Tim Corcoran - The Nature Of Purpose, The Language Of Soul, And Vision Quests

Foreign.

Team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. We are going to dive into some wonderful topics that I've been wanting to dig into and we're going to do that with a gentleman named Tim Cochran. Tim is a founder of Purpose Mountain where he serves as a certified nature based purpose guide to support people who hear the call from wild nature to discover their purpose. Those with a burning desire to live their vision and a willingness to work with resistance and fears through the ecology of self and voice dialogue. Tim also serves as a co director of Twin Eagles Wilderness School, an organization he co founded with his wife Janine Tidewell in Sandpoint, Idaho in 2005, dedicated to facilitating deep nature connection, mentoring, cultural restoration and inner tracking. So he's done a tremendous amount of work around vision quests and that's something that Tim and I are going to talk about towards the end of this podcast. We really start off by talking about purpose. What is it? How do you find it? What are some of the breadcrumbs that life leaves for us that we can begin to follow? Because as we talk about in the show, purpose is a very sort of vague term that gets used a lot in our culture today that is sort of ambiguous for a lot of people and it can be frustrating to not feel like you have a sense of purpose. I'm going to be talking about purpose quite a bit more in the coming months. It's something that I get asked about a lot. It's something that I've done a lot of work on and studied on and interestingly enough, fun fact, I think I mentioned this in the show, but there's like over a quarter, quarter of a million books all related to this notion of purpose. And so clearly people are wanting to find a purpose. Maybe you are wanting to find a deeper sense of purpose. Hopefully this podcast brings some ideas, some concepts, and like I said, some breadcrumbs that can help point you and steer you towards a deeper calling, a deeper sense of purpose in your own life. And then towards the end of the podcast, we shift towards what is a vision quest? Why are they important? How does fasting fit into the vision quest? What does the role of nature have to do with embarking on a vision quest? And this is something that I really believe in and have practiced in my own life and will continue to do so because they can be very powerful. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Tim today and without any further delay, please welcome Tim Cocoran. All right, Tim, welcome to the Man Talk Show. It's great to have you Here.

Thanks, Connor. Great to be here.

Yeah. Our mutual friend Josh Trent push in touch and I got to check out your work. And he said, do you think that Tim would make a good guest for your show? And I went on your website and it says purpose mountain.com. and I was like, probably going to be a yes. But then as I dove into your work and what you do and listen to some of your conversations, I really. It was a. It was a really big yes. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation about purpose and a number of other things. But before we begin, let's just give the listener some context to who you are. So if you want to say a little bit about who you are and what you do outside of that, tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Sure, sure. So, yeah, Tim Corcoran is my name. I live in Sandpoint, Idaho with my wife Janine and our sons. I've got a 12 and a 15 year old and I do. I have two different organizations that I run. I run Purpose Mountain where I help people discover their vision, their purpose, their soul level purpose in life using a nature based approach. And then we also have a wilderness school that my wife and I founded in 2005, so 17 years ago, that's still running strong. That's Twin Eagles Wilderness school where our focus is helping people just connect back to the earth on the earth's terms. So we do old, old skills, wilderness surv and animal tracking, edible medicinal plants, that kind of thing. And I have a very blessed life, Absolutely very blessed with my family and my work.

I just, I just wanted to clarify that. When you said edible and medicinal plants, I am assuming that you mean more than marijuana and magic mushrooms.

Oh, definitely, yes. Yeah. An important distinction these days. Back in the day we never had to make that distinction.

I know, I just wanted to drop that in there for people that are like really edible and medicinal. Nature based.

Yeah. I actually don't work too much with entheogens and psychedelics. I've certainly had experiences with those. But that hasn't been my primary spiritual path. My primary spiritual path has been the vision quest. And I think, Connor, that would make a great story, a great defining story. So I'm 48 and I did my first quest in the year 2000. So that was what, 22 years ago. And that very much set me on a deep spiritual pathway in this life. It helped me connect with my purpose. It showed me that I would eventually get married and have kids and you know, start a community based organization to help people connect with the earth and ultimately help people on their deeper healing journey towards cultivating a sense of purpose. So in my very first quest, I had an experience where I was up in the, in the Green Mountains of Vermont. And it was, it was September actually. You know, when it was, it was, I went out amazingly on September 11, 2001. So it was, it was 91 1. And this is something that I had been preparing for and yearning for and dreaming of for, for two years really. And I had, there's lots of preparation. I won't get into it now, but, but entering into the experience, I had built a simple shelter, warm and dry. And.

I had this absolutely profound experience with a moose where I built this shelter. I was up in the national forest, like I said, at the Green Mountains. Absolutely beautiful location, September. The leaves are turning colors and there's that rich, earthy smell in the air and just feeling fully alive. And as I was settling in for the night, it was starting to get kind of dark. I hear this snap from, from a distance, you know, of a big branch breaking with the speed and intensity at which, you know, you or I might break a toothpick. And I turn my head fast, I, I look over and here is absolutely the largest bull moose, big antlers, the whole thing that I've ever seen in my life. And as a young man at that point, I was still very much working with my own fears as well as we all do. And, and I was, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I had an absolute fear based response, right? Like I was convinced this moose was here to hurt me and to kill me. It was totally irrational. You know, I was, this is not in line with my wilderness training. And yet it touched a deeper existential fear inside of me, which of course I wasn't fully conscious of at the time. All I knew was I was scared. So I go to get in my shelter and I can hear this, this moose approaching. And it had just been at the creek and drank all this water and I could hear the water moving and then slushing back and forth in its stomach. And it's approaching me, Connor, getting closer and closer and closer. And the fear was just like, oh my gosh. It just was like all encompassing, to say the least. As it gets really close to me. I just, frankly, I don't have a clear memory of what happened in the moment when it approached, other than feeling this big warm wet on the back of my head because I was laying down kind of Facing away.

And then this big thing up on the back. And I was like, what in the heck? And again, hazy memory. Next thing I know, it's, it's walking off maybe 20ft from me. But the emotional feeling in my body had completely changed in my body. It now feels like. Well, it feels. The best I can relate it to is that feeling of having met a new good friend. Like I remember this as a kid, right, going to maybe a summer camp, meeting a new friend and then leaving. And that feeling of departing a new friend, that's the feeling I had, is that moose left exhausted, I fall asleep. And that night I dream. And in my dream in the quest, the moose comes back and beds down right next to me. I wake up in the morning, I'm just like, oh my God, this is nuts. You know, I must have dreamt the whole thing like there's no way a moose. And then like I'm feeling on the back of my neck and I'm in my head and it's like there's this, there's this crusty stuff, kind of like dried boogers, you know, dried snot. And I'm like, no way. And I look and sure enough, here's this clear as day, this large animal trail with clear moose prints that the big heart shaped prints. And right at the spot where next to where I had been laying, I can see where the prints come in. And there was more pressure on the front of the prints. From a tracking perspective, that means the head lowered because it had to hold the extra weight where indeed it had licked me and then went on its way and I checked even to see did it actually bed down next to me and no it didn't. That was in the dream. And I share that because there's an important spiritual teaching that was a lot of years ago and I've had numerous other encounters with moose, including other encounters with moose during vision quests. When we first come face to face with our power in this life, the typical pattern for us, especially Westerners, is that is that of fear. We typically are afraid of our biggest power. And it's a big journey that involves emotional healing, that involves facing our truth, that involves a great deal of surrender and vulnerability. To come to the other side of that and recognize that thing that we were perhaps the most scared of actually is our greatest gift, our greatest power that we have to offer this world. And so yeah, years later, now I find myself guiding others through that. And I should say as a disclaimer, it doesn't have to be a moose Sometimes vision can come in the form of a little inchworm or a beautiful babbling creek down the forest, or it can be the great moose and all forms. Does vision take?

Yeah. Wonderful. I appreciate you sharing that story with us and something that was clearly altering but intimate moment in your life. And it's interesting because, you know, I lead men's weekends as often as I can. And we just did one in Austin, Texas.

Oh, nice.

And on the second night, we had a fire outside, and there's this massive fire pit, and there's these chairs around, and. And so we have about 26 men all around the fire pit. And one of the things that I've started to get in the habit of doing is just storytelling, just getting men to storytell. And it was funny because I opened up the night and I said, hey, you know, who wants to kick us off and start with a story? And it was just silence. And I let the silence be there for probably about two minutes. You know, I could tell that there was some fear of the men leaning in. And so, for whatever reason, I told a story about an encounter with a bear. And it was so interesting because I told the story. I told my story, which I won't retell here. And then all of a sudden, like popcorn men started sharing stories about their encounters with bears. And it was interesting to hear how many of them had these encounters and how rich the story was, you know, that it wasn't just this sort of, oh, yeah, you know, I was hiking and I crossed the path with this bear. I was like, no, no. This was a substantial, meaningful experience that this person had. And so I can imagine being on a vision quest, which we'll talk about more of, like, the parameters around that soon that. That, you know, you're like, in that liminal space, right? Oh, yeah. Did I really have that, or was that. Yes, you know, was that. You know, was that part of the vision or was that an actual, like, real experience? And so let's just set some groundworks. We're going to talk about vision quests here. We're going to talk about the importance of nature. But I really just want to set some groundwork because you do quite a bit of work around purpose, which I think we, as men specifically, are very intensely focused in. On. And I think that within our culture, within Western culture especially, purpose has become this very vague but also very broad sentiment that a lot of people can't seem to grasp. And it seems very abstract for a lot of people. And I was. You know, we. We have something called the man talks alliance. And we were talking about purpose in the group, and I had done some research and found that there's like over a quarter of a million books on purpose, over 250,000 books on Amazon on purpose. So I preface all of this to say I realize that what I'm about to ask you is maybe a big question, but I'm going to ask it anyways to get your perspective, which is how do you even define what purpose is? And let's just start with that one piece and then we'll go into the other parts after.

Well, in the simplest sense, and this is a very tangible answer, we will definitely go into, into the intangible. But in the simplest sense, Connor, purpose is the reason why something exists. My purpose is why I exist. You know, the tree, you know, outside my window here, the Western redcedar's purpose is the reason why it exists. Now, how we define the reason something exists is. Is another question. I would agree. You know, it's very easy for us, especially as Westerners, and especially as Western men, to get obsess times with. With purpose. And certainly I think modernity here in the west tends to focus much more on the doing rather than the being. I define purpose as embodying both. So, yes, what are the tangible actions, the. The meaningful projects, the career, the. The. All of that, that. That are going to be expressions of my purpose, but those are really, I see those as vehicles to deliver something much deeper. And that much deeper thing is our essence, you know, is our deepest being state. When we, when we shed all of the distractions, who is it that we are when. When. When all of the distractions fall away? And to answer that question, I look at that actually as a question of connecting with soul. Right. So if there's a part of me or a part of this world that knows my purpose, it is my soul. We could keep it that simple. There's trying to define soul and purpose. Yeah, I mean, in many ways this is like a paradoxical, impossible task. But if there's a place within me that knows my purpose, then that's my soul. So how to connect with the soul, then that I see not so much even as a spiritual process, but I see that more as an ecological process. Meaning that just like when we look to the natural world, every single species, including humans, has a niche, a place, a give and a take, how they contribute and. Yeah, give and take from the natural ecosystem. And we as humans are the exact same way. But of course, we each have unique gifts and it's this great process of discovering what are those and cultivating those gifts and then sharing them with the world. That's. That's the great adventure of life. That's the great adventure of discovering and living our purpose and our vision. So I could say a lot more, but maybe I'll pause there.

No, I think that's well articulated and I appreciate the distinction between the being and the doing aspect of it because I do think that it can be easy to get caught up in purpose being a sort of level, deeper version of our career. You know, it's like, oh, yeah, like what's my purpose? When usually when I hear men asking that, and even when I found myself asking that question, you know, years ago, what I was really asking is, what would be more rewarding for me to do with my life? Not what would be more rewarding for me to be. Who would be more rewarding for me to be? What's more possible in terms of who I am capable of being or becoming or embodying? And I appreciate the distinction that that's a part of it, right? That being is a part of it.

Yes.

So, okay, so purpose, being, doing, those are integral parts of it. I'm going to ask and inquire about obstacles to purpose. What have you seen block people? Normally, just in the work that you've done, because you've been doing this for a number of years, what do you see most people getting hung up on or where do they normally get blocked? What are some of the common ones?

Well, it all comes down to fear, really. Right. It all. It all comes down to fear. Fear can take lots of different forms. You know, in the healing work I do with people and because I've had lots of experience with the men's work and men's circles and therapy and all of that, you know, and that's very important, the healing journey that we've. All that we all have to take. And certainly if someone's on the deep journey of. Of connecting with purpose, then. Then there's going. They're going to face. They're going to have to face themselves. And that means facing all of their power, all of their potential, as well as facing all of those wounds, all of those elements where we're not at peace with ourselves. So common blocks. I mean, in the healing work I do, it pretty much always comes back down to worthiness. Am I at the heart of it all? It's like the core question is, am I worthy of love? Am I worthy of love? And there's lots of different forms that can Take as far as blocks go, but that's what it pretty much always comes down to. So that might take the shape of, you know, low self esteem and like, oh my gosh, who am I to have a purpose? I'm not important. You know, other people are important, Connor's important or Tim is important, but me, not. Not me. You know, that might take the form of. Even if I do find my purpose, will I have what it takes to live it? This is. This is so big. How could I possibly step into that? It might take the form of overwhelm, like, oh my gosh, there's so much suffering in the world and there's so many possible ways that I could help.

How do I find what's mine? I mean, these are some really common ones.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, I remember I interviewed a gentleman named Francis Weller.

Oh, sure.

And he said, you know, the core wound that we're all carrying is the wound of belonging, the wound of not belonging, and the 10,000 variations of not belonging, you know, that exist out there in the world and that those become the blocks. And I'm curious because I've in some ways stumbled my way into a sense of a purposeful life. And I don't mean to, you know, have a sort of arrogance as if, like I've claimed purpose or anything like that, but sure. And when I say stumbled, I mean failed tremendously, repeatedly, and was fortunate to have mentors in my life that guided me psychologically, emotionally, in nature. And. And what I have found is that if I could condense how I found my way to a sense of purpose, to some semblance of purpose, was that I had to walk through pain. I had to walk through my own pain and I had to walk through the things that I didn't want to face about myself and my past and my life and my actions.

Absolutely.

And so I'm curious to get your take on. Where does our human pain, our individual pain and suffering fit in on this journey towards purpose?

Well, you've probably heard of the idea that the sacred wound is one side of a coin and that the other side of that coin is the sacred gift. So, I mean, I can use myself as an example. Right. For me, I was always a very sensitive, sensitive individual emotionally and spiritually. Right. 48. I grew up in the 80s. Being a sensitive boy was not a good thing in the fourth grade locker room. Right. So for years I was convinced, probably easily the first 20, 25 years of my life, that being sensitive was a curse, that there was something wrong with me, that this was something to hide. And later on in life, through mentoring, through ceremony, through vision quest and other processes, I began to see that. Oh, my gosh. It's the same sensitivity that allows me to connect deeply with the natural world. It's the same sensitivity that allows me to read other humans and people and groups. It's the same sensitivity that allows me to actually feel someone else's pain and be there with them in that space without needing to run away or immediately fix it or just to be with it. And over time, I began to see that. In fact, that was one of my greatest gifts. I mean, I look at myself now and I'm like, my God, I can't imagine doing the work I do without that sensitivity. I just. I just don't think it would happen. But facing that for me was really tough. You know, it was like, wow. Like, yeah, I faced a lot of pain in childhood. Bullied and the whole thing. You know, my parents divorce was another example, and I didn't want to face that. Who wants to. Who wants to be with pain? You know, don't give me pain. Give me a Starbucks latte, you know? And yet, thanks to my mentors and my own willingness at times, there were plenty of times when I wasn't willing and thanks to my understanding that, yes, in order to cultivate a sense of purpose, I was going to have to travel through that pain and face that and do my best to heal that. So it plays a huge role. It plays a huge role.

You had mentioned the word soul before. And so I think I just want to circle back around, and then I want to talk about vision quests, how they fit in, you know, where nature fits into this puzzle. What I've noticed is that as. As I've gone deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole of purpose and understanding existence and why we're here and. And especially understanding vision quests and how they work. That word soul continues to. To permeate through most of the literature. And I think it's something that we mostly avoid within our culture. Or it kind of gets talked about vaguely in religious circles or sort of New Age spiritual circles. So from maybe an ancient tradition or from your own perspective, where does the soul fit into this? And maybe not necessarily needing to articulate what soul actually is, because that might maybe not be helpful. If it is, please, please do so. But where does soul fit in to the equation of purpose?

Well, I think it was Frederick Buechner, the theologist, that had this quote. He said that soul is that Place where my deepest gladness meets the world's hunger. Where my deepest gladness meets the world's hunger. Which is a beautiful way to look at it. I see soul as something that's simultaneously and paradoxically both within me and as well as fully infused in the entire world. It's the place where I find myself interconnected with all of life. When people make progress on the journey of a deep soul level purpose, oftentimes we call that process like a series of soul encounters or soul. The work to cultivate connection to soul. And that can take the shape of lots of. In lots of ways. Right? That can take the shape of like animal encounters, like. Like the moose experience I had. It can take the shape of dreams. Soul loves to speak through dreams, through signs, symbols, synchronicity of realizing that there is a. It's like there's this greater world, yes, there's the physical world and yes, of course this matters, but there's also the soulful world that is right here at the same time, where on the one hand the moose is still the moose physically and it has its life and, and there's all of that. But on the other hand, the moose was showing me something mirroring me, something back to me about myself, about my place in the world. And just as much as. As we yearn to find our purpose or our soul, I would offer that soul and purpose and. Or vision has at least as much of a yearning, if not more, to find us. Right. And so this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, that if indeed that's true, that if my soul, my purpose is yearning to find me, then maybe it's less about all this stuff that I do and maybe it's more about, okay, gosh, how do I get found? How do I slow down enough? How do I shed the distractions of screen time and alcohol and workaholism, on and on and on, enough to really get really, really still so that that soul can find me.

Yeah, well said. I like that. I appreciate that. And it's interesting as we're talking, I'm like remembering the. I don't know if you saw it, but I think it was like a year or two ago. The Disney Pixar. I think it was Pixar movie. I think it was just called Soul. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was quite well done. It was very.

Yeah, it was.

It was movie, but okay. I'm sure that purpose and soul, these things will continue to, in our conversation to be a through line as we, as we move into vision quests. Maybe just tell us a little bit about how you got into vision quest in the first place. And then I would imagine that you, as you embarked on leading people through this, you went through some form of training. And so if you can give us some context into like what is a vision quest, what brought you into it? What can people expect in terms of, you know, not that there's sort of one or two things that people get out of a vision quest, but let's just kind of hash out some of the details because I think this is something that a lot of people are curious about.

Sure, sure. So a vision quest is, is an old, old Earth based ceremony and it might actually be the oldest ceremony. In most cases it involves a four day fast fasting from food, although you do typically drink water, where you are alone in a wild place somewhere in the natural world and you have some sort of a guide mentoring you through this process. But it's the quest itself proper is. Yeah, it's typically 96 hours alone in a, in a circle held in ceremony with the holding the singular intention of why am I here? Who am I at the deepest level? What is the point of my life? Why have I taken birth? It's a process that involves a significant amount of preparation. It's not something to jump into, to just jump in. I'm going to do a vision quest this weekend. So it involves a lot of preparation that is best facilitated by a guide as well as significant follow up work. Integration. I almost hesitate to use the word integration because it's, it's almost overused these days, but it is integration work. It is processing the experience, making meaning out of the experience, recapitulating, sharing your story, journaling. So for me, when I was a young man, before that first quest with the moose that I mentioned, I had read an old book about an old Apache healer and scout and medicine man who was known as Stalking Wolf. And in the book it spoke about this idea of vision. And this was my first exposure to it. Right. And the basic idea, yeah, that life is not random. Which meant my life is not random. That there is a deep, soulful, spiritual reason, ecological reason why I'm here. And that as I said before, the great adventure of life is to discover what that is, find those gifts, to cultivate those gifts and to share those with others. And that like when I read that I was, I don't know, 23, 24, it became my singular focus. I was like, I have to do this, I have to find this. It's important to note that most People these days associate the vision quest with Native American culture. And certainly it's present in Native American culture, but it's not a Native American thing. The vision quest is present in cultures worldwide throughout history. Jesus, you know, on his 40 days, that was basically a quest. The Buddha finding enlightenment. Where did he find enlightenment? Under the Bodhi tree? Not, not on a pillow, in an ashram. He was under the Bodhi tree, basically on a quest. Moses, you know, so many different examples throughout time, throughout history. So that's a bit of context.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting because I think I like that caveat as well, that the vision quest has historically been prevalent and very prominent in a lot of different cultures. Because that's one of the things that I was surprised by is that as I started to learn about vision quests years and years ago, I started to see them everywhere because I'd studied theology a little bit. I was like, oh, it's in Hinduism, it's in Buddhism, it's in Christianity. The vision quest is everywhere. So when you talk about preparation for these things, because really you're going out into nature, you're going to be in nature for a number of days, you're going to be fasting in nature. Two things, you know, One, what are some of the key ingredients for, for preparation? Obviously having a guide is, is essential because I, I think just like if you're going to go on a psychedelic journey, you, you probably are not going to want to do that on your own, especially if you're doing it for therapeutic purposes or for revelatory purposes, et cetera.

Ceremony.

But what are some of the preparatory pieces that are, that are needed? And then secondly, why the fasting?

Yeah, yeah. Well, the answer to those questions is really the same thread. So what is the quest in the most basic sense? It's so simple, right? It's just like stopping for three, four days, stopping for four days and stopping all inputs. So why the fasting? Well, so that we can nourish on a different food source. So that we can nourish on the nourishment from soul. And I think that it's the simplicity of the quest, Conor, is a big part of why it's so prevalent. It's pretty simple to say, hey, I'm going to stop everything, I'm going to stop doing everything and just be for four days with the singular question of why the heck am I here? What is the point of my life? And I'm not willing to leave until I find that answer. You got to show me. Now, maybe that takes the form of three days here or five days there, but it's pretty simple in that way. So in preparation for it. So what is the quest? It's one giant shedding of all of the distractions that keep us from experiencing ourselves. Certainly here in the modern day we are very familiar with those. Yeah, screen time and work and modernity and 75 miles an hour. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Everyone knows this. So the quest is a giant shedding of those distractions that keep us from experiencing our deepest self or truest self. No eating. You could look at it as like a shedding of the distraction. You can also look at it, I like the terminology, sacrifice. It's like, hey, I'm going to take these things that are comfortable, that are easy for me, that I like, I like my chips or my, my soda or whatever it is. I'm going to put those aside or cigarettes or working so much or whatever it is. I'm going to put those aside. This is going to be my offering. I'm going to feel a little uneasy because I'm used to those things. My ego likes those things. It creates a certain degree of comfort and even security. Those are short term, those are probably not healthy, but that is what it does. And the point of the quest is to find a different source of identity besides the ego. So if that's going to happen, then we actually need to loosen the ego's grip on our identity. And in order to do that, shedding all of those distractions that normally keep us very set in who we are is a useful thing, right? That when we can find our identity as our soul, that we can realize, wow, on the deepest level, I am much more than Tim. I am something else entirely actually. So the preparation is important, especially these days. If we think about our Earth based ancestors. If we went back 500 generations, for me back to Ireland, you know, we'd find people practicing a form of the quest. And yet their journey from day to day life, normal day to day life to the quest was much shorter because they were living closer to the earth in general these days. As one of my elders used to like to say. He said some people, you know, wake up in the morning and go through their whole day and their feet never touch the earth, you know, it's concrete or high rises, you know, and their feet never touch the earth. So physically we're not accustomed to living close to the earth and there is preparation to help us with that. Something as simple as finding a sit spot, taking 20, 30 minutes a day, sitting quietly in nature at the same place, just cultivating the quiet mind, tuning in with our senses, but as well beginning to transition and shed some of those distractions that otherwise keep us from being fully present. So maybe I clean up my diet, maybe I cut back on my screen time or whatnot, but that's on the physical side, on the deeper side, maybe a psycho spiritual perspective on it. The preparation is all about working with intention. Coming in with the cleanest, clearest intention possible into a quest is paramount. And for anyone who's done any kind of deep transformational work, I think we can recognize, people can recognize that there's always, when I go into a big event, a ceremony at work, workshop or something, there's the reason I think I'm coming and then there's the reason I'm actually coming. And oftentimes that's a very humbling experience. So when people first start, they have a certain, you know, story they're telling themselves about their intention. And that's oftentimes that's very true. But consistently intention gets clearer and clearer and oftentimes changes significantly so that by the time maybe if we do a month worth of preparation, by the time that quest actually arrives, that intention is absolutely crystal clear and they've done some of the shedding of distractions and gain more access to the deep self, the soul, so that they have an opportunity for that intention to get even clearer.

Yeah, well said. As many analogies I could bring into that. But I think what stood out to me the most was just this moment of communing with nature. And I mean, you had mentioned the sit spot. And it's funny because after my son was born, I have a 15 month old boy, and after he was born last year, I found myself every morning taking him out to the front yard. So we were living in this place where there was a lake. And so every morning I would go out my bare feet and I would just go stand in the grass and I would hold him at first, you know, and I would just, I would just stand there for 15, 20 minutes. And then as he got a little bit bigger, I would lay him down in the grass. And then as he got bigger, I would, you know, put him in the grass and he would crawl around and then, you know, when he started to walk, I would walk him outside and we would go and we'd stand in this place and there was a tree right there and he, you know, every morning we would go and touch the tree and we'd go put our feet in the grass. And, you know, it was just this routine of grounding in, of being with nature for a moment, of being undistracted. Because, I mean. Yeah, just because. I mean, when you become a parent, there's so many things that you can be distracted by.

Yes, but.

But I love this idea that you're talking about, that part of the preparation is one, setting the intention, and then two, being able to start to remove some of those distractions leading up to it. Because I think what's overwhelming for people is, you know, I remember I was working with this one gentleman, and I had gone off and done five days in nature on my own, and I had fasted for a couple of those days. And he was like, I want to go do that. I want to go do that. And I said, okay. And so we did some preparation together. And he said, I'm going to go spend four days. And I said, why don't you just try and spend one. Just spend one night out in nature because you haven't done this. And I'll never forget on the next call, he said he got out there and it started to get dark and he just broke down crying and he went back to his car and he went back home. And he said, I just couldn't. I couldn't bear the weight of what I had started to come into contact with in myself and in nature. And I said, yes, perfect, good. So let's work on this. Right. So we worked him up to, you know, we worked him up to actually doing some proper prep work, to going. Doing it longer. So tell me, tell me the audience a little bit about what is it that you're coming in contact with during a vision quest? Like, what are some of the things and where does nature fit into that? I want to start to get into that component of it.

Yeah. Well, you spoke earlier about, I think you were mentioning Francis Weller, speaking about the core wound that we all carry is that of a lack of belonging. And I would agree with that. I think part of my message for people is that that sense of belonging comes from more than just the human world. Yes, we need to find a sense of belonging in human community. Yes, that is good, critical, and, you know, big thumbs up on men's groups and women's groups and all of it, you know, intentional community, etc. Etc. But that is not the whole picture. I would offer that. Just like we need that sense of belonging in human community, we also need that sense of belonging to the earth itself as well as to Seoul, right. So, I mean, I've done a lot of nature connection work through the years, guiding people, probably over 10,000 people, on the journey of connecting with the natural world. And there is a process, some call it ecological awakening. It's this process of recognizing that as a human being, I am nature. We evolved from this, of this Earth. We weren't dropped down here from spaceships from Mars and God, even if we were, that would still be nature. Like everything is nature. We have distorted it, we have modified it and made homes and buildings and all these structures. But even this computer that we're interfacing through right now, this is from nature. And so this process of finding a sense of ecological belonging is huge. People talk about it this way sometimes. They'll say to me, it was like I went out on quest and I realized that there was a veil that was between myself and the Earth, but I didn't know it was there at first. And through this process, the veil dropped and I now experience myself as part of this Earth. I feel like I belong under that cedar tree or I belong at that spot in the. In the high desert where I found. Like that's, that's where I. I feel like this is my place, this is who I am. Equally, there is a sense of belonging to our soul, that there is a deeper reason why we've come and that when we touch that which is not a mental process, it's not something that we'll ever quite understand. It's an experiential, embodied process. We might feel it and there may be certain memories associated with it, but ultimately it's a soulful process. It's a. Because again, how does soul speak? Signs, symbols, dreams, synchronicities. And when a person comes into contact with that, which admittedly is a difficult thing to put into words here may be impossible, but there is this sense of, I have a place, I know my place in this world. I've come to peace with who I am. And those gifts and those wounds, you could think of it like this. So just like we can be displaced from our home physically and feel alienated, we can be displaced from our soul. And that is the calling, this knowing that there's something more to my life, that I know somewhere I am here for a reason. I haven't yet fully embodied that, but I feel it, I know it. And it's not that yearning for transcendence or enlightenment. It's not a yearning for more money or safety or security or power or fame. It's the yearning for our place in the world and that sense of belonging, that's the antidote to desire. As we look around and everybody. What's the old saying? We can never quite get enough of what we really don't need. And so we sit up late at night and eat chips and popcorn and watch Netflix till the cows come home. It will never be enough. We're trying to fill that void. And what the quest does is. It's a pathway, Connor, to actually feel what needs to fill that in the first place, that deeper sense of belonging. And the earth can offer us that soul can offer us that if we're willing to take the journey.

Yeah, well said. As you were talking, two things happen. One, you're talking about enlightenment. And it's so interesting because when I've heard people describe their experiences, their sort of moments of satori or moments of awakening, I almost always hear some version of a remembering that they were already a part of everything around them. And so an enlightenment, in some ways is oftentimes a remembering of a sense of belonging that wasn't there prior. You know, that didn't exist before that. And I think many people have had that, some version of that. Maybe a small version or a conscious version or cognitive version, but then there's a deeper version of that that can happen as you're talking about, I think, within the. Within the soul level, right within the vessel of the body. And the second thing that I was reminded of, and I don't remember where I heard this, but I remember hearing a conversation, and people said that how we define nature by definition excludes human beings, which is interesting, you know. And so I had looked it up, and it's like the natural world as it exists. Nature exists without human beings or civilization. And so in some ways, we've extracted humans out of our definition of nature. And so there's almost like this reclamation process or this reintegration process back into nature to remember that piece. And then the last thing I would say is, do you feel in the work that you've done in guiding all of these people, does nature act as something that puts wisdom into people, pulls wisdom out, or is it that it acts more as a mirror? Because I've heard it described a little bit as most of those, but certainly the last one, that nature acts as this kind of mirror?

Well, lots of great points here. So I want to respond to this idea that, as you said, you know, kind of comparing the. The visionary, revelatory experience to enlightenment, you described it as a deeper experience, and I would agree with that. Deeper meaning down so if classical enlightenment, like meditation, Enlightenment, goes up and where we experience all is one, one is all. And that we transcend the ego and realize, oh, that's all kind of a big joke. Not necessarily a joke, but it. There's more to it than that. And suffering, I can. I can transcend it. That's beautiful, but it's not the whole picture because, yes, we need to be able to transcend the ego. And yet we were still. We still took birth, we still took form here at this time for a reason. So that would be like to use the three worlds model. Enlightenment is like upper world. What I'm talking about being initiated into a soulful life is the lower world. It's connecting down deeper. Yes, it's still a transcendence of ego, but into the deepest place of why am I here? Right. So that's. That's an important distinction. Nature is mirror. So, so a huge one. So does nature put something into us? Does it draw something out or does it reflect? I would say yes to all of those. If I was going to lean in one direction, Connor, I would lean, as you suggested, towards nature reflects us back to ourselves. Like when we, when we do vision quest work, we have a significant number of days focused just on the integration process. And a big part of that is each person getting to share the story of their experience in our community, our kind of small, temporary community that we make of questers and guides and having the story reflected back to them by experience. Guides who have learned to speak the language of soul. Right. Who have learned to navigate what. How do synchronicities really work? And what is exactly is a symbol? And what does it mean when I dream about, you know, my dead grandfather coming back to me, all of these things, there, there are patterns there. There are. That's a language that you can. One can learn to speak. And that's much of what I've cultivated through the years. So having a guide who can not. For it's not about me telling somebody, oh, here's your vision, but it's just offering, gosh, here's another way to look at it. Right? Here's another perspective. So in the process of the quest, and for that matter, anytime, really, all of life is a quest, if you really think about it. But anytime we spend time in nature with that kind of an intention, nature will give us an answer, as it were. We'll be attracted to certain species and forms in the natural world and will be repulsed by others. And all of those have energy and have teachings for us as well. You know, there are certain species that will be attracted to us. Why did the moose come to me not once, twice, actually three times at three different vision quests. The first two were in the physical and the third one came in a dream. Why did that happen? You know, and as I looked into that, it was like, oh my God, the, the life cycle of the moose and how much moose. Moose actually struggle physically quite a bit when they're small with the extra long legs and, and then that becomes an advantage later in life. And I couldn't help but to see the mirror of that in my own life. Like, oh my God, like I had a really tough go the first 20, 25 years of life. I was really low self esteem, the whole thing like I mentioned. And then all of that shifted to become these gifts that I just love now and like, whoa. And the moose came to me. At first I didn't seek the moose out, you know, the moose came to me. Why is that? Ultimately, I can't explain the nature of how all of that works, but I know that it works and I've learned to trust that over the years. So does nature mirror us back to ourselves? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I feel like that's. I was going to go on a Jungian tangent, but I feel like we're out of time, unfortunately. So we'll have to save that for round two of our conversation, which I'm sure and I hope that, that there is one. But Tim, I just want to thank you for coming on the show today and, you know, spending some of your valuable time with me and having this conversation. I appreciate your wisdom and for people that are wanting to go learn more about you, obviously you can go to your website. We'll have the links for that below. But where, where would you like to direct people? Anywhere in specific that they should go and, and learn?

Just, just my main website, purpose mountain.com. you know, I've got some free resources on there. I've got a big like a, a PDF download out. It's more of a workbook if people want to just kind of get a taste of my work. I've done lots of podcasts so people can google me as well, but Purpose Mountain.com is the best place.

Outstanding. Well, thank you so much. And for everyone that's out there listening, don't forget to share this episode. If you found value in it, you probably know somebody that is trying to work on purpose and trying to understand it and work their way through it and so definitely share this episode. And if you have follow up questions that you would like Tim and I to talk about in the next episode. If we can get them back on, then DM me Man talks on Instagram. Or you can fire me off an email infoantalks.com and until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.