Healing Through Connection: Trauma, Awakening & Collective Consciousness w/ Blaise Kennedy EP 425

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Hi there, I'm Brian D Smith, and welcome to Grief to Growth. And whether you're joining us for the first time, or you've been on this journey with me for a long while, I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is a space where we explore life's deepest questions. Those are things like who we are, why we're here, where do we go when this life ends, and how do we navigate the grief, the growth, and everything in between. And today, I'm really excited to bring you a conversation with someone whose work dives straight into those mysteries. His name is Blaise Kennedy. He's a spiritual teacher whose approach is rooted in connection, not just personal development, not just individual development. So while many spiritual paths emphasize a solitary inner journey, Blaze emphasizes something we don't often talk about: the power of relationships, our ancestry, and the collective fields of consciousness that surround and shape us. So from his own transformational journey that began in his mid-20s to his work guiding a global community of students Blaze brings a deeply integrated approach to healing and awakening. We're going to talk about trauma, how it moves through individuals, families, and even across generations. We'll explore why human beings are driven to awaken, to heal, and to create, and how practices like therapy and meditation must come together to truly support that process. This episode is a chance to step back and see our lives through a wider lens. Ones that honor, honors both our personal path and our place in the larger human story. And if this conversation resonates with you afterwards, I invite you to keep it going by going to our community space at grieftogrowth.com/community, where you can listen to more episodes, interact with other listeners, and connect with me directly. So with that, I'd like to welcome Blaise Kennedy.

Yeah, thank you. What a wonderful introduction. Sounds like an episode I'd be very excited to participate in.

I, I sure hope so. Um, Blaze, I'd like to start with you. I, I, when I was reading about you, I guess your, your journey, this part of your journey, it began sometime in your mid-20s. So what is it that led you to, to where you are now?

Yeah, I mean, you could— the, the revelation started in my mid-20s. I think that the seeds, you know, you could, you could draw back much deeper. Really simply, I had a lot of problems in life I had no way to resolve them. I think my primary strategy was to kind of avoid them and try to move on. And some people are really successful at that. Um, I am not one of those people. I'm not able to avoid my problems and move on. So what that looked like for me is I got sent to a treatment center when I was 24 years old for addiction. And the, the fundamentals of it were basically do the opposite of avoiding, really. That's the basics. Move towards the things in life which trouble you, concern you, face them. Use, use connection as a way to voice and move those and to express those in a way that gives you release and then allows your horizon to change. And so when I was 24, The reason I would say that my journey started then, other than the fact that I went to treatment, was because it was the first time I could really comprehend that as a life strategy. And I could see, like, globally, that that was a great way to live my life, essentially to be honest and to live in connection. And so when I started to do that, you know, I had all these amazing insights from, you know, realizing I didn't know much about how I worked to realizing that I had trauma and that was the primary reason why I struggled so much and realizing there's a way to resolve it. And even more, again, primarily is I found all of this fascinating and interesting. You know, I'd spent so much of my life trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. You know, was I going to be an athlete? Was I going to be a musician? Was I going to be an academic? And so when I started to do this inner work, I just realized like, oh, this is the most interesting thing to me. I have a seemingly endless amount of motivation for it. I have, I have a latent skill set that I've never used. And yeah, for all of these reasons, like for, for the reasons that it was, that it worked, that it was interesting, that it gave me direction, I was off to the races. That was what, 15, 15 years ago. And my question became, after I got out of treatment, like, how do you like, where does this go? How do you take it deeper? How do you go farther? And, you know, that took me in all kinds of different places. But absolutely, I spent a long period of my life stuck and very confused and, um, just feeling like I wasn't doing life right.

So when you came out of treatment, do you feel like that's, that's the point you were on the path that you're on now? Or you could— you spent a long period of your life stuck. Was that before or after treatment?

Before. Before. I mean, okay, it was, it was pretty magical. Like, I got there and they keep you there for a while, right? They, they make sure that the transformation sticks. But I went from thinking like, I've wasted my whole life, I've failed at everything, to feeling like I have my entire life ahead of me. Hmm. And I, you know, transformation, healing is inherently painful. So I want to really emphasize the journey is challenging and painful. But I would say I haven't had any problems. Since then. I mean, if you're willing to feel pain and difficulty and move forward through it, then that really solves the biggest impediment in life. Yeah, for me, I just haven't had any primary kind of foundational struggles since then.

That's awesome. So you would say that, I guess, the treatment that you went through was, uh, transformational, really helped you out a lot?

It was, it was extraordinary. And, you know, I learned much more I don't know what to call them, fancy or esoteric or cutting-edge or more conscious or systems. After that, you know, I, I found really radical paths. But the basics of treatment is you can't live alone, uh, and you can't let things live inside you that are painful or difficult. You just can't manage your life internally. You need connection, you need expression as a means to understand yourself. You need to be part of life. You can't hold it in. That's the basic premise of addiction is like— they have a saying like, secrets keep you safe, or secrets keep you sick, I should say. Secrets keep you sick. This basic methodology of addiction recovery is like, you have to get it out. You have to, you have to, you have to participate. You're— you're— all the content of your life has to be known and expressed, and once it is, it doesn't rule your life anymore. And so I just really took that. I mean, there was an episode of of, uh, Seinfeld where George Costanza decided he was gonna do the opposite of everything he'd ever done.

Yeah, yeah.

And it, and it worked, right? It was the same for me. Like, I looked at my life when I was in treatment and was like, I basically lied and avoided, like, feelings and what's going on for me my entire life. What if I just did the opposite of that? What if I just didn't avoid feelings? And what if I just was honest about them? And just like George Costanza, it worked. Worked really well. And I, having found that, I just, I was so grateful for a lifeline. I just didn't want to be stuck anymore, so I, I just really committed to that.

Wow. So was that treatment, was that particular to the place that you happened to go? Because I haven't heard of anything like that before.

Well, it's, it's so— AA was invented in the— created, and invented is the right word— in the '50s maybe.

Okay.

20th century. And at the time, you know, the word trauma didn't even really exist. So it took from this kind of framework that was Christian, I guess you could call it, like confessional in nature, and they have steps. And so all of that is built into the 12 steps and the traditional path. But treatment centers kind of borrow from AA and have progressive therapeutic modalities. And they can be a little bit more kind of cutting edge. So it was a blend of both.

Okay.

And it's a blend of both.

Yeah, I guess I find that really interesting, um, because it's kind of the opposite of the way most of our society is. It's like, do everything on your own, we're rugged individuals, you know, pull yourself by, up by your bootstraps.

And you will find that, again, as you said in my intro, like, that pervades spirituality and healing as well. And of course everybody wants to get the best for themselves, right? Of course you want the best for yourself, but the realization, again, that dawned on me progressively— I mean, I saw it at a very basic level when I was in treatment— is like, we aren't separate beings. That's not the design of the nervous system or of human consciousness, is separateness and individuation. That's not its primary or sole function. We are like a web of life. We are like a relational nervous system. We are like a— we are meant to be in connection and relationship. And if you want to be healthy, you you have to participate in that web of life. You have to use your vehicle the way it's designed to be. Um, and the challenge is, is that I hadn't known very much connection in my life in a, in a, in a, in a way that helped me orient to that later in life. I just didn't know that as a possibility. I didn't— it just wasn't really available. For example, like when I was 12 years old, my father died suddenly. And this is like the primary challenge of my childhood. And if you look at my development, like for the next 12 years, I was kind of frozen developmentally. And what I could say is I was not able to reach out and no one could see what was happening for me. So like our relational infrastructure in this world needs to grow a lot to be able to really see and respond to the things that happen to people in life. And so I was born out of a culture that nobody really had that capacity. Like, no one in my world could really help me or relate to me, so of course I wouldn't orient to it. So my job in the world— you know, I have many things that I consider my responsibility, but is one to share the wealth and the beauty and the transformative power that is being related, being in connection. And there's so many ways that can— at so many levels that that can occur, just to see how efficacious it is, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And again, that just wasn't an option for me up until I was in treatment. And then, um, progressively I understood the power of it more and more as I— my awakening progressed.

Yeah, you know, it's— as we're talking, I'm thinking about, um, you know, both being men, that I think particularly men are, are socialized to, to be an island, to be, to be a rock. Um, and as you said, even in spirituality, we think about it, we, we start to— we learn to turn within, which is great. I think we do have to know ourselves, but a lot of times it can, it can come across as kind of a solitary journey. We don't talk about the connection that's important. And you were— I know you're in Canada now. Were you raised in Canada?

Yeah, I was. I grew up in Vancouver. Um, yeah, it's pretty, pretty— the rules of socialization in Western civilization are pretty uniform.

I think they are. I, I think they are. I, I have— I've only lived in the U.S. I know what it's like here, and I know that, again, that, that reaching out, that, um, again, especially with men, I think is really, uh, not encouraged. I think it's really sad because almost every room I've been doing this work, whether it's working with clients or whether it's I'm going to a conference or whatever, it's like 80% women. Um, the men just aren't there in your work.

And when you go to retreats, you see 80% women. And I, you know, I don't know, I definitely like— I don't know how much I would socialize not to feel as a man in my life. So I, I don't You know, I'm, I'm kind of ambivalent about that. But now, from my position, just like you say, I'm like, where, where are all the men in, in therapy? Like, every retreat that I've ever been to or run is 80% women. And I, like, from this perspective, I just, I, I have a deep, uh, longing and curiosity about, like, male participation in healing. It's very strange to me.

Yeah, and again, um, I don't think, you know, I can point to any one particular thing where I was socialized that way, but, you know, it's pretty apparent, you know, unless we believe there's a real biological difference— and I don't think there's that much of a biological difference between men and women— that it is socialization. And, and we are not encouraged to, to reach out. But again, you know, even moving beyond that, even the spiritual journey, like you were saying, we— it's— that can lots of times be a solitary thing. Uh, and I think there's a, and I know there's an epidemic of loneliness in the West, you know, and it's really wild because we live in cities, we're packed with people around us, we've got the internet, you know, we've got all kinds of ways to reach out to people, but people report being very lonely. Stay with us. We'll be right back. You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

Yeah, well, every— at every point in civilization, people recognize problems and solve them. I'm sure that's as true in the Industrial Age or in the Victorian era as it is now. And here you and I are recognizing this problem within our civilization and responding to it. And like, when I when I look back in time, um, you know, two generations ago, even one generation ago, I see radical differences in what was available to people. So like today, the amount of connection that is available, the amount of healing that is possible, is radically different from what it was in my father's life or in his father's life. And so as much as we, you know, recognize the challenge, and I also recognize that the solution is becoming increasingly available. And I think just as you name, like, there is a real pressure, like people feel— I don't know that people are lonelier than they ever have been. I, I, I would suggest that they probably just feel it more than their predecessors. I mean, if you have— we have issues with mental health, and in the younger generations you have issues with anxiety. And if you go to major cities, you see the issues with addiction. Like, are we getting sicker as a society? I mean, it, it's manifesting itself. But I would suggest those problems have already always existed. And somehow our ancestors had a way of holding that challenge and functioning on top of it. You know, like most of the people that I work with are dealing with inherited— I mean, everybody that I'm working with are dealing with inherited problems. You raised the idea of intergenerational trauma, like the challenges that if you look at the challenges that you have, whether it's in your relationship or in your attitudes towards yourself, and you look at the people who've come before you, or if you feel the people that have come before you, you can realize you're basically working on problems that our ancestors haven't gotten to yet. So I see them manifesting increasingly. It's getting harder and harder for people to have a good life without doing the work. That's how I would diagnose it. There's, you know, you can, you know, one time maybe it was meaningful to run a store and, you know, work 14 hours a day and do that. You know, immigrants, you'll see immigrants to this country still have that mentality. The further you get into this sort of modern and Western world, generations in, you find people aren't motivated that way anymore. They have deep challenges with motivation and meaning and sense of connection and identity. And it's, I think, the calling of our time, or at least in part, to respond to that and offer, offer alternatives. I think it's a, it's a, it's a I heard you say something recently, like, all, all change comes— all transformation comes with some pain or challenge. And I see this as a sort of civilizational level, or at least Western civilization level challenge that we get to respond to.

Yeah, it's really interesting as you're saying that, because, uh, my daughter is like 28, and so I'm— her generation, I see now, they're, they're really more about experiences and stuff. And like, and even with work, like, when I was, when I was that age, I was like, just give give me a job that pays good money. I don't care what I'm doing. And they're like, no, I want a job that's meaningful. It's got to be fulfilling. And even, even like teenagers are like— I remember one of my, my daughter's friends when they were like 17 or something, she quit a job because she said it was boring. And I'm like, when I was at age, you did not quit because it was boring. You just did it. So I don't know. I don't— I agree with you. I don't know that we were any more healthy. We just kind of like, we just knuckled down.

Yeah, and, you know, I think we have lots to work through as our, as our, the younger generations bring something different. I think it's a huge challenge to relate to them always, but I, in general, I think it's wonderful that their standards experientially are higher. And, you know, I don't know how equipped our civilization is to guide them because we have a mindset or attitude that doesn't really shepherd them so clearly. So, you know, that's one of my great curiosities. It's like, what do we do when, when the next generation comes up with a higher potential for well-being and it comes up into a culture that has— you could call it lower expectations— how do we support them, right, to have a journey, a developmental journey that moves them from immature to a mature expression of that, right? Because, you know, you can see we worry about our young people quitting a job because it's boring. You think, well, that's, that's maybe not the most responsible or mature expression, but there's something essential about that that we can develop. We develop just like we would develop anybody else.

Yeah, I guess I really thought about it the way you put it before, but I really— it's, it's interesting because I think maybe in a sense they have different expectations. They have higher, higher standards for like, I, I want to be happy, I want to be well, you know, physically and emotionally, not just material things. Um, and I also noticed that with the younger— this generation, it's like they, they value traveling a lot more. They're like, they're like, my daughter's been all over the, all over the world and I haven't. Um, because she's like, her generation's like, we're going to have experiences. I want to go to Japan. I'm not waiting until I'm 40. I'm going to go now.

Yeah. And you know, I'm not a— certainly not an economist, but just within my own life, the incentives The, like, economic incentives have changed so much in this nation or in our civilization and will continue to change. And that's a challenge. And also, like, there is a push, there's a tremendous opportunity for our civilization to be different. So my, you know, I don't work so much with young people. I work with, you know, adults, people who generally are later in life and have that same transformation. Many of the people that I just— it occurs to me that I should make this point. Many of the people that I work with traditionally are 50 to 70, boomers, you could call them, or what used to be called boomers in younger generations. And they go through that stage of life and they work hard, they get ahead, they become affluent, and then they take on those questions. Right. So like these younger kids are kind of just skipping.

Yeah.

Step, right? So like, we're all headed there, right? You get all the money in the world and— or you be successful in your career, and then of course you're going to want to feel good, right? Like, that's a natural developmental step that I think everybody takes. And yeah, supporting— I think for me, like, as a witness of our culture and economics, it's like, how does— how do we— how does well-being become like a currency in the world that we can start to orient around. Like, so hard work is a currency and, you know, raw, raw materials are currencies and starting a business is a currency. But like, if we are well, you would imagine the product would be a wealthier, happier civilization. So I'm kind of waiting to see how our culture adapts to wrapping around well-being. It's like the fundamental building block of culture. Yeah, I think it's a— we're slow to adapt to that. Or we're— yeah.

So, you know, when we talk about, you know, as you're saying, the word trauma has become very common. We all, we all hear about trauma, but I still think most of us think of it on an individual basis. So when people come to you, what's, what's the question they're asking you? What are they coming to you for?

Well, people, people come to me because they know they want to work on trauma, but most of those people already have a background in it. Have already done work on it. And the idea is that I can help them do it better, faster, more efficiently, more powerfully. Um, but again, people generally think about trauma as like the, the symptoms of that. And the other thing that they notice as, as a reflection of the symptoms is that they just like— they, they know they can go deeper within themselves, or they know they have more potential, or they know like they have a calling in life and they just don't know how to access that. So one of the fundamental qualities of trauma is that it, it disconnects you from your vehicle, from your body and your consciousness. So when people come to me and they're like, you know, I'm lost, I don't kind of know how to go, I would, you know, I help them reorient to their body. And it, for me, it's, it's not, it's not innate, or it's not a natural phenomenon for people to be lost or to be in their heads or to have, you know, chronic anxiety or not know what they want to do. All of that to me is a phenomenon of a developmental process which reflects trauma. So each of us grow through our world. You know, we talk about the people before who could make prudent decisions, like they just make good decisions. That doesn't mean that they actually do what's authentic for them or what's really in line with their highest potential. They just made smarter decisions. So for me, trauma separates us from our ability to live an authentic life that's a reflection of the fullness of ourselves and that works, that, that, that, um, that supports the well-being of our entire civilization, that, that, that, that creates this whole field to the way that, that happens for me is through the process of the, of, you could call the body developing or nerve, the nervous system developing or consciousness developing, that when children are born, they're not in their heads. They don't relate to the world mentally through concepts. Most of the adults that they are supported by, the world that they are supported by, is not embodied. It's not in the body. It's not relating in the body. So we are, we grow into a world, and I was naming this when I talked about, you know, my father dying, where there's a gap between what children are actually experiencing and how adults are relating to them. So because childhood is a dependent process, it's a very interdependent process, without the resources to relate, to, to feel, to, to be connected, to be expressive, and to be received, to be held in our nervous systems and our consciousness, our body learns a set of techniques or uses itself to manage and, and basically care for itself. So our organisms become separate and individuated and modified by the resources that are available or not available in our world. So through the developmental process, we all really modify what our highest potential would be, manage feelings and experiences that either we can't handle or that we can't relate to life, and we become fragmented cemented in ourselves and we reflect a much lower potential. So if, if people come to me much later in life, my, my basic premise is we're going to reverse that by feeling together. That's really the basic premise, right, is we're just going to feel together. And people say, well, what are we going to feel? And I would say, well, we're not going to direct it mentally. What we're going to do is we're going to re-establish the, the, the natural operating system of our body and consciousness. Our body and consciousness really functions beautifully. It's a wonderful intelligent system. And you can notice right now your sensations just move on their own, your emotions move on their own, your thoughts move on their own. It's kind of like a natural system of arising content all the time. And what we're going to do is we're just going to go with that instead of controlling it or deciding what we should do. We're going to learn just to go with that. And then we're going to learn how to feel it together. And we can talk about what I mean by that, but we're gonna, we're gonna use this instrument the way it is designed to be used. And when that happens, several things occur. One is lots of important stuff comes up that people, the people learn more about themselves. They become more connected to themselves progressively. But secondly, they— when you turn on this sort of native or natural capacity that our consciousness has, it starts to point to what we want and where we should go and how we should function and what we need to do. So people learn their way, not by learning a system or, or hearing what I have to say about what we should do or what you should do, but by engaging with their body and their consciousness and that's where their way comes from, that's where their path comes from. So when I went to school, like, no one ever said to me, like, let's find out what's authentic for you. Like, that just wasn't even a consideration in the educational process. It was, it was all about learning how to do things that kind of come from the outside. So my basic model is, like, you want your intelligence to come definitely respond to life, but come from the inside of you. And that can be supported just by feeling it, sharing it, being with it. And again, as I will speak about, I'm sure, many different ways— when you are with someone, when you are with someone who is with you, like when you can feel that as I feel my sadness, or I feel my joy, or I feel my anger, or whatever it is, there's actually someone here with me it radically changes how our body processes and moves energy. Because in my view, our feelings are not designed just for us to have feelings. They are like, uh, communication information. They're designed to be expressed. So for example, if I'm a child and I feel sad, that's not just for me to be with, that's for my family to be with. That's for everyone to feel me and know where I'm at. It's the design is to connect us. Our emotional world, our inner world, designed to create connection with us. So what I'm suggesting is what's particularly powerful is when we use our inner world to relate to life, to share with other people, it moves out into the world in a radically different way and doesn't sort of just get stuck and stored inside of ourselves. Yeah, I'll pause there. That's like my approach to trauma. And if you were to ask me like, what is trauma? I would say trauma is the inverse of that. It's, it's content that either I can't handle or that I can't express and can't be a part of life. So I store experiences, I hold on unprocessed experiences that are waiting to move and be completed.

Hmm. Now you, you use the term feel together, so explain what that means. Yeah.

So like, I'll start off with what I do generally with people is when I sit, like if we were sitting together or somebody who's listening, I listen to you not just with my ears but with my whole body. Because what I know is that my body is actually designed to receive your experience. That's its design. And I've trained it or developed it to that way. So what happens is, again, this is my profession, when I sit with people, their bodies can feel that I'm here, that I'm available. I am a receptor site. My whole nervous system is a receptor site to their life, to their inner world. And so when they feel, they feel in a very open way, or they learn to feel, they, they have the opportunity to feel in a very open way. Where what they hold inside actually moves out of their nervous system and expresses itself and shows itself to me. And this is a capacity that I have developed because I, I saw that it was possible and it fascinated me. But I also support the people that I work with to do that. So what this means is like people learn to be very attuned, to use their whole body to tune into the other person so that it feels like— what it feels like is we are sharing the same moment, we are sharing the same experience. When I feel sad, or when I feel joy, or whatever it is, I don't feel separate from you in this. I have the feeling, when I'm feeling, that you are here with me.

Mhm.

My inner experience has actually created a connection between us, and this feeling allows my body to relax. It's the sort of optimal state of health for human beings, is to be safe and to be seen. Mhm. So, so this is the sort of goal, is just to, to, to process our life experiences in this environment where there is relationship. And the content that we process is, is not as important to me as the fact that we can feel that we're here together.

Yeah. So when people come to you and you start talking about things like collective consciousness, how do people respond to that? And how do you, how do you explain that to people?

People are at all different levels of development and experience for, for a broad number of reasons. And it's not like some people are a 3 and some people are a 5 and some people are a 9. It's actually that we have this extraordinarily unique composition of capacity. So when everyone comes, people come to me with places where they're uniquely, tremendously strong, and they come places of deficit and blind spot. And my job is to like to create an environment where we can all come in in that sort of diversity of our unique experience and find success. So the, the basic building block is that when I, I can feel my body, first off, this is really important, and then I learn to feel what's happening around me. So for example, right now you and I are talking. You can hear my voice and you can see me. But I'll ask people, like, does your body know that we are actually here together, that we're sharing the same space? What people learn to do is start to listen and pay attention relationally from their whole body. And it's like a form of meditation or deep presence to be really related to what's happening around you. And as people learn to hold their focus in this way, what we notice is we have a— like, our felt sense, like I feel my body, it's not actually confined to the boundaries of my physical body. Like, I can feel things all through life. So we learn to conduct our practice in a space where we are— we're listening in this way, in this way sharing. People take turns, like, like I'm talking now and you'll talk. Both are beneficial because In both cases, we're learning to be present in this open space where we are not separate, where we can actually feel the interconnectedness of life. And so when people practice this, you know, they go first, they go, oh wow, like, look how I feel. They might notice the results because they are very relaxed or they're— they don't feel guarded. They might notice the relaxed— the, the effects in their own body. They also might notice is that they start to really feel touched or affected by other people, like not just intellectually, like, but when people speak, they can't help but care about them and empathize for them. They start to get information from the world. It's nonjudgmental information, just like pure receiving people. And they also like to notice that they really have a felt sense of a kind of inner world that's, that's not personal. And what I'm suggesting is like the collective consciousness is like an inner world that is not personal, that is inner, that is filled with life. And this world is, is expansive and subtle and beautiful, and people, people get drawn to this. So any of these, you know, three— there might be other ones I can think of— the fact that you feel good, or emotions move easily, or, you know, challenges that you have resolve themselves quite quickly, or the fact that connect, you feel other people, and it feels good to care about other people. Or the fact that this sort of inner collective space opens up, people get a taste of that and they say, this feels right for me, I want more. And then just the more they do it, the more it opens up to them like anything else. So that's my, that's my kind of invitation, is I say, yeah, there is this thing called collective consciousness, or these deeper dimensions of consciousness, or these mechanics of consciousness that are interrelated And people say, well, that's a great premise, and they come and try it, and then they get results, you know. So I, I tend to lead by practice, lead by let's actually feel it, and then you tell me what you feel and where you want to go.

Okay, cool. So when, um, I know we talk about trauma, I mean, everybody's against— everybody's heard the word, but we— I think people tend to think of it as an individual thing. How do we move people to understand that trauma can be collective or even generational?

Yeah, well, here's, here's a radical premise to start. I'll start with a radical premise and then maybe work it back to a more practical level. I believe that all our life information actually belongs to a field of consciousness that is impersonal. So what that— what that— to translate into technological terms, uh, I have a computer I don't— and we have the internet. Like, I'm in this modern age, everything about my computer is about plugging into the internet. I don't store stuff on my computer. Everything is on the internet. Everything's on the cloud. My computer is my vehicle to connect to the internet. That's our modern technological world. In the same way, my body, my consciousness, my pain, my trauma, my feelings they are designed to be part of the internet. And so currently our model of our emotional world and our sort of spiritual life is like a computer that doesn't know about the internet. Hmm. And over time, what you realize is this impersonal, expanded, subtle field can hold all of life and unify it. So in our world, we've had all these ways to be similar. Religions and cultures all over the world have had rules that kind of keep us together. What you find out is this field, this collective field, or the dimension of consciousness, or field of energy, or whatever words we want to call it, it, it has a very beautiful way of integrating all parts of life. And so what we— the reason that we make the shift from a personal model to a collective model is the same, is because the technology is better. Meaning, like, when I realize that I don't have to store my content and, and hold myself separately, that I can sort of upload everything about myself into this field and I should— like, it, it creates— it put— it makes me a part of life, and that there's a place for everyone. When I experience that, as I progressively experience it more and more, I— people just realize this is the way. So that's my, that's my sort of radical concept of, like, that this field is like, it's like the internet. It holds everything, and that we're better off personally and collectively feeding this energy. So the way that people experience that is that they sit with me or someone else in my practice community, and they realize, when I tell you that I feel sad and you feel it with me, I feel better. Like, when my life is shared, when there is someone who's actually capable and has the capacity to feel with me, and I feel safe with them, and my, my inner world is now in the room, in our shared experience, I feel better. I feel better. I feel relief. I feel safe. I feel seen. And I know that these people who are with me are actually holding a piece of me. Like, they now represent me. I'm no longer a foreigner to them. I am, I am one of them. A piece of me is in them in a way that means, like, they will never they will never forget me. And this, this is the design of collective consciousness, of this field of energy, is that everything about me can be known and cared for by the world. It's a pretty radical concept, right? If you look at the history of the human world, you would say, well, that's— that doesn't seem like that's what we've been doing here, that there is a place where everything about me can be honored and cared for by the world.

Right.

And but that's my truth, is that this is the design of this sort of deeper dimension of life. And we build it, we build it out because people come together and share and care together. That's how we build it out. And the more that we do this, the more capacity we have, because there are many parts of life that are very painful or delicate or come with a lot of, uh, conflict in their history. It's not actually that easy to find ways to communicate. I mean, if you look again at your nation, there's so many long-standing issues that don't resolve themselves very easily. So we're inviting is like that over time collectively we develop the skill to feel together and to integrate all human content. Then to do that, it's, it's a tremendously laborious process, like it takes a lot of time and energy.. But where we start, we start by wanting this for ourselves. We start by saying, oh, and there's this person in my life who gets me. I feel safe, I feel connected, I feel well. And the more that we do that, the more we think, wow, what if, what if everybody had this? What if this thing that's changing my life, what if everybody needs that? What if the problems that we experience in the world are really a function of the fact that people don't have that? What if violence and conflict are really fundamentally about people not feeling connected and safe, and the content that they experience not really being honored in life.

Yeah. So I know you talk about different ways that humans— or different motivations that humans have to awaken, to heal, and to manifest. So describe what those are and how do we support people through that?

Yeah, so what, what we're really focused on so far, I would call healing. Really simple thing is like you, your relationship with a parent, for example. Like, it doesn't feel good to be angry at your parent and not seen by them, and, you know, whatever the challenges, or your spouse or your partner. It doesn't feel good to have pain between yourself and the people in the world. And so one of the motivations is to resolve that pain. And we can think about it in terms of like, I'm in pain, I don't want to be in pain. But I would say there's a deeper motivation, which is that we want love and connection. I think all people fundamentally, whether they, whether they, they're actively seeking it or not, love and connection and like this kind of participation where everyone is included and seen is inherently— that is health. And our body is going to— our consciousness is going to look for that in whatever way it can. Sometimes that means actually my relationship is so painful that I avoid it. It. But I would still— that's still a strategy in this sort of level of life where love and connection are essential. So this is something that we deal with every day, and you can pretend it's not there for your whole life. People do that, but more and more people— it's getting harder and harder to do that, and people are more and more motivated to feel good, to feel connected, to feel their bodies, to feel, um all of life. So this is one motivation. And as much as that's a personal motivation, I would also say because consciousness is collective, it's like, um, it's like we are all like cells in a body that is trying to get well. So I would also call this a collective motivation, okay, that the whole system wants to move towards a kind of a unity like this. And the other, the other phenomenon that I spent a lot of time talking about and looking at is the phenomenon of incarnating. And for some people, this is like really abstract or like a belief system, the fact that we incarnate, that there is some intelligence or consciousness that we bring into the world with us. For other people, they have a strong connection to it, and for other people, like, it, it kind of dominates their life. Like, it— like, they have to resolve this, and for a variety of reasons. So I support people to kind of know the consciousness, to, to know the consciousness that is, is born when they are born. So a really good model of this, a simple way to think about this is in, in Tibet, in Tibetan Buddhism, their system is an incarnational legacy system. If you think about what they are doing with, with the lamas specifically, is that they are— when people die and they're reborn, they are weaving the intelligence and the spiritual development back into their society. So when a lama dies, they track the consciousness that has left the body and then they go find it and then they bring it back into their civilization. Because what they're, what they are trying to do is to kind of have like a continuous development that, that their, that their religion or their society is constantly bringing back in the light of those who were previously here. So they spend a great amount of time saying, helping connect people to their soul and helping to continue the process of development. That's the basis of their spiritual technology.

Hmm.

And in the West, you know, we don't have a strong belief system around reincarnation. That's not the foundation of our society, but But broadly speaking, everyone is born with a quality of consciousness that I would call light. If we, if we talked to healing, if we talk about like what the foundational ingredient of that is, I would describe it as love, a kind of fluid field of energy, a sense of love. It's very sort of connected to our heart. And into that field, light, even more subtle quality of consciousness arrives to each of us. One, and this light is kind of bidirectional, meaning it, it comes into the world and moves towards the future. So when we work at this level, when we work with people, I think there's two things that people are looking for, is to remember or to be reconnected to the stream of light that they come with, and that may include to be connected to where they come from. To where this part of their consciousness, where you could call it their soul or their light, comes from, to, to regain that. But more importantly for me is that that is that motivation to, to live. They bring that into the world. So, you know, in the, in, in the Christian tradition, they have this concept that, you know, Jesus is the Son of God and he is born. He is, he is the light of the world and he brings light into the world. And I think that is a universal phenomenon. I think every single human being brings light into the world. And so what this means is to recognize each life that you are fundamentally good, you are fundamentally bringing goodness into the world. This world needs this quality of light that you bring, and we are going to see that and support it and develop it. And it's going to be the motivating or driving force for the direction and expression of your life. We're going to support you to live from there. So why people would want to do that, I think it's because it's a fundamental part of themselves, but also again because it connects them to the beauty and the, the richness of the subtlety of consciousness, and it gives them a direction and purpose forward into life. And In some ways, it also helps people navigate the challenges that come with living and dying.

Yeah, that's, uh, yeah, that's a great explanation. Um, so when people are, you know, as I'm, as we're having this conversation, I'm thinking of people going, um, I think we're introducing some concepts to people maybe they don't really even understand, like collective consciousness and, and, uh, generational trauma and stuff like that. So when people come to you and, and they're trying to figure out like, why am I, why am I stuck? Because I, I assume people probably come to you and say, I'm stuck, I feel like I'm not moving forward. Uh, what's the, what's the most difficult concept for them to get when you're, when you're trying to explain this to them?

I don't try and explain it to them all at once. We have a unique experience here on this podcast where I'm just telling you a whole bunch of things.

Yeah.

This. There's a whole bunch of stuff that took me a long time to be able to feel and make sense of. Like, I'm— my ability to talk about this is a product of really intense transformational process. So if you don't get it, you know, you and I would be in this good company. When I got started on this journey, yeah, and when I didn't get it like all at once, I didn't go, oh, all this stuff makes sense to me. You get it progressively. So when people come to me, it's not important that they understand any of these things or believe them to be true. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we can find where you are, what your challenge or drive is, and we can support that. Yeah, that will grow. So, you know, so far I've talked to two of the— I've talked to two of the three. I just want to bookmark that. Two of the three, uh, sort of callings that describe awakening as a, as a third thing. But people come to me, they don't need to care about light or their process of incarnating. It's not a prerequisite. They care because they have some pain in their life, or they don't like their job, or they like— they have challenges in their family. It doesn't matter. If you start doing work, this whole map will bleed and unfold into itself, and you will see more and more how all these interconnected parts of life really serve your development. But that's not where people start. They don't start by knowing the map. They don't see the territory, right? What they see is what's right in front of them, right? Of course, my job is to say you're not supposed to be seeing something different. You're supposed to be seeing what you're seeing right now. And if we work with it in this very open way, just by being with it and relating to it, your ability to see yourself and life and the map of consciousness will expand. And then you your values will change. You'll make different choices. You will be more informed about what is possible. But that is not something that people need to arrive with. If they arrived with it, they wouldn't need me. Yeah, they already knew all these things. I wouldn't be much. Yeah.

And that is a really, really good point. You know, I was just talking with someone earlier. We were talking about the way that we develop over time. And she was talking about like where I am on my journey now. And I was like, well, my daughter passed away 10 years ago. So when I'm talking to people and they say, you know, I'm like, it took me 10 years to get here, and it took me like 5 years to even really get started on this path. So it's not like, you know, this thing happens to you and then suddenly you, you wake up and you're here. And who knows where I'll be in the future. So I think you made a really good point. It can be— we're talking about a lot of kind of esoteric kind of things that people might be saying, I don't really understand that. But what you do understand is that you've got some trauma, you've got some blockage and this thing right here in front of you, and you want to feel better.

And, and it's a, it's a kind of like heroic journey. Like every movie that you like starts out the character being like, I don't know if I can do it, and then they go through all these trials and tribulations, and, and then there's some sort of beautiful resolution. And our lives aren't that simple, but we're— whatever it is that drives you to listen to this podcast or be curious about any of these things I'd consider it the beginning of a wonderful journey that unfolds. And the, the challenge is that if you don't know where it's going or how to progress down the path, it may be hard to get started or feel like you're making progress. So the, my job is to say, like, to help people exactly where they are be successful in their next steps. And I promise you if you take all the people I know and work with, none of them have the same next step. None of them have the exact same next thing.

Yeah.

So it's really about figuring out what's like, what is, what's trying to happen through you and going with it, kind of moving blindly into this unknown future and having people around you that say what you're doing is inspiring or powerful. I see you, I want to support you. And that kind of shared experience for me really gets us through a lot of the unknown of it. Right. Yeah, we have a support community. Again, that's what I focus on a lot.

Yeah, I think it's another excellent point. You know, it's— the path is different for everybody. You know, I work with people that are going through the grief journey. And, you know, one person's next step is going to be very different from another person's next step. And there is no, you know, we can understand that there, the path is kind of onward and upward, work, you know, I think always— I think we're always moving toward that, but it's not, it's not a straight line, and it's— there's no time limit on it. Everybody progresses at a different time, you know, time frame, and it's just, you know, taking that next step with faith that you're heading the right direction, whatever that direction is for you.

One of the— and one of the other things, speaking to what you're saying, that's really useful for, for me, it's to say this is not a straight, as you're saying, a straight line of continuous improvement. There is so much pain and difficulty that arises as a result of opening to life. And so, and this is kind of cyclical, like it comes in waves. So what people struggle with all the time is like when difficulty comes up, often, I think naturally, they will think they're going backwards.

Yeah.

And like, for me, like, in my grief journey, for most of my life after my father died, I didn't feel anything. So then I was like, okay, I'm going to do this thing called grieving my father's death. Then I felt a lot of things. And in some ways, you could say I felt worse. I'm like, it's not— it doesn't make you feel better immediately. Like, if you're problem is, your challenge is that you haven't processed grief, well, then you're going to have a lot of grief to process, right? Like, that's—

yeah.

And people— but people don't— it doesn't feel like that necessarily. You don't feel like, well, I become more vulnerable, you know, I have a harder time connecting with people. I'm like, uh, I'm, I'm not as functional as I used to be when I was in my strategy of like managing it. Like, there's all these ways in which we don't feel better. And our job is to say, actually, that's okay, right? That's temporary. And just keep doing it. Like, keep doing it. And in relationship, people have so many wonderful signals that we can send to each other that give people this message. Like, when I work together, when people share pain, other people feel deep love and appreciation. Like, instead of, like, my pain harming people like when we have deep listening and relating, people feel inspiration, they feel touched by it, it affects them in a positive way. We don't have that same experience in the world, right? Like we go to a party and, you know, I remember when I was growing up, I'll speak to myself, like I was like, I just can't talk about my dad dying. Like nobody's gonna go awesome, it's not going to inspire a room full of people. Like where am I ever going to take this? Like where am I ever going to share this with people?

It's just right.

And then you find years later, actually, that when you do share it, there's all these people that it touches in a profound way. And you go, oh wow, actually, instead of being this terrible malady, look the effect that it's having on life and on the people around me. And so this is really important that— to realize that pain, like when we experience pain in ourselves, it doesn't feel good. When we share pain with other people, actually it creates deep connection, love, and inspiration. And when people have this experience, it's a, it's a, it's like a natural way of creating enthusiasm. And the reason that I think it is is because, like, my pain, your pain, the pain of the world is actually part of this collective field.. And so no matter what you are healing or working through, you're actually making the world a better place. And so when we're really in touch with each other, we're sending these signals that say, thank you for caring for this life that we share together. Maybe your child or my father, but somehow we can feel like it's actually the same life that we're caring for. And, and you caring actually makes the world a better place. So for this kind of model, I think is much more inspirational for people than sort of, you know, just figure it out for yourself or deal with it yourself model.

Yeah, I think that's, that's so, that's so, uh, profound. It's really interesting because I've, I've realized that, you know, people in grief, they have— we have this need to be witnessed, we have this need to share, and you just explained why, right? Because it is, it is a collective thing, it is a collective pain. And, and when we let it out— and I was talking with someone just yesterday and they were saying that, "I really don't want to talk about this." Person's had, you know, some children, couple of children die and they're like, "You know, I don't, I don't want to share that with people. I don't want to bring people down." I said, "You give people an opportunity to, to care for you. You give people an opportunity." Like you said, dude, so you said it's better than I can. It's like when you put that out there, it connects us in a way and it also, it helps that other person because Otherwise, we feel like, like, this is— I'm the only one going through this, even though we know intellectually other people are. But when we share it and, and people go, oh yeah, I went through a similar thing— not the same, you lost your father, I lost my daughter, not exactly the same, but similar, right? We can, we can relate in that, in that sense of a really deep loss.

So yeah, two things to add to that is that to make people, you know, this person's afraid of it not being a downer. I think it's, it's really reasonable to not share when we look around the world and say, actually, we're not in a position to be received frequently in the general population. So in therapy or in spiritual practice, we do a couple things. We take time out of the world where we're not just thinking and doing stuff, right? And this, we're just here to feel together.

Right?

So we really simplify it, we make a ritual of it, and then like it helps people be successful. And the second is we teach— I teach people, we support people to learn how to actually receive and feel with people. And so when you put those two elements together, what you, you get is these like really intelligent fields of connection that, that, that are responsive and care together. And something that's amazing, someone will put something out about, like, a thing of pain that they experience, not only does everyone, um, care for it, but it, it brings up something in them that informs the direction of their process. They say, you know, when you talk about your father, your sister, your relationship, it actually brings up the next thing in me that I want to share. And you have this, like, it's like a group of people triggering each other, but in the softest, most loving way possible. And you— and the next person shares, and it creates a release in the next person, it creates a release in the next person. So you have these fields that have actually evolved and grow together dynamically because we're sharing. So in, like, in the— in many of the spiritual meditation-based models, they're like, basically, you're just gonna sit there and it's— we're gonna make it really intense, and eventually stuff will come up for you. That's like a traditional, uh, path to right, just sit for 12 hours a day. It's going to be so uncomfortable that eventually you're going to break open, right? And it's a very personal way. But what I find is if you just put people together and you cause— and you get them to just relate, the things move really quickly and really intensely just by virtue of the fact that there is this dynamic, open field. And sometimes that's really easy, sometimes it's challenging. But this means that whereas previously I think being in culture was kind of like a detriment to your spiritual development, and monks and people would just get out of the world so that they could have a clean enough space to heal.

Yeah.

Where I envision us going is to a place where actually being around your family, being around your friends, seeing people on the street is actually the place that opens you and contributes to your healing. And I think when, when that is available— I mean, it's, it's already happening, but when that is really consciously supported, I think there's really no limits to what human beings can accomplish.

Wow. I think that's a great place to, to draw to a close. So, uh, let people know where they can reach you and what you have to offer, Blaze.

Yeah, I mean, main places on my website blazekanady.com and my YouTube page, which is @blazehere. I teach, as you can hear me very passionately, about this particular subject. We could call it healing or relating or trauma. I run a community online, and you know, this is the emphasis of our program today. If it's interesting to you, yeah, just check out some of the content I've made or come to some of the events that I do, or Yeah, just book a call to talk with me about it. Um, and yeah, these other two facets of awakening, whether we call it the, the, the, the search for God or the truth that we didn't speak so much about, which I also support, and we're talking about light and incarnation. So yeah, I try to teach as many of these things as I can and interconnect them. Um, so yeah, that's That said, I— anybody who resonates with them, I'd be really happy to meet and talk to. So my website, my YouTube.

Sounds great, sounds great. It's, uh, it's been great talking to you. Thanks for doing this today.

Yeah, thank you very much.

All right, have a good rest of your morning.

Yeah, thank you.

Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.