In this three part series together with my guest, Zach Seagle we explore the world of grief & sorrow. Zach is a grief counsellor, former school principal, educator and a plant-medicine worker in the lineage of the Asháninka, a Peruvian Amazonian tribe.
We met in Pisac, Peru introduced by a mutual friend, Stephanie Kittell. Before we even met in person, our acquaintance had started with exchanging long voice notes and already very early on I knew that I HAD to have Zach on my podcast.
What fed further into my desire to have him for everyone to listen, is attending one of the grief rituals hosted by Zach. I felt a lot of resistance, but took a plunge. It took a whole day: of crying, purging, sharing – to shift the grief within me. And the insights I got during that ritual are still here.
I can’t say that I was “healed”.
Because, you see… grief isn’t something you heal – or even need to heal from. It’s about learning how to be with it, to learn its many faces and to be able to look at them all.
I loved learning about five gates of grief from Zach and gradually began accepting that everything I love I will lose (3rd gate of grief). And contrary to an assumption, looking at grief is not “depressing”. It was impossible for me get to the other side of grief & sorrow – the unbridled child-like joy – without letting myself fully feel into grief, into loss, into the pain of losing.
Why I loved talking to Zach
Every time we would bump into each other around Pisac (and it happened often, as Pisac is a small village in the Peruvian mountains), we would ourselves deep into a conversation moving from mythology to psychology, from grief to determinism, from Gabor Mate to Carl Jung. So, while Zach has become a dear friend, I am delighted to invite you into our conversation. I think everyone, literally everyone will benefit from it. It lasted much longer than my usual interviews, so it became a series.
In the series, Zach opens the gates of grief & sorrow and through his eloquent un-rushed manner talks about concepts like dissolution of the ego, the darkness of the soul. He shares what he learnt when studying with the same family over more than 8 years in the Amazonian jungle. We talked about what Western civilisation can learn from the indigenous traditions and rituals.
Part 1: Sorrows of the World
In this first part, we discuss the sorrow of the world, felt acutely by the Indigenous cultures. Zach from years shares the experience of the “kinship system” – a profound feeling of relating to nature and its members (fellow humans, animals and rocks & rivers). A beginning of a fascinating spiralling conversation to lead you down further…
Part 2: Ego Maturation
In the second part, we dive deeper into the concept of ego dissolution and through that process, ego maturation and becoming adult. He shares a view pinned by Bill Plotkin, “a culture of the hungry caterpillars”.
A forest (read: our society) needs both, caterpillars who eat the forest and butterflies who pollinate it. For that balance, caterpillars eventually need to go into the cocoon in order to transform into a butterfly. But living in the coddling culture of the hungry caterpillars, there’s only few “pollinators” causing the vibrant greenery of our forest disappearing.
Zach further builds on this concept, sharing his experience of visionary states where his mythopoetic identity was revealed. A mythopoetic identity only has a chance to be seen by going into the darkness of the soul. Different from “life’s purpose”, but akin to a unique sound you’re meant to play in this orchestra of life.
But in those grounds where it can be found – it isn’t safe. For it is not in safety you can hunt for your own wildness…
In this third and final part of my conversation with Zach, we go into the explanation of the importance of a grief ritual. He explains the history of grief rituals, brought to the West by Malidome Somé from the Daagaba tradition of West Africa. Zach further explains the Five Gates of Grief – a concept and a worldview on grief outlined by Francis Weller.
Personally, I found the latter a very helpful tool to understand my own grief, during the ritual that Zach has hosted in Pisac, Peru. Later in the episode I share my personal experience of a grief ritual, bringing examples of gates of grief I’ve experienced.
I didn’t want to butcher it…
Towards the end of our 2.5 hours long conversation – if you’re watching it on YouTube, especially – you’ll see a change in lighting because by the time we finished, the sun has almost set.
I wouldn’t have imagined it would take us THAT long. Time has flown by as it usually would whenever I would find myself talking to Zach. And, after recording I thought I’d be able to distill it to something under 90 minutes… But as I was editing the episode, I realised that I simply cannot. There was simply too much wisdom in what was shared.
I really, truly hope you enjoy this series. A very special conversation that took on twists and turns and diversions into the dark woods of the soul.
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