone–maybe in different ways. Some people are more leaning towards certain gifts and others towards others, but they weren’t disconnected– Indigenous people from that. That connection with Earth and our wildness… The transcendent is in, it’s right in the middle of the wildness, right in the middle of that. And there’s a point that could be added here, which is that it’s not that horses are enlightened or babies are enlightened or Indigenous people are enlightened because they’re simple. That’s a quite– and feel free to disagree with this, but I think there’s something Ken Wilber talks about called the pre-trans fallacy, where people say, oh, horses, babies, and so on. They’re enlightened. We have to get back to that state. Well, we don’t want to get back to infancy. We want it because we’re adults. But you can kind of come full circle and achieve human maturity and your wisdom and your personality and all those things. And yet, as Jesus said, “Be gentle as doves, wise as serpents, gentle as doves.” So you can kind of regain the innocence and simplicity of those examples. But you’re not going to be simplistic. You’re not going to be infantile. You could be very mature and wise. And yet, as simple as it is. Jesus also said, “Except ye be as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. And when you talk about enlightenment–babies or horses or anything else being enlightened, that whole evolutionary arc, I just don’t think that… I think we like to have it wrapped up in kind of a box of that, “Well they’re there and that’s there,” and = I like to just leave it to well… it’s the mystery, isn’t it, just unfolding in different forms.

Rick: That’s good. I Mean… I do think there is such a thing as levels of evolution and a whole kind of spectrum or scale of evolution. I mean a mosquito is not the same as a a monkey, or that kind of thing, but you can’t really make hard and fast decisions about it. It’s just more of a broad understanding.

Savita: Yeah it leaves us kind of more open. You can feel it.

Rick: Yeah. And certainly regardless of the level of evolution of anything it’s all the divine–a rock for that matter.

Savita: I’ve met some beautiful rocks here on the land.

Rick: Yeah, okay, so here’s a question. We could call this finding safety in the infinite. You say that with trauma the body loses its sense of Safety, and you speak of a deeper absolute trust that is synonymous with surrender. The ancient traditions speak of our divine nature as never having been hurt or damaged, sort of being beyond the possibility of harm. Let’s come back to like practicalities. How can people = establish their connection or establish that as their foundation and thereby be in a state of safety regardless of the challenges that life throws at them?

Finding Safety in the Infinite

Savita: Well I think that comes back to what we were talking before about grounding. That’s hugely important for the body. And you talking about your conference that you were at… it’s only in a mild way. I know you weren’t flipping your lid or anything, but…

Rick: I was just kind of hyper stimulated with all the people and the food and the talks.

Savita: Yeah, exactly. And you had that direct experience of when you grounded yourself, then the body can like… “Oh, okay. I’m safe.” And so Mother Earth was the conduit to that. It was the bridge for your body because it’s all the one body.

Rick: Yeah. And of course the word ground is sometimes associated with being itself, “the ground of being, ” Pure consciousness or whatever, being the sort of ultimate foundation of everything.

Savita: And it doesn’t mean that fear still… that fear might not arise when that’s coming. You know, the first time I had that fear really come up, it was very much a psychological fear of the void or you know… and it was like, oh I’ve never felt… I’d felt fear before, obviously, but that fear was like, I’m going to be completely taken out, like just non-existence. And the fear really arose, but it was a psychological constructed self that was going to never exist again.

Rick: Was this on the verge of some spiritual shift that that you went through?

Savita: Yeah, just another opening.

Rick: That happens to a lot of people. There’s sort of a threshold you cross where there’s a big upsurge of fear, after which… It’s kind of like breaking the sound barrier. It’s smooth after you break it, but as you approach it, it gets really rough.

Savita: Yeah. And I think, certainly for me, it wasn’t just a one-time thing. It wasn’t just a one-time “break the sound barrier and all is good.” It revisited… like the waves come. Like we were talking about before, you know–washing, washing away, the batches. And so the second time that fear really came up, it was experienced very differently and it was just experienced as the survival instinct in the body and there wasn’t that psychological component of it. And my mind was like, oh, oh, like the fear of death is here and it’s just in the body, it’s just a survival mechanism in the body. And then the next day in meditation I went into–I suppose what spiritual people call, samadhi, where everything just collapsed.

Rick: So that fear was like a precursor to the samadhi that happened the next day.

Savita: It was. Yeah.

Rick: There’s a saying in The Upanishads which goes, “Certainly all fear is born of duality.” And it almost seems like, again, there’s this sort of guardian at the gate of unity that is a fear membrane that you have to get through. Yeah. As duality merges into unity.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick: The phrase you use–in fact you gave us this phrase to put on your little YouTube thumbnail, is “Healing the intimate divide.” Is that what we’re talking about right now? Or if not, what is this intimate divide that you’re referring to in that phrase? And what does the process of healing it entail?

Savita: That’s absolutely what we were just talking about.

Rick: Okay, good. Good timing.

Savita: Perfect. Perfect timing. Divine timing.

Rick: Doing the next obvious thing. Okay, two questions came in. Let’s ask them. This one is from Michael Maitis Mitas in London. Michael, you’re up late. “Is it possible to manifest our desired reality and if so, how?”

Savita: Interesting. Well, the question denotes that it’s a me doing it. That it’s a separate someone. So I’ll answer it in a slightly different way. I think there is something that we can offer ourselves to… offer ourselves to something larger than just our humanness. Offer ourselves to healing. And in that way we can align with what wants to really unfold. And what wants to really unfold might be better than what we ever could think that we want, you know? We sort of get these ideas of we want to manifest certain things, we want to create certain things in our life, and they’re not necessarily going to make us happy– maybe temporarily, but it depends on what you’re interested in.

Rick: Yeah, sort of a “let they will be done” thing.

Savita: Yeah. And it’s understandable, that drive, because everybody wants to live a fulfilled life. You know, everybody wants to be healthy and that’s just a common human thing. But if we can trust that life knows better than us kind of what’s good for us, then we can go, okay, well, let’s–as a devotional thing, let’s offer ourselves to this path and see where it leads.

Rick: You know, there’s these popular things like The Secret, and there’s this lady named Esther Hicks who channels some entity called Abraham, and it’s all about manifestation. So manifestation’s been a big popular thing in New Age circles. But like you just said…

Savita: And there’s nothing wrong with it.

Rick: No, and it’s natural to have desires. We have desires.

Savita: Absolutely.

Rick: Yeah, I had a teacher who one of his favorite phrases was “Highest first.” There’s so many things you could want. Want the highest and then let everything else kind of fall into line after that.

Savita: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, it’s really good. I was going to say one other thing about that. It’s gone now. It might come back.

Rick: Okay, you just go ahead and say it if it does. Here is a question from Prachi Dixit in Torrance, California. “What would you suggest to help us uplift the collective consciousness? By uplifting collective, I mean lift humanity to its true nature.”

Savita: Yeah, I think that comes back to what we were saying before, that we can only be responsible for what’s here in our shadow. So, what’s here in our unconscious is, it’s not just for ourselves. That is an offering to all of humanity. Our state of being is going to have a profound effect on not only the people and the animals close to us in our lives, but that ripples out. And that kind of almost goes back to the manifesting question with the trusting of what wants to unfold–that you will be given what you need to live out this life. To offer.

Rick: Yeah, the ripple effect that you mentioned is very important, I think, because all of us, all the time, are emanating some kind of influence. And if we look at the whole world and the state of it, then, okay, what are we looking at? We’re looking at the collective Total–sum total–of all the influences that are being radiated by 8 billion people. And obviously it’s somewhat lacking. So what can we do to help the world radiate a better influence?

Savita: Yeah, absolutely. And we don’t know what it’s gonna look like necessarily at the start. Like, we don’t know in what way life is gonna wanna use us to serve. We have no idea. And it’s just trusting that it’s gonna find its way.

Rick: I think it helps to just have the desire to be used by life or the divine. You know… St. Francis, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.” If you have that… “Where there is this, let me sew that,” and so on. I think if you have that sort of desire to be an instrument of the divine, then you’re more likely to be one.

Savita: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it can be in the smallest thing. It doesn’t need to be some big thing. It can be just moment to moment. Are we radiating that kindness? Are we allowing that compassion to flow through us? Where in us are we unconscious? Where it gets blocked, that flow.

Rick: No, small things are important. If we don’t do the small things, we’re probably not going to do the big things.

Savita: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: I mean, I don’t want to seem like some kind of a… like I’m tooting my horn. But I can’t walk down a sidewalk where I see a worm stranded on the sidewalk without bending over and picking the worm up and throwing it on the grass. You know, it’s going to die in the sun if it lies on the sidewalk.

Savita: Yeah, that’s beautiful. It’s like a devotion–devotion’s coming through.

Rick: I thought, “Oh, the poor little thing, it’s stranded. I got to pick it up.” Okay, devotion, good timing. My next point was about devotion and simplicity. Devotion is a recurring theme in your work. You speak of a true devotion of life itself that never abandons us. Okay, what do you think is the relationship between this devotion that you refer to and simplicity that you say is at the heart of any authentic realization?

Savita: You just highlighted it beautifully in your story about the worms. You did it for me, Rick.

Rick: Okay, good.

Savita: We’ve got an invasive weed that grows here. It’s a South African weed called Capeweed. And it really… with cleared ground, it really takes over. And it’s not good, anyone who’s out there listening who’s horsey. It’s not good for horses.

Rick: Right, and it’s probably invading their grassy fields and things.

Savita: Yeah, well actually, some of the native Australian grasses are really good for horses. It’s kind of interesting, that whole, you know, what would actually be good for the earth to be regenerated back to the native grasses would be good for the animals, that whole sort of thing. But the Capeweed… it’s really quite bad here. The job to pull it all out by hand is far more enormous than my body’s capable of, but I do it anyway.

Rick: Oh okay.

Savita: You know and as I’m doing it, it’s this simple act of devotion. Just me and the horses and the paddock and the weeds.

Rick: Did you ever hear the story of the old man and the starfish?

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, “Made a difference to to that one,” he says, as he picks a starfish up. And there’s thousands of them on the beach. And the kid says, “What difference does it make if you throw one in the water?” “Well, made a difference to that one.” [CHUCKLES] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [CHUCKLES] Yeah. You guide meditations–I’ve heard some of your meditations on YouTube– to evoke the still mind of the divine. This is a good one. The second verse of the Yoga Sutras say, “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.” Of course, it’s in Sanskrit, but that’s what it means. So, how in your opinion does quieting the mind help us access the timeless, peaceful state–the ground state?

Savita: Well, it’s more about where our attention goes than trying to quiet the mind. So, if our attention is constantly caught by thought, then that’s what we’ll get more of–just trapped in thought. But if our attention can rest in that gap.

Rick: Beyond thought.

Savita: In the stillness, we get more of that. So that’s sort of the tool that we have–is, where is our attention?

Rick: Do you find that when you’re busy doing something. Could be a simple thing like washing the dishes, or a little bit more complicated like driving a car, or even like right now having a conversation, do you find that there’s a dimension that is always in stillness? Which maybe there wasn’t when you were 15 years old or something but it’s become a kind of a natural feature of your experience.

Savita: Yeah, I mean it was certainly there when I was 15 but you know I had no idea.

Rick: It was kind of overshadowed by stuff probably then.

Savita: Too fragmented.

Rick: Right, right. Yeah, I mean it’s there for everybody, but most people are overshadowed.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, it’s kind of, the music’s too loud. Someone’s turned the stereo up too loud.

Rick: You talk a fair amount about embodiment and also mysticism. So you seem to speak of a blend of mystical and groundedness. And you reference the archetypes of the Divine Mother and the Warrior. And you work with subtle energies and benevolent helpers, all while remaining deeply rooted in the physical. So these benevolent helpers–I presume you’re talking about guardian angels or something of that nature. Some subtle beings that aren’t obvious to the human perception, but are nonetheless among us and helping us?

Savita: Yeah, wish I’d known about them sooner.

Rick: Well, they knew about you.

Savita: They knew about me. They know about all of us. Yeah, I don’t really label them as sort of guardian angels or guardian anything necessarily. Just that they’re there. They’re there and they’re support for us.

Rick: How do you know they’re there? Somebody might ask, how do you know they’re there?

Subtle Guidance and Knowing Beyond Intuition

Savita: As your path goes and as the more subtle senses open up, knowing things in that subtle realm, it’s like I know that you’re here talking to me. It’s like that. It’s really hard to explain that knowing. It just is. And when it comes through with really profound things that you need right in that moment, and it moves you and it moves that emotion like you know it’s authentic.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: That’s probably the best way to explain it. It happens a lot for me through a clairaudience, sometimes a claircognizance–just a knowing. Like hearing a voice that you know is not yours.

Rick: Yeah, like intuition.

Savita: Different to my intuition, and that’s how I know. I know when it’s like intuition that’s arising in me, or when it’s another subtle being that’s a helping guide.

I know when it’s like intuition that’s arising in me, or when it’s another subtle being that’s a helping guide.

Rick: Ah, that’s good. I bet you a lot of people listening can relate to that.

Savita: For that first question, the manifesting question, that was the point that I was going to say that if he’s offering himself to his spiritual path and his healing or whatever’s happening for him, tuning into that internal navigation–the clearer we get, the easier that is. And that’s going to help him in the fulfillment of a good life.

Rick: Yeah, so it might seem a little esoteric to some people to think that there are these sort of subtle beings of some kind that are hanging around and helping us out, but it really can become obvious, kind of second nature, and almost something you can rely on, you know.

Savita: Unless they decide that you need to do it on your own.

Rick: Yeah, or unless you’re pushing in the wrong direction, then they might block it, you know. I don’t know if it’s them or what, but you might meet resistance and maybe if you’re wise you think, “Okay, there must be a reason for this resistance. Am I supposed to push on through it or am I getting a sign that this is not the direction I should go on? I should go over this way instead.”

Savita: Yeah, yeah. And it’s a whole journey that, you know, like learning to navigate the realizations and the different stages. But yeah, they’ve certainly helped me if I’ve been maybe going on, “Oh, go down that way,” they’re like, “No, maybe don’t go that way,” and it is very different to my own arising of knowing that. And then when we don’t listen–we all get that, and then we don’t listen, even the not listening is intelligent because there’s a lesson there that needs to be played out for whatever reason.

Rick: Yeah. I don’t perceive these things visually but I had a friend who did, and you know he would say that you could be in a group of people like that conference I referred to and he would see these beings of some kind around people and he didn’t know exactly what they were doing, but everyone seemed to have their little attendants, you know. And this is a whole bunch of spiritual people, you know, who are spiritual teachers and stuff who are on this–in this conference. And you know there are a lot of teachers and traditions who say that there are probably more beings in the subtle realm than there are in the gross. I interviewed this guy named David Spangler, who was one of the founders of the Findhorn community in Scotland, and you know he had been seeing and communicating with these things all his life. I think it’s interesting. I mean, you know, it’d be big news if a UFO landed on the White House lawn. But, you know, think of the fact that there could be more beings in this world of a subtle nature than there are gross beings such as we. And that’s even bigger news in a way.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it’s kind of–it keeps us humble too, I think. It keeps us humble that we don’t get too wrapped up in our own stuff to know that there’s these beings in other realms and perhaps we can’t have the full picture here.

Rick: I wonder if there’ll come a time when humanity is so evolved that it’ll be common for people’s awareness to encompass a broader range of creation and it’ll be kind of ordinary for us to perceive these subtler beings as opposed to just being some extraordinary thing that very few people have.

Savita: Yeah, well that’s it and it does, it becomes– it just becomes normal. Things that before when you’re sort of contracted and cut off, that would have just seemed like mind-blowing. It’s just, of course, it’s just normal. It becomes normal. It doesn’t seem odd at all.

Rick: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Savita: It’s very beautiful.

Rick: Yeah, a friend sent me a whole long, like 20 minute message the other day and I hadn’t talked to him for about a year, but I had been just thinking about him for a couple of days. And so when his message came, I called him up on WhatsApp and I said, “Well, I’m not surprised that you sent me that message. I’ve been thinking about you for a couple of days.”

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really common.

Rick: Yeah. You shared a beautiful experience of the Divine Mother gazing through you. Can you speak about that a little bit more, and about the feminine aspect of the divine, and what it means to be an embodied mystic?

Savita: I think what you’re referring to was with my little doggie. When I was lovingly, very lovingly gazing upon him, you know, there’s that personal relationship, obviously. You know, there’s no one else that is his mother. I’m his mother. (laughs) apart from his actual dog mother. And I’m gazing upon him with all this love in that personal relationship–my motherly love. And then that personal just gets pushed aside and then it’s like literally Divine Mother gazing upon him. Unconditional love. And just a strange–so much love and intimacy, but like a strange detachment. There’s not that personal relationship. It’s not there, there’s something else.

Rick: It reminds me of a–Maharishi Mahesh Yogi wrote this poem called “Love and God.” And there was a section in the poem where he said, “Personal love is concentrated universal love.” And they said, ah, I said my heart flows when I say personal love is concentrated universal love. But I guess we could think of the Divine Mother or universal love as being a field of which we are just little conduits. And ordinarily, we feel love. And it seems like it’s kind of coming from us. But probably it’s coming through us to whatever extent it can. It sounds like in that case, you know, you had the realization that it was a much broader field–that you were just kind of a magnifying glass for.

Savita: That’s it, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: That again is–I mean, I keep going to the global implications of this stuff, but again imagine if everybody in the world could be conscious conduits of universal love. It would be such a different world.

Savita: Yeah. And that’s all. It’s inevitable, I think. It’s inevitable. It’s just, are we going to commit to our devotion, bringing our human devotion to our paths. Are we going to do that now or are we going to wait? How much suffering is going to happen between those two points?

Rick: Yeah, I mean there’s no practical reason why everybody in the world couldn’t be properly fed and housed and cared for with health care and everything else. It’s just human, you know, limitations screwing it all up. These points, I mean, they seem obvious to us, I think, but they don’t seem to be obvious to everybody in the world because people keep seeming to think that some particular political or economic or solution is going to come along to solve all our problems. Aldous Huxley said that there are no–all these problems that beset us in the world are not problems, they’re symptoms. They’re symptoms Symptoms of the kind of the lack of the kind of realization that you and I are talking about

Savita: Yeah, yeah symptoms of the core wound, hey, separation.

Rick: Right on a mass scale Yeah, you know we’re talking a minute ago about the divine feminine peering through your eyes at your dog. There’s also kind of the Warrior archetype. I don’t know if you talk about that, but how do you balance these two energies? And actually when you think of mothers and their motherly love, they often balance that with the Warrior archetype–you know, having to rescue a child from a vicious dog, or whatever. Speak to that a little bit.

Savita: Yeah, that’s it. And that’s that whole not rejecting our–I mean, I’m calling it wildness just because I like that word. Rejecting our wildness. Rejecting that innate intelligence that would do that–that would protect the child. You know, that would stand up for oneself or would stand up for others from that place that’s not divided from life itself. And I think that there’s probably still something in us that wants to separate that out, like that they can’t coexist in harmony. That all-loving, unconditional, Divine Mother that seems warm and welcoming–that it can coexist with the Warrior archetype. And that’s actually really necessary.

Rick: Are you saying it can but it often doesn’t?

Savita: Yeah, it often doesn’t and there’s often, I think, a collective kind of pushing away of that. You know, like–well I can’t be that because I have to be this, you know like that whole idea of it rather than it just being what it is–the truth of it, and the truth of it is that it does coexist.

Rick: Yeah, sometimes I think of spiritual evolution as a greater and greater capacity to contain opposites and paradoxes. Not having to be black and white, on and off, this or that, but being able to sort of hold the multi-dimensional paradoxical nature of the universe within your awareness.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, and to be whatever the moment is asking.

Rick: Yeah, whatever it calls for.

Savita: Whatever it calls for, yeah. And it could come through as like a fierceness in that Warrior. I mean, Joan of Arc is a striking example of that.

Rick: Yeah, she’s a little teenage girl.

Savita: Yeah, you can’t fathom it, can you? I mean, and the unconsciousness of what they did to her.

Rick: Right. If you read her biography, or her, yeah, her biography, there was a profound mystical dimension to her that somehow impelled her to take on the role that she did.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. She certainly had surrender sewn up, that’s for sure.

Rick: Yeah, what they did to her, you know, that reminds me of something I discussed in my interview last week with Aedamar Kirrane, who’s this Irish mystical woman. But we were talking about all the horrible–not that we want to dwell on this–but all the horrible things that have been done to mystics and even like herbalists or whatever during the dark ages–during the middle ages. People being burned at the stake for knowing about herbs or something like that. Or having mystical experiences, you know–just–It’s probably in a way–it’s a sign of, for optimism, because these days such things are coming to the fore and people aren’t being, you know, killed for them–they’re being respected and it’s being recognized more and more widely. So that might give us hope for the world.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. It’s becoming more common, but I think that it’s still in the collective that fear of the mystical–and really it’s fear of death, isn’t it? When you get right down to it, their fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of what they can’t control.

Rick: Yeah, I mean just speaking of religious traditions, usually what happens after some great seer comes and establishes a whole new wave of knowledge is, you know, after a generation or two, the administrators move in and take over the whole thing. And thenthey don’t understand the mystics and they feel threatened by them. And so mystics end up getting persecuted and then the whole thing becomes a complete polar opposite of what its founder intended.

Savita: And then you’ve got mystics’ intergenerational trauma.

Rick: Yeah, really.

Savita: Yeah. I mean, there’s people that knew me prior to awakening and they might not come and say it to me, but they probably think I’ve totally lost my mind, because it’s so far from their paradigm of life.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: That they can’t fathom it. They can’t fathom it, you know, and it’s um–they don’t realize that that’s actually–rather than an insanity, it’s actually coming into sanity. The whole awakening process.

Rick: And, you know, again, it’s a matter of what is the norm, and someone like you is an outlier–you know you’re not the norm, thank God. But there could, and hopefully will, become a society in which mystics are the norm. Which is not to say they’ll all be sitting around contemplating their belly buttons. The practical stuff can get done, but from the kind of the normal higher state of consciousness that everyone will be living. And then, you know, someone who’s not living that will be the aberration or the oddball. It’s like, you know, even think about what–how the world has changed since, let’s say, the 1800s. And, you know, what everything we took for granted in the 1800s–and a train was about as fast as anything could ever travel and, you know, things like that. And there was no conception that there was a, you know, other galaxies out there. Even that we were in a galaxy. People didn’t know what we were in. And now look at all the things we take for granted. I mean, look at our cell phone is a much more powerful computer than the computer that was used to get the astronauts to the moon, and we carry it around in our pockets. They can do all this stuff. So, you know, and the pace of change is accelerating. And AI–I don’t think people realize what an earth-shaking development AI is and how it’s going to really shake things up in the next–even in the next couple of years. It already is. Amazon has more robots working for it now than it does people. But anyway, as Dylan said, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and it’s exciting to be in the midst of it. But I think it has–it’s not just technological change, I think it’s spiritual change, and there’s a real renaissance going on in that regard.

Savita: Yeah, yeah. I saw you interviewed–I can’t remember his surname–Father Sean, someone Irish? Oh yeah, Diarmuid O’Murchu, the Irish mystic about a month ago? Oh, Seán ÓLaoire?

Savita: Yeah, that’s it.

Rick: Seán ÓLaoire, right.

Savita: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Yeah, he was a cool guy.

Savita: And he was saying about his experience with a mystical being, saying that there was going to be three kind of segments of the evolutionary arc of humanity.

Rick: Huh. I forgot what he said because it was a few years ago, but go ahead and remind us.

Savita: Yeah, something about homeo-psycho, psychopathia or something, and then there was homo-spiritualis, and then homo-artificialis. It was like a cyborg.

Rick: It could be. I saw this little video the other day of this robot that’s wandering around Austin, Texas, and it goes up to people and introduces itself and says, “Hey, nice Apple watch you have, And, hey, cool t-shirt,” you know, and he can pick out all kinds of details about the Person. And the reason there’s a buzz about it is that nobody knows who owns this robot or where it came from or why it’s wandering the streets of Austin.

Savita: He’s saying, “I’m not anybody’s.” He’s sovereign. No one’s slave.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Yeah. But when you were talking about 1800s, it drew my attention to horses, because obviously in the past, horses would have been so pivotal in our society. And I think now, with the raising of consciousness and the evolutionary arc that we’re on, it’s like a time of giving back to them, because our modern–all the modern comforts that we enjoy were literally grown off the back of horses. In a lot of instances as kind of like slaves, really.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Savita: Because if it wasn’t for horses, we’d probably still be, I don’t know, hunter-gatherers or something. They really advanced humanity, and sometimes people can kind of have a negative idea or association. Not everyone has a positive idea or association with horses. More like, oh, you know, a really cold-hearted kind of, “Why would you bother? It’s a lot of work,” or it’s a lot of, you know, whatever. Our gratitude to them is due, even if you’ve never had anything to do with them.

Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. And our gratitude to all the animal species. I mean, we’ve really given them a raw deal. I forget who it was, it might have been Einstein or maybe it was Gandhi. Some quote about how you can kind of measure the level of evolution of humanity by the way it treats animals–something like that. And we’re not doing so well by that measure yet.

Savita: Not yet.

Rick: Not yet. Yeah, there’s just– I mean, I live in a town where– I mean, in a state where there are 3 million people and 23 million pigs. And there’s a big controversy going on right now because California, which is more progressive than Iowa, insists that pigs be given at least 24 square feet of space to live in all their lives, which is what? Four by six. That’s not a whole lot of space. But the Iowa pig farmers are saying, “oh, you’re infringing upon our business model. That’s not practical to give them that much space.” And they want them to be in little confinements where they can’t even turn around because they somehow make more money. And pigs are more intelligent than dogs by most measures.

Savita: Yeah, they’re amazing.

Rick: Yeah. So, this kind of thing. I mean, there’s got to be some karmic consequences to the way we treat animals.

Savita: Yeah, that cut off, it’s just, yeah. And that’s that whole thing–goes back to the second question of how do we help? We help by attending to what’s here, because I think that the level of compassion that is allowed to flow for all the parts of ourselves that are in pain or unconscious or wounded is directly proportional to what then flows out for others. And you can see it with people that are very loving and kind, but they haven’t gone to that depth. And there’ll be that moment of like, “Oh, that hurts,” because they’re not able to include that suffering of whether it’s an animal or a person or whatever being in, but it’s because there’s parts of themselves that are suffering that haven’t been included.

Rick: So you’re saying that if they could somehow reconcile or heal their own suffering, their own shadows, then compassion would be a spontaneous outcome or flow from that? Yeah, inevitably, I think.

Savita: It’s inevitable. Yeah. It is. It’s interesting. Out of all the sages or mystics, whatever, Ramana Maharshi was one that I–I didn’t know anything about him, but I’d heard his name and I was drawn to him–felt drawn to him over others. And then I found out later that, apparently, he was a real animal lover and when really young.

Rick: Oh yeah, crows. He had a cow named Lakshmi whom he considered to be enlightened. And he would often, while he was giving darshan, he would often just be staring at the squirrels climbing up and down the trees and things like that.

Savita: It’s funny, isn’t it? Talking about all our capacities, how we have that capacity to know. So there was knowing in me that there was a resonance with him, with that whole connection with animals and that love for them.

Rick: Yeah, a lot of sages have been like that. St. Francis is famous. There’s all these paintings of him with birds on his hand, you know, landing on him and things like that. And there was a story about Yogananda that this deer had come to live in the ashram and somebody fed it too much milk and it was dying because it had over drunk milk. And Yogananda was holding it in his lap and just loving it and praying for it to live. And then the soul of the deer said to him, “Let me go. It’s time for me to go. You’re holding me back.” But anyway, it’s quite typical, I think, of saints and sages having an affinity with animals. It’s almost like an indicator of their level of development.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, that inclusion of all beings.

Rick: Which in a way is like symptomatic of godliness, you could say, because God certainly loves all creatures. And if we are really kind of in God consciousness, if we want to call it that, then we’re going to exhibit the same qualities as God. –

Balancing Mysticism with Practical Living

Savita: And then you’ve got to balance that with practicality, you know, like I’ll go out in the forest to cut firewood with one of my friends who’s very mystical and, you know, you get too lost in looking at the amazing mushrooms that have grown out and you’re just like, “I don’t want to cut this bit of wood because it’s just so beautiful.”

Rick: Yeah, it’s the home to these mushrooms.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Practicality is that you’ve got to stay warm as well.

Rick: Yeah, but it’s like not taking more than you need. I think that’s an important principle. And that’s, again, something– like the Native Americans, they would kill bison, buffalo, but only what they needed. And then they would use every bit of it. And then when the white men built the railroad through the West, they would just stop the train, and people would shoot all the bison and leave them to rot on the prairie, in part because they wanted to starve out the Native Americans. But completely idiotic way to behave that is indicative of the mentality of those people.

Savita: Cut off from themselves, so they don’t realize that what they’re doing, they’re doing to themselves.

Rick: Yeah, exactly. I keep quoting Jesus, but he said, “What whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” I think everyone could say that. Well, aren’t we full of wisdom–all this pontification? [LAUGHTER] Anyway, it’s a fun conversation.

Savita: Good fun.

Rick: Yeah. So I apologize to people if you feel I’ve talked too much. Sometimes I talk too much, and Irene is not in the room to hand me notes telling me not to. [LAUGHTER] So, in any case, then, so to wrap it up, looking at the full tapestry of your journey so far– your journey is far from over, you know, the trauma, the awakening, the shadow work, the devotion– what’s been the ultimate realization for you so far? If that’s a fair question, you can always tell me that’s not a good question. (laughs)

Savita: That life is living itself.

Rick: Mm, nice. And where do we fit into that equation?

Savita: Go along for the ride.

Rick: Yeah.

Savita: Hopefully have some fun.

Rick: So you interact with people, you do one-on-ones I presume, you have maybe some kind of group meetings, different things like that, right?

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: And actually you mentioned that you often get intuitive insights for clients before you have sessions with them. And then when you have the session, you realize, “Oh, this insight is absolutely pertinent to what this person just brought up,” right?

Savita: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sometimes it’s an insight specifically for them. Other times, I’m just drawn to talk about something totally random, and it’s exactly what they need.

Rick: Turns out what they needed to hear, right?

Savita: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might even share something about my own life for some reason. I think, “Why am I doing this?” And then it’s for them, you know?

Rick: Yeah. Good. So, people listening to this– I’ll put a link to your website, and I presume that on your website you have ways of getting in touch with you and a page about events or services and all that stuff, right?

Savita: Yeah, yeah. There’s an events page that they can go on and they’ll see the next date, the 10th of August, and just email. What are you going to do on the 10th of August?

Savita: I’m going to do one that I’ve done before that the group really liked. I call it The Healing Chamber.

Rick: How do you work out the time zones?

Savita: Well 10 a.m. my time, so it’s not far off that now. So

Rick: yeah, so okay, so that would be like 9 in the evening in the central U.S. or whatever. Yeah.

Savita: Yeah.

Rick: Okay, good. So, and you have an email sign up thing there on your site, so if people want to be notified of things they can sign up.

Savita: Yeah, they’ll get notified of the groups and various things and if anybody’s in WA or if they’re in Australia, or they’re traveling here, I’m running a retreat for two days in September.

Rick: In Western Australia?

Savita: Yeah, yeah, right on the beachfront.

Rick: Oh, that sounds nice.

Savita: Really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, looking forward to it.

Rick: Great, all righty. Well, keep up the good work and it’s been lovely talking to you and meeting you.

Savita: Yeah, really nice to meet you.

Rick: And I really appreciate everything you’re doing and everything that most of the people I talk to are doing. I sort of felt like in a way, if I can help them, then I can help the world through them, you know, by just bringing them to more people’s awareness.

Savita: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Rick: All right, so thank you.

Savita: It must be fun.

Rick: Yeah, it has been. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. And we’ll have another one in a couple of weeks with a guy named Dan Kelso. And I won’t talk much about him right now. We’ll just see what he has to say when we have our interview. So thanks, Savita.

Savita: Thank you.