Jamie Catto

When asked about the 'David' sculpture, Michelangelo said that when they brought him the huge slab of rock he could feel the figure already there within it, he just had to move the excess rock out of the way. This is how I see innate genius that is buried within each of us. The genius is already there within the rock.

We're in the rock dissolving business.

I briefly lost one of my children this year. It was unimaginable.

I know it may sound trite, but if you’re a parent (or even if you’re not) can you touch upon, even for a moment, the utter devastation that just one of the parents of the thousands of kids being slaughtered not very far East of here is experiencing?

I find it scary to even really let it in for a second.

Unimaginable.

I don’t know what giving them a moment of my undivided love will do but I’m gonna do it anyway.

Join me for a second?

Not ‘Coming Soon’, but starting TOMORROW!

If you’ve e been doing too much of your self-development alone then maybe a 5 month deep dive gentle adventure meeting on Thursdays (closed group) where we play with our shadows, creativity and intimacy while making some life-long friends along the way is for you 🙂

jamiecatto.com/gamechanger

Can I watch myself being neurotic with total friendliness and just think 'oh there's Jamie having his neurosis' with zero judgement, just 'oh there it is', not empowering it or feeding it with 'OH NO, must stop this'?

(That's the trap - the agenda for it to be different)

Not minding I'm such a nutter is a deep deep artform.

I am funny today! (phew, I still got it) 🎤

Occasionally I have moments when I'm not totally absorbed in my little human story of Jamie and what he wants and what's going to happen and what's scary or dramatic. Sometimes I notice I'm just watching that Jamie character going through it all from a place that is just curious and loving but not sucked in or taken over by it all. In those rare moments my sense of presence isn't about my identity as Jamie and his life events and concerns. 'Who I am' becomes just the witnessing of this moment slightly from the side of the action, and at those times it feels like there's no division between Me and You. The line where I end and you begin softens and we're just All Of It for a moment. What a relief! Thank you...

Warning: a bit long 🙊

From the moment our human life begins most of us are traumatised by at least one, if not all, of these three things.

First the birth itself. Whether you believe in the great spiritual Oneness before human incarnation or just the oneness of the Mother’s womb, coming out onto planet earth as a baby, where before we were part of something bigger, in a yummy float tank with everything taken care of, now into individualisation, solitariness, Me-ness, and everything that comes with it, is a huge deal. The cord is cut and you are helpless, dependent, and begin the human experience in varying degrees of freak out. ‘What is this skin and nerves and sensations thing???? Help!!!’ Add to that the immense amount of fear and bright lights and disempowerment and death that’s surrounded ‘birth’ in our culture and how unconsciously, until recently, babies’ fragile psyches have been handled on the way in, and a trajectory of fear and loneliness, to varying degrees, is set in motion. (There are some wonderful rebel alliances working to change this but they are struggling to be heard.)

Second, the homes we were born into and the carers assigned to us, almost without exception, feed us a totally false set of rules on how we should be, based on the crap rule book they were given as children. ‘Don’t be like this’ ‘Don’t let anyone see you being like that’, painfully and scarily withholding love and approval when not obeyed, or you get it wrong, or they’re just tired or stupid - and the whole model of ‘how to be a person’ is handed down, missing the real truths of Life, in fact, recommending the opposite. We’re taught, through our experience, not to be vulnerable, not to fail, always to obey, to not stand out, not to be magnificent, to manipulate other’s responses by reading them and catering to their model even if it’s not authentic for us, to say yes when we often mean no…and on and on…. We have all been given a different set of incorrect instructions and it has felt exhausting and self-abandoning to keep living to that toxic model. And most people don’t even notice this. They live as if their model is still right and should be working for them, crisis after crisis, still clinging to that early, ignorant, rulebook. Ouch.

Third, the cultural environment the humans have created is just so fu**ed up it is banal to even list it here. The attitude of fakeness and superficiality that mainstream culture feeds itself with is baffling. The normalisation of gun-running and creating war for profit. The way illness and medicine have become a business for profit. The way we treat animals and the daily factory-farm holocaust. The way much of the world treats women. The way we’re taught to all pretend that we’re not going to die. The utter plunder of the environment…a culture where intimacy is treated as high risk. It’s just unrelentingly backward out there. Who said that it’s no measure of sanity to be adjusted to living in a sick society?

So with our varying experiences of those three shadows, is it any wonder everyone’s in such a state of trauma? I know that I have been and that the accumulation of only doing minimum damage limitation on my trauma when I was forced into a crisis, was not enough.

I’m calling for a global pow wow to really acknowledge the state of trauma most humans, even in wealthy countries with no bombs dropping, are in. And when we acknowledge this, to collectively team together to bring in the medicine to heal us all - and that is TURNING TOWARDS IT AND BEING VISIBLE.

I know looking weak or ugly or like a failure is a taboo and our lives have taught us that if we let those parts of ourselves be seen we will lose out or be exiled. We live religiously protecting the shop window of our attractive and palatable appearance - but it’s killing us slowly with loneliness.

Intimacy is not as big a risk as our reptilian brain signals claim. It feels much more dangerous than it is. In fact it’s a cuddly sheep in wolf’s clothing. We’ve made maps of ourselves, cut ourselves down to what we think will get us love and acceptance and success, and we’ve put ‘there be dragons’ around the edge of our maps as an alarm system to make sure we never risk those ‘other unwelcome parts’ being seen. But it only takes a tiny quarter turn towards those dragons to see that they are merely children’s chalk drawings of dragons and with one soft breath they blow away and a pile of treasure and homecoming is available.

The starting point, I feel, for this time, is for each of us to acknowledge the trauma we’ve absorbed and start to take much more diligent and focused steps to release it. You can see how reactive we have become. Do you ever go a week without being triggered into it? A day?

Please let’s acknowledge the collective trauma and sober up about any expectations of life sorting itself out while we’re pinballing around from one self-protecting strategy to the next, ignoring the incredible need for releasing that trauma rather than living life in constant compensating for it and bouncing from crisis to overreactive crisis.

There’s so much heartfelt, nourishing, intimate, connected, laughter-and-tears-filled healing available if we can wake up from the trance for a moment.

3 - 2 - 1 - and we’re back in the room!

Hi……you deserve healing too, even if you had a happy childhood….come to the edge.

(come and find me online sometime...)

Simple enough… anyone?

“One way to get free of attachment is to cultivate the witness consciousness, to become a neutral observer of your own life. The witness place inside you is simple awareness, the part of you that is aware of everything — just noticing, watching, not judging, just being present, being here now.

The witness is actually another level of consciousness. The witness coexists alongside your normal consciousness as another layer of awareness, as the part of you that is awakening. Humans have this unique ability to be in two states of consciousness at once. Witnessing yourself is like directing the beam of a flashlight back at itself. In any experience — sensory, emotional, or conceptual — there’s the experience, the sensory or emotional or thought data, and there’s your awareness of it. That’s the witness, the awareness, and you can cultivate that awareness in the garden of your being.

The witness is your awareness of your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Witnessing is like waking up in the morning and then looking in the mirror and noticing yourself — not judging or criticizing, just neutrally observing the quality of being awake. That process of stepping back takes you out of being submerged in your experiences and thoughts and sensory input and into self-awareness.

Along with that self-awareness comes the subtle joy of just being here, alive, enjoying being present in this moment. Eventually, floating in that subjective awareness, the objects of awareness dissolve, and you will come into the spiritual Self, the Atmān, which is pure consciousness, joy, compassion, the One.”

- Ram Dass

The bigger the difference between how I present myself on the outside and how I actually feel on the inside, the more my mental health and well-being will be challenged.

So let’s each radiate the safety for us to all not feel we have to pretend. Lets co-create a non-judgemental and empathic environment wherever we roam.

Painting by Turner

Scientists have proved that 83% of my upsets around other people have been rooted in me misinterpreting their intentions.

Beware of these spurious interpretations today. Beware being certain you know what someone else's actions or words definitely 'mean'. Our wounds and fears feed us negative thoughts and 'versions' of other people's intentions which masquerade as such definite 'truth' to us at the time - and these wound-based thoughts do SUCH a sophisticated impersonation of 'Me' and 'You' (when they get control of the mind and the adrenaline gland system), that we feel sure in that moment that these judgements are real and what we 'know to be true'. We feel SO sure.

But they're often (usually) just conclusions born of past pain and confusion, like an inner-bodyguard trying to make sure we never feel certain things ever again.

Which we can't guarantee...

Half the time the person we're upset with thought they were being loving or helpful....no?

Let's not saddle each other with expectations or negative conclusions from how we were treated in our pasts any more. Let's vulnerably tell each other how we need to be cared for...we are each of us a precision instrument that needs and deserves as much care and attention as a baby...

Everyone is fragile and hiding it (poorly).

image - Adam Martinakis

This is the short but vital version to transform disempowerment into power and why triggers can be blessings:

1. Each of us has a big lump of accumulated, unexpressed, painful, constipated emotional energy that lives in us, mostly located from our chin to our belly which, when we get triggered, contracts or erupts in such a painfully disproportionate way (hence our battling, over-reacting, avoiding, manipulating) that we'll do anything to avoid feeling it.

2. Our human body is hard-wired to mend and heal itself, it does it all day and night, inside and outside in numerous exquisitely sophisticated ways, including constantly needing to discharge this constipated, hair-trigger, emotional gunk in us.

3. So part of the genius of life is unexpectedly manifesting and attracting very challenging experiences and people which make our constipated lump erupt SO THAT IF WE ARE SKILLFUL we can consciously breathe into that place which has erupted so painfully in our bodies, gently allow it to dissolve with our presence and focus, and release a thimble of it every day - this is the most potent and vital self-health practice we can do for ourselves. It turns our over-reactive disempowered lives from black & white to colour. No longer yanked this way and that by the last idiot that crossed our path but using them to discharge old stuff which is hurting and limiting us.

4. So rather than be a victim to challenging events and difficult people in our lives, reframe those experiences as above, do the breathing and dissolving practice daily as it arises and know that these challenging situations and people are nothing more than walking laxatives!

I was once lucky enough to interview Kurt Vonnegut for the first 1 Giant Leap film, one of my favourite authors.

"I once told my wife I was going out to buy an envelope:
“Oh", she said, "well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?"

And so I pretended not to hear her. And went out to get an envelope because I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is - we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realise, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Let's all get up and move around a bit right now... or at least dance."

Let's stay in contact folks! Let's not normalise editing out the simple interaction of Life.

(oh and I’m running a new Gamechanger in 2 weeks (doors opening now) - a 5 month deep dive gentle adventure meeting on Thursdays (closed group) where we play with our shadows, creativity and intimacy while making some life-long friends along the way - maybe it’s for you 🙂 jamiecatto.com/gamechanger )

I was once lucky enough to interview Kurt Vonnegut for the first 1 Giant Leap film, one of my favourite authors.

"I once told my wife I was going out to buy an envelope:
“Oh", she said, "well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?"

And so I pretended not to hear her. And went out to get an envelope because I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is - we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realise, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Let's all get up and move around a bit right now... or at least dance."

Let's stay in contact folks! Let's not normalise editing out the simple interaction of Life.

(ps I’m running a new Gamechanger in 2 weeks (doors opening now) - a 5 month deep dive gentle adventure meeting on Thursdays (closed group) where we play with our shadows, creativity and intimacy while making some life-long friends along the way - maybe it’s for you 🙂 jamiecatto.com/gamechanger )

Nothing to be ashamed of.
Everyone here (and everywhere) is a mess.

(Some are temporarily better-groomed messes).

So just taking a quick moment to remind you that you deserve as much care, rest, space, benefit of the doubt and love as anyone else. While you’re running around being a martyr and putting everyone else’s needs before your own, please take a moment to include yourself in the circle or generosity. You don’t deserve more, just the same, average amount of love. No prizes for suffering and martyrdom, not even from God. Got it?

If you’re really serious about your spiritual development…
…you might be doing it wrong 🤔

Release yourself from all manner of nonsense and wounded patterns while making some lifelong friends along the way with me.

Gamechanger closed group starts in 3 weeks… message me 🏴‍☠️

Please treat yourself like this…

Go easy on yourself, you’re already great as the uniquely sculpted freak you are.

Trust me on this one.

'Hard to put into words the wonder of the magical insights gratefully received at Jamie Catto's workshop this weekend....can only say I'm delighted to be more intimately connected with my inner juicy freakiness and those of the beautiful and open people I shared it with. If you only go to one workshop in your life make it this one. Oh and...f**k you 😀' JT

Last call for B*tches & B*stards (for singles and couples) with me and the effervescent Ruby May in Brighton this weekend. Come dissolve your relating nonsense and enjoy the love you really desire from now on.

When feeling depressed or afraid, focusing on it being ‘my’ pain, ‘my’ demons, ‘my’ depression, can isolate me from the support of the shared human experience. It can be really helpful in these moments to imagine, right now, there’s a man setting up his fruit stand in Peru who’s feeling just like this. There’s a woman walking her dog in Paris who’s feeling just like this. There’s a kid lying in bed in America who’s feeling just like this. Maybe I’m not feeling my sadness. Maybe I’m feeling 'the' sadness.

Perhaps we are all given a bucketful of pain to process in our lifetimes which is everyone’s and we each carry our share. Before we get to Earth it’s just the universal pain, but so that we can have a context within which to process our bucketful we set up a childhood full of wounding and storylines and characters so that the pain that we’ve agreed to take care of has a context to be experienced as a human. I love how the Tibetan Buddhists do their dissolving practice. They call it Tonglen, and after they’ve done their breathing and dissolving of the blocked emotion, as a last stage they say:

May this practice help all beings who are feeling like this be free from suffering.

I love that.

Some people believe that a large amount of ‘mental illness’ or psychotic episodes (not all of it of course) are a kind of awakening, even a shamanic initiation to be some sort of healer.

Do you think this idea may be true?

Do you know anyone who practices this successfully?

I find it very hard to believe it when I witness someone in deep distress and relentless paranoia.

Anyone near Brighton for a rare in person weekend of shenanigans with Ruby May and I?

Very gentle and hilarious and full of heart 💜

A good day to call around and double check all your pals (or family or anyone) are ok - emotional times, stretched times, many isolate at times like this and suffer in silence - who do you know that might need a check in?

When we're forced down into the depths of our dark nights of the soul we come back with jewels in our hands which are great gifts to the World.

But also the time we spend sharing and laughing and marvelling together at this peculiar predicament of being a human at this time on the planet is rich in healing and empowering and creativity and joy.

I believe every wound, every challenge, every predicament which appears heavy and unmanageable has a discoverable treasure waiting behind the resistance.

I’m running a new Gamechanger in Autumn (doors opening now) - a 5 month deep dive gentle adventure meeting on Thursdays (closed group) where we play with our shadows, creativity and intimacy while making some life-long friends along the way - maybe it’s for you 🙂

pls share

Acknowledging and embracing the FACT that you are a bit of a d*ckhead is a prerequisite for efficient evolutionary work - not minding everyone else knowing that about you is FREEDOM.

Let's face it, if the people in your life could hear the internal dialogue of your mind on a daily basis you'd be locked up - there'd certainly be no more reiki clients for you. So let's give up the pretence and reap the intimacy and relief from ending the HIDING.

Many mornings I used to wake up already spiked by adrenaline and fear.

It could take every ounce of my strength just to get up.

If you experience this I'd like to send you some love and solidarity.

You are safer than your body's chemistry is telling you.

Things that might help include:

- Slow conscious breathing with your palm gently on your chest.

- Gentle soothing self talk to remind you you are safe.

- Movement...gently dance with some music.

- Water, drink lots and get in the shower or the ocean.

- Above all KNOW THAT YOU ARE NOT ALONE - you are not lost, we are here...
...IT WILL PASS LIKE A DARK CLOUD

image is a page from CPTSD by Pete Walker - a really helpful resource

I hope this is helpful.

I always ignored people who suggested I had an addiction to self-harming but then I really noticed how my mind looked for trouble, for something 'wrong' to agonise about, even when the coast was clear. I had the usual loop of issues my mind habitually checked for: 'money', 'abandonment', 'health', but then I noticed my mind trawling for trouble even when everything was clearly just fine and dandy. That’s what the self-protecting mind does.

It was illuminating to watch my mind trying to find something wrong, not trusting that the Ok-ness was, well, Ok. This was my addiction to self-harm. Looking for problems to worry about as if just the contentment of 'no apparent problems' was itself, a problem.

Why was the search for something wrong more attractive than the peace of the present moment? Was it self-protection? Not letting my guard down 'in case'? I'm now treating myself with patience and compassion in this. A wise man in our 'What About Me?' film warned that "worrying is praying for what you don't want." and I'm reminded of Gabrielle Roth's wise words: "It takes immense discipline to be a free spirit."

Staying awake to what it’s doing and watching it without frustration or exasperation but just realising - this is the mind’s nature - each time, lovingly relieving it of duty while marvelling at its persistence - I notice - then I say “Hello old friend.”

It helps to share a lot this together and dissolve the phantoms that take over when we’re alone.

The Jam of a Lifetime 2023 is a three-day sacred plant medicine retreat with legal psilocybin truffles, integrating inspiration, creativity, and embodiment with the journey of self-discovery. The retreat features amazing live music in ceremony, along with personal self-reflection, creative song making, and expressive dance workshops. With a decade of experience in organizing retreats, their team is one of the longest running providers of sacred plant medicine ceremonies in the Netherlands that specializes in serving psilocybin truffles. Join for a Jam of a Lifetime, an unforgettable, transformational journey of personal healing, spiritual growth, creative expression, and celebration.

I’ve been invited to lead them into some gentle shadow games so if this is your cup of tea check out the link ❤️

Jam of a Lifetime Jam of a Lifetime is a very special psilocybin ceremony retreat with live music, a journey of self-discovery, creativity, and embodiment.

Annoying fact:

Being 'in the right' is the biggest distraction from fully feeling and taking responsibility for dissolving the reactive volcanic eruptions in our own bodies. It doesn't matter how 'wrong' the other person is or what they did, if it's erupting in ME then those feelings are MINE to turn towards and maybe dissolve. Let's not delude ourselves.

Anyone in Bristol? I’m teaching a one hour mini workshop at Origin Workspace in Berkeley Square at 3pm

Modern Freedom - the basics:

The root of being able to be free of the addiction of needing a social event, online feedback, or something to ‘fill the silence’ to stave off the feelings of discomfort in the space, the home-alone feelings, the social l***r feelings, is cultivating the habit of being interested in the edgy feelings which arise when we leave space. It's the social clutter and online clutter and phone addiction and constant filling of space that is the avoidance of simply being with oneself and feeling what arises. With these digital or medicinal escapes we have been desperately trying to fill the hole of lack, the terror of aloneness - of feeling the grief or anxiety that we've been escaping for our whole adult lives.

So the self-love path is first about gently entering those spaces, creating less filler and more space so that gradually we feel comfortable with the very thing we have been avoiding. And sometimes this will involve holding ourselves and soothing ourselves in some challenging feelings and not resorting to one of the usual 'crutches'.

However, reaching out to other humans to share presence and be in connection through the challenges and curiosities of your Life is totally legitimate. Connection is a core part of our humanity and the idea that we’re meant to strive alone is a sad misconception. We are interrelational beings and the benefits of being compassionately witnessed are central to our sense of inner peace and our sense of worthy inclusion in the World.

These are the first brave steps towards freedom and self-care. Let’s share more of it together.

Trigger warning:

Beware milking the specialness of your particular suffering.

When someone says 'I suffered for x years', the need to let everyone know how many years, for example, can be a covert pride in how much they endured or suffered, as if the amount of years deserves more pity or something, elevating suffering to a deserving status. This, to me, is potentially toxic.

I’m not suggesting to never share or get support for what we’ve been through but to really tune in how it is so ingrained in our culture to run the formula of 'the more I suffer, the more love I deserve' as this elevates suffering as a currency for love. I'm not interested to feed that. We all equally deserve love and care. If we believe we deserve more because of our suffering then we'll create more suffering to get love, like a kid who falls down accidentally on purpose when it sees how much more attention it gets.

Let's break the cycle of elevating suffering as a currency for deserving. We can still respond with care and support without fanning the drama.

This path of awareness and making conscious choices is like trying to ride a rodeo horse covered in vaseline. You're going to be on your ass on the ground 1000 times a day. You'd better start finding it funny. So NEVER beat yourself up when you fail or react like a tw*t again (and again) - that's self-violence, and never say "I'm so disappointed in myself, I really thought I was past this stuff..." You're never past this stuff. Enlightenment is not reaching a finish line of equanimity, it's loving yourself exactly where you are NOW. As wounded and freaky and uniquely twisted as you are. Nothing can evolve until you do.