On the show this week I am in conversation with Kimberly Carter Gamble, who produced, directed and co-wrote THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take? and THRIVE II: This Is What It Takes. Kimberly came from a background in journalism and film. Currently she is focused on helping to empower grassroots movements around the world to reclaim our freedom and develop tools and practices for spiritual awakening and averting medical tyranny.
Kimberly tells me she eats mostly from her own garden where she grows food and also cultivates a habitat for native bees as her response to bee colony collapse. She currently has over 78 species of native bees.
She and her husband, Foster Gamble, live in Santa Cruz, California. They have children and grandchildren living nearby and she helps care for her 94-year-old mother, who has Alzheimers.
I’ve been fortunate enough to meet Kimberly in person a couple of times for great conversations about our shared passion for the thriving of people and planet. This is another fabulous conversation – whether or not you agree with Kimberly’s views, I am sure you will find it fascinating.
We talk about health freedom, transhumanism, Big Data, learning to disagree respectfully, courage, purpose and passion, life, death, consciousness and spirituality…. And, of course, thriving.
I really enjoyed this conversation enormously. I really appreciate Kimberly’s philosophy of freedom and non-violation, and I’m going to steal her saying: “I am a friend of your soul and an enemy of your project”. I couldn’t agree more that we have to remember how to listen to each other, and to disagree respectfully. Especially as we approach the holidays, when we might well spend time with family members who have a different view from us, this was a really timely reminder.
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And our archive of conversations – with Charles Eisenstein, Tim Jackson, Jude Currivan, Bill McKibben, Sharon Blackie, Ted Rau, Paul Hawken, Peggy Liu, John Buck and Monika Megyesi are available for free on Spotify, and now also on Apple Podcasts!
Links:
Kimberly’s Health Freedom series of videos
Kimberly also mentions Superhumans: stories about people transcending biology, expanding consciousness, and pushing the limits of what it means to be human
Favourite Quotes:
Kimberly’s favourite quote, from Audra Lord: “When I use my strength in service of my vision, it matters less and less whether I am afraid.”
For those of us who are clear about our purpose and our passion, then to not honour it, is its own death.
I have a lot of confidence that I am living the life that I’m here to live. And just that joy and energy and alignment gives me such a good feeling that at least I know I won’t die regretting that I didn’t live because I was afraid of something that may or may not have happened.
One of those things that we need to unpack is our relationship with authority. How is it that some people have the authority to tell us what to do with something so basic as our own bodies? If we don’t own our bodies, and our thoughts and our speech, that is a fascist world. So to be able to take responsibility for that, and proceed fearlessly, despite what you know, rumbles and flutters in my heart. It’s like it’s not as if the fear doesn’t run through my body, it’s that it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to act from fear.
The courage that I want to have most of all, is the courage to consider possibilities and understand that I’m relying on my own discernment. And I want to hear people who disagree, discuss something so that I can discern for myself. Which part of this do I think do I agree with? And which part goes in the category of I don’t know, but I’ll keep my eye on it?
If something can happen once, then by definition, it’s not impossible. So can somebody experience spontaneous healing? Yes, that has happened. So therefore, it’s not impossible.
Learning to hold conflicting ideas at one time is an essential part of critical thinking. So if I don’t know something’s right, I’m going to listen to somebody’s perspective. And I have to suspend my own judgment for a moment to actually consider it all of the way.
Let’s look at the different sources, and also I’ll say what I think you believe, you say what you think I believe, so at least we can articulate each other’s perspectives and understand why we might think what we think, and then take it from there, instead of making each other wrong, and separate and divide, which are really dangerous things.
I’m a friend of your soul and an enemy of your project.
My fundamental orientation in life is spiritual, I relate to myself as a spiritual, eternal being who’s here for life, for some amount of time with a purpose. And so because that’s my belief, my spiritual orientation is of a sense of oneness, that we are all connected. I meditate, and really have a committed meditation practice. I’ve had benefit of plant medicine and other tools that have really facilitated my understanding of the inner connection in all life.
I don’t believe that anyone should be able to violate anyone against their will. That’s a fundamental guiding principle that defines freedom, so because of that, I’m gonna work hard to stop it (violation). I just do it with an open heart. And a little less of an attachment to the outcome.
I’m most proud of my family relations, which cross all kinds of worldview divides. Where I have vaccinated kids, unvaccinated kids, kids who believe this, kids who believe that, and we are really committed to finding a way to keeping our love and closeness alive and robust. I’m watching other families just get torn apart. And we’re really having to have a common commitment to that. And I’m very grateful that we do.
I actually don’t believe that we will survive as a species until we get beyond the notion that we’re going to all agree. We’re not going to agree. The fundamental agreement needs to be that we don’t violate each other. So that means you can believe and do whatever you do, so long as it doesn’t violate my ability to do the same.
What we need to do is figure out how are we going to coexist here, and what will be the fundamental principle and ethic and strategy by which we can coexist. That’s not agreement. That’s how to come up with a way to disagree in a way that doesn’t violate anybody against their will. And to me, that’s the challenge that we really face here.
I would definitely take out the stranglehold of corporations in the financial system to control the government because right now, we can’t even make new policies, so long as the those who are supposedly elected are actually answering to the corporate interests.
To me, (selling our personal data is) an alternative to universal basic income, where if people actually own their data, they can choose to sell it, where they want to, they can align their financial world with their values in a way that’s really important and which hasn’t happened yet on the planet.
There are people who fundamentally disagree at such a core level, that now the job is to come up with a guiding principle that allows us to live together because changing each other’s minds has also historically proven to be impossible.
This idea of “I’m going to force you to go along with my belief” – we won’t make it if that’s the strategy we choose. Instead, enough of us get that and are rising to the occasion to have these difficult, uncomfortable conversations, which comes back to something about the notion of our oneness, which is who are we, who am I? And what is my belief system? What is my worldview? I’m more than my opinion, I’m more than my beliefs. I’m more than my worldview. Love is more important to me. Love, I believe, is a subset of freedom. So we’re free to actually express ourselves in this way, as long as we’re not violating one another.
A thriving future for me is one where we actually have mastered disagreeing enough to live in harmony based on a non-violation principle with people who have completely different worldviews than we have.
The great work that is available to help us all now to expand our consciousness. And by that I mean to be able to expand who we think we are, so that when we’re riled by somebody else’s opinion, we actually know what it feels like to take a deep breath, and redefine ourselves for a moment as interconnected beings, probably both trying our best to make a better world, but have different ideas about how to do that.
Featured Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash