Slavery, Faith, and the Search for Meaning with Former NZ Detective Gary Shaw

What you've done, I've never met anyone else that has done this.

I learned about an organization based in Washington D.C. that employed detectives to go to the third world to use their skills to gather really damning evidence of, and in particular the sex trafficking of women and children. One of my first operations was in Cambodia and we'd been told that there was a village where there were very young children being sold. One was seven, one was five. They were sisters. She was asking that you take her because that all she could do to protect her little sister.

It's awful, you know, and for a seven year old like God, they should never have to think like that.

Suddenly we had a squad of armed police who worked with us to facilitate a by bus. The youngest child I carried out of a brothel that day was five years old.

That could have been your kid. That's someone's kid.

Absolutely.

Wow.

We rescued a few hundred women and children but we failed to rescue many, many thousands.

Kara, how do you, like, how do you deal with that?

I came back to my hotel room, I cleaned, closed the door and I just collapsed and sobbed for about three days. My life ultimately shattered. My marriage fell apart. That will always be one of the hardest days of my life.

What is the journey of forgiveness?

Well, yeah, I've only ever given trigger warnings once, maybe twice in the entirety of this show. But today you're going to sit down with Gary Shaw. Gary went undercover to help save people from trafficking and slavery. Gary wanted me to read this statement to you on his behalf before you watch this show. Today we're going to be talking about human slavery. It has become common practice to provide a trigger warning alerting you to potentially disturbing or upsetting material. The jury is out on whether trigger warnings are actually helpful or harmful. Suffice to say, I care about your psychological safety and so I remind you of your agency, your ability to respond in the event that your nervous system is activated. I encourage you to exercise self compassion and leave at any time. Having said that, I think there is a danger. We conflate trigger warnings with anything that makes us feel uncomfortable or upset. Today we're talking about human slavery. And as such, for the sake of our shared humanity, I hope it is upsetting. The word compassion means to suffer with, to touch and be touched by the hurting place within ourselves and others. The shadow side of trigger warnings is they penetrate on an overly fragile view of human beings unable or unwilling to stand amid tragedy. Standing in tragedy can be terrifying because it is that there that our heart is broken. But as Author David White said, heartbreak may be the very essence of what it means to be human. As inevitable as breathing, only a broken heart has the capacity to hold more suffering and greater joy. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, all the great ones spent a lifetime amidst tragedy, their hearts broken open to a largeness that held the possibility of a better future. The great paradox of what it means to be a whole human being is that it necessitates being broken. As my favorite U2 song says, a heart that hurts is a heart that works. From a broken place is where the victory is won. So my invitation to you all today is to draw near to modern slavery and let your hearts be broken. Folks, that was a message from Gary Shaw himself. And now please sit back and watch the show unfold. The Lead On Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz.

Gary, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you.

I'm glad to be sitting here with you finally.

Likewise.

I've learned lots about you in the recent months. My team have done lots of research on your journey. No, it's amazing. It's inspiring. It has the full circle of emotions, the full circle of aspirations, professionally, personally, spiritually, what you've done. I've never met anyone else that has done this. And what you've learned is something we can all learn from. So we're both sitting here in Christchurch at the minute and if we maybe start your journey around that time, professional journey. You were a police officer here?

I was in Christchurch, New Zealand, yes. Yes, I was a detective just at the Central Police Station a few blocks from here for a number of years.

And that's to me, you know, I look at where your journey took you. You started in Christchurch. I would never expected you to have done and experienced the things that you did in that time, those formative years. What was it like to be a police officer? What did it mean to you?

Well, first, it was a childhood dream to be a police officer.

Stemmed from my childhood desire to be a superhero and save the world. And.

In my idyllic mind, that's what a police officer does and. And realistically gets the opportunity to do many times a day.

To show up.

In situations of brokenness and disorder, chaos, wounding and bring some sense of order and hopefully compassion.

And that's probably where I struggled the most.

While I wanted to be a policeman with all my heart.

I'd initially been disqualified from applying my eyesight. I wear contact lenses. My eyesight wasn't good enough. I was told to join the New Zealand police. So I went on a circuitous journey. I went to university like most young people when they have no idea what they want to do. Did a BA in psychology, sociology. I just knew I wanted to work with people. I got a scholarship to study in Philadelphia in the United States and did a master's in Third World Economic Development. Basically how to go to the developing world and fight evil and injustice using economic development, community development in an anthropologically, culturally sensitive way. So that was where I thought I would end up working for Relief and Development Organisation. But it was just at the time where they were recognizing that you could employ 20 locals for the same price as one naive, inexperienced white guy who couldn't speak the language. So I came back to New Zealand pretty lost. And.

I saw that.

What used to be a traffic police division, which was separate from the General police duties division, was about. They were about to merge. The traffic police did not have the same ISOT requirements as general duties police. So I joined the traffic police. Eight months later they merged and yuppie.

Amazing.

And I was a police officer. What I didn't count on was because of that circuitous journey that I took, I had quite a sensitive heart. And while I love the police work, I really struggled with police culture.

Tell me more about that culture. What was it that you struggled with?

This was back in the early 90s as well. Like I hasten to add that it's different now, thankfully, but yeah, it was a boys club.

So if you didn't play rugby, you didn't drink heavily and all the things that go with that, you were in some squads in particular, you had to fight to be.

To be part of the. Part of the team. And police policing, I mean, it is a family of sorts and certainly when you're out on the street, you know, you rely on each other for your life sometimes. So I desperately wanted to fit in and have their respect, but. But there were things that I also that really grated inside of me, that the internal bullying of. Of females, of anyone. That was different, basically.

So you coming in as well, from the way that you did come in, you would have been quite different. You wouldn't have been one of the. The cool kids.

I wasn't one of the cool kids. No, no. So, yeah, it was challenging.

Yeah, I bet. And obviously you didn't stay there forever. What was the kind of like the catalyst. Okay, the enough's enough. I'm moving off that I've had enough of this.

It wasn't so much that I mean, I did love policing. I think I would have loved to stay there. And the culture, as I said, did change, did mature. There was greater awareness around as I was leaving, greater awareness around self care and other ways to deal with.

The fallout of policing. And I don't. All those things I've said about police culture, I hope don't come across as a blaming.

You don't know what you don't know. And there is no other job like policing in terms of what you see each day. And so without real guidance on how to deal with that trauma day after day after day, unsurprisingly that you end up in the bar drinking heavily if there's nothing else to go to. And back in the 80s and 90s, at least there didn't seem to be much else. So that has changed. But.

Around, I've been in the police around 16 years and I learned about an organization based in Washington D.C. that employed detectives to go to the third world to use their skills to gather really damning evidence of gross exploitation, human rights violations and in particular the sex trafficking of women and children. And that's originally what broke my heart. That's what made me want to go and study at Eastern University in the United States in the first place. And so it just seemed like, ah, you know, that's why all this stuff has happened. You know, the circuitous route. Looking back, I can maybe I can use what I've learned in the police to go and still have this heart for these places in the world where there is no one to show up.

You know, in New Zealand, on the positive side, we have one of the most professional and largely corrupt, corrupt, free police forces in the world, which is, you know, unheard of. And you discover that, you know, as, you know, as you travel.

Oh yeah, South Africa is probably an example. South America, in many places an example. We're very different here.

Yeah. So to take the best of New Zealand, and I hope, not that I'm the best of, you know, but to take the, to take the best of what I'd learned in my.

Policing here in New Zealand and to go with, on behalf of this organization to ultimately 12 countries around the world. And I got to be James Bond. So my childhood dream being the superhero. Typically I would fly into a country, sometimes alone, sometimes there would be a local team, but we would use really high tech equipment. Our supplier supplied intelligence agencies around the world with the tech and the COVID cameras. And my day job as I arrived on the ground was typically to pretend to be a pedophile a sex tourist, a sex tour operator, whatever was necessary to get into the very dark places that we'd received intelligence on where women and children were being sold.

Wow.

And, yeah, I had sort of a three to four week turnaround to find out who you could trust, who you couldn't trust, infiltrate those places using.

Covert cameras and other technology to gather really damn and compelling evidence so that we could then take it to those local authorities that were somewhat trustworthy to facilitate the rescue of the victims and the prosecution of the people responsible.

Highly complex, highly dangerous, volatile situation. But I want to talk a little bit about the psychology piece and the emotional piece. So you're here in New Zealand, you work with New Zealand police in Christchurch, arguably a pretty quiet city compared to some of the chaos that you're going into. So you now have to go in and think like, act like, and pretend to be a pedophile. So what does that do to your psychology in terms of having to act and think like that? How did that impact you in those early days, Years?

Well, I wish I knew now. Wish I knew then what I. What I know now.

There was a lot of naivety. I did speak to a number of police officers in New Zealand who had gone through the New Zealand undercover program before I went overseas. And, and that was invaluable in terms of.

You know, holding on to, to what was true deep within yourself. And, you know, there's a lot of things you can change on the outside, but important just to have your bearings and your compass and to know that, you know, this is true and I'm not going to change that about me. So you've got a solid place to always come back to.

But I think.

My, I mean, the reason I was drawn to this work and the motivation behind it was at the time based in a. In a Christian faith and in particular the more evangelical end of the Christian faith at that time. And so.

I was often alone and as you said, it was, looking back, dangerous. But I was so passionate about being God's agent of justice, at least that's how I felt.

A savior kind of.

Definitely. There was a lot of messiah complex, savior complex, mixed stuff. And like I said, I wish I knew then what I know now.

And there's obviously a shadow side to that. But there was also just this sincere desire, having grown up in Christchurch, New Zealand, in a loving family with a father who loved my sisters and protected them, and to go to parts of the world where I met little girls.

And women and boys who had nobody to protect them. And There was just that real desire to show up and to facilitate justice, some form of justice and some form of liberation in a part of the world that for all manner of reasons.

Wasn'T happening, of course, and such incredibly important work. If it doesn't happen, those children and women will suffer. And we need to be able to do the right thing and we need resource to do that. Obviously local law enforcement need to play ball. Possibly they won't always be trustworthy. I'm sure there's been experiences where things did go wrong.

They went wrong more than they went right. And you know, one of my first operations was in Cambodia and we'd been told that there was a village where there were very young children being sold. And that was probably my first foray into the complete darkness of what we now call modern slavery. Going into this village late one night was incredibly hot and humid and I met a 12 year old boy who was basically the local pimp. Wow. And he said, you know, you want girl, you want boy? I said, sure. And I followed him through a labyrinth of alleyways to one of several houses operating as a brothel in this village and went inside, sat down and the brothel manager brought two 15 year old girls into the room and he said, for US$30 you can have either girl do whatever you want.

Wow.

And I said, well actually this isn't what I'm really looking for. And I went to leave and he said, oh, wait, wait, wait, I know what you want. He left the room, he came back in a few moments later with two six year old girls and they had pigtails in their hair and teddy bears on their T shirt. And he said for US$30 you can do whatever you want for one hour. And being very much in roll, I said, fantastic, absolutely. I got them to come and sit on my knee, which was getting them up close to the camera so I could capture their faces. Gave them some candy. As far as he's concerned, I'm the perfect predator. But I was just very aware that in order to capture the evidence there was a number of things that I had to do. And one of them was paying a deposit. So again, making sure that the camera was facing his face.

Nothing worse than capturing someone's belly button because looking the wrong way, recording that crime being committed, which under Cambodian law, again, that's what I loved about what we did. It wasn't imposing sort of our morality or our western idea of human rights. It was saying that, you know, under Cambodian law what's going on here is illegal. And so paying a Deposit, capturing his face and his name, their faces, their names. Getting the GPS of the coordinates of exactly, exactly where we were. And then I said, you know, do you have any more girls like this? I've got some clients that, you know, that's why I'm here. I'm, I'm the, the tour operator smoothing the way for my clients. And he said, yeah, absolutely. And over the next three weeks, I documented nearly 50 children.

Wow.

Between the ages of 5 and 12 years old who were being sold every day to men from all around the world, every nation, creed and race, including Australia and New Zealand. And, yeah, documented them all. And then.

Perhaps the most challenging part was going to the local authorities who. Some of whom, not all of them, but some of whom were complicit, who were making money by protecting what was going on in that village. And initially, because of the money they were making, they didn't want to know. And in this particular case, it meant going to the US Ambassador, who went to the Cambodian Prime Minister and said, we have some evidence of what's going on in this village. If you want to continue to receive U.S. aid to the many millions of dollars, then we want this taken care of. And suddenly we had a squad of armed police who worked with us to facilitate a by bust. But again, as sadly, what became very common in those parts of the world, everything that can go wrong often does go wrong. And.

The youngest child I carried out of a brothel that day was five years old. But of those original 50 that I had documented, only six were rescued. And I don't remember the six. I remember the 44 plus that, that I didn't rescue. And you think that's bad. And then it gets worse.

We subsequently heard that because those children's faces had been captured, you know, we, we gave the copies of our evidence to the local police when we had to, to bring them on board and, and elicit their help. But. But because some of them were complicit, those images got out and some of those children were permanently disposed of because I had taken their picture.

Wow. Garri, how do you, like, how do you deal with that? Like, when you find that out, how do you come to terms with that? And like, it's horrific.

Yeah. You cry a lot. And not in the moment, you know, obviously, when you're operational, as I was, as I described, in 12 countries, like in the moment. I think just believing so much in what I did and what we were doing.

And that faith aspect of it, I think greatly helped as well.

I'd just begin Each day on my knees and usually at the end of each day as well. Just that this was, this was too big for me and too dark. And.

So that certainly helped.

Were you a dad at this stage?

Yes.

Okay. So that takes it to a whole other level of like, I've got an eight year old boy right now. And so you've been through one year old, two year old, three, I'm up to eight. And the thought of anything like that happening to him, like, it shatters me. And I imagine as you being a dad at that point, you would have connected and empathized with these children you were trying to save on a whole other level. Because that could have been your kid. That's someone's kid.

Absolutely.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I had to be careful as to how much I brought my family into what I was seeing and doing. But on our refrigerator back home in Washington D.C. where we were living during this time, I put some of the images up, you know, so that my daughters, who were 5 and 6, 4 and 5, 5 and 6 at the time.

You know, these are the girls that daddy's going to help kind of thing. So they could sort of understand why I was gone for weeks at a time. And.

The hard part was coming back, jumping on a plane. You know, within 24 hours I'm back in Washington D.C. pushing my own children on the swing, but my mind is still very much.

Back in Cambodia. I mean, on the day of that operation, I was just, I was inconsolable when, you know, we kicked the doors into some of these buildings and they'd been tipped off and they were gone. Or in one case, I didn't have enough hands to hold on to all these children. And there were two little girls in particular that were on our refrigerator back home.

And.

One was seven, one was five, they were sisters. The first time I met them, the seven year old, I put a deposit down on both of them, you know, for a future transaction. And so the crime is complete. And then I want to get out of there. But the seven year old stepped forward, she said something to me in Vietnamese that had been trafficked from Vietnam to Cambodia. And as we were leaving, I asked my translator, I said, what did that little girl say to me? And he said, she was asking that you take her because that was all she could do to protect her little sister.

Man, just hearing that, it's horrific. I don't know how you.

And those two girls were the girls that I couldn't grab onto. And I watched them run out the door as I'd been told to in the event that a police raid happened. And yeah, I never saw them again. I don't know if they were the ones, you know, that were.

Gotten rid of, so to speak. So yeah, it definitely shattered me. I didn't know what secondary trauma was and, but certainly.

The work began to take a toll. We rescued a few hundred women and children, but we failed to rescue many, many thousands. And, and I didn't have my. I found my evangelical theology woefully inadequate for the experiences that I was having. And.

Yeah, my.

Life ultimately shattered, my marriage fell apart and unsurprisingly, my faith collapsed under the weight of what I was experiencing as well. And yeah, it was.

Dark. Night of the soul, as they say.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I find it quite hard, actually, be honest with you. I find it hard talking about it. It's, it's awful, you know, and for a seven year old like, God, they should never have to think like that. It's horrific to save the little sister.

Well, and then, I mean, I hesitate to go, you know, it's like.

I won't go to the darker places where, you know, we investigated people trafficking in babies and in organs.

And then, you know, again, just when you think like this is as dark as it gets, you discover that human trafficking is only about 25% of what we call modern slavery. That the other 75% is largely made up of bonded labour, forced labour, often women, children, men.

And the majority of them are buried in the supply chains of companies that make our lifestyles possible.

The fast fashions.

Fast fashions. You know, as I say to people, if you have chocolate in your diet, a smartphone in your pocket or a diamond on your finger, then you have slaves making your lifestyle possible. And you can go online and, you know, roughly calculate how many people in slavery in the world make your life what it is. I have approximately 33 people in the world in some form of slavery to make my lifestyle possible. And, and then you go one step further, I'll stop here because this is the reality of modern slavery is that our entire global system relies on a large pool, a very large pool of cheap, vulnerable, easily exploitable labor without which our global system would not operate. And so.

Yeah, it's confronting, it's sobering. But I figure that again.

If we're not bringing that into the light, if that's not a part of what we call economic growth and prosperity, then, then what we're creating is a sham and a facade on, you know, if we're in the Hunger Games, we're the ridiculous people in the capital. You know, I grew up like most of us watching TV series and movies about slavery and to sort of recognize that actually we're the ones who are in the big estate house with the slaves making our life possible. Hopefully it's. Hopefully it is upsetting. It really. Hopefully it is upsetting.

And the reason it is like I find it so confronting is because out of sight, out of mind, you know, like when you don't see something going on, it's not going on. And slavery.

Oh yeah, no, that's.

I remember the reading about slavery and that happened and it was, you know, slave ships and yeah, that doesn't happen. I think most of us are naive in thinking the world's a great place. It's, you know, we always hear it's never been better for humans. Like this current age. It's actually never been better. And so it's very easy to go. There's nothing going on that I should be worried about. And I go into my H and M or here in New Zealand, you go to your Glassens or your Uniqlo in San Francisco and you get your $12 t shirt. Oh, this is great for me. But who's it not great for? Same with our iPhones or our Samsungs.

Cool.

This is so convenient. But you're right, like we don't know. We can't trace it back to who's being abused, trafficked. And to think about it for a second, the majority of our listeners come from western world countries.

The people that were in those countries committing those crimes, as in the men, largely men, I imagine going to abuse these young people, they came from the New Zealands and the Irelands and the Canadas and the these countries and they're everyday people that have everyday jobs.

Yes.

So what I'm hearing is that that hasn't stopped. That still happens.

Absolutely, it still happens. And that's not even going to the online world, the dark web. And obviously what took off as a result of COVID when people couldn't travel.

Yeah, it absolutely still happens. There are more people in slavery in the world today than at any other time in human, human history. And as I discovered, much to my chagrin, modern slavery will not go willingly into the night. It's a multi, multi billion dollar industry. Organized crime.

Sometimes, sometimes in relation to human trafficking. Often it's everything from your, you know, auntie, entrepreneurial auntie who.

Who wants to make a quick dollar through to massive organized global crime syndicates. But also when you get over to forced labor where the majority of people are in slavery, bonded labor.

Then.

It's not necessarily just, you know, the criminal lens falls apart because it's an economic lens.

As I said, it's the way our whole global economy can work. You know, it's why many of the brands you mentioned and thousands more, it's why they make all their stuff.

In the developing world, largely.

Not to fuel slavery, but because we have a very large pool of cheap, vulnerable and sadly, easily exploitable labour.

Is there a possibility where this world economically could thrive without the need for slavery?

We could absolutely thrive. What we have to stop is this incessant addiction to growth and to more. We can still thrive, we can still be prosperous, but it will take a fundamental shift in.

Our greed, basically our insistent desire for more, for better, which again comes back to our. I don't say that as a shaming, naming, blaming kind of thing. It just comes back to the human wound that we all carry, that we're all ultimately insecure and afraid and we think that if we have more stuff, then we're going to be more secure, 100%.

And we can see that as almost being fed to us as well through social media, which. Social media has lots of really great things about it. So many great things. But however, there's a dark side to that as well.

Absolutely.

The idea of affluenza, of this constant need for more affluence, more money, more clothing, cars, etc. I mean, you could see that rhetoric being pushed pretty strongly online. But what I'm hearing is that there are other options and we can take a different route.

Absolutely. And there are very large movements now, I'm sure you're aware, many of them, that, that are, you know, less is more. And as you simplify your life, you simplify your mind, you're, you're, you know, you're free and liberated in ways that we don't have time to talk about today. Probably. But.

So there's absolutely different ways to run an economy and to define success, I think is the key, you know, culturally to call BS on what we.

Sometimes unconsciously, but accept as a very, very shallow definition of success. And I, you know, again, I.

Don'T claim to be there. You know, I'm as vulnerable and.

Flawed as anyone else. And.

I think I met a girl who was in slavery who fundamentally changed my understanding of what it means to prosper. And.

Her name is Esther and she was about 14 or 15. She grew up in a tribe in Burma and her auntie came and promised a very poor family that she would get Esther a job across the border in Northern Thailand where she could make enough money to send home and support her entire family. So, somewhat reluctantly, the parents agreed. Esther went across the border with her auntie, and sadly, the auntie took her straight to a brothel where she received a very high price for a virgin. The auntie disappeared. They kept her locked up for a number of weeks until they could find someone who was willing to pay the price to rape a virgin. Sadly, Esther was brutalized. They. I won't go into too much detail, but they had to use. She put up such a fight, they had to use masking tape to tie her down. And then, sadly, she was put out with all of the other girls in the brothel, exact same situation, and brutalized many, many times a day for many months until one of my colleagues was able to infiltrate that place posing as a customer, wearing a camera and in the privacy of the bedroom, earned her trust and was able to get her story, took that information to the police. The police raided that location, rescued Esther, and arrested the people responsible. The next day, they took Esther back to collect and the other girls back to the brothel to collect because they only had the clothes on their back to collect their few belongings. And when they went into the room that had been her, essentially her prison cell, above the beard upon which she had been raped many times a day was this writing on the wall. And they said, esther, what's this writing? And she said, well, my family comes from a Christian tribe in Burma. And this was a poem, a psalm that my parents read to me every day. And they said, well, you know, will you read it?

She read it, and it said, God, you are my light and. And my liberation. Whom shall I fear? God, you are the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid when evil men advance against me to devour my flesh. Even then I will trust that you are good, that you are for me, and that I am loved.

This teenage girl who I subsequently met, just one of the most courageous young woman I've ever met. And that statement, not so much a religious statement, although I'm sure that was part of it for her, but an ontological statement or a statement of what it means to be human, that somehow she had tapped into what Viktor Frankl discovered in Auschwitz, what Martin Luther King discovered in a jail in Alabama, and what Nelson Mandela discovered in a prison in Robben island, that the circumstances of our life do not have the ultimate authority to define and to name who we are. And she had Gone deep. And in the midst of her slavery.

She had found that place and was liberated long before she was set free.

Wow.

And she. Yeah. When my life subsequently fell apart and shattered her story and her example, and.

Became my inspiration to find that same. To seek it anyway. To trust that when your life does shatter, that there is a ground.

That'S solid upon which you can stand.

What an amazing young woman. To have that ability to see a picture the way that she was able to see it, it would have been horrific to be in her shoes and for her to be able to do that and get through that with that kind of perspective, well, it's unbelievable. And for you, I imagine, doing this work, this important work, this heroic work, there would have been potentially some kind of. We talked a bit about earlier, God complex. Like, I'm here, I'm James Bond. I'm here to save the day. Like, let me in. I want to get it done.

James Bond for Jesus. That was me.

Yeah, there you go. James Bond for Jesus.

Yeah, right.

That's. That must fill a cup that must be fulfilling the dopamine rush, the serotonin, all these feel good things and almost addictive in terms of I'm in it, but I want to be back home with my family, but I'm in it, doing my thing and I'm here, God, I made a difference. You head back home to normal life. There'd be a dopamine dip and like, hey, I need more. Like, I need another rush. I need it. Let's go. How did you manage to navigate that? And I guess to some degree you struggled because the divorce, I imagine, was a lot to do with the work that you were doing.

Absolutely.

I dealt with it by not dealing, you know, very imperfectly.

As I said. There's a lot of that I'm grateful for in the evangelical tradition that I was a part of. But there was a lot of toxic theology, you know, which my ego loved, to your point, right. That I was God's agent of justice. And we were told, you know, you are God's plan A and there is no plan B, which my ego loved until plan A collapsed and burned. And I failed more times than I succeeded. And then as in the example I described, you know, what do you do if I'm God's plan A and I just fail to rescue those little girls and there is no plan B? Wtf? Like, what is. You know, what does that mean? And what a weight on my shoulders that I'm God's plan.

So. But. But that was the weight that I was carrying. I didn't know about self care, self compassion, none of those things. And as, as you said, you know, things came to a head after, after four years of being James Bond for J. Jesus. I was on my very last deployment and by this time I'd started to believe my own press, you know, that I, that I was a superhero. And I bought the. I was in Jamaica. I bought a woman who had been trafficked from Ukraine. She had paid off her debt, she was now working for herself out of this bar. But she had great intelligence and, you know, I paid for her time. She came back to my hotel, recorded her story and then I said what I often said, you know, I had to make up some excuse every time. And those excuses were varied by the way. Sometimes I'd say, I'm from New Zealand, we don't have sex, not on the first date. You know, I just want to get to know you. That's why we're a small country. Other times I'd just say, look. And that's what I said in this case, look, I've just broken up with my girlfriend. I really just want some company. Look, give me a massage and I'll take you back.

She was very good at massage. And one thing led to another and we had sex and I could not believe it had happened. I was, you know, obviously looking back in hindsight now, I wonder how it took four years for it to happen. But I took her back to the, to the bar, I came back to my hotel room, I closed the door and I just collapsed and sobbed for about three days.

And as I said, we, you know, that was one of the factors, wasn't the only factor, but that was one of the factors, significant, significant factors that, that contributed to my, my world imploding and, and subsequent divorce and, and being back in the New Zealand police.

And went to see the police psychologist, which again, the police are great in that regard. Your life falls apart, they go and get some help. And he said, you know, I recommend you write down your thoughts. I got carried away and wrote a book.

Which was very cathartic. And I suppose it was during that process that I started to deal with four years of not dealing with. And.

That led to, well, starting a New Zealand organisation doing the same sort of work, but hopefully learning from our mistakes, so making sure that staff were well debriefed, that the partners and spouses were included in the decision making and in the field operations that, you know, self compassion, self care, talking about shame and, and all those deep, deep wounds that, that, that I'd been oblivious to.

Previously, but I was talking to someone recently and.

And I was just explained that particular story and I told him what, what happened in that, in that hotel room. And he said, wow, what a gift. And, and I said, you know what, like this, this was devastating to me. This like my.

This was three days of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not to mention the destruction that came after that. And he said, what a gift for that ego wrapped up in all of that toxic kind of belief and weight to be just smashed and to be.

Shattered and that you are human and you're not a God. Or God. Yeah, it's interesting. Do you mind if we unpack that a little bit?

Oh, please.

So first things first. This, this woman, she was obviously an adult.

She was about 25, 26. Yeah.

Okay. And this is the first and obviously only time this had happened.

Yes.

And.

What after it, if I can just. This is the first time that I'd crossed that line.

Yes.

It was four years of compromise leading to that point.

Because you talk to me about those moments where you're like, what it's like as a human male.

Yes.

In this. Because I imagine you're in brothels, you're in different bars. There's probably a lot of weird things happening. Naked, mostly women, I imagine.

Absolutely. Yeah. That was my day job, was going into a go. Some of my colleagues in the police wanted to know how do you get this? But it was going into a Go Go bar, for example, in the Philippines, because there's a 10 or 12 year old girl who's been trafficked.

Is that the same as a strip club?

Essentially, yeah. Like a naked woman dancing around a pole. You know, when you come in, they'll, one of them will come over and sit beside you. They'll basically try and seduce you so that you then have to pay a bar fine to take her back to your hotel. Or sometimes they have rooms on site.

But in order to get that evidence, I have to sit there and.

Be the customer. You know, I've got a camera which is a liability if it's found. So I have to be very careful that that camera is not found.

But I've also got to pretend to be like all the other guys around me, really into what's going on. And as a male with any kind of red blood cells, you're surrounded by.

Many, many beautiful young naked women who are doing their best to seduce you, including coming and sitting on your knee and pushing their breasts into your face and putting their hands you know, and you can redirect to a certain degree, but your life also depends upon being convincing. And so, you know, there'll be moral compromises all along the way in order to get that evidence. And you know, one case in Johor Bahru, southern Malaysia, infiltrated a brothel where there was more than 100 women from seven different nations that had all been promised jobs and teaching waitressing that arrived, their passports taken, raped and brutalized, locked up in this factory style brothel. And they'd sent some, some American investigators who, who weren't able to get in. They sent a couple of Thai investigators, they were turned away. So they sent the Kiwi and unassuming, assuming, yeah, they used to call me the genius and I don't say that, you know, to blow smoke up my bum. I think it was just because as Kiwis, yeah, we're, we're a bit more unassuming, a bit more self effacing. We're not a threat. And so I had a backpack on, I just was like, ah, you know, what's going on here mate? You know, is this like, is this a brothel? Oh my God. And come on in. And gained entry. I spent three days going backwards and forwards and documented several women who once we were in the bedroom and I paid to have sex with them, but then indicated that actually I didn't want to. I was just happy to talk. They wept and in every case said, please tell my family where I am. And.

One of them spoke really good English. And so I wanted to find out because this place was protected by local authorities, I wanted to find out who they were, where they hid the girls. When the police came, there was a lot of information that she could give me so I paid for her to come back to my hotel room for the night. So she slept in my bed. We did not have sex and I, she was a bit confused to start with, but I'm like, hey, no, you know, I just want the company. And she was like, well this is weird but whatever. And, but she gave me a lot of information about how the place operated. As a result of the information she gave me, we rescued about 100 women during a. It was the largest rescue operation of its kind, huge success, except that I went home and my marriage was never the same. We didn't have sex, but I'd slept in the bed with.

You know, this young, beautiful, Thai 25 year old woman.

And that's just one example of hundreds of compromises along the way.

Chipping away at your soul.

Absolutely. And my identity.

And so I think when things fell apart. Now, looking back, and as I said, my friend said, wow, what a gift.

Yeah, I very much got my significance, purpose, meaning, worth and identity out of what I did, not who I was. And so I was so shattered at the time, looking back, I'm incredibly grateful for it now because it took a. It was like a death, but it took a good year or more until I was finally able to just catch glimmers of. Similar to Esther, you know, I don't mean to compare my experience with hers, except to, say her example, her inspiration, that finally catching a glimpse of.

Someone who could get their sense of identity from who they were, not from what they did. You know, my hero through all that time, Batman begins. There's that great line.

It'S not who I am underneath, it's what I do that defines me. You know, I love that. That's. It's what I do that defines me. But that is the root of the toxic.

Insidious. Because if what I do defines me both good and bad, then that's the ultimate of who I am. But what Esther and others, the great ones.

Have taught us, and do teach us, is that we are not just the sum total of what we do, whether good or bad, but we are infinitely more. And I guess my shattering opened up a path whereby I could start to step into that. Well, fall into that, actually.

It's incredible. I want to say thank you for actually sharing this, and I want to take it and go a bit deeper. But for you to do this and be radically honest is difficult. It's difficult for you. It's difficult for me. It's difficult for the listener or the viewer. Right now, there's a couple of things I want to touch on. The first being that a listener or a viewer might right now be listening, going, my God, look at the work he did. He's amazing. He's one of the greatest souls. He saved all these lives. Oh, my God. He just told me that he's now had sex with someone he was in there to help. And instant judgment, instant finger pointing, instant.

More than feeling let down. I don't know what the next level of that is, but these feelings come up, and I just want to compare that for everyone else out there. Like, I think we all have things in our lives that there's shame around, and they could be big things, and they could be things that happened 20 years ago, five minutes ago. It could be things that you do daily that you're ashamed of. And often for the people that are listening, the Light will never be shone on their shame publicly because they choose to cover it up. And it could be addictions to things, could be how they treat themselves or treat others, things that they maybe aren't honest about. So I want to shine the light on the fact that I think we all can connect, on the fact that we all experience shame and it's normal and it's very uncomfortable and it's not nice, but actually it's normal. That feeling of shame. How did you bring this to your wife? How did you have that conversation, your ex wife? And what did it feel like when you actually finally just were open and upfront?

Yeah. Very insightful question. Thank you. And summation.

Yeah, we were already struggling, as I said.

The nature of the work. She didn't want to know. Ultimately, increasingly, what I was doing and what I was being exposed to was too painful for her, which I understood and respected. But it also meant that I had to navigate what I was dealing with in a silo. And as I said, there weren't. The organisation I worked for was fantastic, but they were very young and they were learning as well. And so we didn't have many of the supports in place, which they now have.

And so things were already collapsing around us. That's why ultimately I resigned. We came back to New Zealand, I was back in the police here. We tried for two years to hold things together and when it looked like.

It wasn't going to work, I thought maybe this dark secret that I'm holding is kind of, you know.

The thing that's just unconsciously.

Imperceptibly eroding our relationship. And if I'm transparent about it, maybe we can heal. Maybe, maybe we can. Maybe we can fix this. So I told her, I said.

And I tried to explain, you know, while this was a one off in terms of going all the way, this was the nature of my work. This was the slow erosion of my boundaries in my soul. But ultimately I crossed the line and this is what happened. And, you know, no judgment on her. Again, it wasn't the only reason, but it didn't, it wasn't a magic pill. If anything, it just confirmed.

For her that I was pretty broken. And we subsequently divorced. And that was one of the most painful things in my life. I know you've been through that path. Having to look your children in the eye and tell them that and dad aren't going to be living together anymore and seeing just their spontaneous tears. Yeah, that will always be one of the hardest days of my life, I bet. Yeah.

And Then beginning that long journey, or continuing that long journey rather, of.

Healing. And as you said, Shane, Brene Brown became one of my heroes. You know, her work just around, as you rightly said, like, we all have shame. It just looks different.

And she's done such an amazing job of helping us understand that.

Shame is there in all of our lives. And it only. It thrives in secrecy and silence. Just like slavery, shame thrives in secrecy, in silence and darkness. And the only way to break through it is to bring it to the light and to share it. Not necessarily like this, but, you know, with someone that you. In a safe place, with someone that will neither abandon nor invade you. And.

To receive forgiveness, to forgive yourself, well, that was one of the. You know, I'd stepped away from the. The evangelical Christian scene, but my children were still in some sort of program. And I went along to one of the churches to drop them off one Sunday morning. And I said, I used to be at the front, you know, William Wilberforce, talking about rallying the church to rescue people from slavery. Well, I was the, you know, the publican down the back of the church, sitting in the dark corner. But this particular morning, the pastor was talking about forgiveness. And he said, you know, I just want everyone to close their eyes and think about who they need to forgive. And I thought, oh, you know, I've not this. You know, I've forgiven everybody, like, and it's been hard, and I've done the work, you know, I'm not holding. And then I just felt this real, real deep little whisper. Say the invitation to forgive is to forgive you. And I just wept. So many moments like that, of. Of dealing with the shame, as you rightly said, that we all carry in some form of another.

Thank you for sharing that and this piece around forgiveness. How does someone do that? Like, someone right now is listening to this or watching this, and they've done something that they didn't want to do, at whatever level it might be. They might have spat chewing gum out on the ground and they knew it was the wrong thing to do. They might have hurt someone. They might have lied to someone they love. How does someone go about forgiving themselves? And I guess I'd love you to speak to that in terms of your process. You're sitting in church, you get this almost epiphany, like, oh, the one person I haven't forgiven is me. How do I do that? So what is the journey of forgiveness?

Well, yeah, excuse me.

I don't fully know, I think, to say that I knew.

Would be hubris, would be arrogance. Because everyone's journey is different and the wounds are all different and they look different.

I mean, leading up into this point, like I said, I'd had to journal and essentially write a book about my experience. I'd had to sit with a lot of people in whose company I felt accepted, that, as I said, held safe space for me.

That I'd confided in, that had forgiven and welcomed me.

As well as reading Brene Brown and watching all of her stuff around, the nature of shame and how insidious it is.

And I think just letting go, letting go of.

The hero and all the stuff.

Connected to that, you know, it felt like a death.

But incredible freedom in letting this definition of what I had defined as success, letting that go. So all I can say for me, forgiveness.

Feels like whatever it is you're holding on to, it feels like opening your hands and letting it fall. And sometimes it's a journey, right? We pick it up, we keep carrying it, but ultimately, over time, letting it go again and again and again, sometimes into other people's hands. You know, if there's a spirituality into the hands of.

Someone or.

Some people, some beings bigger, stronger than you, to carry whatever is appropriate for.

You in your worldview, that's culturally appropriate as well, I might add. But for me, it's a different energy. It's the opposite of striving, it's the opposite of attaining. It's getting to that point where I know I cannot attain this, but in my powerlessness to attain it, I will assume a stance such that it might be attained in me.

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And to me, the word that comes to me is acceptance. As you explain that, accepting things, accepting yourself, accepting your flaws. And I think that's a very difficult thing to do at times, very difficult. I want to also shine a light a little bit on the things that we have. We talked about fashion, let's just talk about the corporate side of modern day slavery. And it seems weird that I'm even using that term, modern day slavery.

Modern slavery, like, it seems crazy that it goes on, but what can companies do? Actually, let's go the opposite side. What are companies not doing right now that they should be doing to try and remedy this?

So in the sustainability space, esg, environment, social governance, modern slavery, UN Sustainable Development Goals, you know, there is a global movement which has so much wonderful, amazing people doing incredibly good, good work in it.

And.

There is a movement, you know, you can call it whatever you want, ethical, business, responsible investing, responsible Business, corporate social responsibility. Like there's all these terms which, which are basically as you said, we need to do better. You know, we need to if to protect our brand. Usually that's self preservation. Exactly. It's usually ego based. You know, corporate social responsibility is basically, it's, it's this externally imposed responsibility or duty that I feel as a company I need to do just to protect myself. So I don't, I don't want to be on the front page of the paper like some big brands over the last 20, 30 years because slavery was found. And so it's, it's self preservation. Some go a little bit further and they genuinely want to make an impact. There's the B Corp movement, benefit corporation movement. You know, again, great, great, great work.

I think having spent the last seven years in that corporate sustainability esg, modern slavery space, from my perspective there is, it's not so much what companies need to do, although there are things certainly that could be done.

But it's a different way of.

It comes back to redefining success.

Because you can be a B corp, you can be an ethical business, but fundamentally it doesn't necessarily change your culture one bit. It doesn't change your bottom line and your ethos as to why you're in the marketplace one bit. And ultimately go growth at all costs on a finite planet is still your modus operandi.

And in modern slavery, the unfortunate necessity of making a profit.

I think one of the most hopeful movements that I've seen in the last few years is the Inner Development Goals created by many of the same people who created the system Sustainable Development Goals in recognition that we are not going to achieve any of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, not because we lack the science or know how, but because we lack the internal development, the inner development. As human beings, we don't have the courage, we don't know how to define ourselves. Similar to what I said earlier by first of all being not doing.

Our definition of success is so caught up in more and in growth at all costs. And so the Inner Development Goals is basically saying, you know, we need more.

Say need more. Because again, that's back to the whole, back to the language of ego, but that the world is, you know, the world's on fire. And.

The invitation is for more and more of us to do that necessary inner work such that we place being before the doing, that we know how to get past our ego and our shadow. We're even aware of what those things mean, such that we can collaborate. And that's the most Exciting, exciting area is when you see leaders and brands really doing their inner work, changing the culture, changing their definition of success. Because.

We talk about modern slavery, again, thrives in secrecy and silence. And so a lot of businesses talk about transparency in their supply chain. We need to be transparent. But the reality is most businesses spend millions, billions of dollars on polishing the corporate turd, basically on advertising, on marketing, on only putting their shiny side out. And so you have this real competing demand. On the one hand, you only want to be shiny and look good, understandably. And a capitalist, you know, we want to just look great, buy our stuff, but you also have this competing demand to air all your shit in your global supply chain. And actually best practice, if there is best practice, emerging practice I should probably call it, is to lead with like some brands are really courageously doing. We found there was a Tony's Chocolone said recently, you know, we found more than 1500 children working in child labourers in our chocolate supply chain. That is best practice because those kids are already there. But this company is saying we found them. That's the win. We're going to talk about it. Same as shame, same as the conversation we had earlier. That's the way we're going to deal with this stuff, by bringing our wounds as individuals and as corporates to the surface. But you won't have the courage to do that if you're still ego based. So I put a lot of my hope in the willingness of brands to do their inner work, to address the corporate ego, the corporate shadow and the inner development goals. Have a toolkit and a pathway as to how you can do that, such that your culture changes, you're then able, because you've dealt with your corporate ego, you're now able to collaborate. You know, again, when it comes to modern slavery is just one of the many challenges that, you know, we're facing as a species. But it just feels like we're rearranging the chairs on the Titanic so that this chair is slightly more sustainable and this chair is a little bit greener and we're moving them and they're all responsible and they're all ethical, but it's not changing the speed, size or direction of the ship itself.

The reality is many of these changes, challenges like slavery, are too big for any one business or actually any one country to respond to on their own. So we absolutely need to collaborate. The problem is we don't know how truly because of our, our ego and our shame, all the things we talked about. So I suppose, long way of Saying I put my money on inner development goals and the work that stems from it and floats around it because it offers a real way for.

Businesses, brands and leaders to do that necessary inner work such that they can truly collaborate. I'll just end by saying the company that I worked for most recently, just before I left.

Signed an MOU memorandum of understanding with their direct competitor, saying that when it comes to our shared supply chain, we will work collaboratively on addressing worker well being and any cases of exploitation that we find there.

That's unheard of. That's really cool. That's ultimate radical collaboration.

And what a story. Like you talk about brands looking to earn the trust of their clients. Right. Of their customers. Well, what a way to earn trust.

That's amazing. And it takes me back to kind of stoic philosophy of do the right thing, do the right thing, do it now, doesn't matter what it is, if it's hard to do it, but it's the right thing, just do it. And often with large organizations, businesses that are competing, working together and agreeing on things, it's sometimes not easy to do, but it's the right thing in this case. So that's a good example of setting a new precedent. I am aware that New Zealand is a small country. I live here and I love it. We've got 5ish million people. So in terms of us leading the charge and making a big impact and changing these things, we might not have as much punching power as a UK, USA, Russia, etc. However, what do you think our current coalition government can do in this space? Is there anything that they can do to actually start impacting things and making a difference?

Yes, there is.

And.

I still have hope that they will. I was on the Modern Slavery Leadership Advisory Group, which was a group formed under the previous government from a range of business, private sector, investment union, ngo, human Rights Commission, tertiary sector, bringing people with knowledge and know how hopefully, or some sort of, you know, what could be called expertise in the modern slavery space to create legislation that was culturally relevant, that, that fit the New Zealand context, that wasn't demanding, but that was actually positively framed. In other words, we were going to be the first country in the world that rather def. Rather many other nations have, have done great work like the uk, like Australia. They've created a UK or Australian Modern Slavery act, which is great.

Do we have one?

We don't.

New Zealand doesn't have one, no.

So this group that I was a part of was working to create a New Zealand version of that and I think What I was excited about was rather than frame our response by calling it a modern slavery act, in other words, framing our response in terms of what we're against, we were going to positively frame our response in terms of what we were for.

That's powerful.

So.

The draft version said the Freedom, Fairness and Dignity act or something similar, you know, so that when we went out to the private sector, for example, it wasn't something onerous that they reluctantly felt obliged to adhere to like a modern slavery act. It was something that they already internalized because they're part of this culture. The freedom, fairness, dignity, that's what makes us New Zealand. And. And so this is something, not that we have to do, but something we get to do. And that was going to be the framing. Sadly, the current coalition government has decided and has said publicly that modern slavery is not a priority for them. I hope that changes.

And.

There'S a lot I could say, but I probably shouldn't.

Why not?

Well.

I think I've. Hopefully what I've said already about modern slavery.

I'll share what I said publicly and in writing to the Prime Minister actually, that, you know, any kind of. I understand the drive to balance the books and to.

Focus on, quote, cost of living and inflation and economic prosperity, but as I said earlier, any kind of prosperity or wealth that we enjoy in this country, if it is built on the back of slavery, what kind of prosperity, what kind of life is that? What kind of culture are we building and what kind of nation are we identifying ourselves as? If on the one hand we say our economic. Our economic, like our little New Zealand bubble, our economic prosperity and growth can be achieved at the expense of people in slavery. We're no better than.

The slaveholders in, you know, 1800s, Mississippi, or.

You know, elsewhere. I could expand the metaphor, but you know what I mean, I get it.

100% get it. And have you given up in terms of trying to influence them or is this a lifelong mission of yours?

I wouldn't say it's a mission because I'm done with missions. Right.

That's fair.

Yeah. No, I think the moment something again becomes a mission, then again that's where the, you know, that becomes that God complex thing. Exactly. It's my mission.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Not that having a mission is a bad thing always, but for me, I've got to carry it lightly.

Yeah.

So I wouldn't say it's a mission.

I hope I have something to offer in this space, and as long as I do, then I will continue to put myself out There as currently at least. My website says consultants, keynote speaker, corporate training.

Yeah. So in the modern slavery sustainability space.

Well, I know of many large corporates and organizations that have hired you and have loved you. I've haven't heard you speak on stage yet. Personally, I've watched you on videos. It's been amazing. But I've heard great feedback from people that have been in audiences. So I am going to make sure that the team puts in the show notes, all of your socials, your website, so that if anyone is interested in, in connecting in to hire you to explore where you're headed or to try and help you on what you're trying to achieve, then I'll make sure that they can do that.

Thank you.

No.

Pleasure.

And before we wrap up, a couple other things. So this book. I'm a journaler and I love journaling and it's very cathartic and it's a process and I get all my emotions and ideas out onto the page and. Sounds like this book was a very cathartic process for you. So what was it called? And can I buy a copy?

You can.

It's a delicate question that in keeping with the work that I used to do.

For quote, legal and security reasons, I had to write the book under a pseudonym.

Yes.

And I signed a contract to say that I would never publicly say that that was me.

So if we go searching for it and figure it out, we can do that. We just won't need to name it. People can get creative in trying to figure it out.

They can if they contact me privately through the details that you're gonna post. I'll be happy to share that. But yeah, I can't say publicly.

We'll chat off air and I'll get a copy. I'd like to understand that process and read the book and get a deeper connection with your work.

Thank you. I would say, as I said, I wrote it, I was still. I mean, I think the stories in the book speak for themselves. They're. They're powerful and they're true. The framing around the book was I was, as I said, had an evangelical lens, which, you know, I don't, I don't see the world through today. And so I'm writing a second book. Cool. Actually based on Esther's story. It's about a rather uptight, somewhat religious, overly intense, well meaning man who's trying to rescue women and children from human trafficking. That part's easy to write, but he comes across a teenage girl who has been trafficked and even though she's a slave. She knows who she is and at that deep level. And she's more free than he is in all of his certainty and his dogma. And she sets him free. So it's fiction. I think it was CS Lewis who said story has a way of getting behind the watchful dragons of our mind and getting into the heart. And the first book I wrote because it's a hard read because it's non fiction, it's true, it's just these story after story. So by writing a fictional account and I hope it's more accessible and that it moves people at the heart, not logically. I learned the hard way that just because you share facts and information about slavery and da da da da da, it doesn't necessarily move people. But story has a way of touching the heart and hopefully transforming lives.

I agree. I can't wait to read it. Best of luck with the journey of running it. I know how difficult that can be, but go well, A couple more questions before we wrap up. 1. Do you believe in God now?

I do. I do. Although I would say that that's not.

The main question.

My understanding of God has evolved and.

When my world fell apart, some dear friends said that they would love to take me to Hawaii with them, all expenses paid. So I said absolutely. We went to a conference. The author of a book called the Shack was speaking, Paul Young, and won't go into detail except to say his life was incredibly traumatic. The book that he wrote, a creative fictional account, but was basically what happens in a man's life when he encounters the trauma that we all experience at some form in our lives, suffering and undeserved pain. And he then has an opportunity to spend a weekend with God and basically say wtf? You know, like my little girl who was murdered, you know, did not deserve that.

And yeah, sitting listening to him speak, the author of the Shack speak for the four or five days I was there and then getting to know him and having some conversations subsequent to that, I would say that my theology.

Collapsed under the weight of love. And so the God that I.

Now understand, first of all is not remotely concerned whether I believe in him or her at all, or even whether I trust him or her, but whether I am willing to let go and to fall into the arms of.

Deathless.

A deathless love that is mysterious and beautiful, trustworthy.

You know, I think of just coming back to your question. The words of Jesus I was just listening to this and I podcast the other day. He said, you know, he wasn't concerned whether you believe in God, Whether you trust God, he just wanted to know, do you love with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength? Is that your orientation when you show up each day? And however you understand God, do you love with all your being? And to me, that's. That's God.

That's so helpful and I appreciate you sharing that because I kind of hit you between the eyes with a big question there. The reason being one, I grew up in Northern Ireland and I seen how religion, as they wanted to put it, really caused a lot of issues and does in many parts of the world still to this day. But then more recently, two friends taken their lives in the last month. One was 50 years of age, both here in Christchurch, took his own life, and then another 18 years of age. And I started to try and figure out why that would happen and how could someone get to the point where that happens?

And.

And I was speaking with a mutual friend of this guy that had killed himself, and we were talking about God.

And I said, look, I don't believe in God. I said, I believe there's something big out there. I believe it's something miraculous. I have no idea what it looks like. I don't think it is a person, but it's a miracle that we're alive. So I believe in some kind of spiritual thing. I don't know how to put words to it. And he said, well, look, I feel that if someone gets to their depths of misery and wants to end it and quit and check out.

The solution is to have a relationship with God. And if you have that, then you're not holding on to money or a relationship. So let's say you lose money and you're millions in debt. So the easiest solution, take your life or your lover and your partner falls in love with someone else, so you no longer have any meaning, so you take your life. So he suggested, James, if you have a relationship with God, that it can help you get through those times. And I get it and I understand that and I respect that. But for someone who's not a believer per se, in a specific element or a way to describe a God, I'm just a spiritual person. What do I do? And I guess you answered it at the very end there, where you said, it's how you show up. It's, are you fully loving? Are you showing up with love and intention and passion? And I guess that's all I know how to do in terms of connecting with something. I'm uncomfortable with the Thought of having to read a book that was written thousands of years ago that tells me that this is how we should live. But I respect those who do, and it's their thing. And I'm glad that you answered it the way you did, because it actually helps me a lot. I'm sure there's other listeners and viewers that might have a different viewpoint. But as I share that with you, does anything land?

Yeah, it does.

Wow.

So many places to go. But I think.

There is really toxic. And you've described it, you've touched on it, and I've experienced a real toxic, unhealthy religion. I mean, we look at many places in the world today. It's.

Such destruction and devastation, corruption in the name of an unhealthy understanding of. And a tribal understanding of God. And I think that's what I turned my back on, was.

This kind of monster in the sky. Actually, I brought a poem with me.

That really has helped me because.

I used to adhere to. And I think this is the kind of tribal religion you're talking about, where there's this monster in the sky who basically would.

Who says that in order to be in, you've got to believe these things. And each faith, each denomination, each religion has their own little, you know, at an unhealthy level has this list of things so that we can decide whether you're in or out. And we decide whether you're in or out.

And I think what I've fallen into through the experience that I've described is.

You know, my dad was the kindest man I know. And I know he would never turn his back on me no matter what I did. And I think many religions would have me believe that my dad is more loving than God.

I think.

So. The universal, and I use that word intentionally, the universal love of a God who includes everybody. It's either everybody or God is not worthy of the name. And long before there was a printing press in the last few hundred years.

There is creation.

And that is the original Bible. The original word became flesh through creation. And all of us are a part of that by the nature of us being here. In other words, we're all children of God, and it's not something we need to earn.

There's no believer meter that makes us a believer if we somehow get to, you know, do I believe enough or not believe enough? There's been a lot of corruption.

In particular in the Christian. That's, you know, what I can speak to, I suppose, with. Not with any authority is the wrong word. But Experience, you know. And was it 313 A.D. when Constantine Co opted Christianity?

This underground life giving movement of non violent, generous, forgiving, peaceful life loving, inclusive people suddenly became co opted by empire and by colonialism and by state. And so we could argue that since 313 the message has been woefully diluted, corrupted and translated.

To meet the agenda of certain people. But the original message is what still breaks my heart in the best way possible. But I'll read you this.

Yes, please do.

It's by a modern mystic. I think Shalane Harkin is her name. It's called the worst thing. The worst thing we ever did was put God in the sky out of reach Pulling the divinity from the leaf, Sifting out the holy from our bones Insisting God isn't bursting dazzlement through everything we've made a hard commitment to see as ordinary Stripping the sacred from everywhere to put a cloud man elsewhere Prying closeness from your heart. The worst thing we ever did was take the dance and the song out of prayer Made it sit up straight and cross its legs, Removed it of rejoicing, Wiped clean its hip sway its questions, its ecstatic yellow it's tears. The worst thing we ever did is pretend God isn't the easiest thing in this universe Available to every soul in every breath.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

I love that.

Thank you. What does it mean to you when you read that?

It means I can rest. You know, when I was at that conference in Hawaii, you know, I was still mission, right? That was my life. And so he was taught, talking about this undeserved grace that I was invited to fall into, but I couldn't accept it. I was like, no, I've got. It's not what I was taught growing up. For a start, you know, there's this big gap between me and God.

Basically I was told I'm separated from God and I need to do all these things to get close to God. And what Paul Young was saying was, was no, you don't. And that's not what the original message was before it was corrupted. And so, but I was, you know, I was like, but what about mission? And I, I was the annoying guy down the back. And he said, he said, gary, what if your mission is to crawl up onto the knee of your papa and rest in his relentless affection and delight.

And having a dad that I could do that with all my life physiologically, when he said that, I just went.

Really? And I spent months and still spending years since then just saying, you can't be that Good. You cannot be that good. Because I would fall in love with a God like that.

And I believe that's God.

Thank you for sharing that and thank you for letting the conversation go there. I don't think I've ever had that level of conversation on the show and went in that direction. So I really appreciate you.

Well, I appreciate you asking. And you're uniquely qualified, coming from Ireland, you know, a country torn apart because of different definitions of God and that you, you know, the trauma, the pain, the untold suffering, it behoves us to be honest. And, you know, it's. I know what I've said won't be popular with many people either, but.

We can. Coming back to what you said earlier, too, about shame, which some would say is the original definition of sin. It's not bad stuff we do. That's just the symptoms. The original wound would be, you know, we're wounded.

And so it's a healing, not a judge metaphor that many are quick to go to, but rather it's a wound that we carry and into that wound, in fact.

And I suppose this is what I would say about, if I have a philosophy now, a way of approaching life. It's the wound is the way.

I love that.

The wound is the way. It's in our wounds that the greatest transformation happens. It's in our wounds that we are most vulnerable and precious and held.

And, you know that famous the U2 song, I Love.

A heart that. A heart that. What is it? A heart that hurts is a heart that works. A broken place is where the victory is won. And if we just had the courage individually and collectively, and I'm not saying I have that courage all the time, I don't. But to. To go to that wound and to let it have its way with us, we would be transformed human beings. We would see each other in our wounds that we share. Jewish and Palestinian, Ukrainian and Russian. We would see each other as wounded and the same.

Because we are.

Because we are.

It's interesting. We've got mutual friends in Matt and Sarah Brown, and that's the work that they do in is the healing and what I took from them and their amazing book, she Is not yout Rehab was. You get to pass down one of two things to the next generation. You get to either pass down wounds or wisdom. The choice is yours. And I think the only way to pass down the wisdom is to go into the wound and try and heal the wound. And I think there's many different modalities and ways to do that, but it starts with, I guess, self awareness, acceptance, letting go, as you talked about. You've shared so much, and I feel like this is not our last conversation, the first of many. But I'd like to ask you one final question. So if we were to fast forward many years into the future, you're highly aware that it's your very last day here on Earth. Someone very young comes into the room who you love, and they say, hey, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Hard to go past what I just said, but maybe saying it differently. Don't run from suffering. Embrace it.

I mean, there's a lot of great secret sauce hacks for life out there, and they have value and they're good and they take us to those goals that we have, starting with why it gets us to the horizon of our life.

But what we're talking about today is.

That there's a place beyond the horizon that we can't get to by striving and effort and by, you know, learning the tricks of the trade, as it were. We can only be taken there, we can only be carried there, which is a letting go.

Would this be a good time to share what I. I would love to. Yeah.

So for those that are listening or watching, there was an amazing piece that you shared right before we kicked off, and, yeah, I would love you to share it right now, live on air. It'd be amazing.

Thank you. I was just saying I brought this just in case because it's been singing to me lately, and it sums up, I guess, what. What we talked about. It's called Letting the Hero Die by Paul Weinfield, and I'll just read a little bit of it. He essentially says people throw around the term the hero's journey without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness influencers thinks the hero's journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25,000 followers on Instagram. But the real hero's journey? In the real Hero's Journey, the dragon slays you.

Much to your surprise. You couldn't make that marriage work, much to your surprise. You turned 40 with no kids, no house, no prospects, much to your surprise. The world didn't want the gifts you proudly offered it. If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered and return to the village humbled, but with A newfound sense that you don't have to identify with. The part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know this is where your transcendent life begins. So embrace humility in everything. Life isn't out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. Every defeat is just an angel tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don't have to keep banging your head against the wall. Leave the striver there trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away and life in its vastness will embrace you.

Really powerful. Thank you for sharing that. I'd never heard that. I never connected with that. As soon as you said it, right before we went live on air, I was like, wow, we need to share that. So I'm really glad that you've brought that and thank you for the work that you continue to do. Thanks for sharing a really open space today and going in all different directions to a very deep level. I know that this will have impacted the listener today, and for some, it will have been triggering and challenging. For some it will be very inspiring. And others might have lots of questions. Others might want to get you into work with teams and organizations. And so I'm going to urge the listener, no matter how they're feeling, to reach out to you and let them know how this has landed for them. And I know that, as I say, it's not our last conversation. First of many. So thank you so much.

Thank you, James.

Thank you.

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