YouSaid · the spoken record

Boyd Varty

lines on the record: 159
first: 2024-08-14
most recent: 2024-08-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I think for one thing, there was a masculine feminine component to that. They did a lot more post-traumatic counseling at the time. And I wasn't open to that. I thought, you know, the way that I'd grown up, I thought like, I'm just going to get on with it and move forward, which is a naive approach, to say the least. And then there was also a challenge that I had where in the masculine it was harder just to process just process feelings. What I needed was”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, you know, you find this in native people too, the capacity for homing, the ability, and I've seen it with trackers who've come down sand trackers who've come down from the Kalahari. They've come into the Kruger National Park, a terrain they've never been in. We've taken them into the Mapani. Mapani is like an eye high scrub. And we've walked for a few hours in the Mapani. We have a GPS because we know how easy it is to get lost in there. And then afterwards, we've said to them, okay, take us back to the vehicle. We've got the GPS and they walk on a beeline directly back to where we left the vehicle. And it's just like, what is that?”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It doesn't surprise me. I mean, even just some of the stuff around orientation, you know, you watch a female leopard walk five or six kilometers, leave her cub, walk five or six kilometers, then hunt in thick terrain, walking circles, moving in an irregular way, catching in a parlor, hoisted in a tree, and walk a direct line back to where her cub was, which by anyone's standards would just be an incredible piece of navigation. She doesn't have a verbal mind or a rational mind, but somehow through all of that circuitous movement, she knows where she left the cub in a more instinctual way almost.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's just a knowledge out there that is, and if you actually talk to any people, biologists feel the more time you spend in nature, the more you'll realize how little we know. There is subtlety and nuance and there is things happening out there that is way beyond our understanding.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're in the alternate scenario, you've got something very, very wrong. And the reason that you get into the alternate scenario is that you get it wrong in the moment. You see, as that charge starts happening, you're in the dialogue and your presence is absolutely critical and your ability to project an energetic presence and meet her and then to quickly help her understand that you're not afraid of her. You're dangerous, but you're also going to give way. And when people get killed, it's because they get that wrong. They fall over. Their nerve breaks and they want to run or they get scared and they start running immediately. That's when dangerous things happen.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That, like, I'm dangerous too, and then the minute you see her energy drop a little bit, because all that she's doing is she's trying to anchor you so that the cubs can run away. The minute you see her energy drop a little bit, you just start dropping And then you get out of the situation and you just find yourself giggling stupidly and doing all the weird things that happen after high tense situations.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we most believe in is being in this dialogue. And so if that happens, the first thing that you do is you breathe out a long outbreath. Because everything in your system is starting to jack up because the feeling of it is like you can feel your whole system flush with adrenaline. So you breathe out, you anchor yourself. And then you understand that that line is trying to communicate with you. She walks towards you intensely, intensely, and then she'll growl. And with that, she charges. And then she runs at you at full speed. And it is so fast snarling, full gums reveal, teeth revealed, and she comes in. And then you stand your ground and you look her directly in the eyes. And mostly what will happen is she'll stop some distance from you. As she stops, you hold her in your energy and you almost aggressive back to her.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starts to flick intensely and they start to warning growl at you. And it sounds like the growl is so intense. It sounds like someone started a dirt bike in the bush up ahead of you. And then if it's a lioness and she's got cubs, she'll stand up and still with her head low and her ears back and the tail lashing she slowly starts to walk towards you. And she fixes you with a gaze of utter intensity. And the minute she has you in that gaze, your only option is you have to stand your ground and you have to communicate an intense presence back to her. So when that happens to me, if I feel myself starting to come into an encounter where we're going to have a more aggressive, energetic conversation.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, again, I want to come back to that idea of the minute a lion becomes aware of you become aware of it, you are in a language dialogue and it is a language of energy and presence. Now, there's usually one of two things that will happen. Either the lion will get up and this is 99% of the encounters, the lion's natural instinct is to get away from you. Remember people hunted lions for hundreds of years on the plains. And actually one of the primary ways that hunter-gatherers got food and a lot of people don't know this is they tracked lions and then they would rob them of their kills. And so lions have a long history of being chased by humans. So normally it'll go away from you. However, that doesn't always happen. Particularly if a lioness has cubs or if they have meat, they can be aggressive. Now normally what will happen is the first thing that you will notice is the animal's body will tighten. They'll drop their head and the tail.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the next thing that I got was I became intrigued by the power of this collective ability to fire the collective consciousness algorithm. Like, what would it mean if we all started really attending to states of peace and healing and well-being? And if enough of us did that, could we like the bees, you know, create some kind of algorithmic transformation for everyone?”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Simon would come around and he would say, hey, boy, how are you doing today? Not good. He said, I bought some ice for your feet. Next time we will get you boots. But you know, I sat with it, and what I took out of it was, number one, what the bees taught me is if you want to know about the bees, respect the bees.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Term, true as nuts, we come around the first corner and on the other safari truck driving towards us is the couple from Singapore who've been afraid of Ebola and they see what they see is the Ebola cleanup crew in full white suits driving towards them at full screen going you're gonna die you're gonna die drive drive And that was my first encounter with the bees. So eventually I make it back to the house. And I remember I got into my bedroom and I sat on the bed and I was just trying to feel my own body. And I was like, am I dying? Am I dying? Am I okay? Like, is it kicking in? And I got into the shower and I took all the stings out of my ankles and I made it back onto my bed. And that was me for the next five days. I did not move. My feet looked like someone had taken surgical gloves and just blown them up.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is when two men in beekeeping suits break into a full run through the wilderness. And we just start running aimlessly at first. And then he says, they will chase you forever. Make for the Landrova. So we run to the Land Rover and we jump into it. And he just says, drive, drive, drive. They are enraged.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He grabbed the smoke, he starts putting elephant tongue in it, and then he gets it going, and he comes over to me and he starts blasting me with the smoker. And the first blast went right through the visor of the beekeeping suit and kind of into my mouth. And so I got a big inhale of elephant dung. And then my mind and my chest immediately tightened up. I started thinking, my whole body is going into anaphylaxis. Is it elephant tongue or is it anaphylaxis? And they're still singing me and it's bad. I said, Simon, they're still singing me. They still sing me. He says, okay, run for your life.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they begin to sting me intensely through the socks. The socks do not work. Simon, they're stinging me. Simon, Simon, they sting me. What was I do? What was I do? He says, okay, back away. And they start following me and now I'm being sung hundreds of times. And then at one stage, I look up and there's a bee that has that's inside the suit. So eventually I get into the clearing. I now have a swarm of bees around me. They are still penetrating the sock belly. It says, Simon, what must I do? What must I do? He says, hold on, I will help you. And he runs over and he cuts a large branch of a tree. And then he runs back and he starts beating me with the branch. So now I'm standing in the clearing getting pounded with the branch. And they're still singing me. They're still all around me. I say, Simon, it's not working. It's not working. He says, okay, I will get the smoker going. And I just this thought ran to my head like a little late for that.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we get up next to the hive and Simon gets out his crowbar and he cranks the lid off and 70,000 of the most enraged African bees rise up in a black cloud around me. And they're shimmering around me. And you can feel the intensity and you can feel their attitude of, oh, you think you can fuck with us? And they're all around you and they start to land on you. And, you know, if someone who's grown up around animals, I feel the energy of a single angry, aggressive animal. And they're all over me. And I say, Simon, this is quite intense. He says, don't worry, everything's okay. They start landing on the visor and like blocking the visor out. And it's super intense. And right at that moment, in the midst of this raw buzzing intensity, 1B found... Weak sock area and it stung me through the sock. And the minute as that”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so Simon and I start heading towards the hives. And I'm talking African bees here. Now, Tim, amazing thing happens as you approach the hive, if you just walk past the hive with no intention of doing anything, the bees somehow know it. But the minute you put your intention and attention on them, I don't know how it's maybe to woo, but I'm telling you they feel it. And as you start walking towards the hive, they start changing gears like they're at the Austin F1 track. And you hear the sound changing.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I said, What do we do now? He says, okay, the first thing is you must put on your beekeeping suit. So he gives me his suit and I put it on. And it's a little bit short for me, like literally between my sneaker and my ankle, I have some exposure. So I said, him, Simon, the suit's a bit short for me because he had sort of, this was his second suit. He says, don't worry, you can borrow my socks. So he takes his boots off and he's got thick black socks. And so I sort of feel them and I think, okay, this is going to be good. And I put the socks on and I like seal up the suit. And I say to him, cool, Simon, let's get the smoker going now. He says, oh no, I don't use the smoker. It makes the bees afraid of a fire. So like a little bell goes off in my head. I'm like, but beekeepers all over the world use the smoker. He says, it's not my style. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm here to learn.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great. Next morning I meet him and he's got a big sort of black plastic case. And we drive out to the highs and I'm inappropriately dressed. I'm in like shorts and t-shirt”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Simon Samba had himself has a mellifluous voice, very soft, lilting voice. And Simon Sambo is the village beekeeper. So I say to him, Simon, I've got really interested in bees and I know that you have some hives and I would love to come and experience you beekeeping. He says, okay, there's no problem. I can take your beekeeping. I said, great. I'm excited about this. He says, you meet me tomorrow in the morning and we will go and meet the bees.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So wait, I should tell you that during the time that I got fascinated about bees, there was a couple who were coming on Safari and they had been writing to me from Singapore and they were saying, listen, we want to come to Africa, but we're terrified of Ebola. And I had said to them, listen, Ebola is in North and West Africa. There's no Ebola in South Africa. Yeah, but we're very, very afraid of it. We're very concerned that it could travel. I said, you really have to trust me. There is no Ebola in South Africa. You're going to be absolutely safe. So they had come on Safari. Meantime, I walk up into the back of the village and I seek out a man by the name of Simon Sambo. Simon Sambo.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, anyway, I was having this idea and I was like, the bees are really fascinating. And then I started reading up on them. And it's this incredible creature, right? They pollinate millions of flowers. They're one of the biggest contributors from the insect world to the economy, honey sales. They can feel electromagnetic fields. They will disappear if a storm is brewing. And then as you watch the hive itself, this incredible kind of algorithmic intelligence whereby a single bee an individual bee responds to localized stimuli doing what it knows to do. And when enough bees responding to individual localized stimuli all start to attune an algorithm fires through the hive and they move as one and they know where to go and get food, etc. So that idea also gripped me, the idea of individuals attuning to what they know to do can trigger a kind of a collective transformation. So I got really into this and I went”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you'll walk out to remote places, and suddenly the birds then it's like, come on, let's do this. Are we going to do this? And it almost appears to get disappointed if you're like, I'm not going to go and rob the beehive now.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wants us to follow him, and then it will fly in front of you and show you where the beehive is so that like for thousands of years before, as a hunter-gatherer, you can rob the beehive and then you put some honey down next to you and the bird comes and lands next to you and eats the honey. This incredible ancient, just an encounter like that. Like it just takes you back thousands of years.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I became fascinated by bees for a few reasons. The one is that one day I was walking in the wild part of Zimbabwe and I came across this ancient Bayab tree, this two-story high Bayab tree, and it had been hollowed out when elephant had knocked the branch and it was in fact empty. And a swarm of bees had made their hive in the top of it. And the sound of the bees humming was coming down the base of that tree. And it was like standing next to this giant didgery do. And just the sort of, I could hear the intensity of the bees through this process and I felt their vibration coming out of this tree and it was, it kind of sparked my interest. There's also an amazing thing in southern Africa. There's a bird called the honey guide. And literally, if you go out in parts of wilderness in Africa and you start banging on trees, a bird will come to you and it will start to call incredibly animatedly, very much like Disney's, I think.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. Well, I guess we bonded over this story. People ask me a lot, like, what's the most dangerous encounter you've had in nature? And by this stage of the podcast, you know, a crocodile tried to ingest me. And that was...”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know that this maybe veers us off a little bit into the esoteric, but there was this feeling that there's this sentient, alive consciousness and somehow it was feeling me as I was feeling it in a really deep way. And that felt actually supportive and like I was touching something really beautiful and special.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I will say that it was largely supplemented by the passion for tracking. And so, you know, your encounter with like feeling the presence of Molly there and being in this thing together, like my feeling is every time I'm tracking, I'm in a new story. Every time I'm out there following, I'm in a deep encounter and it actually feels Like there's this alive sentience awareness. One of the things that I would say is that when I first went out, I thought that part of what I was doing is I wanted to improve my attunement to nature. Like I wanted to know nature. But one of the most profound experiences out of it was that I started to feel known by nature”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I allowed myself to go tracking. And so actually, it was incredibly generative for me. And there's all these like little problems you have to solve. Like you got to keep your camp clean and then everything gets wet and then you got to work out how to build yourself a bit of shelter. And then once you become more present, it becomes so full of life. Like I would make myself this evening shower. I'd go fill a big cast iron kettle with water. And then I would warm it on the fire. And then I would pour this kettle of hot water over myself totally alone up in the tree. It was the best shower I've ever had. And just it was teaching me presence all the time. And once the anxiety left, there was a lot of introspection and I looked at a lot of things, but I actually didn't feel myself taken by anxious or oppressive demons. The process felt very generative and alive to me.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have 39 days to go The one thing is that I was not doing like traditional Zen retreat. I allowed myself books. I allowed myself to do daily recordings of my encounters, like kind of journal entries.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, certainly a concern. And then there's also this weird component of time, right? Like you wake up at four in the morning, you meditate, you go tracking for a few hours, you come back to the camp, you make some coffee, you run, you do some more reading and journaling, you meditate again, and it's 1015.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really so that other people can get tuned in to what a difficult time you're having. But when you buy yourself, they just do not abide because there's no one around to like stay in the story for.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I flew into a rage, like I flew into a rage because it was so painful. And then I realized that with no one else around, I couldn't maintain my state of anger. And it's a really weird thing sulking, being angry and sulking and moods and all of that stuff is really for the benefit of other people.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, without a shadow of a doubt, it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever done. And I don't know if I will do six weeks again, but I will certainly try and get 10 days solo in nature a year with no other people. And in this one, I didn't see other people. I was totally by myself. And, you know, there's amazing things that happen when you buy yourself. One is, you know, getting really into your own energy. Just being in your own energetic field, then being attuned to nature and feeling your body start to attune to those rhythms, you know, watching the stars move through the sky all night and feeling yourself naturally wake up with the dawn and go to sleep when it gets dark and feeling your whole circadian rhythm attuned to that. What else about it? You know, funny things happen like on the one day I banged my head. I had a trunk which had dry goods in it, but I banged my hand on the trunk. And I was like, ah, god, you know, damn it.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so distinct to all my anxiety, you know, all the things I worry about, but like true. It would not end. I just kept saying to myself, like, you can't be this scared for so long. Surely it's just going to pass. And then like another hour and another hour. And I just kind of weathered it and I felt an incredible, yeah, I mean, I guess it's talked about a lot, but an incredible fragility and an incredible humility. And then the next day when I came out of it, I also felt like, oh, God, that scared me so much, but I would do it again, you know, just like on the other side of it to have been like in a storm like that felt very, very, very special. I felt profoundly like a profound encounter with the force of nature.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know the lightning bolts were coming around around me, and I don't know if you've ever been very close to lightning strikes, but the first thing is that you just hear it go like this. And then the blade comes down and then the sound goes sonic. But if you're close enough to it, it actually clicks as it hits the ground. And that started to come down around me torrential rain and blades of lightning lighting up around me. And the sound was just so intense. And I mean, it was just monstrous. I was cast into a deep and overwhelming fear. And I realized.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the one encounter that comes to mind, and there were many, is lots of solo hours tracking, which felt very special. But on one of the nights, I got caught in a storm, a thunderstorm rolled in and the heat built all through the afternoon. And I could see the storm building out over the western horizon. And it started to look menacing and then even more menacing. And I was living on a flat platform up in the tree. And eventually the wind started to howl and blow. And then the mother and the father of a thunderstorm broke around me.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helps you make meaning. And in a society of the modern world are almost becoming devoid of the structures that allow us to make meaning, but the natural world is full of encounter. And that encounter generates an aliveness and a relational meaning making quality that just makes life feel very, very rich. And we lived like that for thousands of years before we lived on Discord.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as you start to become more personally attuned to each animal, you start to see that there's a pattern to their movement. And in fact, then you start to find yourself orientated inside of a series of interlocking intelligences, that is really what the natural world is. And then at some point, you realize that I'm not observing this intelligence that I'm watching unfold around me. I am fundamentally a part of this. And it stops being a mental construct and you start to feel yourself inside of that intelligence. And that's a very, very deep experience, or at least it was for me. And I think that that is why at a certain point the mystics went to go and get quiet enough to feel themselves inside of that incredible field of intelligence that is the natural world. I had just radical encounters every day. And I think that's another thing about the natural world is things happen. And as things happen each day, it almost like it”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After three days, that all dropped. I know the Aboriginal people have this amazing saying that modern culture is three days deep. And after three days, I felt myself go into a different state of consciousness. I just realized it doesn't matter. And then I started to attune myself to the natural world. And a few things happened. The one is that a big insight was that where your attention goes, your life goes. And if you're constantly putting your attention on living things, there's more aliveness in your own life. That was one. The second was that if you spend time in nature in the same spot over a period of time, it starts to become incredibly personal. So it's not just a bird or that antelope. It's that bird that roosts in that bush and flies down the riverbed in the morning and back up the southern bank. And then it feeds for grubs in this tree.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was 40 days and 40 nights in the tree. I went into the tree. You know, if you read all the mystical traditions, including, I think your man Hafiz on your bookshelf. But in all the mystical traditions, there seems to be a time when the mystics are drawn to be alone in nature. And Jesus went for 40 days and 40 nights, the Buddha went to the grove. There's accounts of it all along the way. And so I wanted to go and have that experience myself. And I'm not saying I'm a mystic, but I wanted, my question was, why did all of the mystics go to be in total solitude in nature? And so with a lockdown in the world, suddenly I had six weeks where I could go and do that, you know, go and sit in that question and see what answers came to me during that time. The first was that initially there was a tremendous anxiety, you know, the first couple of days, I had a lot of thoughts around I'm going to be away, I'm going to miss something. I'm not attending to then.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've in action through courageous action in that case, but very much what he was showing me that day was how deeply ingrained it was in him, the collective nature of life. Another way of saying it, Tim, is like, and this gets really interesting as you start to learn your own psyche, but different cultures, the psyches are structured differently and in a more Western setting, you might say that in a society where the individual self is disconnected from the greater interconnectivity of life, the search for meaning is reduced to a constant state of comparison. So people will always on some level be saying, how am I doing in comparison? And so many people are living with that without even knowing that that's how they're trying to orientate themselves. Whereas if you grow up in Africa or if you grow up in nature, you grew up relationally. So it's not comparative, it's more like...”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ya, Ubuntu is an African philosophy that says I am because of you, or people are not people without other people. And what Ubuntu is talking to is the relational nature of life. And the point I want to make about it is that it is when you spend time with people with the Ubuntu consciousness is activated in them, where Ubuntu is alive in them, it is actually a kind of structuring in their very psyche. They experience things in relation. They experience each other in a relational way. And they know that knowing yourself and being yourself is about being connected to people, but also to the broader field of sentient life. And so what Soli was activating there was the Ubuntu consciousness. And he was showing that Ubuntu consciousness comes alive.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he would look at me with disdain and say, My brother, you're in trouble, I'm in trouble. And at first I thought it was some kind of like, you know, platitude. He was playing down his actions. But as time went on, I really understood and I came to see that in the way that Solly grew up, he grew up in a much more collective consciousness. He grew up with his tribe. He grew up hunting and gathering. He grew up in nature. He lived in a much more interconnected way than any of us live. In fact, his whole psyche was not formed around individuality. His psyche was formed around a we consciousness. You and me together, collective consciousness. And to him, it was fundamental if I was in trouble, he was in trouble. And so he did not see it as any kind of heroic action. He just saw it as the most obvious natural thing to do. And that really moved me and that taught me a lot.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, those two experiences were very alive in me. And maybe this is a side point, and then I'll slow down for a while. But, you know, in the months after that, I sat many, many times with Solly. And I said to him, Soli, why did you come in the water?”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made my way through the branches and I fell onto the bank and I knew that I was extremely vulnerable on the bank, crocodiles in. It's an elite predator. If it thinks it can get you and I was on the bank against the water, it's going to grab me again. At that point, Solly coming from the other bank arrives at the deep section of the channel. He seen me come out of the water. He's seen that my leg is mangled and he knows that in the deep channel of water between him and I is a crocodile. And I can tell you that man didn't slow down not for one second. He plunged into the water. He waded into almost over his hips, and he got to me on the bank and he grabbed me, put me on his shoulder, and he carried me up onto the bank. He took his shirt off, he wrapped it around my leg. We were able to call the folks who were with us and calm them down. Radio a plane that was flying over, and I was able to get Medivaced out and we were able to stop the bleeding so that I survived.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing that you notice when a crocodile grabs you is just the ferocity and the pressure of the bite. I just felt it slam onto my right leg and it tries to pull me into the deep section of the water. I throw my arm up and I grab a branch and it starts to shake me and I see a slick of blood appear in the water and then it gets washed downstream while the crocodile is shaking me. I see Solly who's on the bank. He sees me and he sees that I'm in trouble. And he immediately starts making his way towards me. Soli is also Shungan man, grew up hunting and gathering. The croc goes to bite me a second time and I kicked and by the grace of God my foot went down its throat and it spat me out and I pulled myself up into the branches of the tree and I have this memory of almost being non-local watching myself pull myself up into the branches of the tree. I got up into the branches and I remember looking over my shoulder and my leg from the knee down is just absolutely mangled.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As I walk past the shadowy place, I actually sat down just on the edge of those shadows and my perception was that the water was too shallow for crocodiles. But of course, the crocodile was in the hole.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then on the heels of that, and I think sometimes of Jung's description of like what is unconscious will be made conscious. It will manifest into your life until you become more conscious about what you're carrying. A couple of weeks after that, literally in the same year, myself and some friends and another tracker called Soleim Shlongo, we went down to the river on the reserve. And it was an extremely hot day and we left the people who we were guiding sitting under a tree and we began to walk upstream in the river. And Solly stayed on the bank and I was actually walking in the water and the water was knee deep running over sand. And you could see quite clearly. And then there was a place up ahead where a tree had fallen over and its branches were in the water and it was kind of shadowy. And when I think of it now, I think if it had been a horror movie, you know, people in the audience would have started saying, don't go near the shadowy place. And of course.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as that happened, and there were three of these guys standing around me, as that moment happened, it was kind of this weird, the only way I can describe it is a kind of a weirdness came over everyone. It was as if everyone had become glimmered. And they put the guns down and everyone just stood there, confused. And I walked back inside, totally accosted in any way. And I got the car keys and I walked back out and I gave them the car keys. And I said, get in that car and leave. And they did. And it was just immensely bizarre and, and for years I lived with trying to work out both the terror that I felt and the fear that had flooded me, but also trying to integrate like whatever had happened in that moment. And I'm not sure that I fully understand it. But I felt like I glimpsed through the most terrifying situation. I glimpsed something.”
2024-08-14 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #763: Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT