The hidden limits of pattern-based personal growth - James Tripp
Episode 549, released 21st May 2026.
Lian and hypnotherapist and changework facilitator James Tripp on where pattern-based change meets its ceiling, what Jungian individuation and NLP have to say to each other, and why the most resistant clients may be the ones most in need of a reconnection to soul.
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Or if you prefer to read: Scroll right down for the transcript
James Tripp is an internationally recognised authority in the fields of self development, personal mastery and generative changework.
Coming from a diverse background including philosophy, music, martial arts, movement culture and NLP, James is also the developer of the Hypnosis Without Trance approach to hypnotic facilitation as well as author of the critically acclaimed book of the same title.
In his one-to-one work, James works with individuals looking to become better adapted in consistently creating outcomes they value and living lives they love. Since turning professional in 2007 his clients have included artists, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and business creators, c-suite executives, actors and performers, frontline services operatives, medical doctors, writers, special forces operatives and military veterans.
Beyond his one-to-one work, James has presented at conferences and run workshops across Europe, Australia and North and South America, and his ‘home turf (London and Edinburgh) workshops typically draw students from around the world.
In this episode, Lian and James begin with "doomer optimism," a genuine belief that radical change is not only inevitable but potentially the very thing that makes us more alive and more human. They look at what it costs people to build a life around patterns that are functional in the world but out of resonance with who they truly are, and why that gap, which might show up as numbness, burnout, or a vague sense that something's missing, tends to compound under pressure.
From there the conversation moves into territory that doesn’t always make it into change-work: soul, and what it takes to bring that word into a room full of police officers without losing them, and why, in James’ experience, even the most practical people tend to respond when someone gives them permission to look in that direction. There's something here about nourishment rather than healing, about arcs of becoming rather than things to fix, and about where ancient ways of knowing, shamanism, Taoism, the Kabbalah, still carry genuine usefulness in a world that has largely forgotten them.
Listen if you've been doing this work, in yourself or with others, long enough to sense that changing our patterns is only part of the story.
We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Why changing patterns can take you a long way but still leave you feeling like the nut has been removed from the shell
How soul connection shows up differently depending on the room you're in, and why James rarely uses that language the same way twice
What Jung's private admission near the end of his life, that he had failed at his principal task, reveals about how long it takes for a seed to become a fruit tree
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
Join UNIO, The Community for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
Don’t want to miss a thing?
Subscribe (BTW, it’s absolutely FREE) to the show on your favourite platform or app by clicking the relevant button below… That way you’ll receive each episode automagically straight to your device as soon as it’s released!
Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan
Episode Transcript:
Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.
Lian (00:01)
What if the ceiling in your personal change work, whether that be your own or that that you do with others, isn't a failure of the method, but a sign that something else entirely is needed. Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This week I'm joined by a many time past guest, hypnotherapist and change work facilitator, James Tripp, to explore where pattern based change meets its ceiling. What Jungian Individuation and NLP have to say to each other and why the most resistant clients, which could include ourselves, may be the ones most in need of a reconnection to soul. James is an internationally recognised authority in self-development, personal mastery and generative change work, drawing on a background that spans philosophy, music, martial arts, movement culture, and NLP.
He's also the developer of the Hypnosis Without Trance approach to hypnotic facilitation and author of a book of the same name. And his clients over nearly two decades have ranged from artists and filmmakers to special forces operatives and frontline services staff. We begin with what James calls Doomer Optimism, a genuine belief that radical change is not only inevitable,
but potentially the very thing that makes us more alive and more human. And from there, we move into what it actually costs to build a life around patterns that function well in the world, but sit out with resonance with who we truly are. That gap might show up as numbness burnout or a sense that something indefinable is missing and it tends to compound under pressure and over time.
And we've both seen it enough times in ourselves and in the people we work with to know it doesn't resolve through more pattern work alone. From there, we move into the territory that doesn't always make it into, I guess, typical change work circles, soul. And what it takes to bring that into a world that isn't typically thinking about such things. James gives the example of a room full of police officers.
How do we bring in this notion of soul without losing people? And why in James' experience, even the most pragmatic people tend to respond when someone gives them a permission to look in that direction. We get into arcs of becoming rather than things to fix about how ancient ways of knowing such as shamanism, Taoism and Kabbalah still carry real usefulness in a world that has largely forgotten them.
So listen, if you've been doing this work with, again, in yourself or with others long enough to sense that changing patterns is only part of the story.
You've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing. So honour that call and go ahead and subscribe.
It's challenging to live in this crazy modern world. Wild sovereign soul is what we know will help. And so if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for soul seekers. UNIO is the living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to wildsovereignsoul.com/unio or click the link in the description.
And now back to this week's episode. Let's dive in.
Lian (03:41)
Hello, James Tripp. Welcome back to the show. In fact, I think you've probably been on the podcast through each of its iterations. You may be the person that's been on the show most over all time. So welcome back.
James Tripp (03:59)
Well, thank you. It's good to be back here. Yeah, I don't know. I have been on a few times. I don't know if it's the most. You've had Jörg and Rasmussen on a few times. I know.
Lian (04:10)
have. Yes, also our mutual friend, John P Morgan. But yes, actually, I didn't realise how many times it was because we've been, we've been a thing for not you and I, the podcast has been a thing for 12 years. And I was looking back at our previous episodes. And I think you may have been on five or six times before, which was actually a surprise to me. Yes, it's a long time. So
James Tripp (04:16)
Yeah.
Really? Yeah, it's surprise to me as well. Yeah. Well, I'm very thankful to be able to come back again. Thank you.
Lian (04:41)
Well, it was funny because we actually kind of started having a conversation just as a catch up, which you were kind of recording and was potentially going to be us on your podcast. And then we ended up over here for my podcast, certainly as a part one, and we sort of began having a conversation that just seemed as though it was one worth recording and sharing. So I'll give a bit of a synopsis as to where we got in our conversation and then let's...
James Tripp (04:55)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Lian (05:11)
dive in. So we're talking about this changing world, which is a cliche that perhaps people have been speaking about for a very long time, but certainly the level of change and just the sort of unprecedented nature of the kinds of changes do feel different, certainly in the last few years. And so we were talking about our experiences as people who are, I guess, devoted to, I mean, we could give so many, was thinking actually your words, agency, the way we describe it as sovereignty is really a similar orientation, my sense is. Obviously the work we do with others around these kinds of themes and how it gives one an interesting perspective on this world as indeed it goes through all these changes.
We started talking about this and it's okay. I mentioned something about that contrast between the storm whipping up ever more, as in the world's storm, and then being in the sort of eye of the storm, the centre of the storm. And then you went to share your own personal relationship to that kind of symbol of the storm.
And I may be about to out you because I think you were saying you have a personal relationship to this that you don't like as a private relationship. But are you willing to share what that was?
James Tripp (06:37)
Yeah, I am willing to share, I'm very much willing to share. So yeah, just to say something about that topic of, you know, as Paul McCartney said in Live and Let Die, in this ever-changing world in which we're living, you know, and that was back in the 70s, he said that, but here we are in the 21st century and a quarter of the way into the 21st century, and the world is changing at an ever-faster pace. I think everybody can agree upon that. We're seeing things that we probably wouldn't have imagined. I don't know if I imagined I'd see them in my lifetime, but we're seeing them now. You know, AI, robots, all sorts of stuff. And we've got this increasing complexity in the world. And therefore, you know, I think one of the things that's significant about how we human beings work is we build models of the world so that we can navigate the world and we want to be able to predict the future. That's what the point of having a model of the world is. So I think one of the challenges that people face now is
Lian (07:11)
Mmm.
James Tripp (07:36)
you know, it's more and more challenging to predict what's going to happen next and what's coming around the corner. So I think certainly from the perspective of my work, and this may well be relevant to your work as well, I have this distinction of adaptedness versus adaptiveness. And adaptedness is your capacity to adapt to a specific context, and adaptiveness is your ability to adapt to different contexts. So
Lian (08:04)
Mm-hmm.
James Tripp (08:05)
You know, the way we've been as human beings is when there's a relatively, you know, relatively stable world, you get to pick the context you want to adapt to, adapt to be functional in that context, and you're good to go. But the trouble we have in this modern world is these contexts keep changing. So more and more, we have a requirement to connect with adaptiveness and ability to adapt within ourselves, you know, to new environments.
So there's that side of it. And I have a particular interest to this because, you know, like we are charged with showing up in this crazy world and making a good go of things. That's what, you know, that's what that is the burden that we all carry or perhaps the joy that we all carry, depending on how you look at it. But I will also say, because you mentioned this idea about the eye of the storm. You see.
And that brought up two personal mantras for me or organising principles that I've had for a long time. Now, even before the world got this crazy, I was somebody that would get flapped by surprising things. I would get in the flap if things weren't going as they ought to be going or as I planned them to be going. And I looked at myself and I noticed that I was kind of flappable and I didn't really want to be a flappable person. I wanted to be a grounded person. I wanted to be able to show up and create elegantly with what came my way. So I sort of developed this orientation which was built around the, I call it a mantra but that's probably not the right word. I am the Zen Calm at the center of the storm. So I had this image in my mind of whatever the storm was, whatever the... I'm gonna maybe cross the boundary with my language here. Whatever the shit storm was, I was gonna be this... Yeah. Is that too explicit or am I all right with that? All right, I'm gonna... Because that's gonna become relevant in a moment. So, I am the Zen Calm at the center of the storm. So what I wanted to be is like whatever was going on, I didn't want to be being caught up in it.
Lian (09:56)
Mental note to Mark as explicit. It's all good.
James Tripp (10:14)
So the orientation for me was to be the Zen calm at the center of it. Now there's another aspect to this as well. I did an episode on my podcast some while back, a few years back, called Doomer Optimism. And I really like this idea of Doomer Optimism because I believe I am a Doomer Optimist. And I'm a Doomer in the sense that the world as we know it is changing rapidly and maybe even you could say if it's not too dramatic a metaphor is coming apart somewhat or is at risk of coming apart. There's increased complexity and what you get as you increase complexity within systems you get paradoxically an increase in adaptiveness but also vulnerability to shocks that can unravel the whole system. So it's a weird paradoxical thing. We're living in a more and more complex world, a more and more interconnected world, more and more stuff talking to other stuff, talking to other stuff, talking to other stuff, you know, and we're kind of set up for this shock, which might knock everything apart, but I'm a doomer optimist in so much as even if everything falls apart, you know, the world that we know falls apart, we as people don't necessarily need to fall apart. And there is an unprecedented opportunity to create something anew from that. And another reason why I'm a kind of doomer optimist is because I actually think that we're not necessarily the most alive when we're at our most comfortable. So even though people seek comfort, there's a part of everybody that wants comfort from time to time. Nobody watches a movie about someone who's really comfortable and everything's going nicely and they're sat in a meadow and there's flowers and it's all, and whilst we might have a part of us that craves that, we watch movies, we watch TV stuff that's about people facing challenges and meeting challenges and about transformation, about change.
Lian (11:42)
Mmm.
James Tripp (12:07)
The movies we're drawn to are dynamic generally. So I'm of doomer optimist in that I do think that things are going to radically change. And to me, that can be an exhilarating thing because it creates an opportunity for us to be more alive and more human. And I think one of the things that marks us out as humans is our adaptiveness. It is our ability to adapt to different environments, to changing times.
I know that some people listening to this might go, but I don't want to do that. I spent my life adapting to this context and I don't want it to disappear. I understand that too. But for me, I choose that doomer optimist. Like, yeah, it's coming apart and you know, what's next? So my second personal mantra is I walk through the shit storm at the end of time. Right?
Lian (12:51)
Hmm.
Hahaha
James Tripp (13:00)
That's my second storm-based mantra. So it's like, I don't want to get swept up in that storm. I don't want to get taken down by that storm. So a lot of that is about how are you going to be within this? How are you going to move through this? And what is it that you're going to be grounded in, in terms of your philosophy of life and...
Lian (13:01)
Have fun!
Hmm.
James Tripp (13:26)
universe and everything because I think that's a really important thing. Everybody has a philosophy of life, the universe and everything, whether they know it or not. We've all got one. And that's what's ultimately, you know, that's where we're going to come from in the world. And as we get more and more rapid change, the only question is, how do I create with this? How do I create with this? You know, so that's that's kind of my general take on it. And I love to coach
Lian (13:33)
Hmm.
James Tripp (13:54)
people in terms of what I would call adaptiveness, which is, how do you create with what comes up? How do you create with what comes your way in the world? You know, and create towards good outcomes for you and the people who are important to you. So that's something that's much at the center of the work that I'm doing with people.
Lian (14:16)
Hmm. My, my mind was being stretched between the ancient past and the possibly not too far off future as I was listening to you talk. So there's two parts to this one.
I really love and relate to what you're saying this, this sense that yes, it looks as though things to some degree are going to come apart at the seams. And there perhaps is an invitation to almost like include that in our, in our orientation, our beliefs, our ideas about ourselves and the world. So it's not kind of
James Tripp (14:48)
Hmm.
Lian (15:02)
my ideas about self and what is possible only works within this kind of this kind of life that we've been largely used to with some changes, a few updates, but largely the same. What if we're being invited to extend that, that version of reality into something that is perhaps unrecognisable, that ask a lot of us in a way, doesn't it, to have this level of openness that is outside of what we know. And then I was simultaneously also thinking, I don't know about you, but I love dystopian future-based books and films. It's one of my most, I mean like I'm even grinning as I think about, it's one of my most absolutely favourite genres. And if you throw a zombie or two into it, oh my God, like, I'm there.
James Tripp (15:44)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lian (15:57)
And I was like, it's interesting, isn't it? That we, I'm not saying everyone loves it, but culturally we clearly do have a bit of a thing for a dystopian future. I've always had that kind of like particular love for that idea. And I think it links to what you're saying. This is like, what if it is that opportunity to actually like really bring out the best of us?
James Tripp (15:57)
Right.
Lian (16:26)
the parts of us that have been waiting, before we started recording, we were talking about the appendix, when we went from me talking about my super duper webcam that half the time doesn't work, and then we started talking about, an appendix in the human body actually redundant, or does it have a mystery function? What if it takes a dystopian future to find out why we have an appendix? Maybe it's been waiting for this moment.
James Tripp (16:44)
Mmm.
Right.
Lian (16:55)
I was thinking about all that around kind of like the possibility, but also how we orientate towards that future possibility. And then I'll simultaneously thinking about, I know that we've got a shared love of what you might call sort of ancient philosophy, whether it be the Daode Jing, or say for example, shamanism has been a big part of my I guess, understanding of the world over the years and how more and more the more things change in the present, the more I see those principles from the past are even more, it's a terrible way of saying it, they're even more true, or probably better said, they're even more applicable, they're even more powerful, they're even more useful.
James Tripp (17:46)
Hmm.
Lian (17:51)
even though they were uncovered or created or understood at a time that was totally different to these times. And that, find that interesting. that was, do with that what you will, James, but that's what you talking was having me kind of go into the future and then into the past. And it's like, it's something interesting in the two of those two things coming together.
James Tripp (17:51)
Hmm.
Mmm.
I think it is. And what's actually coming up for me as you say that is something you said about a minute or so back, think, about, you know, we can have this modern world and the context of this modern world that we become adapted to. And then that becomes the sort of box that we fit in. And this modern world, though, comes from something. It is emergent from something that existed before this modern world. so what I'm thinking here is, I think if you go back to sort of Taoism, for example, and Taoism is interesting and the relationship between Taoism and shamanism. Jeremy Lent, I don't know if you ever read The Patening Instinct by Jeremy Lent, very interesting book. I love that book, I think it's great. So Jeremy Lent,
Lian (19:07)
I so.
James Tripp (19:13)
He talks in that book about it's sort of a long history of humanity and how our consciousness evolved and our way of making sense of the world and our metaphors. So he goes back to a time and says, if you go back to what he calls proto-Sharmanism and Sharmanistic ways of relating to the world, every ecological nonlinear ways of relating to the world, this is the origins. And his point about Taoism is Taoism is very shamanic.
Lian (19:33)
Mm-hmm.
James Tripp (19:40)
I know that people, they look at philosophical Taoism, but if you look at Taoism on the religious side, it is very shamanic. You've got all these different gods and ancestors and things like this. So his point, Jeremy Lenn's point, is this kind of Taoist way of thinking, or particularly for him, he's interested in Neo-Confucianism, which is a blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. He believes, offers an answer.
Lian (19:46)
Hmm.
Hmm
James Tripp (20:07)
to how we can think about and relate to the world today, which is more functional and more useful than ever, this way of being in the world, so that we can handle the unknown, we can handle surprises. I have a particular interest in complex systems and complexity. Now, nature itself is already a complex system, but there's degrees of complexity. And we've added more and more complexity on top of things. And the marker of a complex system, or one of the marks of a complex system, is it consists in unknown and unknowable interdependencies. So more than ever we are being charged to engage with a world that consists in unknown and unknowable interdependencies, but we're raised to believe we have to know how everything works in order to work with it. Right, so you have to more and more now we are being taken back to a time where we have to be able to work with mystery, because nobody knows how anything relates to anything else.
Lian (20:52)
Hmm.
James Tripp (21:06)
If you look at AI, the people that have developed AI don't really know how it works. It's just like, yeah, we figured it out. We did this. We set it in motion, and now it's doing this thing. we think it's doing this, and it's doing that. we think it's going to... Maybe we need to... They don't really know exactly what's going on with it. So you've got these endless uncertainties. What happens next?
What happens next? How does that fit with that? Nobody knows how to fix the economy because it's a complex system. It's unknown and unknowable interdependencies. So I think this way of being in, releasing from that left hemisphere, I need to know what's going on so that I can control the variables and make sure a particular outcome comes about. That can work in a simpler context. If I want to make a cup of coffee, it's good to be able to
Lian (21:38)
Mmm.
James Tripp (22:00)
know the sequence and control the variables. That's great. But the rest of the time, we haven't got that. So we need a different way of showing up and engaging. cannot show up going, I don't know what's going on. I'm afraid. Like, what are we going to be grounded in? And I think these sort of ancient proto-shamanic ideas, things like Taoism, this sort of thing, they enable us to be grounded in that which comes before everything. So like, with the Tao, the Tao is the way of things. I really like to have visceral experiences of connecting into everything that is before the details, if you see what I mean. You could call that a meditation practice or a self-hypnosis practice or just tripping out or whatever, I don't know. But I think it's really valuable to be able to reconnect to something that goes beyond all of this.
Lian (22:45)
You
James Tripp (22:54)
Otherwise, you have the self-imposed responsibility for success and failure in a complex world that you cannot understand. So if you cannot connect with something beyond yourself and beyond all of this craziness, or beyond or underneath of, I think that it's too easy to end up unmoored.
Lian (23:13)
Hmm. Yeah, that's, certainly, my sense of it. was, as you were talking, was pondering, I could be wrong about this, but I feel as though when we've spoken before, we may have talked about things like we have now, you know, the mystery we might talk about or the unknown.
And I don't know if we've ever directly, I mean, I do separately, like then whether it be on this podcast or elsewhere, talk a lot about, for example, soul or spirit. I don't know if you and I have ever had a conversation directly about that. And I was just pondering as I was listening to you, how increasingly over the years of doing this work, both personally and with others, It seems as though some kind of connection to whatever words we would give to those notions of soul and spirit seems, I would say essential at this point is what, how it looks to me. And
James Tripp (24:25)
Hmm.
Lian (24:31)
I guess simply put, I'd love to know your sense of that. Again, I don't feel as though I've directly ever asked you your sense of that, your belief of that. So I would love to know.
James Tripp (24:44)
Right, know, it is interesting.
In that I've been thinking a lot recently about pattern and soul. I've been thinking about this contrast of pattern and soul. And the reason I say pattern and soul, somebody go, what's the contrast there? Maybe this is just a personal contrast. But I'm a change work guy, I'm a change work facilitator. When I'm more poetic, I would describe myself as an alchemical facilitator, if I'm in a more poetic sort of mode.
And I got into this because I wanted to change things about myself. I was not happy about my personal efficacy, my perceived personal efficacy. I didn't feel like I was fit for purpose for the world and certainly not fit for purpose for creating the life that I wanted to create. And when I was younger, I felt really trapped. I thought that, you know, this is the way I am. Particularly, I got very depressed when I turned about 19, 20, because I had this belief that now this is me as an adult. This is exactly how I'm going to be and I don't like it. I feel like I'm in over my head everywhere I go. So I kind of felt very desperate as a young man. And then when later I came to NLP, so I got into self-change through NLP, kind of through NLP. I got into Qigong and stuff first. I made a lot of changes through Qigong and Tai Chi, and then I got into NLP. And the thing that blew my mind was this idea, yeah.
Lian (25:46)
Hmm.
think I, so Inter-Arps, I knew you, and clearly we share a background in martial arts and I knew we shared interesting, you know, quite a lot of overlaps of these types of things. I didn't know that you actually began first with Qigong and then went into NLP. So that in itself is quite interesting. I hadn't realised that.
James Tripp (26:20)
Yeah.
Right, right. So I was probably in, you know, I was 10 years in with Qigong and Tai Chi and other martial arts as well, you know, that these days draw derision from the world like Russian martial arts and stuff like that. They'll come back around, everything comes around and has its time. You know, so I was kind of really into these things and they really helped me a lot. They really helped. One of the things that the martial arts helped me to learn was that there was a possibility
Lian (26:52)
Mmm.
James Tripp (27:00)
for change. really believed in talent and ability. And one of my early teachers said, look, talent's got nothing to do with it. If you put the work in, you'll get the results. That was quite a mind shift for me. But when I came to NLP, the thing that really appealed to me was the idea that we were essentially just a collection of patterns that were learnt. That's the NLP view is it's just learnt patterns. So you can change patterns and you can relearn patterns. So like who you think you are.
Lian (27:03)
Mmm.
Hmmmm
Mmm.
James Tripp (27:30)
just a collection of patents, just a collection of patents, right? And those patents are malleable, you can change them. That was hugely liberating for me because it freed me from the idea that I was a particular way that was somehow deep and immutable, deep in the geology of who I was. So I got busy changing patents and it was very effective. It was a very effective
Lian (27:33)
yeah.
James Tripp (27:57)
way of approaching things. But what I found is some patterns were easy to change, and some patterns not so much. And some patterns, once I changed them, I felt like, yeah, this is good. And some never quite felt right. Some of the changes didn't quite feel right. So the way I look at this now is from a perspective of soul. I think that we have pattern, and I think we have soul. So I think a lot of the time people think
Lian (28:23)
Hmm.
James Tripp (28:24)
who I am, they look at all the patterns and they go, this is me. But really it's not, those are just the patterns. Now those patterns can be more or less resonant with or in alignment with your soul. I think I've got a bit of a Jungian bias on this in that I think that, I really like the idea from Jung of individuation that
Lian (28:40)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
James Tripp (28:52)
Ultimately in life what we need is we need to develop a sort of interface with the world that is both resonant with our soul and resonant with the world What happens for a lot of people is they develop a kind of interface with the world a set of patterns that is that is either Relevant, you know, it might be a good fit with the world, but it's out of sync with their soul It doesn't fit with their soul. So they feel this they're never Really at home within themselves. Or you might get someone who goes the other way, like, screw the world, I'm just going to be me. like, you know, they're just not fitting with the world. And that's not healthy either. Because if you don't fit with the world, we are social creatures. We need to have relationships with everything around us. So you can't just be isolated and go, well, I'm just going to be me. You know, so there's a challenge, which is how do we create, you know, create and adapt a set of patterns which works for our soul and
Lian (29:33)
Mm.
James Tripp (29:49)
works for the world in which we live. You don't get to design that like in abstract. You have to find your way into that. So Jung had this idea of circumambulation of the self. You know, there's this sort of whatever you really are, your life is spent sort of going around it, getting close to it and being more nourished by it. But I really believe that when people become out of resonance with their soul, they lose their soul and many people do.
By soul, I just want to say this, I'm not making a metaphysical claim. I don't know what soul is. I don't know the deeper functioning. When I use the term soul, I'm talking about something, some deep beyond words or before words essence of sort of who you are, some unique individual thumbprint of self or whatever it will be. I don't make any metaphysical claims about the transcendence of souls or anything like that. But I will say this.
For the last about 18 months now, I've been working with the London Metropolitan Police. So I'm working with people who are serving police officers or staff within the Metropolitan Police. It's very high pressure work. It's difficult work. It's challenging work. I know the police are not most people's favorites. I come from a working class background. know, it's, don't see the police as good people necessarily, but there are people doing very, very, very difficult jobs. And the burnout rate is huge, really. So I'm kind of in there working with police officers. And one of the things that people go, well, yeah, that's going to be all practical, pragmatic stuff, because they are practical, pragmatic people by and large. But one of the things that's really come into the work, and I'm careful about how I introduce this, because they're not signed up for this, but is a connection to soul. And I will have an explicit soul conversation with some of the clients there. And what I found is when people, they've lost connection with their soul and they're just doing their duty, they're just trying to do their work, they're trying to be a good family person, they're trying to do their work well, but they've got no connection to soul anymore, their circuits start getting fried. So putting people back in connection with their soul is quite miraculous, even in little ways, even people looking in that direction, having permission to do it, seeing it as a good thing, and starting to just get back in touch with things that have them come alive. So for me, it's a hugely important thing. It's a hugely important resource for people's well-being is to be in touch with their soul.
Lian (32:32)
Hmm.
Hmm. This is such a timely tangent. This conversation has gone down in that just, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, Jonathan and I did an episode together and it was literally on the topic of the sort of modern day obsession with individualisation versus individuation. And so that was the topic.
James Tripp (33:12)
Right.
Lian (33:14)
And as you know, I'm a huge Jung fan and I love that way that you spoke about it, a kind of patterns versus soul. And I was also thinking, I spent a number of years studying the Kabbalah and there's, don't know if you know, but there's a really interesting way that Jung's work and his, I guess you could say re-imagining of alchemy maps very directly onto the Kabbalah.
And probably alchemy was actually taken from the Kabbalah without realising and Jung only realized this towards the end of his life. And so everything you're saying there looked at through the Kabbalah tree of life is exactly that. the, without going into too much detail, the kind of lower part of the tree, it's just the ego's patterns. That's all that we can.
James Tripp (33:54)
Hmm.
Lian (34:10)
see within, work within, change within is like these patterns that make sense at that level of consciousness. And then as we go further up the tree into the soul part of the tree, that's when there is that sense of something that is beyond and before this idea of this ego sense of identity in this lifetime, but also gives us access to
James Tripp (34:18)
Hmm.
Lian (34:38)
to change, to transformation, because we're no longer just circling within the same patterns. And so I love the way you talk about it. I had actually even thought of that before. didn't go particularly deep into the NLP world. And I guess there's probably some nuance to what you said in that, but maybe there isn't. That in itself, I was like, that's so interesting to think it's kind of, it's all about that focus of, you know, we're just a collection of patterns. And
James Tripp (34:44)
Mmm.
Lian (35:07)
there not being any sense of soul in it that in itself is like, wow, that's never, I've never seen it as clearly as that before. That's quite interesting.
James Tripp (35:16)
Think about the metaphor of neuro-linguistic programming, just the overall metaphor of it. So I'm really not a fan of the programming bit. I think there's some great work that's come from NLP. I think Bandler and Grinder and the original crew, they were doing incredible stuff. There's an old story that
Lian (35:20)
Yes. Yeah. So true.
James Tripp (35:40)
Milton Erickson, who they went and modeled. Because Bandler and Grinder, they were interested in patterns and modeling. So they're going, right, what's this person's patterns of efficacy? And we want to model those out. So they went to see Erickson, Milton Erickson. And I don't know if listeners know who Milton Erickson is, but he was a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist who was very creative and very inventive.
Lian (35:44)
Hmm.
James Tripp (36:04)
So Gregory Bateson, who was a mentor to Bandler and Grinder, said, go and see Erickson. He was a friend of Erickson's. So anyway, they went and they studied Erickson. They came back and they wrote these two books called, I can't even say the titles, The Patterns of Communication or something of Milton H. Erickson. Quite a long title, but it's about patterns. They're really interested in patterns. And Erickson wrote the forewords to the first of these books. He later sort of said, had quite a, loved word play and a sense of humour he had. He said, bandit and swindler really cracked the nut on my work, right? You know, so this, I got reported from somebody who says they were there actually when this was said. So bandit and swindler really cracked the nut on my work. The trouble is they took the shell but left the nut, right?
Lian (36:44)
Hehehehehe yeah, I've heard that before but not realised what this was getting at in the same way as you're now talking about it.
James Tripp (37:01)
Right. Right. So the way I see this is, what's the shell and what's the nut? And I don't think that Ericsson was saying the shell is irrelevant. Nuts have shells for a reason. So to me, I see that as the shell is the delivery system for the nut. So I think that Bandler and Grinder, it was valuable to isolate these patterns. But if you let go, there's nothing but these patterns.
Lian (37:15)
Mm.
Mmm.
James Tripp (37:33)
Right, now we have a problem. Now we're losing something in the process. So I really value that NLP work. But then the question is, what is the nut? What is the life? What is it that wants to come through? Now, I've often said about Ericsson. Ericsson was a life coach. Ericsson's really Taoist. He never talks about the Tao, but he's a really Taoist person. You look at Ericsson's work, so much of it is about the deeper intelligences that are at play and allowing, so much about allowing. So much about like one of Ericsson's major things is what he called the utilization principle. That is anything that comes your way. What do we do with this? How do we create with this? So there's a deeper, richer way that Ericsson was being in the world. And if somebody became a client of Ericsson, yeah, they might bring their problem material in, but he was implicitly, I've often joked that he was actually a life coach, you know, and a very Taoist life coach at that.
Lian (38:03)
Mmm.
James Tripp (38:33)
So I think the sort of deeper patterns that perhaps Bandler and Grinder missed were the sort of patterns that connect to real depth in life, the patterns that connect to the the Tao, so to speak. So that's kind of my feeling. So I think that it isn't necessarily the case that
Lian (38:50)
Mmm.
James Tripp (39:00)
NLP has to be soulless. But I think that it is by default because it's deliberately left all of that stuff behind, intentionally left it behind. They wanted the stuff and go, here's the pattern, do the pattern. That's what they were interested in.
Lian (39:03)
Mmm.
Hmm.
And it's a tool developed for patterns, not for soul. Yeah. So the reason, hang on, I'm trying to track back because there was something. yeah. So.
James Tripp (39:21)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lian (39:32)
Again, it sounds like both of us see that having some relationship with this or even a living inquiry about this idea of soul is essential. How, and funny enough, I only wrote something literally early this morning. Jonathan and I were talking about our upcoming course, which is called the pilgrimage, which in itself, I think is very relevant to what we're talking about here is a pilgrimage home to the soul that we're increasingly seeing is something that is cyclical, is something that we are going to need to, you know, return to, devote to returning to over and over again. And so we're doing this conversation about, on the one hand, going back to the, how we began this conversation, the kind of craziness of these times and that, and it can be a reason that people don't want to be in that work of the soul because it's like, but you know, I've got all this craziness, bills to pay, you know, all of the things, insert everything that's going on right now. And yet the, what we were talking about and I was literally writing how it's actually, it's essential perhaps even more than ever to have that connection to one's soul in these times.
James Tripp (40:43)
Mmm.
Lian (41:01)
And so I'm not going to, I want to, guess, freely ask you your sense of that, going back to say, for example, the work you're doing with the police, how is this something again, in navigating these times, and that's a kind of very practical situation, you know, being in the Met and what they're dealing with, why and how is this notion of soul something that's
James Tripp (41:01)
Hmm.
Lian (41:30)
helpful, practical, powerful in these times.
James Tripp (41:34)
Well, I think so a couple of things on that. First of all, it's very easy to think, well, there's the practical world, and then there's this other world of soul and mystery and all of that kind of thing. But you know, there's that old song, it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. So.
Lian (41:53)
You can't really agree with me where I'm going on for me now, I can feel it! I'm gonna be cursing you in hours!
James Tripp (41:58)
Yeah, okay. Well, I apologise, but maybe the earworm will be just exactly what you need. It will be an instructive one, I hope. But I really like that it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it, because you can do something without soul, or you can do something with soul. Is it that Buddhist saying that says, enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. There's wood to be chopped and water to be carried.
Lian (42:08)
You
Hmm.
James Tripp (42:27)
That's true, whatever work that you do. So maybe somebody's doing police work or they're working in finance or they're doing whatever. And there's what they do and then there's the way that they do it. Now, this isn't always just this simple. It's not you can attach any what to any way. But I think the way that you do it is the, that's where the soul comes in. That's where the deeper, richer connection comes in. That's where you come from comes in. So really with something like this, you once you start learning to kind of connect maybe to soul. And the other thing that I like to connect to is sometimes what I call the body. When people talk about embodiment work, I'm always like, yeah, but what's the body? Right. The body. People think my body. No, the body. You know, we are a part of something deeper, the body of the world. So I think, you know, and by the way, I might be coming from this, when I'm working with clients, but it doesn't mean I'm lecturing them in this, right? I might be putting things in very, very different terms because I'll put them in terms of that person can connect with. You know, I'm not going to start coming out with, as a client of mine said the other day, you know, I'm starting to do some of these things that I would once have thought were mumbo jumbo. So I can't just like start rolling out mumbo jumbo to people. But it's where I'm coming from.
Lian (43:49)
I think I'm too far in now. think most of what I do and say is mumbo jumbo
James Tripp (43:57)
But here's the thing, Lian, and I think the people don't get this, because I work in two contexts. I work via Rocks Recovery. I used to work with armed forces veterans, and now I'm working the last 18 months with police staff and police officers. They don't know me as some kind of neo-shamanic hypnotist or something like that.
They know me as a coach. They don't even know me as anything. They just know they're going to see a coach that's going to help them with their mental health well-being. So I have to find ways of coming. I'm coming from a certain place, but I have to connect that to their world. I have to find the bridge, so to speak, without just starting to come out with concepts that are going to have them look at me and go, what are you talking about, soul.
Lian (44:44)
Mmm.
James Tripp (44:52)
It's different with each client. Sometimes I can have the explicit soul conversation. Sometimes I just want to evoke a sense of connection and use different language. But in the end, people, like if you think about it, in that context, I'm basically a kind of well-being coach. And people, they need that well-being. They need that as a base. And what is a problem in that context is people are...
Lian (44:54)
Definitely.
Mm.
James Tripp (45:22)
People don't give that much attention to their wellbeing. They just should be okay. They just should be fine. They just should be able to handle stuff and just get on with their job. Just get on with all the busy stuff that needs to be done. We don't have to look after our wellbeing. Now sometimes wellbeing, and that might mean connecting to soul. I think that is an important part. It might mean connecting to the deeper resonance of things or whatever it will be. And sometimes it means just learning to not get caught up in disturbing thinking and that sort of thing. Sometimes it's useful to be away from whatever the difficulties are and do your work. I was actually working with a client just very recently who had had issues in relationships in the past and she said she'd been away from relationships and she'd done her work and then had a new relationship and was having challenges again. She said, I thought I'd done my work.
And the metaphor that came to my mind and we ended up making use of was somebody who was having difficulty swimming. So they get out of the ocean, go and sit on the beach and really think long and hard about swimming and how to swim and maybe read some good books on it and maybe get some lectures on swimming. And then they go, I think I'm ready now. And they go back into the ocean and they still got to learn to swim. so, know, yeah. So like, I think when it comes to doing any work, it's just like, look, where do you want to be able to swim?
Lian (46:41)
Great metaphor.
Mm.
James Tripp (46:51)
What is the ocean that you want to be able to swim in? So in that instance, it was a relationship. In another instance, it might be a particular context. So like with the police people, their work, their work context, those are the places they want to be able to swim. And they are technically good swimmers, but they're kind of running out of the energy and they need to kind of connect to source again. They need to connect to soul again, in order to be nourished, because that's the important thing. I often see something like a soul connection or a connection to the Tao as important, essential nourishment. And if we don't have that nourishment, we become malnourished. And if you're malnourished, of course, you might still have skills and capabilities and all of these sorts of things. But if you're malnourished in any way, you can't execute those as well. So for me, it's about a kind of nourishment. I really like the idea of nourishment.
Lian (47:26)
Hmm.
James Tripp (47:46)
I love that idea. That's what we want to be
Lian (47:49)
Even the word is nourishing, isn't it? know?
James Tripp (47:53)
Isn't it? Isn't it just? You know, a lot of people talk about healing and I very rarely in my work will talk about healing. I'm much more interested in nourishment. I'm much more interested in adaptiveness and these sorts of things because I don't want to frame everything as you're broken and you need to be healed, right? Or you're wounded and you need to be healed. And I'm not knocking people that operate from that frame. It's just not a frame that I operate from. Normally I'm much more interested in
Lian (48:13)
Hmm.
James Tripp (48:22)
you're magnificent and you don't know it and you've got all this good stuff going on and if you're struggling right now, you know, what is it that you've lost touch with perhaps that you could reconnect with that would nourish you in your continuing what I often call the arc of becoming. I believe that we're all on an arc of becoming in our life, which is related to individuation and it's getting people reconnected to that arc of becoming. They have to be connected to their soul,
to be connected to their arc of becoming. And if people are not connected to their arc of becoming, I've seen this, when people lose their future, they don't do well.
Lian (49:01)
Hmm
James Tripp (49:02)
you
Lian (49:04)
Yeah, we're, we're almost up on time, but something just occurred to me that, might be a good place to leave it for the moment. Albeit we may well end up migrating over to your podcast for a continuation of this very conversation. something was occurring to me. You may have,
James Tripp (49:19)
Yeah, it could happen.
Lian (49:26)
seen this in a letter that Jung wrote towards the end of his life, like in the last few months, I think it was of his life. He wrote to a friend whose name escaped me and he said something like, it made me cry actually when I first read this. He said something like, I see I failed at my principal task, which is to show people that there's treasure in the field. And by that, he goes on to say, I mean that we have a soul.
And there was something about that clarity of like, that was the whole point. know, everything I did was in service of people realising they have a soul. And the fact that I think the reason it made me cry was like the fact like of this incredible body of work that he did. But I think even now we're still in the process of excavating the real treasures of the work, but that he thought he had failed.
James Tripp (50:22)
Mmm.
Lian (50:26)
And so that was one of those things I read, it's like, goodness me, that he thought that he failed. And I was like, no wonder he, then the years gone by, I'm like, no wonder he felt that because even now, as per the conversation we're having, so many of us are walking around as if we don't conceive that we have a soul. We're living so disconnected from even the idea or the notion or the inquiry that we could have a soul.
James Tripp (50:49)
Hmm.
Lian (50:56)
So no wonder he felt at the end of his life, having done everything he did, that he'd failed at that task. And then I was bringing it back to this conversation that we're in about, and we've kind of again gone down a bit of a rabbit hole, but hey, it's the nature of these kinds of conversations. If it was a challenge in his day, no wonder it's a challenge in these times to be kind of pulled out there to the,
James Tripp (51:02)
Hmm.
Lian (51:26)
to the world out there and the craziness of the world to the storm as we first started talking about. And yet that kind of turning inwards to one's soul is perhaps more challenging than ever, but also more necessary than ever. Because as you've said in your words, it's the time when we perhaps most need that nourishment.
James Tripp (51:32)
Hmm.
Yeah. Do you know what? it is more challenging than ever, but maybe it is more necessary than ever. And I'm a big believer in where there's a will, there's a way. When we really need something, then we find a way, even if it's more challenging. If something's easy, but we don't really need it, we don't do it anyway. So maybe these times are putting people in a position where a lot of people are having to seriously reevaluate, and go, okay, there's something missing, what do I need? Maybe they find their way back to soul. And I think with regard to Jung and his, you know, I failed thing, again, thinking about Milton Erickson, one of Milton Erickson's major concepts was that of seeding ideas. So Milton Erickson would very rarely try to get somebody to get something now, right? He had an incredible amount of patience to know that if he planted the right seeds, those seeds would grow across time within somebody's psyche. And I think maybe, and I don't want to be here like going, acting like I'm somehow wiser than Jung because that clearly isn't the case. But, you know, maybe Jung was missing the fact that through his work, he planted a lot of seeds. And he planted those in the world. And I think those seeds have really grown. I think, I don't know, maybe we all end up in our little echo chambers and that kind of thing. But my feeling is
Lian (52:46)
Mmm.
James Tripp (53:15)
Everyone has heard of Freud, but I think the seeds that Jung sowed are now blooming way more than the seeds that Freud sowed, for example. So I think they are. I remember Steve Chana had this model of the world. He used to say, stop operating by the coffee machine model of the universe. It doesn't work like that. The universe is like casting seeds into a river.
Lian (53:26)
Yes, I would agree that.
James Tripp (53:44)
And those seeds wash down the river and they wash up in different places and fruit trees grow. And as you continue your journey, you'll come across fruit trees and you'll never know whether they came from one of the seeds you cast or not.
Lian (53:57)
I love that. I gave me chills.
James Tripp (53:59)
Yeah, so I think that I think that Jung definitely threw a lot of seeds into the river, you know
Lian (54:06)
He certainly did.
Hmm. Yeah. Well, hopefully our conversation now will ripple back in time and will somehow be received in his ears. So before we close this conversation on these changing times and dystopian futures, do you prefer fast zombies or slow zombies?
James Tripp (54:32)
I don't know, I kind of like fast zombies, but I did enjoy The Walking Dead, but not for the zombies, for the same reason you probably did. I always loved Day of the Triffids as well, and there's a kind of like, you know, similar overlap with that. Do you know, just say this super quickly, did you know there was some research conducted during the pandemic that showed that people who enjoyed sort of dystopian post-apocalyptic stuff handled the pandemic psychologically way better than average?
Lian (54:42)
yes. Yeah.
No, I didn't. That is fascinating. Wow. My gosh. You should have brought that in earlier. Maybe that will be the conversation that we begin your show on. That is fascinating. Makes a lot of sense.
James Tripp (55:02)
Did you know?
Yeah.
Well...
Yeah, yeah, well, I think it's a really, really interesting topic. yeah, there was a ton more I had on that one. So maybe that's the one to pick up on the other side. I don't know.
Lian (55:25)
Yeah.
Wow. That's fascinating. In fact, I'll finish with a little story that for years we've had this kind of store cupboard that jokingly in quote marks, was kind of like, you know, you buy a few extra tins of baked beans and they're in the cupboard just in case, you you run out and need them.
But I, because I have this kind of like fascination with dystopian futures, always said like in the case of a zombie apocalypse. And then it got shortened. So it's literally now just called the zombie. And then of course, during COVID, it's, you know, when everyone was like, my gosh, we need our, you know, stores of things. Like, it was like, now it's come to like fruition. And the whole reason I had this was for this. But we obviously carried on past the pandemic. But it was literally is now.
James Tripp (55:50)
Hmm.
Right.
Mmm.
Lian (56:17)
just one of those things where we forget that it's even a weird thing to say, where we'll have guests over and then one of my children will be like, we've run out of pasta or whatever. Where is it? I'll be like, have you checked the zombie? And he's just become that. So we were prepared for that for many years. Anyway, and this has been such a...
James Tripp (56:39)
Mmm.
Lian (56:42)
Such a wonderful conversation. We've gone into so many interesting places that I'm so glad we're going to have the opportunity to pick back up and journey deeper with soon. For the moment, where can people find out more about you and the wonderful and very varied work that you do?
James Tripp (56:53)
Mmm. Okay, so my kind of personal website is currently still jamestripp.co.uk. I bought the dot com years ago and still haven't migrated. So there's that. I have a YouTube channel, James Tripp on YouTube. I'm on Instagram as @thetrippnotist and various other places. Yeah, Substack is where my podcast is, which is Agents of Everything. And I'm very happy for people to sign up there. But generally Google is
Lian (57:19)
great name.
James Tripp (57:30)
is my friend when it comes to helping people find me if they wish to do so.
Lian (57:35)
Excellent. I was just thinking, there's so many overlaps between our passions and work. And I was thinking even the, when I do a podcast on my own, it goes out obviously on our show, but it's kind of had a name now for, I don't know how many years I've had my own version of it, maybe five, six years, but it's called All the Everything. And I was just like, it's interesting. You are agents of everything. Am I all the everything?
James Tripp (57:58)
Hmm.
Lian (58:00)
And yes, well, I encourage people to go find out more about all the things you do. They probably had a little taste of the very deep and varied work that you do from here, but I'd encourage them to go deeper.
James Tripp (58:14)
Thank you, Lian it's been a pleasure and I look forward to picking it up for the next part. I would say part two, but part whatever it will be.
Lian (58:24)
Yes, thank you. Until then.
James Tripp (58:29)
Thank you.
Lian (58:30)
What a fascinating conversation. Here are three things that have stayed with me from it. Changing patterns can take you a very long way and it really does for a lot of people. And there's a point where the work starts to feel like the shell has been cracked open and the nut has been left behind. Erickson saw it, Jung saw it. Most serious practitioners deep in their work do eventually feel it too.
Soul connection doesn't arrive in the same way, in the same language twice. In one room, it might be a direct conversation, but in another, it's a kind of permission that might be much more indirect to reconnect with what used to make life feel worth living. What matters is that the person in the room knows where to look. Jung believed that near the end of his life, that he had failed his principal task, which was to show people that they have a soul.
But the seeds don't fruit on the planters timeline as James reminded us, while Jung cast into the river is still washing up on shores that he never saw in his lifetime. If you'd like to hop on over to the show notes for the links, they're at wildsovereignsoul.com/podcast/549 And as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world, the world that we've just been talking about, and long for guidance, kinship and support. Come join us in Unio, the community for soul seekers. You can discover more and join us by hopping on over to wildsovereignsoul.com slash Unio now. Let's walk the path home together. And if you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device, auto-magically as soon as it's released.
Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you walk your wild, sovereign soul path.