E170 - Dr. John Churchill: The 7 Stages of Awakening (and How Consciousness Evolves)

**Dr. John Churchill** (0:00)
What's a financial system that is beautiful? What's a medical system that's beautiful? What's an agricultural system that's beautiful? I mean, I think we all have a sense of ones which aren't. You begin to intuit that there's a matrix. We're at a moment of significant transformation. The question is, what story do we find ourselves in? We started with rubbing sticks together to make fire, and here we are at a moment where we're about to release a fire, which is the symbol of AI., or of artificial intelligence. It's going to reveal our imaginations to us. Which way are we going to choose to go? When we pull way back, I think the first thing we have to recognize is that our story as humanity is woven into the story of our beautiful planet. We are part of a much larger system. We're not alone. It's the sense of separation that makes it so difficult.
I think the world is going to get kind of interesting.

**André Duqum** (1:00)
It already is. It's more and more by the day. Yeah. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Know Thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a returning guest. He has a degree in both contemplative psychology and clinical psychology, and he has really deep knowledge from a mystical lens of Tibetan Buddhism. And we've had the pleasure, which I don't always often have the pleasure of doing, having a couple of days in advance, spend some time together to dive deep, to support each other on each other's work and missions. And it's just a pleasure to be with him, Dr. John Churchill. Thanks for coming back.

**Dr. John Churchill** (1:39)
Thank you, Andrés. It's a pleasure to be here.

**André Duqum** (1:42)
I thought it would be great to, again, set the context for this conversation by exploring what evolutionary moment we find ourselves in right now, humanity finds itself in right now, because you have this really unique background and practice to be able to have the conciliant understanding of these different ancient wisdom traditions about what they all point to, like where humanity and Earth finds itself at this time right now. And as we later in this conversation weave in how we can both find our own unique gifts and unique responsibility to show up for a planet that needs us in this time, it's helpful to set that context. So I would love for you to share your thoughts there.

**Dr. John Churchill** (2:25)
Thank you. Well, it's helpful to start with the story. I think story is one of the languages of the universe. Like there's a language of mathematics, there's a language of physics, and it's definitely a language of story. So the question is, what story do we find ourselves in?
And when we pull way back, I think the first thing we have to recognize is that our story as humanity is woven into the story of our beautiful planet. So whatever it is that is occurring to us, we are part of a much larger system. So that planetary perspective, I think, is super helpful because our own spiritual journeys, our individual spiritual journeys and the evolution of us as a species is related to this planet we find ourselves on. Clearly we're finding ourselves in some kind of moment of transition.

**André Duqum** (3:47)
No?

**Dr. John Churchill** (3:48)
Is that your sense?

**André Duqum** (3:49)
I think it's everyone's sense. Okay, good. I think for the most part, we all have this feeling that we're on the precipice of a big transformation.
In some sense, it's never been better, and in some sense, it's never been as worst in terms of like the mental health pandemic. And I think we could all agree that we're in a moment right now.

**Dr. John Churchill** (4:09)
We're in a moment.

**André Duqum** (4:10)
Yeah.

**Dr. John Churchill** (4:11)
We're having a moment. Yeah. So that's really helped. Just to hear from you that that's like, yes. So clearly, if we look at the symbol, the big symbol that's in front of us right now, which is the symbol of AI, right, of artificial intelligence, which is a symbol of, in many ways, humanity's tool-making capacity. We started with, we started with rubbing sticks together to make fire. And then we've used fire for however many cycles of time it is. And here we are at a moment where we were about to release a fire.
So, it's helpful, I think it's helpful to look at it through a mythic lens. And by that, I mean, the kind of the, what's the story here? Well, the story of this fire is that we're at a moment of significant transformation.