The Crucible:Conversations for the Curious

Hamish Niven (00:03)
Welcome to The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious. I'm Hamish, your host.

In each episode you'll hear from everyday people who've been through profound life altering experiences, from life threatening illnesses or accidents, deep existential crisis, addiction, or having to make life choices that have ultimately brought them peace, connection and purpose. They've all stared into the abyss, walked through the fire of their own personal dark nights of the soul, and emerged from the other side transformed. This podcast is for anyone going through an awakening, a time of massive change, or questioning the

meaning of life. You are not alone. You can get through this. I promise you life is more meaningful and beautiful on the other side.

Hamish (00:49)
Hi everybody, today we are talking with Altair and he is a stress busting, health preserving coach. Thank you very much for being here today Altair. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey?

Altair de Almeida (00:59)
Yes, it started a long, long time ago, 1975 actually, when I came to England. I came to England originally to study veterinary medicine, but I was living with my aunt and my cousin and he belonged to an organization which was doing some interesting stuff and so he started talking to me about palmistry healing.

that kind of thing, which was new to me. And my aunt said to me, don't listen to him, he belongs to a cult. So I thought, okay, two years down the line, I was so interested in what he was saying, I thought I better check what a cult is. So I checked it and I found that it's nothing to do with the cult, but just educational. But it changed my life. I suddenly realised I didn't want to do veterinary medicine. It...

Partly, I chose veterinary medicine because I was so repressed as a child that I wanted a vocation where I didn't need to speak to humans, not realising you have to speak to all of us and so on. But my uncle was a vet, so I had a kind of template for that. But I decided I was going to drop it. And basically, my uncle said,

if you do that, you'll have to leave the house. I had no money and I thought, well, I'm going to do it. And I did. But I had no idea about about cooking or anything. So I was eating the cheapest food, white bread with tomato sauce, white rice with tomato sauce.

Three months down the road, my body just said no. I had starch dyspepsia, so if I put any starch in my mouth, my stomach would cramp. So I started studying microbiotics and that changed, you know, started to change how I looked at food and life generally. A little further down the road,

Because I was a repressed child, my father was quite a headmaster and he believed in spare the rod, spoil the child and I was the eldest so I got the brunt of his education. And so I was very repressed. This was a kind of...

attitude I had in life, protect myself. But I started something called Primal Integration in 1982. And that really helped me open up the emotions, allow myself to express myself much more ably than I was before. And I've carried on since that was the beginning of

cracking open the whole, I didn't realise there was rage. I had no idea that I had rage in my thinking about my father. And by the way, I didn't realise it's just through therapy. I realised that I chose to go to boarding school when I was 13 to escape his influence. I didn't know that at the time. I thought I just wanted to go to boarding school. And I went to one called the Duke of York in Kenya, which is like, was based on Harrow and Eaton. So it was...

got the bullying and all that, but I kept this way to protect myself. And then I came to England again, not realising it was to escape his influence. Both of those incidents he didn't want because I think on some level he knew. But my spiritual awakening started when I came to England really, so it gradually deepened. And I haven't looked back and it's continuing. It's a lifelong process.

For me, my lifelong path is about speaking my truth, opening it and helping myself and helping other people to grow really. That's my passion. It's not a job, it's a vocation for me.

Hamish (04:50)
So I think that's fascinating. So your body basically said,

this is not working. You're gonna have to change something, which was that kind of shift that made you start looking for something that would obviously change your life and make it better, but take you on a new direction.

Altair de Almeida (05:06)
Yes, yes indeed. Yeah. At that time I started various things. Tai Chi started in 1980, I think, and that started the process. But it was really the primary integration. I know that it worked because my body physically changed shape. 18 months in, I've done lots of one -to -ones and weekend workshops and stuff, but it was enough to, for my...

body to physically change so I knew it had worked on a deep level.

Hamish (05:40)
running away because I did the same thing. I left England, I went to South Africa for all sorts of reasons. But you ran away just for what reason?

Altair de Almeida (05:49)
It wasn't a conscious running away. I went to boarding school thinking that was what I wanted to do because one of my young friends was going and I thought it was an expensive, you know, back in the day, it was an expensive venture. So my father wasn't keen, but I was convinced my mother to convince him. So that was the first getting away from my father's influence.

coming to England was another one. Coming to England was a much more powerful one, but I didn't realise it. I had no idea that that was what was my soul. I choose to believe that the soul has its own agenda different to what we think. And it brought me here to open me up. I've never looked back really.

Hamish (06:42)
Okay. And then, so as you said, you...

So as you said, you started doing veterinary and then you realised it wasn't what you wanted to do and you were given an ultimatum by your family. So what happened after that?

Altair de Almeida (06:55)
So I was living in a bed set and like I said, I had no idea of what is good to eat. I was completely ignorant and I didn't know how to cook. So I was eating the simplest thing, anything that I could boil really, pasta and stuff like that. But not knowing about nutrition, my body soon educated me and now I'm super developed in that aspect and I know all about minerals and you know.

haven't done a nutritional degree, but my understanding is pretty hot on that. Most people don't understand how important minerals are and we get them from vegetables, but it's very much less than it was in. There was a test by MAF, which is a UK based agricultural and fisheries thing, and they tested vegetables.

between 1941 and 1991. And there were some things that have reduced so drastically because in 1940 everything was organic. There was no phytoslysis. They came in after the war really. And they put NPK, which is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, just three minerals. We need about 70 for, I mean, the small quantities, but we need a huge variety. So...

Yeah, I went off the subject. But now I'm passionate, I'm passionate about giving this body the best it can in many different, in the whole sphere, physically, mentally, emotionally. In fact, my work is body, mind and soul. I work with my trainees and students on those levels. Soul is the one that our society is not really governed to.

It's something that's just used, but we don't go into that very deeply. Mainly because of medicine, I think they've shut it down and say it doesn't exist.

Hamish (08:58)
Yeah, I think we could quite easily go off topic there and start going down to some rabbit holes. But you, going back, you mentioned you'd had a spiritual awakening. So tell me about that in a little bit more detail because this will bring in the soul element which you find incredibly important and so do I as well. Tell me about the soulful awakening, spiritual awakening that you have.

Altair de Almeida (09:20)
Okay, so my cousin was in this organization called the Iman. It was run by an English guy, but he deliberately chose a name that would, Iman means the faithful one in Arabic, actually. So he used a name that people wouldn't be able to link with other things. And that gave me so much confidence that that's why I broke with the whole thing about the...

the veterinary medicine, I decided no, I'm not going down there. And I began to open up and like I said, I was depressed before, but it taught me, especially after the therapy, after 18 months of intense therapy, that I loved humans, actually, whereas I was scared of them before, I really realised how I changed and I wanted to help others.

It took me a long time to get the different strands acupuncture and Tai Chi, Qigong and the various things. But it started, I would say, yeah, it started with therapy because it gave me that additional, the Iman gave me an intellectual opening up the primal integration, which is still going.

So that was the emotional opening. And I've continued working with what we call the shadow, the side that's repressed, the emotions that are repressed.

Hamish (10:45)
So you went to the...

Iman and you had the intellectual stimulation and then the emotional through the conversations and the coaching and then the spiritual that was sort of just wrapped around the whole thing that just made sense is that correct?

Altair de Almeida (11:02)
Actually, spiritual, now that you've talked about, I found this spiritual master called Barry Long, who was an Australian mystic in 1985. He lived in Highgate at the time.

It really took me on into the spiritual level. I first talked about mental and then the emotional. This was the spirit level. And...

Yeah, his training basically was about stilling the mind and really training to be in the moment.

Yeah, he was a tantric master as well and that really brought a different aspect. He's become famous because of that, but his main teaching was about keeping the mind not attaching to things. So we are so programmed to hold on to things all the time. And what that taught me was letting go is what really helps you to live in the moment.

They say the ultimate letting go is dying. But if you learn to die in the moment, then that's what makes you alive. It's contrary to what we've been taught. In fact, death in this in England is is a kind of secret. You hardly ever see dead bodies anyway. Give you an example in Ireland, for example, when someone dies, you dancer and you have a wake and the body is there. You can see it in England is kind of all hidden in India as well. It's like.

you see dead bodies going on the river, the Ganges. So it's much more open. In Kenya where I was born and brought up, you saw dead animals and stuff. But in England, it seems to be, I don't think I've ever seen, maybe out in the countryside, but you don't see death very much. And death is part of life. It's something we need to acknowledge. And we all, most people have a fear about it, but until you learn to let go.

thing letting go in the moment helps that process.

Hamish (13:00)
No, absolutely. And thinking about things, how did your, as you were going through all these things, how did your relationships change? I mean, did you ever reconnect with your father? How about with your uncle? How did your letting go of, as you said, the fighting, the protecting, how did that start to change as you changed?

Altair de Almeida (13:24)
That's an interesting question, actually. I went back to my parents place after doing the therapy. And what I realised, I only realised later, I'd gone, I'd slipped back to how I was when I was 18.

I was, I mean, he was a bit of a bully mentally, yeah, mentally more than anything. And suddenly when I realised that, I pulled back and I stopped playing the game and then he backed off. And he stopped his game and then it was fine. He's dead now. And...

I think he was someone who couldn't express himself so well and sometimes he would say to my mother, you talk too much and she would ask me, do you think I do? I said, no, it's because he can't talk. He doesn't express himself in a party

I'd had relationships, but the first, what I call the first love of my life came after Biodentz. It really opened my heart and I realised what a relationship on a deeper level could be. And yeah, it's, I love,

from having been repressed and fearing other people, I'm the opposite now. I go where angels fear to tread. And I'm passionate about people and I'm passionate about helping people. And I need to sometimes realise that sometimes people just need time to get to where they're going and to let them...

jumped into places where they need to get burnt a little before they wake up.

Yeah, so, you know, my transformation, it's taken years, but the transformation from being repressed to expressing myself, and it's an ongoing thing. I'm not fully...

It's not it's an ongoing process, so it's not done. Which is great, you know, they say the the the journey is the thing, not the goal. People think when I have earned £100,000 or something that's and it's not you can just look at people like Richard Branson. They continue working because it's not about... it's about growing through all the process. I believe my my life is perfect in the sense that I chose my father.

Hamish (15:32)
Yes.

Altair de Almeida (15:58)
My understanding is that on a soul level, we choose our parents. So I chose my father and my parents exactly to give me what I needed to study in this life, to learn in this life. So it's been, yeah, it's not been easy, but it's been a fascinating subject. And I've covered a huge, my studies gone through, I've got the equivalent of five degrees, but...

I've studied a lot in...

in holistic medicine. And I just love it. So much can be done that's really not taught. You're not told in the media, on television and stuff, it's all repressed. But there's so much that can be done for the human to grow and really express themselves.

Hamish (16:49)
You mentioned something which I find fascinating, this concept that we pick our parents. Why would I pick a parent that would beat me? Why would I pick a parent that would treat me badly and not be that perfect parent that would love me and be there for me? Why would I pick someone who was going to be horrible?

Altair de Almeida (17:11)
OK, so we're talking about the soul level, which is very different to our fragile human emotional level. And there's a brilliant book about this called Journey of Souls by Michael Newton. Now, he was a hypnotherapist, but he was not interested in past lives or anything. But in this particular one, particular session he was doing, the patients had told him what happened when he died previously.

So he thought, that's an interesting subject. So for the next 30 years, he deliberately took people down that path, the death process and what happened afterwards. And he's kind of mapped everything that happens after death. But for me, more important was what happens before you come back. And from his studies, it's not a theoretical thing. It's just over the years, he's heard the same thing from different souls.

And he talks about soul groups that we have a very close soul group, maybe 10, 12 souls that have been with you for thousands of lifetimes and know you left, right, centre, you know them. And on this earth, we try and recreate it by getting into groups or becoming, we often get disappointed. Mostly we get disappointed because we're looking for something that's not possible on this planet.

Occasionally we have really good relationships but most of the time what we have on the other side is very different. That soul group is totally there for your support. The task of the soul group is to help you choose and you are part of it.

to choose parents that will give you exactly on the soul level what you require to grow, to grow as a soul. So sometimes we have a relatively good life, relatively easy life, but what we consider someone else is going through easy life is not necessarily, I'm thinking of people who are born into millions.

This film that reminds me of The Room at the Top, I think it was. But people having, you know, we have this thing about scarcity and we're always thinking wealth brings it all. But you look at people who have a lot of wealth and they're struggling too, sometimes worse.

An example of that in real life is in India. You have huge parities between the very rich and very poor. The very poor on the street and somehow they seem to be happy. They've got this joy. Whereas when you're very rich, you're thinking someone's going to steal your wealth. So you become more restrictive and cautious. So yeah, the soul chooses.

I believe we have a kind of destiny, but it's not locked in. It's not you. Part of the soul journey is to to bring the opportunities into your life to make you wake up. So, for example, you suddenly get cancer or something and then I've wasted my life and then you wake up for others. For me, it was more.

it's taken years, you know, started with being very oppressed and...

through my process, things have changed a lot. So, yeah, looking back, I can see everything was perfect. Going to boarding school was perfect. Coming to England was perfect. And yeah, one of the things we need to be grateful for, we always look at it negatively, but in retrospect, what happened to me was what I needed to grow. It's not justifying anything. It's not justifying abuse or whatever. It's but.

Hamish (20:54)
think that is probably the most important point of what you've said is we're not justifying it. You know, we are not justifying behavior, things that happen to us. But it's like that thing, we're not responsible for what happened to us, but we are sure as hell responsible for how we carry on. That whole soul thing is just trying to wrap my head around that for a second. I remember

Couple of years after I left rehab, someone said to me, so why did you become an addict? And we were deep in a long, profound conversation. And without realising, I said, I became an addict so I would understand it intimately so I'd be able to help other people. And then it was just like, what the f*** did I just say? Because, you know, that, why would you want to get down to that deep, dark place where you had two choices, live or die? That's where I got to.

And then, you know, the words poured out. Yes, I wanted to become an addict so I could understand it and support people going through it. And, you know, I have to hang on to that and just be curious about it. And so that would that would mean that I picked like you did. Every bit was perfect in in execution. But it's. It requires a different way of thinking, doesn't it? I suppose it requires me not to be a victim.

Altair de Almeida (22:16)
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. When you realise that the soul is chosen and that we're not victims really, it's. Once once we realise that then life can change, can change quite dramatically, but before that, yeah, sure, it's like poor me is a big thing in our in our education. Education comes from the word edicare from Latin, which means to reveal from within.

But our education system is opposite. It just piles from outside and it piles stuff that you don't actually need and it actually impresses you.

So it's our job to get beyond that, beyond what we were taught in flower, open ourselves to the joy of life. By the way, I believe that, not so much I believe, my understanding is that joy, peace, love is in our matrix. It's in there. We just can't see it because it's like today the sun is shining, but you can't see it because of the clouds.

clouds are like the programming, the thoughts that cut out the sun. But below, it's like when you're in a plane, when you get beyond the clouds, the sun is shining. And I think that's the same with a human. And I teach people how to connect with, you know, going to feel the sun, feel the love, feel the joy, because those things are always there.

something that's very easy to forget and like you say you can go into addictions and all that other stuff because of that.

Hamish (23:57)
That was very funny, Altair. I was going to ask you, how do you get to this place of above the clouds? It reminds me of the Headspace meditation program where he talks a lot about above the clouds is the sunshine. And this is what you said. So how do you get above the clouds when everything is difficult or cloudy

Altair de Almeida (24:20)
for me, breath is one level but the second level is bring your attention out of your head, out of this noddle into your body.

I go to the naval area because that's the physical level. In Chinese medicine, we have three dantians. 'Dan' means field and 'tian' is way of. So you've got the physical in the naval area, the heart and the head. Most of us are really, especially with so -called smartphones.

really screwed up in the head with what's happening. It's really intellectual computers. So it's coming out of the chundering of the head into the body. And what I help people to do is to keep coming back there. And it just brings you... This is the instinctive level, the instinctive centre, by the way, the guts.

In our biology, we are taught that the brain is up here. Now they're catching up this actually three brains. There's one here, one in your heart and one in your guts. And in fact, the communication from the guts and the heart to the head is more than the other way around. People assume that it's all about the brain instructing, but it's the other way around. So the ancients would often talk about the soul residing in the heart. I don't know if that's true, but...

The heart is very powerful, very, very...

I would say everyone knows this. When you talk intellectually, it's one level, but when you share things from the heart level, it's very different. It's much more powerful. I think that there's a comparison between the brain. If I ask people, which do you think has got more electrical activity, your head or your heart? Most people would think it's the head because you've seen all these things about neurons and stuff.

In fact, it's the heart. And in fact, the heart is, I think, 100 times more electrically powerful than the brain. And something I remember reading somewhere, there's a group called Heart Math, and they study this stuff. And I think they say something like 5 ,000 times more powerful than magnetically. Magnetic is what creates a matrix, if you like. So when we connect with the heart,

When you fall in love, we know. It's a big change. It's much more powerful than...

what you can think in the head. I've gone off topic I think maybe. What is it you asked again?

Hamish (26:58)
It's all on topic. This is a wandering, meandering conversation about people, about head, heart and gut. I'd heard that the gut, there's lots of neurons in the gut. I mean, it reminds me of how often do you hear people saying, hmm, I trusted my gut and that was a bad decision. When we are up here, we miss so much. You are authentic when you dare to be vulnerable, when you...

Altair de Almeida (27:17)
Exactly.

Hamish (27:27)
tell people things, you know, you're risking your heart when you tell people things, but you're also allowing people to be vulnerable. And yeah, I mean, that's where we're going with this whole conversation. It's just about a different way of seeing things and awakening. And as you said, your awakening was a slow process, but it's revealed this magic to you. And mine's done the same thing, you know, concept of soul,

soul groups, mind blowing. You just have to be open minded and hearted to give these things a choice, give them a chance just to listen to and see if it makes sense. Obviously, that's what you've done. You've met things and gone, you've queried it, you've been questioned and curious and I suspect some things you've gone, nah, and other things you're really interested in.

Altair de Almeida (28:16)
So, I mean, it's very tempting to get so much out there that it's easy to get distracted. But again, I think on a soul level, hopefully, you know, it's not like I have to struggle as well. You know, I'm working with things where what we call the self saboteur from way past is trying to hold you back. And that's from fear. So.

It's a constant learning to deal with the shadow and move forward. And this is why we come to earth, it's to experiment. This is the University of Hard Knocks, basically. When you accept that in Buddhism, I'm not a Buddhist by the way, but in Buddhism, one of the noble truths is to acknowledge.

suffering and if we pretend it's never going to happen then that's suffering. So when you learn when you accept that it might happen and you're willing to accept it and move on that's when life becomes easier and more pleasurable. My life is generally pleasurable, it's peaceful most of the time, the crisis is occasional but because of the training I've learned to drop it very quickly.

I'll give you an example of this. Many years ago, I had the only BMW I ever bought. I was driving to London and had a rest. So it wasn't tiredness, but somehow I didn't see the red light on the traffic lights. And suddenly I realised this pile of cars. So I swerved and hit the car in front of the big VW van. And I gave.

the man my insurance and accepted it was my fault. And the fender had gone into the tire. So I kicked it out and then I drove off. On the way when I was driving, I suddenly realised that not there was no recrimination. I didn't say you stupid idiot. You know, it was my fault, but there's none of that. And I thought, wow, this is great. I'd learned to let go, just accept it and move on. So that's the kind of, you know,

The more we learn to accept and be in the moment, the more delightful life becomes. And that's what we're here, I believe, to learn. Some of us make it, some of us don't. And...

Sometimes you have to get to the depths of depression before you wake up. And that's my joy in helping people through that process.

Hamish (30:50)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting one. I was musing about the, about exactly that recently and the rock bottom. you know, we have choices and then we have a few less and as things get more difficult, we have a few less. And then by the time you get to that binary option right down at that bottom, you've got two choices. You know, there's no more people pleasing. There's no more doing it for anybody else. There's no more anything. It's I'm either going to get through this or I'm going to give up and, you know, start again.

die, whatever, kill myself. And there is a clarity but...

it's not a place you need to go to. And as you said, you hit that car and went, oops, you know, you didn't have to explode, but that's come through.

working on yourself and things like that. Tell me a bit more about the shadow. What exactly are you referring to when you mention that? Because you've mentioned that several times.

Altair de Almeida (31:48)
Okay, shadows, that part of yourself is repressed. It's literally in the shadow. So you don't see it until it comes out. So it comes out in what we might term inappropriate times when someone says something to you and you really blast them. Then you realise, hang on, why did I do that? And that's nothing to do with them. It was a trigger from the past. For example, this might be a silly idea. Someone called you stupid. And I'm sure many of us have had stupid.

anything before the age of seven goes into the unconscious and it's there. The only way to get out, I mean, I use a process to help people come out of that. But hypnosis is one way, but it's very expensive to clear the crap from the past basically. But so what you might've been told, you're stupid, you're good for nothing. And someone says that just in a joking way. And then it triggers that,

memory from the past and you really hit up. So when you have what I call inappropriate reactions, shouting, screaming at someone and sometimes it's the opposite. You go, you become depressed and you just go quiet. All that's part of the shadow. Shadow is unconscious. The stuff that's hidden, programmed into unconscious. The more we can make friends with it, the easier it is. is. is. is. Joseph

Campbell used to say that Joseph Campbell was the father of modern mythology. It became very famous. In fact, Star Wars, he used to say that George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was his best student. And the reason why Star Wars has consistently been one of the best love films is because it's using archetypes, many different archetypes. And Joseph Campbell was working with that.

all the mythology, the Greek God and everything, all that's on archetypal levels. So when we connect with the unconscious, one of the ways is working with your dreams, for example, our dreams, we think don't mean anything, but I remember I once was on one of these therapy things and there's a guy,

dream specialist and he said, would you like to work on a dream? I said, yeah, okay. And on that particular time, I had a dream of working with Japanese lap dogs. Don't ask me, I'm not particularly into dogs, but Japanese. Anyway, that dream which seemed to me kind of innocuous, not particularly important, spanned from when I was a child to then, to that time. And everything, it took three hours to work through it, but...

It was amazing. We are film producers. Every night you create this amazing film. And it's much more important than any film you see from Hollywood because it's working on really intricate aspects of yourself. You know, when you see your father in your dream, you think, God, he's come back or whatever. Your father's everything the way I understand it, everything in the dream is part of you. It's part of you.

So your father is part of you and you need to ask, or if you see a house, what does a house represent to you in your conscious mind? So everything, a snake, whatever in the dream is, you get these dictionaries for dream symbols. I think throw them out. It's much better that you explore yourself to find out. I work with dreams with some of my patients as well. So.

I've got a chart where you can go through a process and work with it. But dreams is one way of dealing with the shadow, the unconscious.

The unconscious is, put it this way, they say our conscious is only about 5 to 10 percent. It's like the tip of the iceberg. The stuff that's hidden is unconscious and that's what affects us most of the time. Most of us, we work unconsciously. Most of our daily routine is unconscious. So the more conscious we make it, the more productive we become.

Hamish (36:00)
You mentioned that for the first seven years that everything goes into the unconscious. Can you explain that a little bit more? I don't think I'm actually explaining it right back to you.

Altair de Almeida (36:10)
Okay, so from the say from zero to seven, this is not my theory, it's many psychologists have said, in fact, the Jesuits say give me a child to the age of seven, and I'll show you the man. And that's because they understand that from zero to seven is what the programming, whatever is said to you goes straight into unconscious.

So...

It's no point blaming your parents, but because they were programmed, you know, they had done, our whole society is fear based. You know, most of us have been brought up with scarcity, like we don't have this, we don't have money, we don't have this, we don't have that. And so it's always kind of fear based. And so that's what is programmed into most people.

Even Prince Charles. You think that they have, you know, money and money is not a problem, but he was brought up with this fear there. So it spans most people. The only person I think, and I don't know if it's true, was named David Blaine, I think. He was a magician. And he used to say his mother always, always gave him encouragement that he could do anything. And...

understand that some of the stuff it does is way out of the normal. It's not all magic. It's not all tricks. And I believe our capabilities are, if we tapped into our whole spectrum, we are really, really powerful. That is definitely not taught to us in schools, but we are much, much more powerful beings than what we're taught. And I don't believe it's just...

Tell you, just jump the thing a bit. The mystics and the shamans of many traditions all over the world said the same thing that your power is much greater than what we think. The physicists, the quantum physicists have caught up now. Western medicine still says a lot of rubbish because they're still based in Newtonian science, which is 400 years old.

But the quantum physicist is the one that I like to quote is William Tiller. He was a quantum physicist from Stanford University. Stanford University at the moment is the top in the world. Harvard, which we all thought was the top, is number four at the moment. So they changed, but Stanford is right at the top, one of the top ones. And he said, what we can see with our eyes is only 10 % of the...

What we can see physically is only 10 % of the whole universe. The power in the structures in the 90 % you can't see. The power in the structure is in the 90 % you can't see. And that's exactly like in the iceberg. The power is in the unconscious, you can't see it. And one of Joseph Campbell's, the mythology man, man's work was to find the gold in the unconscious, find the gold in the shadow.

So.

Yeah, so rather than fearing the unconscious, learning to make friends, there were societies in South America, and I believe they still are, where every morning the community would get together and share the dreams. There's no interpretation, they just share. The reason for that is you're sharing the unconscious. And the unconscious is revealing itself and you're sharing it with the community. And there's very little violence in that community because...

unconsciousness being aired if you'd like.

whereas we hide a lot of that stuff.

Hamish (39:50)
whole shadow thing absolutely fascinating. I've been reading some of Jung recently and he's fascinated by that. And, you know, I have the capacity to be very manipulative. Certainly when I was using (alcohol), I was thoroughly manipulative. And I don't like that aspect of me, but when I've had to become aware of it and say, yeah.

I used to be. I can now use aspects of that to nurture and to encourage. So I suppose there is always a duality between manipulation and let's say encouragement or coaching. So I mean, there's the drama triangle where you've got the three negative aspects, the rescuer, the rescuer, the victim and the persecutor. And yet you can turn that on its head and then you've got the coach.

and I can't remember what the other two. So there's always, there's two sides to the shadow, isn't there? There is a healthy aspect of learning it and understanding it.

Altair de Almeida (40:47)
Yeah, the shadow becomes difficult when you repress it. When you become friends with it, it becomes your friend. And that's what Joseph Campbell used to talk about the gold. The gold is in that hidden aspect of the glacier. It's underground, but that's where the jewels really are. But when you've sorted them out, that's where it is. Our society represses it all. They don't go into that.

just say, get on with it. It's the opposite. Yeah, Carl Jung was amazing. He was the first in modern culture to bring that to the fore. Freud was much more into the...

conscious. But in fact, he was going through a real difficult time and knowing the unconscious, he locked himself in the room. I can't remember. It's a long time. If I'm not mistaken, it's three months. It's a long, long time. So people are feeding him and all that. But he was in that room playing with toys. And he said, what's an adult doing that? But he came out of that completely sorted. And it

It was because he realised that the stuff that was stopping him was from from the deep unconscious and he needed to talk to it and work with it. There's another guy not so well known, Dr. Len is a Hawaiian.

pre -shaman his

He was a psychiatrist and he was a psychiatrist in Hawaii. And you wouldn't think there's much violence there, but apparently this psychiatric hospital was so violent that the guards always kept their back to the walls in case someone tried to jump them or something. So this man, Dr. Len, he knew that everything that you see is a projection of yourself. Now, this sounds metaphysical, and it is.

So he would take the files of the people and say, "I'm sorry, forgive me. Thank you. I love you." You might have heard it's called a Ho' oponopono. It's a Hawaiian thing. So I'm sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I love you. And he'd be repeating this to those, to the files and to Western psychotherapy that can be considered crazy. But the people start to get better just by doing that. So much so that that hospital shut down.

So it's factual proof of that, that it can work and work powerfully. And his work became more well known through Joe Vitale from The Secret who made lots of money and he kind of twisted it a bit. But it's working with, basically when you say, I'm sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you, it's like four things and it...

Whenever I get angry, irritated with someone, I say that and it just clears it. And people say, whom are you saying I love you to? You say, it doesn't matter, just say it. But you're forgiving, you're forgiving yourself, forgiving the other person. And it just melts the melts of the angst. You know, the Bible, it says, don't judge that you be judged. So I say, forget about being judged. When you judge someone, you're creating acid.

creating cortisol in your blood, which creates acid and it's making you sick. So forget about the other person, you deal with your own shit first. So when the, the counter side of that is when everyone, I often say that your enemies are often your, if you choose to have enemies, your enemies are your best teachers because through them you learn what's repressed in yourself.

I choose to have no enemies, I don't have any enemies. If someone wants to make me an enemy, it's not my problem.

Hamish (44:43)
This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. And I think one of the things I've picked up on is you're curious. Anything that happens to you, around you, you're curious about, and rather than, as you said, reacting, flying off the handle, it's...

look at it and see what you've learned from it. Does that kind of make sense?

Altair de Almeida (45:06)
Absolutely, yeah. Everyone's there. Again, we're here as souls to teach each other. When you look at it like that, on the soul level, we're all connected. The metaphysicians, shamans will tell you that we are all connected. In fact, the quantum physics will tell you that what you can see is an illusion. We are atoms and we are all melding, you know, from human to rock.

and trees and everything, we're all connected. And we can choose to feed each other or be destroyed by each other. It's not destroyed, but it can be hurt. But when you choose to turn it the other way around, life becomes more juicy, becomes more fun, more joyful. So I choose to live a joyful life rather than suffer.

Hamish (45:58)
Absolutely

Altair de Almeida (45:59)
How we react to what life brings us is a major difference. I think it was John Ford, the creator of the Ford Company, used to say, if you think you're right or you think you're wrong, you're right. Our attitudes, whatever you think is going to create a reality.

Hamish (46:16)
you've given me an awful lot to think about there. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for that. Where can people find out a little bit more about you?

Altair de Almeida (46:25)
Well, LinkedIn and I'll give you the links later on and you can put them there. So I've got a website as well as a landing page. And yeah, my work, like I said, is helping basically heart centred business people, entrepreneurs, executives who are suffering from.

anxiety, panic, tiredness, all that kind of thing, helping them to clear the shadow and come into being fully human. So that's what my life work is and I just love doing it.

Hamish (47:02)
You mentioned your work with clients. What do you do with them? How do you help them?

Altair de Almeida (47:07)
Okay, so at the moment I've

six week.

Zoom course that I And we cover 27 different subjects. So it's not just one or two. And those 27 subjects are divided into the body, mind and soul. So we look at how you can improve your body, improve your mind and your soul. So we look at all aspects and...

The idea of the whole process is to help people who are suffering, basically. My particular niche is not to help people with setting up tasks and organization. That's not my forte at all. My forte is working with the mind, the emotions, the soul, and to get people to be reconnected. These are usually people who are...

suffering, they're stressed. Stress is okay, but when it's bad enough, you can't. And the indications are when you're at work and you lose your temper a lot, or you say things that you later regret. Or you can't think. At meetings, your brain is in a fog. So those are all indications that you're out of kilter. And if you don't do something about it, you're...

business will go down the tube. So, and there are a lot of people in that situation at the moment with inflation and all that stuff. So there's a lot of people in fear and my work is helping people come out of fear. I use the word acronym, fear stands for false evidence appearing real.

So we often get linked to that and we think the worst is about to happen. And as I said, if you think it's going to happen, it's going to happen. So my job with my clients is to help them change that around so they become fully functional and joyful people. Because we get so bogged up with our work sometimes, we spend so much time, we forget about family and friends and your family's...

what should be where your heart is connected with other people. So if you don't have that community feeling, at the end of the day, you're climbing this ladder and you get to the top and you suddenly realise I'm on the wrong ladder because you've wasted your life struggling to make money perhaps. And you realise that money is not where it's at really.

might make things easier but you've lost your relationships, you've lost your family, you've lost your children. Your children are in such a dire state you can't talk to them and so on. So my work is helping people connect with their emotional body as well. The heart is very important.

Hamish (50:03)
very, very important. No, that sounds really super and really important, especially as life gets more busy, more frenetic and more uncertain. It's a really powerful role that you've taken on there. Yeah. And how can people find you? How can people find out more about you?

Altair de Almeida (50:21)
I'll leave you the links. I mean, LinkedIn, if you checked Altair de Almeida, I'll come up, I believe.

Hamish (50:27)
Wonderful. Brilliant. Okay, and then the last question that I ask everybody is, what is the gift that you've received from your awakening?

Altair de Almeida (50:36)
Well, the gift is being able to help other people. At one time I was the opposite, fearing everyone. And now my gift is to help everyone. You can't help everyone. It depends on whether people want to be helped really. But my awakening is about helping those, I often say helping those who want to be helped to be the best they can be.

Hamish (51:01)
Brilliant. Well, thank you ever so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your time and your knowledge and information. It's been really important and thank you ever so much.

Altair de Almeida (51:12)
Thanks, Hamish. It was great to be on your podcast and good luck with your work as well. I know you're on a similar kind of...

path. So yeah, great.

Hamish Niven (51:27)
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Crucible, Conversations for the Curious. If these powerful stories of transformation resonated with you, be sure to like, subscribe and share this show with anyone who you think could do with a dose of inspiration for their own journey. I would really appreciate it if you could make any comments on your favourite podcast platform as well, that helps me reach more people. All the important links and information are in the show notes below. Thank you very much for listening and catch up with you soon.