233. Honouring Carol Sanford: Quit talkin’ about what doesn’t work’

On the morning of Wednesday the 27th of November, I got the news that the legendary Carol Sanford had died. You might remember the conversation I was privileged to share with her at the start of last year, for our 150th episode. Carol knew she was dying, so much was getting difficult or impossible for her, and even speaking was tough, as Motor-Neuron Disease (as we call it in Australia) was taking hold. Yet she was as sharp, generous and forthright as ever. Within minutes she was saying things that have stayed with me ever since, including the statement that’s become the sub-title to this episode. So today, a tribute to Carol, featuring the conversation we shared last year, and a few words I’ve recorded here today, at a place very close to my heart.

For those who didn’t catch that 150th episode, and may not know much about Carol, she’s been at the heart of what we might call the ‘regenerative paradigm’ for decades. I spent a while scrolling through her last posts on LinkedIn yesterday, and noted that she’d hosted her last Regenerative Business Summit just weeks ago. And poignantly echoing what’s been coming through The RegenNarration podcast in these weeks also, she had written:

“Citizens are less ideologically polarized than they think they are, and that misperception is greatest for the most politically engaged people. As a result the tendency is to work on fixing the polarization directly and work on issues more actively. What if the means we are going about change and agreement is only making it worse?”

So it seems like a good time to hear from Carol again. And I can tell you that she did finish her seventh book that she was writing at the time, called No More Gold Stars. Ironically, it went onto win one.

This episode has chapter markers & a transcript (available on most apps now too).

Conversation recorded 2 February 2023, with introduction recorded today.

Carol’s family also posted: ‘If you would like to participate in her transition over the next 49 days, she invited you to practice “phowa”, which can be found in Chapter 13 of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, or offer your own readings, prayers, or meditations.’

Chapters

• 0:00 Tribute to Carol
• 5:20 Our conversation from last year
• 17:22 Educating Human Capacity for Paradigm Shift
• 33:17 Embodied Leadership and Transformation Technology
• 43:53 Embracing Conscious Dying and Silent Reflection
• 52:55 Music & closing words

Transcript

AJ: 0:00

Hey there, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration Podcast, speaking to you today from back in my old haunt of Guatemala. It's been over 20 years since that formative time in this gift of a place. T hough my home was a way from where we are currently and quite a bit quieter. You're hearing some of the sounds of the city of Antigua, the original colonial capital. It is beautiful and fascinating here, with, of course, beautiful people, though of course it carries its brutal colonial roots and still awful pollution. My home back then, though, was inland and north, in Fray Bartolome de la s Casas, in Alta Verapaz. Saludos a todos allá. I actually wasn't sure I'd come back to Guate, but in the end the call felt strong and the logistics? Well. They're a lot easier to contemplate from the States than back home. Anyway, the sun shines, the eucalyptus forest, would you believe, is over to my left, up the hill from north of town, and the family is at Spanish school. So it gives me a chance to record this for you, because what's really pulled my heartstrings the last few days is that on the morning of Wednesday, the 27th of November, I got the news that the legendary Carol Sanford had died.

AJ: 1:19

You might remember the special conversation I was privileged to share with her at the start of last year for the 150th episode. Carol knew she was dying, so much was getting difficult or impossible for her, and even speaking was tough, as motor neuron disease what we call MND in Australia was taking hold. She, however, was as sharp, generous and forthright as ever. Within minutes she was saying things that have stayed with me ever since. Like, I know I'm dying but I'm having a good time. And later in our conversation, as her friendship with Tyson Yunkaporta ha d come up, when I wondered about the intransigence of many of the big corporations, despite all her work with a number of them, she quipped: you sound like Tyson Quit talking about what doesn't work. I might still be wondering about that, but I did deeply appreciate the sentiment and its delivery. So that line runs as the title of today's episode, my humble tribute to Carol, featuring this conversation we shared last year.

AJ: 2:23

For those who didn't catch it and may not know much about Carol, she's been at the heart of what we might call the regenerative paradigm for decades. I spent a while scrolling through her last posts on LinkedIn yesterday and noted that she'd hosted her last regenerative business summit just weeks ago and poignantly echoing what's been coming through The RegenNarration podcast in these weeks also, she'd written: 'Citizens are less ideologically polarised than they think they are and that misperception is greatest for the most politically engaged people. As a result, the tendency is to work on fixing the polarisation directly and work on issues more actively. What if the means we are going about change and agreement is only making it worse?' I was so overjoyed to read that. I mean, on the one hand it's a customary sort of insight in general terms for holistic or systems thinking folk, but on the other, I found myself at times feeling like a relatively isolated voice when talking about how, in Carol's words, citizens are less ideologically polarised than they think they are. Save my wonderful guests, of course, and some of you who've been in touch. But you know, I get to wonder am I just seeing too much of the good in people, notwithstanding Carol's scolding for being fixated on the negative?

AJ: 3:44

I guess Carol's next line explains things a bit for me when she said and that misperception is greatest for the most politically engaged people. Not to say there's not polarisation, of course, and that can be acutely felt, aggressively portrayed and cruelly exacerbated. We see enough of that on mainstream and anti-social media. It can be well covered too by some of the legacy media, but there really does seem to be half the story missing, or more. We can smother ourselves in the stories we live by, be unduly convinced by them and struggle to see beyond them, which clearly matters if, especially at times like this, we buy too much into the narrative of polarisation and in so doing unwittingly worsen it. That might serve some people, but not most people or the rest of the living world, I dare say.

AJ: 4:33

So it seems like a good time to hear from Carol again, and I can tell you that she did finish her seventh book that she was writing at the time, called No More Gold Stars. Ironically, it went on to win one - First place for business education, Carol revealed recently. And one last thing before I leave you to hear from Carol. Her family also posted on Wednesday: If you would like to participate in Carol's transition over the next 49 days, she invited you to practice Phowa, which can be found in Chapter 13 of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, or offer your own readings, prayers or med itations. Transition well, Carol, with thanks for an unforgettable life.

Carol: 5:18

Hello, I uh, and I'm sorry, I can't go put on a headphone. It's in a place I can't walk, I'm going to be disabled and so I barely can get around within a small space.

AJ: 5:35

Yeah, no worries, carol.

Carol: 5:37

Can you hear me?

AJ: 5:38

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you really well and we're good to go All right. Thanks a lot, carol. It's such an absolute privilege to speak with you today. You've meant so much to so many people I know, including myself, for such a long time, so thank you.

Carol: 5:53

Well, I'm happy to be here. We'll see how long I can talk. I get pretty tired, pretty quickly.

AJ: 6:00

I wondered yeah, how are the days for you at the moment?

Carol: 6:08

Oh, they're marvelous. I get to run workshops for all my people. I'm finishing my seventh book with Ben. Do you know Ben Haggard? No, he writes for me. My hands don't work anymore, and so he writes down what I'm saying, but I'm also losing my ability to speak. So I mean, I know I'm dying, but I'm having a good time.

AJ: 6:38

I love that. That is beautiful. You know, it's interesting hearing, hearing you speak with Tyson. Essentially. I think it was just last month, wasn't it? And it reminded me of an old friend of mine I met when I was in the field overseas and along came this guy from French-speaking Canada and the last time I ever spoke to him was years later. I'm back in Australia and I give him a call, and he was about in the same position you are. Years later, I'm back in Australia and I give him a call, and he was about in the same position you are right now. I think His speech had started to suffer and be a struggle and it was so confronting at the time for me because A I was younger and it was new, but also he knew seven languages, he travelled the world, he was doing development work here and there and and such a amazing soul.

Carol: 7:27

It seemed cruel in that sense that speech went almost first for someone like that, and, but you found a way or is it perhaps just consistent with everything you've been about in life to even embrace it well, we're all gonna die, anth, and I happen to know how and kind of even when, which most people don't know, and I worked in hospice and helped a bunch of people transition out of their bodies, so it feels in some ways crazy familiar. So I'm not afraid of dying. I have things left to say. So, uh, are you recording?

Carol: 8:09

yes okay, good, all right. So what are we going to talk about?

AJ: 8:14

well, it's common that I would start at almost at the start, in a sense, like to actually trace back, uh, to upbringing, and and and place of upbringing and what impact that had on people's lives. I'm wondering even was there something in your upbringing that held you in such good stead and you mentioned your hospice work but does it go back further, the qualities that hold you in good stead today for this experience?

Carol: 8:44

you in good stead today for this experience. Well, I'm 80 years old. What happened that saved my life were miserable challenges by fairly evil people.

AJ: 8:53

Really.

Carol: 8:54

Howard. And well, I had a father who was a pretty lost and disturbed human being and a mother who was mentally ill, lost and disturbed human being and a mother who was mentally ill.

Carol: 9:06

So those have stood me learning how to survive in that environment. It's really important. But the way it happened was my maternal grandfather was half Mohawk, which is a tribe here in the US, part of the Iroquois Nation, a tribe here in the US, part of the Iroquois Nation, and so my grandfather kept me sane by working with indigenous wisdom. That's why Tyson loves talking to me. He finds patterns and themes and subjects that are similar to his upbringing and many he feels like he missed, and so I got the disturbing part from my parents. But I got a lot of wisdom from my grandfather and I've written a lot about him in my book, the Regenerative Life.

Carol: 10:06

After I dedicated my second book to him, people told me they wanted to hear more. So the Regenerative Life comes from his teaching and also my book, the Responsible Entrepreneur. He gave me four archetypes that are not like Jungian archetypes but are indigenous ones that teach people how to rebuild a nation, Because the Mohawk were decimated by colonists and marches across the US into camps, basically, and not him. He was much younger but he was taught the ideas of how you regenerate a nation, and so I wrote those into my second book, the Responsible Business and all of those, or sorry, the Responsible Entrepreneur, all of those taught me a whole different way to see the world than I was.

Carol: 11:22

Getting in my household and my mother had the good sense to run away with me and my sister when I was about six and a half and my sister was four, and so we fled and had a new home for some time and then went again to Dallas, Texas, where I grew up from about I don't know eight or nine, and in all those things you learn something if you can. My sister was pretty destroyed by it all, but I wasn't. Somehow my grandfather pulled me through.

AJ: 12:04

Can you encapsulate the quality that he passed on to you, or the essence of it?

Carol: 12:12

Well, it was something like I learned later to call karma yoga. Whatever you're given, you grow you from it, and almost all lineage traditions I've studied since then have a similar message. You don't go off in a monastery or an ashram or something. You take whatever you're given and you use it to work on yourself. And so it was a daily life practice and you do it with everything that shows up. So that's probably philosophically the thing. And then I found teachers later who were saying very similar things. Like I work in Google or I have not not now, but until a few months ago and they run meditation twice a day and then people go back to their ordinary mechanical way of thinking and so sitting it's out there twice a day. Meditating is good, but it's really incomplete. You need a practice that teaches you Zazen all day, every day, on everything you're doing. So if you've got a boss or an employee or a husband or wife or a partner, you have a lot of trouble with. The best place to start is with yourself, and we teach or I teach frameworks to use to help build your capacity to be able to make sense of our world and evolve yourself. Do the work on yourself, for example, if you ask yourself in a situation with your life partner, I've got a framework that's called reactive ego and purposeful, and the question is what am I being reactive to? Where am I letting my ego get hooked and can I move? So I see some purpose in what we're doing, either on my own or together. And if we don't do that, we become a victim and feel like the other person is whether it's employee, boss or partner or child. We will feel like they are causing us misery, and so one of the things my grandfather taught me is no one can cause you misery. Whatever's going on is happening in a dynamic, and you have to learn to do this kind of looking at yourself and managing. And he said you know our young warriors, and it mostly was men. Um are taught from a young age to be, uh, witnessing. That wasn't his word, but that's when I've come to use of your own reactions, everything that's going on with you, and take back your internal local control. So you're at least being mindful of what's going on and you have a choice about your reaction. You may not have a choice about the event, but you always are in charge of your reaction. You may not have a choice about the event, but you always are in charge of your reaction. So that's.

Carol: 15:51

My grandfather also taught me a lot about animals and he was working on a farm. He raised pigs and he worked with the State Department of the Farm Bureau where he educated people about farming and animal husbandry, and he did it from the indigenous point of view and that looked a little like we went out and fed the pigs and then we went for a walk with the pigs and walked down to a creek or creek that was near there and if you sat down, the pigs would come sit with you like family Right. And my grandfather, when he talked to me, he often talked to the pigs too and they would oink and he said there's no dividing line and unless you get the idea that we each have a role, the pigs have their work to do, we have ours Also. Farms and the plants have their work to do. So it was always about learning about the system and how they work together and how it was you worked in that process. So maybe this gives people a flavor of mine.

AJ: 17:22

Indeed, probably under young years yes, it reminds me of kate rayworth in donut economics wrote about an indigenous fellow who addressed the college of natural resources and he was saying they're not resources, they're kin, like you were sort of just outlining there. So what if it was the college of natural kinships or something like that? It would change everything.

Carol: 17:44

Yeah, I mean each one is unique. I'm really bothered when people say I should learn from nature because I am nature. That would leave out a human role, which is we're here for a reason within the system and what is really important is to learn the role each entity has and how it is. We build our capability to do that Humans. You know.

Carol: 18:15

I got a Pipsen match on LinkedIn with somebody who is furious that I said humans are a keystone species. That just means they're a peg in something that has a really important role and if it goes away, like the wolves went away here, then the whole system collapses. It's not we're better. Keystone doesn't mean we're better. It means we play a role. There's a link between some dynamics and if you say get rid of humans, you're, uh, not understanding what the role of humans is and how that pig that holds all these together is really important. Like the wolves are not more important than the large animals that trample down and cause our life not to work and cause our life not to work, but they're critical because without the wolves, the other animals can't play their role. So we are letting down the ecosystem by not teaching people how humans need to work and think that's what I do is helping humans understand their role, because even my grandfather said we're making a mess humans are.

AJ: 19:51

Well, if anyone was going to know, he was going to know too what they went through.

Carol: 19:54

Yeah.

AJ: 19:55

So I had a friend just the other day, actually Dominique Hess. She's prominent Regenerative design tends to be the label she gets put under.

AJ: 20:02

Yeah, I know, dominique, she's prominent regenerative design tends to be the label she gets put under. But I know there you go so well. She says essentially what you were the little battle you got into on LinkedIn she was bringing up again the other day, feeling like that the regenerative paradigm that is trying to be expressed and and worked in and worked at is missing. Yeah, the, the people bit the keystone humans as keystone bit, and she's thinking what needs to happen to remedy that, to ensure that it comes along in that way.

Carol: 20:31

Well, we right now, don't educate humans in their work anywhere. It's all about doing and all this stuff out there we. It's all about doing and all this stuff out there we. I'm writing my last book right now, number seven, that said the education system needs to change and the parent, how people learn to parent. It's very deep. And so our entire school system don't teach humans how to think for themselves. They teach them content and answers from experts. And that's where you have to begin, because humans can't play their role unless each one can think for themselves. They tend to borrow ideas from experts, from their parents, authorities, and everybody that comes to me wants answers, and I don't answer questions, I don't do a Q&A, and I'm trying to reverse that tendency and indoctrination we have from the behaviorists. You know who they are from the behaviorists.

Carol: 21:44

You know who they are. Yeah, the behaviorists. Yeah, tyson and I are both on a rampage against them. Because in the early 1900s number three or four year they pronounced the idea that humans can't think for themselves and thus they become experts that are certified by some science. And so public schools in the States, and shortly after everywhere, were created, with experts deciding what should be taught and increasingly you had outside feedback and outside experts and outside authority and no one thought for themselves. And that put us on this path. Because it's easy nowadays to say but these kids can't tell whether they're right or wrong, they need somebody else grading them. Same thing at work. People at work don't know whether they're right or wrong. They need feedback. Change that and you start building capability of individuals, kids and parents and teachers. Even teachers are not assumed to know anything.

Carol: 23:10

They have to have outside curriculum designer, right? So the answer to Dominique's question is you have to start with educating the capacity of each individual to think for themselves, and that has to happen at work, at home, and you have to stop filling up the space with experts and knowledge, because when people say humans are making a mess, they don't know anything. They're right, but the problem is, if we keep doing it that way, they'll always fail to learn their role and to develop and to make a difference and we will die as a species, and that species will then leave a void of consciousness. The ability for people to see that species will then leave a void of consciousness. The ability for people to see their effects and to help change effects. And then those folks will be right saying humans need to die and go away, but they leave the void of consciousness then, yeah, I wonder for you.

AJ: 24:23

I mean, I assume for you school was of that nature as well, and so it was as an adult where you came across other encounters that helped you see this.

Carol: 24:35

No, my grandfather.

AJ: 24:37

Your grandfather.

Carol: 24:39

I mean I did. Later I studied with a guy named Thomas Kuhn at UC Berkeley.

AJ: 24:47

Yeah.

Carol: 24:47

And Kuhn wrote a book called. It came out that year. We were there, the Structure of the Scientific Revolution. It was about paradigms and I was in a class with him and he was pretty young and trying to figure out whether he has figured out the paradigm shift, and so he would go with us. There was a place on it called Telegraph Avenue at the university and it had a coffee shop or I don't think it served alcohol I can't remember maybe beer and we would sit in that cellar and talk about paradigm shifting and somebody asked how in the world he got there the paradigm shift and you, he was a scientist and he was talking about it happening in science, where you would for 100 years, have one paradigm and move shifts. And they said how'd you do that? He said, well, I sat around and I watched people talk let's do it right now.

Carol: 26:02

He'd say so he'd go around and we had people from all over the world in the 60s and he said where did you grow up and what was your religion and what influence does it have on you? And they'd go to the next and I watched him do that. And one guy asked him well, how do you get people to change paradigm if that's how they grow up and that's their religion. He said well, that's your job. I figured out the problem and it had a huge effect on me. I took the answer personally, I'm supposed to figure out how to help people shift paradigm. Personally, I'm supposed to figure out how to help people shift paradigm. So I also listened to a lot of people who were working on epistemology how we learn and know and I figured out these two were related and so I've worked on helping people choose how they learn not tell them how to learn, but how to choose and to become aware of it. So my answer to Thomas Kuhn's question was help educate them so they can see their own choices, their own sourcing, and they will change when they actually can see. So I've written a lot about it.

Carol: 27:25

My last book has even more on epistemology and how you help people discover how they got where they are and then do they want to change. So you don't need to tell them to change, which we keep trying to do, and drive them deeper in their corner. So we get more conflict, more polarization. You don't need to do that. Create a framework where people can see themselves and then they will change. And I watched for almost 50 years of my career. For almost 50 years of my career, if you look at who wrote the forwards to my books. They're CEOs of companies and senior executives and they all say I learned how to think, about my thinking and that changed me. Carol never told me what to think. She gave me a how to think. I used some of the how to think and I got to better answers. So the problem is we keep trying to condition. We don't like what people are thinking, so we think, well, we'll recondition them, we'll give them an incentive, reward. But that's what got us here.

AJ: 28:42

And that's where your conversation with Tyson went, when he said that, striking in his typical manner, he said the fascists are going to win because the ones who would condition have an effect and sort of hold, the just to use a glib term the mainstream, the dominant trajectory, still at the time, the dominant culture. But you disagree. Do you still think human capacity can on his overcome? The word can come through.

Carol: 29:15

So I worked in South Africa from the 93, 1993, to to 1997. And I watched the work. We did radically change Afrikaners and English who had been opposed to the removal of apartheid, and I never told them to. I did the same thing in dupont with mining, and I didn't tell them money is bad. I taught them how to assess what the quality of impact was and their own thinking, and they changed so many things. And so I know uh, now, once you're really attached to something, it gets harder. But the way you do it is move whole system. They have to make money. So I went into companies and Colgate Palmolive was who I worked with in South Africa.

Carol: 30:21

South Africa, and we never told them you need to particularly be good people or make a certain kind of thing. The constitution in South Africa required they move black managers to the top of the company and reflect what the population looks like. So we just used what was required and we said well, we have to educate people how to move to the top. We did that six months because everyone agreed we should, including. We only lost one white manager, an Afrikaner, who said I can't do this and he left Everyone else because we didn't tell them. They had to change. We educated them on assessing how to do their own change. They moved.

Carol: 31:14

So the reason we get the question you ask like, well, how do you get people to do this? It's because they assume it has to be a doing. You have to move them, you have to change the laws, you have to influence and control, and they don't understand the power of educating people to see their own mind and its effects. And so it's a simple answer. And the thing is, in South Africa, what we did took six months for something, a year for a few others In the mining industry. It took only a couple of years, but it was all through education, not on what's a thing, but on how the thing can see your own effects.

AJ: 32:05

And then you choose yeah, and you were invited in to do that right, and this is true of so many businesses, including big companies around the world over your lifetime, and it's always made me like I've had this bit of a struggle throughout the time. I've particularly known your work because I think you perhaps represent it to me most in the sense that you've had this enormous success, like with how you've worked with these people, companies I mean even google, for example, but not just a single out. I guess I've wondered, are the structures that they operated in operating still holding them tightly so that whatever they've benefited from with you, they still can't really act out? I mean, they can act out to the extent that you've described it there, for example, but with shareholder structures or infinite growth-oriented economies or extractive surveillance mode, online technologies Are these things?

Carol: 33:07

You sound like Tyson. You're referring to everything that doesn't work. I don't work where it doesn't work. I find leaders who are willing to make great change and we go work there and it influences hundreds of thousands of people.

Carol: 33:27

And, like in South Africa, when they replaced David Osasho with a GM I was working with, they put in a guy who was basically a Nazi and he pretty much undid the structure we'd put together. But you couldn't take it out of the people. No one who worked in the company reverted. They kept doing the things the right way and trying to lift up these guys and eventually he has to be moved and to leave his new GM position. So the problem is you can move by moving probably the minds of a few hundred people in a company with 3,000. They all changed and they worked in the township. Those people who were in the townships are still bringing about change at the level of everyday work, especially in Soweto and Alexandria, and the people who were in Colgate no longer have the structure to be up in place, but it's in the mind and heart of the people who are still leading things. Mandela started, so quit looking at what doesn't work.

AJ: 34:49

It's exhausting.

Carol: 34:51

And it was the same thing I was saying to Tyson Don't be so skeptical. It takes very little to move a whole lot. And if people go find the places people are ready. Even if that's 5% of a neighborhood, go with the 5%, Because research has shown it probably takes 2% to 3% once those people move. So, I don't look at where people are stuck. I find leaders who are ready to move.

AJ: 35:26

It reminds me of a recent guest I had late last year, karen O'Brien, and she just released a book called Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World. That was the subtitle. That's the one I remember you Matter More Than you Think was the title. That's right, it's quantum social change.

AJ: 35:42

And, yeah, extrapolating what we're learning from quantum physics into the social cultural domain, and it's a terrific hypothesis, but it really reminds me of precisely what you're saying that in everything, everywhere, in every moment, embodying a way of being is going to bring about all these reverberations or fractals I don't think that's enough.

Carol: 36:06

What do you think? Yeah, I don't. I think that I believe in all that theory. I have a technology to use it, to apply it every day, working with people. Because that level you're talking about I don't know about her. It's such a high level of abstraction. People can say, yeah, well, of course, but what do I do to help grow people to think? Well, I haven't read the book, but I find a lot of people can say to me well, you're talking about something somebody else said, but most of them don't have a technology, a way of every day redesigning work. So it lives up to those principles. And so that's what I have been building. I have two communities one with change agents who are consultants, teachers with change agents who are consultants, teachers, owners of companies, and they meet with me for several years and then suddenly they see what that meant the entanglement, the quantum and so forth. But they now know how to redesign a company based on it and how to educate people. And then I have a change agent group or sorry, a company group, where you have teams of people who come in and learn how to redesign their business. And so when you're a part of those two communities. We give you a technology and you're a part of those two communities. We give you a technology.

Carol: 37:44

Technology means how to transfer theory into practice, into design, and so I think there are a lot of people well enough maybe that are getting the new theory. My work is based on quantum science, on indigenous teachings and on lineage of wisdom. Teachers out of various countries raised like Buddhist traditions and different versions, and also Hindu. All of those have threads in them and have had for decades or centuries that we draw on, and so I think my grandfather and other indigenous and I find there are threads in all of those things and then we translate them into a technology. We don't teach them those things directly. We show them a technology. We don't teach them those things directly. We show them a technology about what that means. How do you design with it. So I think theory is good. A lot of people are writing more or less good ideas, but they don't know how to tell you what to go do with it. So I've got these 3,000 who I've managed to, in my lifetime, share technology with.

AJ: 39:09

Yes, indeed, you mentioned those other wisdom traditions. Have wisdom traditions been important on your journey as well?

Carol: 39:17

Yes, traditions been important on your journey as well. Yes, socratic method is a Western philosophical tradition. It's a big part, and so we have Eastern and Western. I did happen to mention Eastern, but there are quite a few philosophical traditions that are Western wisdom traditions. Socrates is probably the most intense one we work with, and Pythagoras.

AJ: 39:53

Can you describe, yeah, how you work with that?

Carol: 40:01

Well, that's a really probably impossible question because it takes years to get connected. But Socrates had five things he was working on all the time, which we have technology for. One was being non-mechanical. Humans are so sound asleep, and so we have a variety of practices that help you wake yourself and your team up. One is like a disruptive practice.

Carol: 40:30

If you sit in a workshop with me, I may insult you on purpose for something I can see you're insecure about or you're not thinking about or you've seen in the lessons like mechanicals, I might say so is that an idea you've had all your life and you've never questioned it? And people don't come defensive. I'll say, okay, now you're going to become defensive. Well, is that a mechanical response? So I do that to members until they're no longer bothered by me doing it and then. So that's a Socratic process, because it's about waking you up.

Carol: 41:16

Humility is another one. Can you be with people, even as a teacher, and not feel a need to be smarter than them or a need to teach them as you as an authority? I'm constantly, when people first join, I say especially students, I did teach at a couple of universities I say don't trust me, never, don't assume that I am any kind of authority or expert. So don't reject uh well, don't accept anything I tell you, but don't reject it without testing it with your own personal experience. That's the only time you can say you know the answer to something is if you're doing that. So Socrates and most people who are out there teaching work hard to get to be experts and look like they know more and can teach you. It looks like they know more and can teach you. So we learned from Socrates how to help everyone learn to think for themselves.

AJ: 42:27

And you've created you alluded to before, you've been part of creating peer groups and networks as well throughout your life quite a number and at quite a scale too, and they're now sort of moving along on their own steam.

Carol: 42:41

No, I have not quit teaching any of them, rhett. They meet with me eight times a year to learn the next evolution, but they all have independence, so no one's dependent on me. I'm not in charge of anything, I just happen to have some ideas that's good to play with. So they've never not moved on their own, and when I was learning this, I moved on my own. I don't report to anyone, no one's in charge of me, so we're all independent forever. But I too, and they've asked me to keep teaching as long as I can and that's probably coming to a close in a couple of months, because I will choose to sit down and die, like the sages, and be gone. And then everyone has their own new seed, a place to start a new level of work, and I need to tell you I'm getting really tired.

Carol: 43:53

Yeah, and so let's think about kind of some wrap-up questions for five minutes.

AJ: 44:00

Yeah, good, you've actually given me the perfect segue when you said to sit down and die like the sages, because I was wondering if you would contemplate life in this moment for you, if you'd contemplate life as a spiritual journey.

Carol: 44:13

Well, I've always thought of it that way. I don't know whether karma exists or not, but I choose to believe in it because it makes me a better human and I believe there's some kind of development. I personally believe I chose to die before I was born with ALS. It's a terrible disease. You know how people die with ALS they suffocate. Your lungs quit working. Doesn't that sound horrible? Yeah, very few people would want to get it, but I think I chose it before I was born because I figured I would get to learn a whole lot, since I'm terrified of suffocating and of being claustrophobic. So I figure all that was in my plan.

Carol: 45:07

Now, how do I deal with it now? Pretty well, mostly. The good news is I'm not afraid of dying. So I'm leading conscious dying workshops because on this Western plane of existence we don't teach people how to die. We don't teach them how to be conscious and in the moment with their deteriorating body. So the people in one of my two communities are meeting with me every other month and I report what I'm doing, watching my dying, and I also have invited them to be present with me as I go through some phases.

Carol: 45:57

One is the sages dying and for me, that is, you stop eating and drinking and your body lets go of your spirit, so to speak. You can in the States, in most places, do death with dignity, which means you administer a substance to yourself that kills you. I that feels unnatural and I probably couldn't qualify for it, because you have to be able to say yes to doing the drugs and you have to administer them, and with LH you can't do any of that. You can't move, I can't even go get my microphone right. How would I go get well anyway?

Carol: 46:47

But the sages throughout history have said my work is as complete as I can do at this time. I'm going to sit and it'll take about three to four weeks if I don't eat or drink, and I've asked people to come be with me doing that, including online, but they have to be in the community with us working on their own exercises and work I'm offering. And then the second or the last phase is, after I've left my body, to sit in practices that are used in Tibetan Buddhism for helping a soul wing its way onto its next body or whatever it's chosen and um to be with me for that 49 days. So I'm doing the best I can to spiritualize it and to invite people in who want to learn about dying instead of hiding from it. So yeah, yeah.

Carol: 48:00

It's a fearful journey.

AJ: 48:02

Oh yeah, and that is an inspiration. I was just listening, with my wife, to friends and colleagues of my wife, one of whom has become a death doula. Yeah, yeah, works with people just like this.

Carol: 48:15

I've done that. I did when I said I worked with hospice, what they called us. We got trained to be death doulas or dying doulas. I think we more called it because it's a process Not about the moment only of dying, but the process of choosing how you will die, if you can, and how you will be engaged with other family members and friends.

AJ: 48:47

Yeah, and you did say at one stage a couple of years ago you were going to write a memoir. Is that woven into this current book?

Carol: 48:55

No, well, it's woven into many of my books, like my grandfather's story, uh, well, but not the one I meant to write. Uh, and I doubt that I'll make it. I had two books I I'm not going to get written. Uh, the memoir was called. Uh, am I am? What was it called?

AJ: 49:21

Oh, yes, I remember this. I Am Too Smart.

Carol: 49:25

I Am Too Smart exactly Because my father told me repeatedly I was stupid, and I spent my whole life overcoming that constant daily. I know it's a terrible thing to do to a child, but my last book is about how smartness really happens, and so it has some of my story. So I think what I've done is getting all the way to a memoir is woven it in. I thought you might say that that's right. Yeah, yeah, I think of the impact, thomas.

AJ: 49:59

That same thing yeah.

Carol: 50:00

Yeah.

AJ: 50:01

I think of the impact Thomas Kuhn and that moment had on you and I feel like you're having that increasingly still that sort of a moment on other people now, and I guess what would you like to say in this particular context, as we go out, in terms of passing the baton?

Carol: 50:23

No, there's no such thing. Each person, who they are and what they came to do, dies with them. The thing is, you have to know and ask what did I promise to do before I was born that I've not completed, and what I'm asking people who are sitting with me during the reset it's called voluntary stopping, eating and dying. I've asked you get to touch a portal by being connected with me leaving, and you were to ask yourself what is mine yet to do? I'm sitting here with you, carol, leaving your body, and I can feel now my entire life and my work. And now, what is mine left yet to do?

AJ: 51:12

I'm really taking stock go do your thing taking stock stock of that, carol, let's go out with a reflection on a piece of music that's been significant.

Carol: 51:25

I've never played music, none.

AJ: 51:28

Really.

Carol: 51:28

I have silence. Silence is what I do. I don't listen to records. I did when I was young, you know, in my 20s and 30s, but music's never been my doorway to anything but silence has sorry.

AJ: 51:45

No, this is good, this is yeah. I love silence your life has been so full. How would you? Would you have practices that you would consciously then go and be silent somewhere?

Carol: 51:57

No, I've lived alone a huge amount of my life. My husband died 20 years ago and he always was in the shop when we lived in the woods and he was all day, except for dinner, in the shop. So it was silent all day and he walked in the woods and silence we did together. I've always lived with a lot of silence around me, except when my kids, of course, were very young they were noisy. AJ: al right, I can't thank you enough.

AJ: 52:34

Thank you so much for being with me. CAROL: You're welcome. Thank you for asking and for listening. AJ: yeah, I will certainly be thinking and feeling of you, for you, throughout this next period and, yeah, taking a lot of stock of what you've said, thank you. CAROL" you're welcome.

AJ: 52:49

Thank you, Anthony. AJ: That was the legendary Carol Sanford. For more on Carol, see the links in the show notes. I'm still sitting deeply with this one and wonder how you might have found it. Thanks very much for joining me for another year of The RegenNarration and, of course, thanks as always, to the generous supporters who've helped make this episode possible. If you value what you hear, please consider joining this community of supporting listeners so I can keep the podcast going. Just head to the website via the show notes regennarration. com forward slash support. Thanks again. Thanks also to cousins Maz and Kor-B for loaning a studio to me for this one. Renos to the unit upstairs of us here, sent me packing. And as always, if you think of someone who might enjoy this episode, please do go ahead and share it with them. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden, off the soundtrack to the film Regenerating Australia. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.