Episode 7 – James Kite “Social ecology”

09/25/20 • -1 min

A friend from Awakin Circle (no relation), James is a remarkable character, engaged in the social dimensions of awakening and community.

Audio Version

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Subscribe Links James’ Projects

Find Enlight Project
Enroll Yourself Learning Marathon (Creative & Analytic thinking )
QT – Community Magazine During Lockdown

Influences

Creative Mornings (Creative Lecture series )
Awakin London (Local Mindful community)
Plant Environment (Local Growing Community)
RSA
Ken Willber & Integral theory (Clean up, Wake up, grow up show up)
Metacognition & Self Referential Thinking in arts & life
Neuroplasticity
Permaculture thinking
Systems Thinking

Conduit Club has sadly closed!

Bill’s work

Endlesss – collaborative music app
Hopin – virtual events platform

Transcript

(First 40 minutes only – that’s all we could get for free from Otter app )

Jasmine 0:09
Today on the show is the lovely James. And initially how we first came to know him myself and Bill was both, again through the awake in circles. And you do something special, I think, James, for your work, I think you’re probably on the side of – it’s more unusual, I guess.

And even the theme that you proposed today was very interesting. And so maybe you can explain to others like what you do, and maybe where you are right now.

James Kite 0:56
Cool. Hello, both of you. Thanks for having me. So, being able to explain what I do is probably taken me more than 10 years, and I don’t know if I’m ever gonna get there. But the last out a six to seven years or so I’ve been in the fields of like social arts producing. And for me, that involves kind of jumping from different domains. It involves, like community development, it involves cognition, being understand being able to understand myself and the way I relate to other people. And I guess the framing of how I ended up in this space was, I was really introduced to polymathic thinkers very early on. And I saw the benefit of being in multiple disciplines. And I see the benefit for myself individually. But then the next step is being able to communicate to people that I’m just not in one domain, but I enjoy being in multiple domains. So in summary, I used the word social odds producing, but it’s probably a lot broader than that. And yeah, so that has, that kind of led me to running events with various themes, some mindfulness, some social, economic, some interpersonal, and I’ve been using event as like playgrounds to explore the multiple domains I’ve been running into. So I would say that’s a summary of it. I guess we could probably delve a bit deeper as, as the conversation proceeds.

Bill 2:43
It sounds fascinating. I still don’t quite understand, but I’ve got a slightly better idea now. What What would you say? What would you say? Your what, what what are your aims? And what what are you what? Like, obviously, real life events are kind of off the menu at the moment. But yeah, what have you been looking to achieve with with your work, I guess?

James Kite 3:12
I’ve been looking to kind of develop, like a fuller sense of myself, and feel a sense of the community around me. I think that, at the deepest core of what I’m trying to do is find the most conducive way for us to as a humanity and, and myself to, to kind of coexist and thrive. And, yes, so that’s led me into the like the field of creativity. I kind of come from a bit of music background, but I felt like the skills in music, or the things that you’re practising is actually applicable to so many different fields, the skills of like centering yourself, incenting, what you want to communicate to the world. And I’ve thought of that as just community building. So that’s the that’s the simple kind of answer community building that’s able to not just withstand the world we’re in but kind of build a new world based on the way we interact with each other based on the spaces we create, and how that creates new ways of engaging. Hmm, yeah, it’s kind of like, i...

A friend from Awakin Circle (no relation), James is a remarkable character, engaged in the social dimensions of awakening and community.

Audio Version

Subscribe in your favorite podcast app:

Subscribe Links James’ Projects

Find Enlight Project
Enroll Yourself Learning Marathon (Creative & Analytic thinking )
QT – Community Magazine During Lockdown

Influences

Creative Mornings (Creative Lecture series )
Awakin London (Local Mindful community)
Plant Environment (Local Growing Community)
RSA
Ken Willber & Integral theory (Clean up, Wake up, grow up show up)
Metacognition & Self Referential Thinking in arts & life
Neuroplasticity
Permaculture thinking
Systems Thinking

Conduit Club has sadly closed!

Bill’s work

Endlesss – collaborative music app
Hopin – virtual events platform

Transcript

(First 40 minutes only – that’s all we could get for free from Otter app )

And even the theme that you proposed today was very interesting. And so maybe you can explain to others like what you do, and maybe where you are right now.

Previous Episode

Episode 6 – Getting started with meditation, with Liam Chai.

Thinking about starting to meditate? The good news is you do already! Meditation is an innate ability we all share. We’re joined again by our friend Liam Chai for a philosophical, wide-ranging chat about the many ways people meditate, and the various ways you can learn to deepen your practice – everything from 2 minute breathing exercises from apps to week long silent retreats.

Audio Version

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Subscribe Links

Recommended app – Insight Timer
Liam’s site – liamchai.com
‘The Goenka gang’ – Silent vipassana meditation retreats somewhere near you- dhamma.org

Books

Lorin Roche – Meditation made easy

We’re on Youtube too

Transcript

An experiment this episode – rather than type up timings and notes, we’ve run the audio through a transcriber app. It’s not entirely accurate, but hey you get the whole text and we were able to release the episode now rather than “when we have time to do the notes” What do you think? Also: any volunteers to do show notes for us?

Bill 0:08
So we’re here today to talk about getting started with meditation.

Perhaps I could ask you to kick off live as a show guest today.

Liam 0:26
Okay.

I was your show guest last week too!

Bill 0:33
Because we love you.

Liam 0:37
Yeah, I think it’s a

it’s a relevant theme for me at the moment. I feel like I don’t know about the two of you. But I, I definitely come in. I think going in ways I think recently with my own practice. You know, there’s like, these periods of like, pretty intense, daily practice, especially on on retreat. But then I think after coming, I remember one time being on retreat. It was like a short weekend retreat. And someone was, yeah, he said, Oh, it was my first retreat that I went on. And, you know, I wasn’t, he was like, I wasn’t drinking alcohol. I wasn’t eating all this junk food. And I was meditating all the time on this retreat. And then he said, the first thing he did when he came back to is, you know, came off of retreat and back home. He said, he just he just binge on everything. He was like drinking, he was eating junk food. And he was like, just going in reverse. And, yeah, I feel like there’s this sort of similar cycle that plays out, you know, yeah, from like, really intense practice. And then after that, it’s kind of really, there’s not bothering and stepping away from the practice. And now, yeah, you know, so I feel like this podcast is. Yeah, it’s almost like a signal. Okay, it’s time to like, get back into the practice some more. So, it’s a good topic. I

Jasmine 2:08
actually thought about that. Exactly. today. I was thinking if we’re having on it on the, on the desk, we’re talking constantly about meditation, it’s absolutely vital that our practices solid. So I completely agree with

Bill 2:25
you. Yeah, I would add to that, that, it’s, I don’t know, formal practice is a thing, right. And we all get kind of a bit attached to it. I think that, oh, you know, I’ve done my meditation today, I’m fine. You know, everything’s cool. Or, like, Oh, I haven’t, you know, I’m a bad person. And I’m slacking on my journey. And I’m trying to make more space in life for just to acknowledge all the other kinds of meditation that I do as well, you know, like, just just sitting in a bath. And that’s, that’s been, I’m starting to sort of understand better how big a thing that is for me, that I can just sit in a sandbox with no, nothing, you know, that I sort of make a mini ritual out of it. And I will have nothing added to that I don’t bring a book. I mean, some people do, and that’s fine. But I just don’t bring a book, I just stare at the wall, basically. And sometimes I’ll change the lights and make it kind of real dark. And I just, and that’s, that’s my meditation. And, and that’s fine. Like, what, you know why devalue it, because I didn’t do like a formal practice.

Jasmine 3:41
So I think, you know, when you start doing a ritual like that, so ritual being something new take on quite regularly. That begins to open up the scope for it being a formal practice. And that sounds because, yeah, it takes on another element every time you do. And I think exactly that. How we see four practices only just setting but I was speaking to

someone said the other day, where

even just like movement based practices aren’t even acknowledged as much. So let’s say yoga or Tai Chi or even just walking, but we would say that would be like walking practice, you know, rather than like a sitting practice, which everyone thinks to be a bit more like for warm sometimes. So the more that we can expand the scope o...

Next Episode

Episode 8 – Lorin Roche. Meditation can actually be easy

Really special episode this, with one of our favorite meditation teachers. Lorin is something of a ‘meditator whisperer’ – having spent much of his life being an unorthodox counsellor to meditators who were having trouble in their practice. Lorin casts aside monasticism, ascetism, and puritanical thinking for a clear-eyed and honest look at what it means to meditate as someone ‘in the World’: Someone with family, responsibilities, a career – and all the other things that exist outside the Ashram. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did – please let us know your thoughts!

NB. A problem with the stream meant we couldn’t capture Jasmine’s video.

Audio Version

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Subscribe Links Sites

Lorin’s main site – https://lorinroche.com/
Lorin & Camille’s teacher training – https://www.meditationtt.com

Books

Transcript

(First 40 minutes only – that’s all we could get for free from Otter app )

Bill 0:09
Lauren, thanks so much for joining us.

Lorin Roche 0:12
Oh, it’s delightful. I miss England so much.

I love London. And

it’s fun to be a California in like a beach person. Good. I’ve lived most most of my life within a mile of the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, I like to live right? right near the shore. And once I was in London, and I was like, looking around, like, Where am I? Where’s the where’s the tube? So this guy comes walking along on the street, and I go, he looks like he knows his way around. It was wearing his bespoke suit, this fantastic looking guy. And I said, Can you tell me where’s the subway or the tube? And, and like for half a second. He goes like, it was like, you don’t talk to me? Do you understand? Like, I’m a high class person. You don’t just speak to me without being introduced? for about half a second. And then you saw I could see him process my accent. And then go, he’s an American, and then shift to being friendly. And then like, he’s probably a California and he could tell and that he just dropped the whole thing. And all of a sudden, I was his friend. And he just like took me under his wing and was showing me a we don’t have that. That same. Like, same structure. Yeah, like yeah, here. Camille and I were both born, right, right here at the beach near the beach in LA, and our mothers were. But in Los Angeles. If you’re here for a week, you’re an old timer. It’s like if you’re here. You’re a Dennison. Do you own it? If you hear your inhabitant? It’s a totally different, different attitude.

Bill 2:23
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there’s a constant class war on the streets of Britain. I thought when I, I lived in Japan for a couple of years. And when I got back to London, I was just in shock. at the striation level, the barriers in the streets.

Lorin Roche 2:43
Yeah, wow.

Bill 2:46
Cool. Well,

Lorin Roche 2:47
to me, it’s kind of like exotic

Lorin Roche 2:50

— to see that kind of order.

Bill 2:55
Awesome.

Lorin Roche 3:00
And, but, you know, that brings up the point, that the meditation traditions come from these intense caste system. Yeah. And the people who wound up in the monasteries might have been just the debris. The people who couldn’t fit in, yeah. broken. And, and weird and transgender, like, they didn’t talk about there’s very few notes. But in, in the monasteries, people who like why would somebody join a monastery when when everybody’s supposed to get married and have kids? Is it people who, when they hit puberty, whatever age, that would be 10, or 11, or 12, or 13, just freaked out and said, I’m out of here. Or their parents sold them to the monastery. Because there was no food, they couldn’t feed them, from much of from much of human civilization time, from much of time. There. There were the famines and times when there’s no food. And literally, people were starving, even if they were farmers. And so they would give one of their kids to the monastery. So it’s a motley crew.

Bill 4:26
Yeah. Wow. I love that we’ve dive straight in but lines for a minute. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners? I think some of them may not have heard of you. And it’d be. I’ve watched like nearly every interview, I can find a viewers on YouTube or whatever. Yeah, be great to get an intro. So welcome to the show. Lauren, how are you?

Lorin Roche 4:50
Thank you, Bill...