Enlightenment, ego and existential leadership

03:25 Mattias: A warm welcome, and thank you for being here.

03:27 Charlotte: Thank you Mattias, it is lovely to be here. Let's see. Yes, I am going on that assumption.

03:37 Mattias: You got in touch with me a month or so ago and described briefly an event you are holding that is aimed at men and held by women. We will talk more about that in a little while. And then we had a bit of an exchange the first time we spoke. So I am very much looking forward to this, having read a fair amount about what you do. But I would like to start here, because you have written a book that is partly about soul intelligence, and I thought we could begin with the simple question: what does it mean to be human? There are all sorts of identities we put on, and what we believe, and we try to wear masks, and we are supposed to be good boys and girls and all of that. What misunderstandings do you see people carrying there, and what is it we are really searching for, striving towards or longing for?

04:31 Charlotte: There were many layers in that question, I felt. Where should I start? Misunderstandings, you say, connected to us putting on certain identities and masks and so on. I think one misunderstanding, the way I see it, is that the ego is somewhat misunderstood. We could start there. The ego is a necessity. The ego is our ability to create strategies within a collective, so that we get to belong to the group. So in a way it is something rather beautiful, but it becomes a problem when we use strategies that are not good for ourselves or for others. That is when the ego becomes a problem. But most often the basic ego drives are vital and can also help us. I have, for example, a completely basic life map that I have built my visions from, which starts from ego drives, and it is absolutely brilliant and has helped me enormously. And I think that too: instead of pushing certain things away and calling them ego, I think we need to meet them, use them and channel them.

06:07 Mattias: Can you say a bit more about these ego drives? The way I imagine it, the ego is created because we end up in situations in life we do not understand, and then we interpret those situations from a child's consciousness, and we build a strategy to cope, to avoid pain or to reach some form of pleasure. And that is the best understanding and the best system we can create, where we sort cause and effect: if I do this, then that happens. And we have these strategies because they come out of our basic human needs, which everyone has, for safety and contact and love. And I see a problem in us being unaware of these strategies, and that they can be quite complex. It can look like this: now I want a hug from you, my love, and in order to get a hug I have to do the dishes and vacuum. And I am not going to tell you that I am doing the dishes and vacuuming in order to get a hug. It is an ineffective strategy. So could you say more about this map, and about ego and drives, and seeing it in a positive way rather than being led by it? How do you see that?

07:26 Charlotte: Partly, as you say, it is when we light things up, when we become enlightened about which drives we have, which strategies we have and which needs they actually come from. And then we can choose a strategy actively, which is a different thing. That is a way of channelling the ego into something that is both fit for purpose and aligned with my truth, in some way. But if you are asking about this map I mentioned earlier, is that what you were getting at? Did I understand you correctly?

08:01 Mattias: The map in combination with ego drives, yes.

08:06 Charlotte: Yes, for example. I have always been ashamed and tried to hide the fact that I am rather vain. And I get a little embarrassed even saying it. That is how charged it is for me. And when I started working with this: all right, but why do I have this vanity? How can I use this vanity so that it becomes something good? And if I had not had it, then perhaps I would not have been as comfortable standing in the spotlight, which is a very important part of what I do today. When I lecture and teach and am seen. If I had not been comfortable with that somewhere. And when I embraced that part of me. It should not go to any extreme that makes me feel bad about it, or make me think I have to look a certain way, that is a completely different matter. But it leads me into my mission.

09:17 Mattias: The way I see it, most often these things you call vanity, in your example, I imagine such a strategy can often be created out of avoidance. I want to avoid pain: if I look this way then I will not be rejected, for example. That is how it can begin. And then this vanity becomes a natural part. And then it becomes possible to use it and say, wow, this is a great opportunity. I understand beauty in a certain way because I have gone deep into it for twenty years. And then, how can that be channelled and used, but consciously, and not to avoid the frightening thing but because here is something I love and am inspired by.

10:00 Charlotte: Exactly so. And I remember the first times I really consciously went to different events and thought, right, now I am going to peacock properly, and I am not going to be ashamed for a second. And what a revelation it was for me simply to say yes to this, which I had previously experienced as an awful ego drive. It gave me enormous power. It also gave me a great acceptance of the whole of me. There were a great many good things in that. And again: turning around, looking at your own material and just, all right, this I want to surrender to. This I need to adjust a little, because it is not working well.

10:44 Mattias: I am thinking of John and Stasi Eldredge, they are American Christians. They have written a book called Captivating, and one called Wild at Heart. Do you know those books?

10:58 Charlotte: I have heard of them but I have not read them.

11:01 Mattias: Brutal books. Wild at Heart describes the masculine soul, and Captivating the feminine soul. So beautifully described. It is a Christian perspective, but they are so brutal. Whatever belief system you have, they are well worth reading. They say that a man longs for, let me see if I remember, a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue. That is what lies in a man's soul. If a man has that, he will be happy, he will be fulfilled. It does not have to be easy, it is tough and challenging. And then they say about women, let me see if I find it, that deep in the longing of each woman's heart she wants to unveil beauty, to be part of a great adventure and to be romanced. And this unveiling of beauty is what came to mind with what you are describing. Because they also describe how little girls, there is a lot of degendering going on now in the name of equality, but few women or few girls come and say, look how strong I am. They say, come and look at me. And I have two daughters, and being able to see them. No, I am not going to say they are lovely because they are supposed to be beyond that. I am going to say they are lovely and beautiful, because it gives them so much. Because they want to unveil beauty, and it is there. And imagine there being nothing wrong with you stepping in and simply, boom, here, look, here is beauty. How important that is. And to see that it is so suppressed, not being allowed to do it.

13:06 Charlotte: Exactly so. You are very moved, I can feel it.

13:15 Mattias: Tell me what is moving in you.

13:44 Charlotte: It is a combination of what you are describing, that we collectively suppress something that is actually beautiful and fundamental in many of us. And I have suppressed it myself too. It is lovely when it is seen and affirmed. Oh, sorry.

14:21 Mattias: I am looking forward to talking about, what is it called, Womb of Worship, and the mother wound is what I want to talk about. I was glad when you said that, which is why I laughed, not because of anything else. And in that, because this comes up, because I know I have an attachment that is not fully integrated and not entirely healthy. And it is the longing for this unveiled beauty, for this feminine openness, the radiance. And it is not so much about her outer beauty, but her outer beauty is an amplification of the soul's beauty. We know women who are busy fixing themselves up but are not alive on the inside. They are as fixed up as can be, but they are not beautiful. But when we have this beautiful inner goddess who peacocks herself, wow. To be met by that beauty is something so deeply inspiring. And this battle to fight: I do not think a man, if he has a battle to fight, will do it as well if he does not get to witness this beauty, this openness and this nourishment from the feminine. That is why he fights. He does it to protect her, so that she can be in her beauty in her heart. That is why he is willing to give his life in this battle. We should talk more about the ego and what it means to be human. And if we take that in the direction of, you have written this book about soul intelligence, how can we combine it? You have this map over people, or over the self. How can we understand ourselves as an integrated being? What do you see that we Swedish men and women can reconnect to? What do we easily lose contact with, what do we forget, and how can we reconnect to more of ourselves, more of the truth? And what is the truth?

16:54 Charlotte: Those are big questions, Mattias. And several questions in one. And it is so very important too, and I feel so passionate about these questions that I become like a child in a sweet shop. Where do I even start? Could you just ask the question again?

17:32 Mattias: I also want to make clear that I ask several questions at once. It is more to create a direction, and then anything can come into it. I have a strong belief that just because we choose a path, it is not so that we should complete that path. It is so that it leads us on to the next one.

17:46 Charlotte: Then my aim and direction come in here.

17:49 Mattias: The balance between chaos and order that is constantly there.

17:52 Charlotte: I simply answer as I want to. That is something else entirely.

18:00 Mattias: That is the reason. Because we can talk intellectually about these subjects, but then we are not there. How can we be in the heart, how can we be in the truth about what is being touched? Because then you are alive, then I am alive, then our friends listening are alive. So the invitation is to authenticity, and the question is about how we lose ourselves here between soul and ego and identities, and how we can reconnect to our soul, and what that means. What is it that the majority of people lose in our secular country?

18:36 Charlotte: Well, the crisis we are going through now, if we are going to call it a crisis, is not really financial or economic. It is existential. Because somewhere there are a great many people who are beginning to acknowledge a fundamental longing for real. A longing to reclaim the experience of being part of something larger. To feel interconnectedness. And in our secularised society we have lost that completely. We are utterly rootless. Utterly lost in that. Renovating the kitchen and travelling to Goa is not enough any more. And I have felt for a long time that I want us to be able to talk about God in the boardroom. I spend a lot of time in various boardrooms and work with leadership and managers and that sort of thing. And somewhere out there in business this intelligence is needed, and this focus is needed, in order to lead in this extraordinarily dynamic time we are in. We need an extraordinarily strong contact inwards and upwards. And there I find that a great many people are asking, there must be something more, and how do I find that something more? And for me those questions have come to me too, from clients and course participants and people around me. How do I connect? How do I connect with the depth and the height? And my book became an answer to that. I wanted to give some kind of, well, how do you do it? There are a thousand paths and every person has their own. But I can still try to contribute a kind of orientation map, and a bit of a toolbox, for how you open this door and step through it. Because I would say that without contact with your deeper essence, or with existence, we become rather lonely and lost and searching for meaning. So this question of how we lose ourselves has a great many answers. And this is one aspect of it that I try to work to open.

21:40 Mattias: And how do we find our way back to this depth and height and essence?

21:46 Charlotte: We buy Charlotte Fogel's book. No, but it is a very important part of this. And as I say, again, this can be done in a thousand ways. You will find your ways and I find mine. But one very good way is listening. Mind the gap, so to speak. Creating that space, in the small and in the large. And there I talk about three kinds of listening. Soul listening, universal listening and body listening. I do that because there are slightly different directions in those different kinds of listening, and they often give slightly different experiences. And giving ourselves the time, in different moments, to really take that pause and simply put a hand on the heart. It is a very old idea. It is the best thing we can do. I put a hand on my heart and a hand on my womb and I listen inwards for real. And it can take ten seconds or it can take ten minutes. When there is something, just wait now. What is not right? Because right sits up here. What is true? What is really true in this question or this situation? And the answer that comes first, before the brain starts interfering with what the heart or the soul is saying, that is often true. It is not always the most practical answer, or the answer we would prefer, but it is often true. Or doing the same thing and directing yourself towards the field, the universe, God, existence, or whatever we want to call it. Placing the focus that way, and asking the question. And then the answer, or the guidance, or the input, often comes with a different tone. Different perspectives from those kinds of input. Or the body. When there is something in the body that hurts, when we have a physical ailment or something physical, going to that place and asking that place what it needs and what it wants to say. That is listening from the body. And then we can also bring information to the body in order to heal it.

24:21 Mattias: That is one example. What do you mean by the last part, bringing information?

24:32 Charlotte: I can direct my focus. Let us say I have a lot of pain in my stomach. I have problems with my stomach. Then I can listen to what the stomach wants to say, that is, information from the stomach. But I can also bring information to the stomach. That is, I can direct thoughts, words and focus that are about being calm, that I am safe, that I am bringing opening and healing right now to my stomach, for example. So then I am directing information to the stomach. And this, for me now, it can sound a little formless in a way. But this is so concrete for me. It is so concrete and it is so obvious.

25:48 Mattias: You were saying earlier, you were talking about leadership and boardrooms and other things. I think it is important to realise as well, because we live in a performance society and so many of us identify with what we produce, what we perform, what we succeed at. And the way I interpret this movement downwards and upwards, it is more a movement of deep contact and meaning, where nothing gets done and there is nothing that can become better or worse. It is a continuous being, a sacred present moment. So there is a place of non-action. I had a conversation last week with a man who was very afraid. All right, I see it, I long for that, because it is something I know is completely off in life. But will I then stop doing? Because I still have goals, ambitions, I still want to take responsibility for things out in the practical world. If I now go into this depth and start healing myself, will that disappear? He said it very directly, that his entire drive in seeking success comes from a flight from inadequacy. How do you see that? What happens to outer performance and responsibility when we turn inward?

27:13 Charlotte: I would say it becomes more powerful, but it often changes. The direction often changes. Not always, but often we discover that we are doing things from the wrong place in ourselves, doing things that perhaps do not feel true and important to us, or that are not in line with who we are meant to be in this world. So we often discover a number of things we may need to adjust in our outer doing. But once we have done that and keep listening inwards, my experience is that we do more things that are true, and when we do things that are true it happens with a much greater ease. We can manifest things. It is as though, I sometimes call it the click. I am here with my unique soul frequency, just as you are and everyone else is. My ultimate task is to align with it in as many moments of life as I can. In what I am, in how I behave, in what I do. And when I begin to vibrate in line with my true soul frequency, then everything just falls into place. There is an extreme manifesting power in that. And things often get done extremely quickly when we jack into that frequency. So I would say the two go very much hand in hand rather than being any kind of opposites. But often this change is one we are a little afraid of. If I start doing this, I will probably discover that I have to make certain changes in my life. And that can take a little time and be a bit messy.

29:08 Mattias: I am curious, because there are two basic views, above all within psychology. Freudian psychology has been very decisive for how we see people today, and Freudian psychology holds that we are fundamentally the consequences of our histories and our wounds. So our history has determined who we are, and it governs a great deal of who we will be in the future. Then there are other schools, for example Adlerian psychology, which describes us rather as what we want and what we choose. Positive psychology talks about that too. So Freudian psychology says we have to heal, we have to integrate these wounds, we have to take care of all the chaos, we have to feel our feelings and the trauma process and so on. And positive psychology says, well, everyone has wounds, but what do you want to do now? How do you build capacity in that? So you want more soul contact. All right, how do you train strategically and long-term for soul contact? Well, you breathe slowly and you stretch your arms towards the sky and say, show me the way, for example. I am just making that up. But if you do it over and over you will get soul contact, whether or not you deal with your wounds or traumas. So these are different views. How do you see these different paths? Going back into history and sorting out the pipes, or going forward and choosing.

30:44 Charlotte: I believe in both. I believe in all three of these paths, because I actually present a third path as well. The third path, which is where I usually begin when I work with people, is this. If you and I are going to work together, and you have a goal for your life, to be healed for example, and to find your mission or your purposes. Then you can begin by looking at which obstacles you need to clear away, and then you often look backwards. Or you look forwards and say, all right, what do you want to achieve and how are you going to do it? Both can be very important. But I always begin by working to create an experience of who I am beyond what I have done. Or what I have experienced, or what I think, or what goals I have. What am I underneath all of that? And when people somewhere come into contact with that, it is as though the other things either become much easier to process, or sometimes actually melt away. Because I can let go of the old more easily when I have that contact.

32:09 Mattias: Beautiful. We have seven steps for evolution in our transformation process, and it begins very similarly. We call the first step honouring. Our claim is that if you do not honour the wholeness and the perfection you are in this moment, do not take a step either forwards or backwards. Do not look back, do not look forward. Because then you will be in flight or in struggle. No, I do not want to experience this again, or I have to do this and then life will be good. Then we are in the same madness over and over. So I take a step and slow down. I honour my wholeness and my madness in its perfection here and now. That sounds fairly similar.

32:59 Charlotte: And it is fairly simple, this, I think. But in principle always, one should not say always, but I will say it anyway, nearly always it is like this. When we have things we are struggling with, wrestling with, things that are hard, things we cannot get right, or people who come to me and are depressed, they are signed off sick, they have anxiety and all sorts of things, then it is nearly always ultimately about them being in a way, or living in a way, that is not in line with their essence. It is that simple. And then it produces all sorts of symptoms. They have been told during their lives that your essence is not all right, you should be this way. Or they have created a life based on what they imagine they are supposed to do and be. And that has consequences. They become ill or they become exhausted. Or we, I should say. I am not talking about everyone else. Me included. And all these symptoms are ultimately our souls calling on us to listen. And allowing yourself to really do that is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. And from there, depression and sick leave and so on tend to fall away.

34:47 Mattias: I agree. To put another word on it, it is as though the cause of all the symptoms we handle is that we are carrying a lie. And carrying that lie is a heavy burden. I am capable. Now I have to prove that I am capable. I am so good at performing. It becomes a struggle to hold that mask up. And there are so many other parts that have to be pushed aside into the shadow. They have to hold everything together, and that has its consequences. And all this depression and sick leave is a healthy response to an unhealthy basic programming. Truly. And it is something we practise a great deal. You say people come to you with anxiety. Why would anyone come with anxiety? It is wonderful to have anxiety.

35:41 Charlotte: It is great fun. It can be terrible to experience, of course, but it is still a healthy signal about something.

35:58 Mattias: So we should start moving towards Womb of Worship here. I keep saying it so we do not lose the thread there, and we will see if we get there. But before that I have three parts I want your perspective on. Humanity, femininity, masculinity. What is beyond the energies, the polarised energies, masculine and feminine? And what is there in what is simply human? And what distinguishes the masculine and the feminine in men and women, do you see any difference there? What misunderstandings are we working through, and how can we wake up to more truth and freedom in understanding these terms better?

36:48 Charlotte: I thought you described it very well earlier when you quoted those passages, I thought they were beautiful. The way I see it, ultimately it is not so much about me being a woman and so this is my feminine, or you being a man and so that is your masculine. Because I have a lot of my masculine, and you have a lot of your feminine. For me it is about the range in each individual. How much masculine do I affirm in myself as a woman, how much feminine do I affirm in myself as a woman, and for you too, as a man. And I probably have to affirm all of this first in order to sense what my essence then is, as the woman Charlotte in this female body today. And how does it want to take form? And how does it want to express itself? And how does my masculine want to express itself? This is only one way of putting words to energies that exist everywhere, in all yin and yang and so on. So that is one aspect. How much do I explore myself as the enormous whole I am, in yin and yang? And then, beyond that, many women with female bodies have a constitution. Our physical constitution has an effect, of course. We have a womb, we are to give birth, we have certain kinds of hormones. That often affects our focus and our needs and how we function. And generally women are perhaps more oriented, fundamentally, towards the feminine energy. And for me, having chosen, at least for now, to work with the feminine in the woman meeting the masculine in the man. And the feminine in the man too, but to simplify it a little. This is only a selection of focus. This is what we are working with right now. Not because it is the only right thing, or the only approach, but because this is what we are working with now. And I think it feels very important to affirm that polarity too.

39:48 Mattias: We greatly value meeting these parts in ourselves, and also creating a kind of calm, and again that wholeness, that rest in ourselves, so that we do not have to search so much over there, out there. I need her, or it needs me. Instead we can be at home here.

40:10 Charlotte: Yes, that is good. And then we do need each other. We are not isolated islands, we are pack animals. I think it is lovely that we need each other. I think it is lovely that you are clingy. As long as you are well and I am well, we can cling to each other and be very dependent on each other. Because we are dependent on each other, we humans. That is something beautiful too.

40:43 Mattias: So did I understand this process, Womb of Worship, correctly? It is women in their feminine meeting men in their masculine and in their feminine. How was it you described it?

40:53 Charlotte: Yes, you could summarise it that way. Feminine, masculine: it is women who create space and receive men. And whether the men want to be in their masculine or their feminine or both, that is up to them. But the essence of this, as the name suggests, is that we as the women holding the men open ourselves very much as channels for the divine primal feminine force, which is part of us and of much more. Because I see what an enormous power there is in it, and what an enormous longing many women have to be allowed to be in their being, and to act as the channels of healing life that we are also placed here to be. And what happens to us as women in that. And not least what happens to men who get to come in and rest in it. To begin with, rest. Simply being allowed to collapse without any expectations whatsoever. And they are guided in every moment by me as the main facilitator, and also by the women who work with me. So there is no room for those men to manage anything or hold any direction. They are to be there, in this womb. And then it is not only about collapsing and receiving unconditional love from the primal feminine force. But I have truly seen what happens to a man who gets to do that fully. He rises. A fairly short while is enough, actually, to somehow reclaim his natural power. Whether we are talking masculine or feminine power. Simply his power. There are so many men out there walking around who never get to drop their guard. Who never get to allow themselves to really be held for a while. Or to collapse. Collapse sounds fairly harsh. And who on top of that carry their personal, but also a kind of collective historical, guilt that they are not guilty of. And that moves me so deeply. Because there are so many men with so much power, wisdom, love, sexuality and healing to bring to the world. But who are utterly lost in how to channel it. And that is because they are so shamed.

44:17 Mattias: Thank you for being here and listening to Evolution Podcast. We are here to have conversations. To guide, inspire and move. Above all perhaps to create a shift. Perhaps to get you to make a decision to say yes to yourself. To stop compromising with the half-lived life. But the podcast is only a beginning, and it is a comfortable way to experience development and transformation while actually staying in the same place. Because you and I know that life does not change when we learn more, but when we go from knowledge to experience, to an ability that sits in the marrow, the way it perhaps is for you when you drive a car. You know how to do it, you do not have to think about it. And that comes through tasks, experiences and community with other people. We hold regular shorter and larger events, so that you can experience your greatness and remember who you are here to be. So have a look at the links below, and I hope we see each other soon. Thank you for being here.

45:22 Charlotte: And the masculine is so shamed today. I should say, with good reason many times, in the sense that a lot of rubbish has come through men now and in history. But it is still not yours to carry. You can step out and create a change. That can be your responsibility and your opportunity. But not because you are carrying some damn shame that others have created. And that moves me deeply. Because I believe that a real healing in the world now, and collectively, is that the feminine energy should and ought to lead the way now. But with the masculine as rest. Like the river and the riverbed. And we will not manage that if men continue to be pushed down or shamed or held back. Just as little as if women are. But it is as though nobody really speaks for men. Well, of course people do. A great deal has been about women's liberation, which believe me is fundamentally important, so that is not what I am saying. But who is talking about the liberation of men? Real liberation, I mean. And I see that happening in these seemingly simple short forums, in miniature I see it happen. And that makes me, as a woman, want to support that change. We want to support men to rise in love and power, and to be trusted, and to be the riverbeds that hold the river. Yes, they can be the river too, but let us put it sharply.

48:07 Mattias: I feel it, and I am moved by what you are sharing, and I hear how much this means to you. And it is also so important that we stand up for each other. That men stand up for women's true liberation, and not the liberation that has been going on for fifty years now, but the true one, where the real power gets to come out. The legal power is important, and freedom and responsibility. But when the true power gets to come out, men need women who believe in it. Because fundamentally the shame and the guilt are so large, and women experience that the victimhood is so large. The collective victimhood on the other side is equally problematic, and the picture there is so black and white. Man perpetrator, woman victim. And it can sound that way in what you are saying, but we need these men who rise and take responsibility. And there is nobody, I would say, who does it completely, who does it perfectly. We are human and we struggle very hard and we do our best, and then we will mess up and do stupid things, and then we will get up and do our best and carry on with our development. It is messy. And the same with women. Something has happened to me. But of course something has happened to you, that someone behaved like an idiot towards you, of course. That is what it is to be human. And there are no people over there who are ready, who have come further. That is a lie. We are here, and it is messy every single day. I had a men's group this morning, and one of the main themes was that so many want things to be good and want to be in balance. It is lovely to be in balance for a few seconds a week.

50:13 Charlotte: But we are standing on a very thin line, leaning a bit that way and a bit the other way.

50:17 Mattias: Can life not be allowed to be like that? My experience, and please say something. My life is not that I am in balance all the time, that I have everything under control all the time, that I have all the answers, that I know exactly what I am to do. But that it can be in that movement and that dance, with some form of trust and relaxation and surrender.

50:39 Charlotte: This will be good, this will be fun. We will see how it develops. I will be there.

50:44 Mattias: When it happens, I am there. Or I lose myself, and then I will soon come back. But to break the black and white idea that these are the ones who are ready and who should carry it. No, it is you and I and everyone else, with our madness, with our broken hearts, with our souls, with our shadows. We are ready as we are now, and we will not get it right, we will not do it well.

51:14 Charlotte: And it is a hell of a yoke, I think, to strive for harmony. For me a master, if I may put it that way, is not necessarily the one sitting there being harmonious. A master for me is precisely what you are describing. A person who has chosen to be in a human body in this messy life, and travels through this rollercoaster and handles it. Accepts it. Now it is rubbish. Yes, here I sit. Yes, it is rubbish. We will do that for a while now. And who can meet all their feelings and meet the whole register of life. Then I think we are starting to talk about being a master in the existence we are in here and now. Not sitting being harmonious, because that is only an extraordinarily small shade of why we are here.

52:26 Mattias: Someone said that striving for happiness or harmony is to misunderstand life. It is something that arises when we strive for meaning. When we live in truth we have those glimpses of harmony or happiness. So in Womb of Worship, when you got in touch with me. It sounds lovely, cosy, warm.

52:58 Charlotte: I can tell you it is not only that. We challenge the men fairly robustly too. How? Well, such a forum has different modules. One part is the holding, in the way we talked about earlier. Another part is radical mirroring, for example, where I reflect exactly what I see, from a loving place in me of course, and perhaps not at all particularly objectively. And also challenge what I see you are doing that perhaps is not good for you. Or for me. But also reflect your greatness, which is perhaps even harder for you to take in. There is a great deal of wriggling when people are genuinely mirrored in their greatness.

54:27 Mattias: A lot of wriggling? What do you mean by that? What do you mean by wriggling?

54:31 Charlotte: Well, it is almost harder to stay in that, really stay in it, than to stay in your possible areas for development. That is what we are so used to being in.

54:53 Mattias: I can feel my heart rising in frequency at the thought of asking what I am about to ask. So there is a part of me that wants to avoid asking it, but I let the fear show the way. Could you give an example, sitting here now, could you give me a little of that radical mirroring?

55:18 Charlotte: I do not think I want to. It does not feel like quite the right forum and moment for it. And besides, I have not really opened myself to that focus within myself either, so it would need to come from a very present place for it to be any good. It was very brave of you to ask. And I would gladly do it another time.

56:15 Mattias: I am moved by your answer, because I think that is one of the feminine gifts, in both men and women: having the capacity or the awareness to discern what I have the capacity to do right now. The gift in the feminine is that the masculine can have a hurry. Someone is threatening us. It does not matter whether I am hungry or not. It has to be done now. The food does not need to be well made. We just have to attack. Now is what counts. There is a hurry there. But this mature feminine. These are the basic conditions needed for me to have access to this gift within me. And it can be about contact, play, sexuality, whatever it is. But this is the nourishment I need in order to be able to share this.

57:12 Charlotte: Exactly. I would also just like to say, we were talking about supporting men and what men can experience in this space I am describing. And as I usually say to the women who do this with me, we have all had experiences, really hard experiences, connected to men in different ways. And that should be respected. It should also be honoured. But it must not define us, because we can still make a choice. We can always make a choice. I choose to give you love, and I choose to support you, regardless of my experiences of other men. And when I make that choice, something does not only happen with you. Something definitely happens with me. What we are doing here is not only some sort of healing process for men. It is just as much about our own healing. Because I see what happens with the women in this too.

59:08 Mattias: It is beautiful to choose. Not letting yourself be defined by your wounds, but being able to choose something else. I was about to say better, or beyond, but it is not right to categorise it that way. Simply being able to choose something else.

59:29 Charlotte: Yes, and being able to choose that I can heal this wound precisely by meeting the very thing I got the wound from. And then I can make a choice to give that wound love through this loving act. In a setting that for many women is extremely challenging. Now, the women I recruit for this are perhaps not the ones who are most traumatised by abuse from men. Or they may have been, but they should have come some way along the road. That is quite important, so that no trauma response is set off in the middle of it. But we are very careful about it, and it will become more important. We are still fairly much at the beginning of this, and I am still finding the forms for it. But it is, and it will become, very important how we also take care of each other in this. Before, during and after.

60:34 Mattias: The way I see the largest shadow among the men we work with a lot in Evolution, it is about performance. Performing in order to be worthy. There are a great many women who have that too. But that shadow sits in the masculine energy. And in the mother wound, which I interpret as learning that in order to get your mother's love, which was somehow meant to be unconditional, it had to be a performance. In order to get safety or love, the boy learned in the programming that I need to do, fix and solve so that she can be there and give me what I want. And that part also means there is an unwillingness even to receive love if there is no performance. Because then this programmed ego cannot understand that if I have not performed, I should still be able to receive love. It becomes counter-evidence against that construction. And then it becomes unsafe to receive unconditional love.

62:57 Charlotte: But how is it now? Do you feel it is easier to receive, or to relax? Have you practised that, and how have you done it?

63:27 Mattias: Definitely practised it. Could you ask the question again?

63:29 Charlotte: How have you gone about it when you have practised relaxing? And how has it gone?

63:41 Mattias: I do not know. A lot of it has been about being. A lot of it has been about being with the impulse to do something or create a result. Being present in stillness with the impulse to fix, solve, improve, develop. And then really learning to listen to what is the voice of truth and what is the voice of fear. And just resting, or just being, until it says this is what I really want. And this is what wanting feels like. And in that practice it has sometimes taken many, many hours. Normally I get up early in the morning and do all sorts of caring things, a quick rise in a few seconds so as not to wake my partner. Or staying in bed, really staying in bed for five hours after that, until I want to get out of bed. So that has been a practice.

65:47 Charlotte: And what we need, as you describe, is these small or larger gaps where we give ourselves the chance to listen. Inwards or upwards or whatever it is. Exactly that. And if we only, it is not only, but if we only do it. Focus on creating gaps, so that we have time to tune in. Then a great deal opens up. I practise that a lot, I can tell you. Every day. It is not one of my superpowers, but I practise.

66:27 Mattias: I have had a shadow there, which was that I wanted to tune in so that I would be better at producing, or become more efficient. But more and more it moves towards the purpose of my life being to enjoy myself, to enjoy my body, my mind, my soul in the moment. So when there really is no sense of doing this to get somewhere, then it has become so much truer. Because then the moment becomes the self-generating gift in itself. And now I take a moment and sense this worry and do not push it away, but really welcome it, and then I have an intimate moment with myself. And then you usually get somewhere anyway, do you not? Yes, but that is not why it is done. What has been so important for me is that I do not do it conditionally, with something coming afterwards. I have been caught in doing it in order to get somewhere, and then it has not been real presence.

67:41 Charlotte: I think this business of achieving things and doing things and performing things has also been rather mistreated, just like the ego. Because somewhere, if we equate it with something negative. Think for example of what you described, getting love because you achieve things, because you deliver things. That is perhaps in itself, and I am 150 per cent with you on the reasoning, but it is also the case that if we go back to the origin, we are parts of a group, and our contribution to the group is decisive. So what our mothers and fathers are really teaching us is that you need to contribute, you need to deliver certain things to the group, partly to survive yourself but also so that we survive as a group. So somewhere it is quite natural that it turns out that way.

68:58 Mattias: I agree. The conflict comes when it becomes conditional and when we identify with it. In a healthy group you had your place. There was a basic self-trust, self-love, self-respect and belonging. And it was clear that you were seen when you contributed. But also that in the group I do not think there was so much of this. The I was not so strong in the group. We was stronger than I. And there it was more a we-respect. I could not love myself more than I could love everyone else. And when I loved my family and my group, I loved myself, and I was one with nature. It becomes an experience of continuous unity. Whereas the wound today, I believe, is a strong separation, a fundamental separation from God and the universe, from the mother we are physically born out of.

70:49 Charlotte: Yes. I would find it rather lovely to connect this to leadership as well. I have chosen to work a lot with leaders, because leaders, as we know, have a very large impact on very many people. So in a way it is a form of leverage for me, a way to contribute what I can contribute. Regarding what we talked about with SQ and these abilities: what I call, as a term, existential potential, EP. That is, being able to access and consciously use IQ, EQ, SQ and PQ as the extraordinary potential we actually are and have. And I see today that these are the abilities leaders are more and more almost forced to reclaim. Because things out there are moving extraordinarily fast now. And you cannot carry on as a leader managing things and being the expert and fixing everything, generally speaking, any more.

73:26 Mattias: Authentic leadership, exploring what that is. And it is a world that is more about asking better questions than about finding answers to things, because the new answers change so quickly. How can we navigate complexity? I think that is the most important question we can ask ourselves. And what do leaders need in order to handle the world's complexity? How can we create a practice of listening so that we do not become overwhelmed, because stress is a large threat today. But how can we keep this centring and calm? I have been given this image of the shaman in leadership. I heard someone describe that a shaman can fly into other dimensions, but can do so because they are so thoroughly grounded here and now. So they can see and hear and experience things an ordinary person cannot see, but the foundation is the grounding, the stability.

74:34 Charlotte: That takes us a very long way. It sums up a great deal very well.

74:48 Mattias: One of our most common sayings in Evolution, part of it is: I do not know who I am. Or, I do not know where we are going. But if we can combine that experience of being stable here, of having an experience of stability and trust here, with not knowing where we are going, not knowing why we are here, not knowing when we will be finished. Then, wow, how exciting. Because I am so safe here. Shall we play?

75:24 Charlotte: Exactly so.

75:35 Mattias: So what can we do there to create relationships where we can lovingly challenge each other a great deal? Where we all have our fears, and our overreactions to things, where we overdramatise. How can we raise the ceiling, in family leadership but also in organisational leadership, so that we can handle more complexity with safety and love?

76:04 Charlotte: I think it is really much the same principles as the ones we talked about when it comes to yourself and your own evolution. Mind the gap. These spaces that give us the chance to lift our gaze together, as a working team or as a couple. That we consciously choose to take those moments when we bring ourselves home, or travel out like shamans, or whatever it is we need to do. Or take a proper look at: all right, what is happening now? That was the rollercoaster, what is happening here? How should we relate to this? Because it is when we do not do it that it starts becoming really difficult. So I think it is absolutely central. In all kinds of environments and all kinds of roles we have. The listening and the looking and the reflection.

77:22 Mattias: For me that is very inspiring. We have introduced it in Evolution. We have a mastermind where we meet, we have several groups every week, but we have a Friday ritual now. Every Friday we meet and reflect as individuals. How far have I come, what do I honour in the week that has been, and what have I learned? How have I messed up, it did not go as I had thought, what are my lessons from that? And then, what are the highest priorities for next week? We put, what is it, seventy minutes a week into it.

77:56 Charlotte: Seventy, exactly. Not sixty, seventy.

78:05 Mattias: We had talked a lot about the importance of slowing down and reflecting and evaluating, but then we realised we were not living it, because we had no system where we require our participants to do this. If we schedule it and say this is compulsory, if you are not part of this you will not be able to be with us, because we will accelerate so fast that you will not understand anything. But this is what we do, and it is on the schedule. The inspiring thing about those meetings was that afterwards people said, if I did this for a month I would come further in a month than I otherwise do in three or four. Just through this activity. And I find that so striking in this world that is so fast, that it is so easy to get ahead. Not because it is a competition, but it is so easy to have a large vertical or horizontal development, because everyone is in such a hurry.

79:06 Charlotte: We can lead, we can be together far more organically. Because when we listen we can continuously adapt the next step to what is actually aligned, instead of rushing on and being completely linear, which is not always so smart and efficient.

79:25 Mattias: In what you are saying here, it sounds like this is a time of very feminine leadership. Listening, intuitive leadership. And leadership research supports that too. So when is masculine leadership good and when is feminine leadership good?

79:45 Charlotte: Masculine leadership is never good. I am joking. Oh dear, I had to drop that one. But it depends on what we mean when we say it. What is masculine leadership really?

80:03 Mattias: You sounded very sure of what you said.

80:05 Charlotte: I find it rather pleasant to sound sure now and then. No, but I think both you and I have been using concepts and putting them in based on what we have also been talking about in this moment. But both are genuinely needed. If we now put into the feminine part of leadership precisely the intuitive, the listening, the relational, being channels for something larger, creativity, adaptability, then that is very important right now, as we were saying. And those abilities draw down a wisdom that is larger, or wider. And it is that wisdom that needs to lead the way. Then structures and continuity and force and persistence and everything else are needed too, in order to manage it. But what is it that should lead the way? What is it that ignites our journey? There I would say it comes from the feminine aspects of being.

81:44 Mattias: I think of this image of 5D and 3D leadership, where the feminine oracle brings in and channels the wisdom, and then communicates out what she sees or feels or experiences to her partner, to her man. And then it is his task to envision it in the three-dimensional world. What does this mean concretely? Because it can be a feeling, a sense, or a fear, a worry that she communicates, or a longing. But it can be quite abstract, images or colours. It does not have to be, this is how it should look. It can be, but it can also be very much between the lines. So his task is to create a vision out of that. With what she has taken in, create a vision. All right, this is the world we are building. This is the kingdom, the queendom, our dream. And then to lead the concrete manifestation of it, through her nourishment.

83:43 Charlotte: I had a working group for a period where we played a little with these energies in the meetings. That we took on slightly different roles. In this case the two of you in different questions, where you sometimes had to step into the feminine and I into the masculine. We probably talked about it more as yin and yang, since otherwise it gets tied to man and woman. And it was fascinating and it worked very well. When it is also clear which state you are to step into, it becomes more restful. It becomes a kind of order that lets us focus and contribute in a focused way. It was really rather cool, actually.

84:31 Mattias: Great fun. We should start wrapping up soon. It has gone very quickly. How do you see, I would like to hear partly an invitation, what you want to say about Womb of Worship, but also something, I do not know whether to call it a blessing, but perhaps a calling or an invitation to men. Not to your event, but perhaps to awareness. What do you want to illuminate in the male consciousness?

85:08 Charlotte: Well, I would like to ask you men to express more explicitly your needs. What do you need in order to feel safe and powerful in what you want to be? What do you need? It is as though you go into a great deal of that providing mode without it working particularly well, because you are not nourished. What do you need in order to be nourished? Take responsibility for it, so that you become it. And in that, it will be required. You will need to collapse. You will need to receive. You will need to relax. There will be periods of non-delivery. And that is all right. That was one thing.

86:20 Mattias: We will put links to Womb of Worship and other things in the show notes. Anything more you want to mention as an invitation?

86:42 Charlotte: Exactly. Well, it is simply an invitation to experience something. And we address both women and men, because we need more women now who do this work as well. So yes, have a look at it. That is all I would invite people to: have a look at what it is, and sense how it feels.

87:14 Mattias: Thank you for your courage, Charlotte, and for saying yes to this conversation without knowing what we were going to get into. Thank you for your wisdom and awareness, and for the warmth, and I have a sense of generosity and a great deal of goodwill. Thank you for that. Thank you for the blessing of spending a while in presence with you.

87:42 Charlotte: It feels very lovely, and the time has gone very quickly. That is a good sign that we have had a good time. Thank you.