Wonderstruck

Every night, you make images as surely as you breathe. Dream worker, author and mystic Toko-pa Turner believes those images are anything but random. She sees dreaming as the psyche’s way of healing itself, much as skin quietly knits back together after a cut. Even nightmares may be a sign that something is ready to come into consciousness. Modern life has taught us to dismiss dreams as nonsense. Yet across cultures and throughout history, people have turned to them for insight and guidance. For Toko-pa, dreams are our mother tongue: a language we don’t so much need to learn as remember. Born in Devon and raised in a Sufi community in Montreal, Toko-pa brings together Sufi mysticism and a Jungian approach to dreams. She founded the Dream School in 2001, has guided thousands of students, and reaches more than 100,000 readers online. Her books “Belonging” and “The Dreaming Way” explore how dreams can deepen our relationship with ourselves and the wider world. In this episode, Toko-pa invites us to ask something different of our dreams. Not simply, “What do they mean?” but “What do they want?” CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 2:04 Dreaming of the Hypogeum Before I Knew It Existed 8:42 The Symbolism of the Spider 11:58 Why Nightmares Are the Most Powerful 16:34 We Are Nature: Dreams and Self-Healing 21:21 How Rationalism Made Us Dismiss Dreams 31:18 Living With a "Second Attention" 34:31 A Precognitive Dream and Two Armed Men on the Roof 37:51 Rewriting the Past: The Moving Tattoo Dream 43:31 Dream Circles and Shared Dreams 47:00 The Imaginal Realm in Sufi Cosmology 1:02:00 Metaphor as a Bridge 1:08:12 Wonder and the Courtship of Dreams Follow Toko-pa: Website: https://toko-pa.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tokopa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TokopaTurner Follow Wonderstruck: Website: https://wonderstruck.org Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When her mother died, Hiroko Yoda was brought to her knees. What pulled her back was something that had been there all along, the ancient spiritual traditions of her home country, Japan. What followed was a decade-long journey through shrines and temples, sacred mountains, and waterfalls, culminating in her latest book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness. The title comes from an ancient Japanese idea: that eight million spiritual beings inhabit everything around us. Not as a precise count, but as a way of saying the sacred is everywhere, in everything. Recorded inside an ancient Shinto shrine deep within the sacred mountains of Kumano, located at the end of a pilgrimage route walked for over a thousand years, Wonderstruck's host Elizabeth Rovere sits down with Hiroko to explore: ✦ How "kami" spirit exists in everything ✦ How the concept of "half-belief, half-disbelief" makes room for mystery without demanding certainty ✦ Why gratitude, not belief, is the core of Japanese spirituality and the seed of happiness ✦ The flexibility of Japanese spirituality and what it offers a world grown rigid in its certainties ✦ The spirituality found in your favourite anime Through Hiroko's journey, from grief to gratitude, from loss to a world where everything has a spirit, we begin to see that happiness isn't something to be chased or achieved. It's something to be noticed, in the smallest of things, in the spaces we walk past every day without looking. Chapters: 00:00:00 Welcome to the Kumano Shrine 00:01:54 Kami: 8 Million Spiritual Beings 00:05:19 Rigid Society, Flexible Spirituality 00:16:32 Walking Through Grief 00:20:35 Gratitude, Not Belief 00:25:07 Half-belief, Half-disbelief 00:27:50 Mysteries of the Waterfall 00:35:52 Itadakimasu: Spirituality in Everyday Words 00:39:03 Meeting Itako, The Blind Shamaness 00:45:15 Masakado: Anger and Love 00:51:15 Anime, Yokai, and Healing Follow Hiroko: Website: https://www.hirokoyoda.com/ Substack: https://blog.hirokoyoda.com/ Book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/eight-million-ways-to-happiness-9781526672162/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hi_yoda_1 Follow Wonderstruck: Website: https://wonderstruck.org Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If we understood the true complexity of the natural world, would we call it conscious? Would we begin to question the boundaries we put between ourselves and everything around us? We explore these questions with biologist Merlin Sheldrake and science journalist Zoë Schlanger. Their bestselling books, "Entangled Life" and "The Light Eaters", required monk-like study and deep immersion in the natural world. What they discovered quietly dismantles some of our most basic assumptions about intelligence, memory, and what individuality really means. Recorded during Harvard Divinity School's "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" conference, this special episode brings together Merlin, Zoë, host Elizabeth Rovere, and guest co-host Rachael Peterson, the "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" Initiative Program Lead at Harvard, to explore: ✦ Whether plants have personalities and why they might be kinder to kin ✦ How a brainless slime mold can navigate its way out of an IKEA faster than a human ✦ How flatworms put into question where memory actually lives ✦ Whether it's possible to ferment a book and drink it When we stop centering the individual and truly reckon with the entangled nature of all living things, something shifts. The question stops being how do we include more-than-human perspectives… it starts being whether that separation even makes sense to begin with. Chapters: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:10 How to Write About the Hidden World 00:04:45 The Myth of the Individual 00:09:53 We Are Polluting Our Own Home 00:15:14 The Problem Isn't Science. It's Language. 00:18:18 The Plant That Can Copy Anything 00:24:25 As Temperatures Rise, Fungi Are Evolving 00:28:31 Do Plants Have Personalities and Prefer Their Family? Follow Merlin Sheldrake: Website: https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merlin.sheldrake YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/merlinsheldrake Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/ Follow Zoë Schlanger: Website: https://www.zoeschlanger.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zoeschlanger.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeschlanger/ The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-light-eaters-zoe-schlanger?variant=41096248295458 Follow Wonderstruck: Website: https://wonderstruck.org Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mystic poet Chelan Harkin doesn't write poems, she transmits them. At 21, after giving herself permission to write a "bad poem" every day, a creative channel cracked open and poems have flowed through her ever since. Her work has drawn comparisons to Rumi, Hafiz and Khalil Gibran. Poets whose words slip beneath the thinking mind to reach something deeper, older and more alive within us. Celebrating World Poetry Day this month, this episode features Chelan speaking with Wonderstruck's Elizabeth Rovere about: ✦ How a Hafiz poem she heard at 17 unlocked her heart and set her entire path in motion ✦ The "bad poem experiment" and how permission to fail became the key to creative flow ✦ How praying to her favourite dead poets led to a synchronicity that changed everything ✦ How our deepest fears, when met with consciousness, can transform into our strongest allies ✦ The extraordinary story behind her book The Prophetess which stands in conversation with Gibran’s The Prophet This is a conversation for anyone who has suspected that the sacred isn’t elsewhere, but closer, more available and more alive than we ever dared to believe. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:07:06 The Poem That Changed Everything 00:13:47 The "Bad Poem Experiment" 00:19:22 Say Wow: The Poem That Went Viral 00:23:44 Praying To Her Favourite Dead Poets 00:30:50 The Meaning Of Authentic Service 00:35:55 Suffering and Our Great Cocoon 00:39:21 Writing The Prophetess 00:43:33 Meeting Hajjar Gibran 00:51:53 Fear as a Life Force 00:58:32 Closing Reflections Follow Chelan Harkin: Website: https://chelanharkinpoetry.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelanharkin/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chani.harkin Find all Chelan's books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B08PL55XMD Follow Wonderstruck: Website: https://wonderstruck.org Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can a mountain teach us how to live in peace? In his early twenties, George Thompson was living with intense anxiety and a deep sense of meaninglessness. His body carried constant tension, and the voice in his head told him that he was not good enough. That crisis became the catalyst for a decision that would change the direction of his life. George travelled alone to China’s sacred Wudang Mountains, the birthplace of Tai Chi and a centre of Daoist (Taoist) practice for centuries. There, immersed in mountains, monasteries, and daily practice, he encountered Tai Chi. In this conversation, George and Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere explore: ✦ Tai Chi as a martial art and moving meditation: powerful, peaceful, and beautiful ✦ Balance as something dynamic that allows you to hold your centre in the midst of change ✦ The inner critic (“the Underminer”) and learning not to identify with the story it tells ✦ Why peace can’t be learned, but arises through presence and awareness ✦ The universal language of wonder and awe This episode reminds us to look at what lies beneath the thinking mind, and to discover, as George puts it, that balance is possible. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:05:49 Journey to the Wudang Mountains 00:10:22 Finding Balance Through Tai Chi 00:18:14 Spirituality as a Form of Activism 00:24:45 Hope & The Vinegar Metaphor 00:29:58 Love, Connection & Fierce Compassion 00:35:29 Is Eminem Daoist? 00:42:04 Awe and Wonder Predates Language 00:46:27 Nature, AI, and the Technology Continuum 00:49:42 Why Are We Here? Follow George: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@George-Thompson The Subtle Art of Losing Yourself: https://youtu.be/9KArWcMldPM?si=fHt4OPWFb8-zSuAx Balance is Possible: https://www.balanceispossible.com/ Taoist Wellness Community: https://www.taoistwellness.online/community Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/george.thompson._/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@george.thompson_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/georgethompson.uk Follow Wonderstruck: Website: https://wonderstruck.org Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.