92 - John Brierley - Ch 2 - "The Camino: A Path of Self-Discovery" - The Docuseries

Visit our YouTube page to watch this interview filmed in Santiago de Compostela.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheCaminoCafePodcast

Are you ready to embark on a transformative journey within yourself? Tune in as we share a profound chat with John Brierly on our docuseries at Camino Cafe. This insightful discussion, "The Path of Self-Discovery," explores how the Camino journey can stimulate profound personal growth and self-realization. John's profound insights emphasize the significance of stepping into unfamiliar territories, which can lead us to unveil a profound version of ourselves, buried under layers of ego and life dramas.

In this intriguing discourse, John beautifully narrates the tussle between the egoic self and the higher self, underlining the need to diminish the egoic self to truly understand and accept our higher self. He quotes Thomas Merton, asserting that the journey within ourselves is the most vital of all explorations. We aspire to navigate the deeper essence of our beings through this conversation and discuss the role of the Camino in this life-altering process. So come along as we venture on this all-important journey of self-discovery. Remember, the journey is a continuous one, extending way beyond the Camino.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome back to the Camino Cafe. I'm Leigh Brynn and your host. Well, I'm recording this in the middle of Old Town and you can probably hear a little bit of street noise. It's quiet. It's only four o'clock in the afternoon. People are just enjoying the last of lunchtime A few drinks, maybe some tapas. But now I want to introduce you to the second in the Docu series with John Brierly. This is titled the Path of Self-Discovery. It's a short listen but packed with powerful wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Patty Silva and I have really enjoyed doing this project and we are honored to be bringing it to the Camino community. Please share it. If it moves you, please share it. It was John's hope that as many pilgrims as possible could hear his final messages.

Speaker 2: 0:52

I'm John Brierly. The Camino has a path of awakening From fear to love the Camino is a place where you can find the path of self-discovery.

Speaker 3: 1:10

John, you've always talked about how the Camino can be the path of self-discovery. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2: 1:19

Well, I mean, it's about the discovery of a self that we perhaps were not familiar with. I believe it to be our essential nature. We've covered it over with the egoic self. That's our personality, our persona, our life story, our drama that we live out and we think is who we are. But behind that is another self, if you like. A higher self is the essence of who we are, and part of the Camino offers us an opportunity, in the quietness of the root, to discover that other self.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Quote from Thomas Merton, who says beautifully what's the point in traveling to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss to our own self? This is the most important journey of discovery and without it, all the rest are not only meaningless but useless. The difficulty of opening up to that self-discovery, the thing that gets in the way, is the egoic self that doesn't want us to discover that other self. Because on some level we cannot know that other self unless we diminish the egoic self. But like narcissists, we've fallen in love with our ego self, with our drama. However wonderful it is or however awful it is, we just don't want to let it go. And until we let it go, and until we let it subside not go completely.

Speaker 2: 2:58

We still occupy the world. We still need an egoic self to navigate ourselves to extra half K down to the cathedral to do the natural things that we need to do. However, we need to diminish it. We need to quieten that egoic voice, which is loud, is constantly there, always answers first and is almost always one. We need to let that quieten down so that this other self can emerge.

Speaker 2: 3:29

And that's the power of the Camino, because it again brings us away from the familiar lands, us in a place where we're sort of, you know, unknown to ourselves, unknown to the people around us. We've come into this sort of mystery world and we're more open and ready to say right, let me hear, let me see, let me understand this other self, let me become more familiar with it. There's lots of false guides out there. We don't want to be continually trapped by them, but it's difficult. This is, you know, as Thomas Merton said, this is the most, in a way, difficult but the most important journeys of self discovery. We need to find that because that other self, that higher self, is the one that will bring us home. It is the one that will awaken us out of the dream of separation into our wholeness, back to unity.

Speaker 3: 4:28

So by walking the Camino it almost gives us that opportunity to kind of strip away these layers, Correct that they're covering this inner light within us Correct, correct, exactly. And so, when we get to this point, have we found our inner self or does the journey continue way past?

Speaker 2: 4:45

Oh, I think it continues way past.