Podcast: Ceremonial Consciousness

An intimate podcast about how attention can alchemise our animate world.

I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Veronica Stanwell form the Rooted Healing podcast. We didn’t really know where the conversation might lead us but she has a gentle knack of opening her interviewees up and sharing in personal ways. And that happened with me in what is probably my personal interviews I’ve done to date. To my surprise, I also have subsequently learned that it has been of the most downloaded episodes on Rooted Healing. 

In the conversation, we explored themes around human-nature connection, attention, animism, and the role of ceremony in ecological and personal healing.

Some of the key themes and highlights were as follows:

Meaningful Nature Experiences & Synchronicity

• I shared some of my more powerful personal stories of nature encounters that evoked deeper emotional, spiritual reflection, and searching questions around the nature of reality and the consciousness. 
• We discuss the Westernised framing of these ‘synchronicities’ – meaningful coincidences that seem to arise particularly in times of emotional need, loss, or transition.

Attention as an Ecological and Spiritual Practice

• I share with Veronica the importance of the ‘alchemy of attention’, emphasising that where and how we direct our attention shapes our experience and connection with the world.
• We reflect on how the quality of our attention is buffeted by modern life and how the so-called ‘attention economy’ desensitises us from allowing greater connectedness (and empathy) with nature and others.
• I offer an invitation for practices that reawaken attention, such as tuning in to bird calls or subtle shifts in our surrounds.

Animism & Ceremonial Consciousness

• We discusses animism as the predominant worldview for over 97% of human history (there was unlikely any other worldview to ‘chose’ from) and this view held all of nature as alive and infused with a life force, a perspective present in many extant indigenous traditions.
• I describe ceremonial consciousness as a heightened state of collective intentionality that, in shifting into a non-ordinary state of awareness, allows insights to be revealed and seems to invite encounters with the animate world.
• We explore how rituals and ceremonies, especially in these times, quieten the mental noise, turn us away from (dopamine fuelled) distraction and can restore a sense of reverence for life.

Different Ways of Knowing

• I draw on the idea of ‘multimodal agnosticism‘— being open to multiple explanatory models of reality (e.g., scientific, spiritual, psychological) without rigidly adhering to one.
• I share that I find the Toaist “taiji” (i.e. the yin-yang symbol) to illustrate that so many of experiences often blend – and hold the paradox of – ecological (rational) and animistic (psycho-spiritual) interpretations, with one always containing – yet juxtaposing – the other as part of a unified complementary whole.

Indigeneity and Place-Based Connection

• We share the complexity of longing for indigeneity – and a validated sense of belonging to the land – while acknowledging coloniality and the awkwardness of being ‘non-Indigenous’ in various cultural geographies. 
• We wonder whether true belonging comes from relational reverence for place, not only ancestral lineage.

Parenting, Hope, and Future Generations

• I openly share how my young son’s curiosity deepens my own everyday nature awareness and helps me “see through new eyes” and spend time with things that I might have otherwise overlooked – or edited out of awareness. 
• We emphasise that deeper connectedness needs a cultural container—a community that validates and celebrates those human and more-than-human connections.

Practical Takeaways

• I share practices like nature “nudges” (e.g., noticing a particular birdcall) as unexpected everyday invitations to pause for a mindful moment – noticing with curiosity what is happening in that moment – internally and externally.
• We talk about the importance of creating community rituals and embedding nature-based practices into everyday life.

Overall, this conversation felt deeply personal, philosophical, and ecologically-grounded, weaving science with story, and analysis with awe. My hope is that it may serve as a compelling invitation to attend differently, belong more fully, and reclaim enchantment with the natural world.