E96 - Dr. John Churchill: How To Wake Up & Show Up For A Planet That Needs You

**John Churchill** (0:00)
In our civilization, if we're still here in 50 years time, millions of people will suddenly realize that development is a real thing. We're at war on this planet. We live in this materialist, empirical, scientific world view, but actually, there's so much more going on. A lot of what we're being asked to do is to align with how our planet is unfolding. We do have now the technology that could allow us essentially to spin up a golden age. In a short amount of time, if we can, the term mysticism is a bit of a misnomer because it actually, it isn't a mystery, it's a science. Doing the right practice at the right moment in time, it's super important. You can waste years and years and years and the thing is, is that is so common. If we can build a new initiatory system that really takes people through those stages and bring to the table the best of the world's wisdom traditions, this moment in time actually holds great promise as well as great peril.

**André Duqum** (1:02)
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Know Thyself Podcast. Today, we have the privilege of sitting down with a powerful teacher in the field of human development.
He has a degree in contemplative psychology and Chinese medicine and a doctoral degree in clinical psychology as well. He spent several years as a Buddhist monk. This conversation, the goal, I feel, is going to be providing this whole tribe that we're building here with a comprehensive framework and overview for the path of human self-development as well as planetary development towards self-actualization and realization, the need for an integral approach and an overview of it all as well, and much, much more. Dr. John Churchill, thanks for being here.

**John Churchill** (1:44)
André, thank you for welcoming me.

**André Duqum** (1:46)
Yeah, my honor. So excited to dive in deep. I would love to start a little bit more wide and then go kind of into the microcosm of the human journey. But before we do, we were speaking yesterday on the phone a little bit about this perception that Earth is its own being on its own developmental journey, much like we are.
So when you look at planet Earth and what's happening right now currently within humanity, what's some powerful important context and a framework for where we're currently at on that developmental journey?

**John Churchill** (2:23)
Well, one of the things we have to ask ourself is what time is it, right? And clearly it's not 2024, right? So our planetary logos, the intelligence that is our planet, is also on a journey. And just like we go through cycles, just like we've gone through childhood and adolescence, like she is also unfolding. And so having a perspective of sacred world and appreciating that we and our spiritual journey as individuals and as a species is an integral part of her process, all right? So we don't separate actually what we need to do from what's happening for her. And so we are quite clearly going through a quickening process that's part of much larger cosmic cycles.
This is kind of taught about in the teachings related to the wheel of time, which we see in nearly every culture on this planet. And of course, there are these larger cycles and during these larger cycles, certain capacities are built up and then we kind of culminate in a transition phase and we're in one of those transition phases right now, like a 24,000 year and 12,000 year cycle.
So a lot of what we're being asked to do is to align with how our planet is unfolding. And according to the teachings of these, the wheel of time is often we don't do that and then things get reset and we have to kind of start all over again, right? So there is all of us sense this kind of a sense of this imperative and this sense of urgency because she is wanting to blossom and we really need to align with that process and understand what it asks of us.

**André Duqum** (4:30)
Like you said, the planet as it goes through its own cycles like we don't like we do in our own biological body, for example, are given opportunities to transmute and phase shift into that next level of being, the next potential possibility.
And yet, so many of us really do feel the quickening process that we are in, that we are in a time that is unlike any other, that there is so much possibility for catastrophic dystopia on one hand but also so much beauty and light on the other if we harness the opportunity and realize the blessing that it is and not have it turn into a curse. The issue largely is that everything that we are doing in the world is infused with the consciousness in which we are doing it. And so the tools that we are engaging with, the technology that is advancing, all these amazing things that aren't inherently good or bad in and of themselves are being infused with a traumatized species.