How to Shape Your Mind to Serve Your Soul - Lian Brook-Tyler

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Written By Lian Brook-Tyler

Episode 538, released 4th March 2026.

Wild Sovereign Soul co-founder and guide, Lian, has spent over a decade studying and applying the psychological principle of priming - she explains how your environment shapes your attention and behaviour every day, and how to consciously change what is training your mind, body and identity.

This episode is Lian’s All The Everything show… her solo space where she dives deeply into a theme that is alive for her, which, if you know her, could be literally anything - explored through the lenses of science, spirituality and story - hence the name of the show!

It is created for those who feel called toward a soulful life shaped by meaning, depth, truth, and love… for those who feel unsatisfied with quick answers or surface level takes. This is a rich rabbit hole that Lian journeys through alongside you. She speaks from her own lived experience and unfolding process… while inviting you into your own as you listen.

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Or if you prefer to read: Scroll right down for the transcript

The LIVE making of All The Everything is recorded live on YouTube… to join Lian for the next one: Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel, subscribed to our Moonly News email list and/or are a member of our Facebook group and we’ll let you know when the next one is happening.

In this episode, Lian explores the powerful principle of priming, the way exposure to words, images, spaces and repetition shapes what we notice, how we interpret events, and even how our bodies respond.

She traces the idea from its Latin roots through cognitive science, including research showing how older men immersed in a younger environment showed measurable changes in posture, memory and grip strength, and then widens into myth, from the Lotus Eaters to Persephone, to show how land and culture train identity.

She brings it home to the rooms we sit in, the clothes we wear, the pace we keep, and the symbols we wake up to each morning, asking what qualities our spaces repeatedly reinforce, and what future self they are rehearsing.

Listen if you scroll late at night without meaning to, walk into certain rooms and feel your shoulders tighten, or sense that your days are shaping you in ways you have not consciously chosen.

We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation…  please leave a comment below.

What you’ll receive from this episode:

  • Why exposure to simple cues like language, décor and repetition can alter posture, memory, mood and behaviour without you noticing

  • How the environment of the story of the Lotus Eaters mirrors modern life, and the way comfort and noise can soften longing and dull direction

  • What happens when you deliberately change one sensory element in a daily space, and the identity that begins to form as a result

Resources and stuff Lian spoke about:

The Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse

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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan

Episode Transcript:

Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.

Lian (00:00)

Is your environment shaping you to be older, more fearful, less healthy? Or is it serving your soul? Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This episode is my all the everything show. It's my solo space where I dive deep into a theme that's been very alive for me, which...

If you know me could be literally anything. And we're going to journey through the lenses of science, spirituality and story. Hence the name of the show, All the Everything. And it's for those of us called to a soulful life of meaning, depth, truth and love. And those of us that also don't want those quick and shallow answers, this is going to be a glorious rabbit hole that we journey down together.

And throughout, I'll be sharing my own experience and process. And I'm inviting yours into you into yours as we go to, we're going to explore the bigger context, archetypal patterns, the questions that could come up. And also I'll build in pauses and I guess prompts for you to inquire more deeply and also then go out and test things in your own life. So, I would also recommend if you don't already have something to write on, go grab that. And I would say ideally something kind of analog, you know, pen and paper, old school, that it definitely allows us to access a different part of our psyche when we put pen to paper rather than just recording electronically. Of course you do you, but I would say you're going to want to capture some things that you have come up as we journey.

And so if you've just arrived here to the Wild Sovereign Soul channel, welcome. If you've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing honour the call, go ahead and subscribe. It's challenging to live in this crazy modern world. The Wild Sovereign Soul path is what we know will help. And so...

If you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for wild sovereign souls. UNIO is a living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. And if you aren't already a member and you enjoy this episode, You will absolutely love UNIO because we go so much deeper into everything that we're going to explore. And talking of which, exclusively for UNIO members this coming Thursday, let me just check the date on that. It's Thursday the 5th at 11 AM GMT. And we will come together in an integration circle, focus on this episode. And so I'll be answering your questions and giving guidance about how you personally can take what we're going to explore in this episode into your home and life. So you can discover more about UNIO and walk with us by hopping over to BeMythical.com/unio or click the link in the description. And if you're called to go even deeper, come join us for the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul Course. A three month immersive initiative journey into becoming a wild, sovereign soul. You can register your interest at BeMythical.com/wss And now back to this week's episode, which I am so excited about. Let's dive in.

We are about to dive incredibly deep into something that has fascinated me for well over a decade, I'd say. and it is the powerful principle of priming. I was first consciously at any rate introduced to this idea of priming by one of the very first bloggers in the world called Steve Pavlina. And it was in a blog post about this idea of priming. It was the first time I'd read anything about, I mean probably...

As you, as I go, you'll hear aspects of what I'm about to speak about and go, that's like that. And, I can see how this links to this, but I'd never heard of this thing, this name priming applied in this way before. And I read it and I was like, my goodness, this explains so much of things I've already experienced. And I kind of want to dedicate myself to this now consciously because I already have a sense of the power.

And so since I read that blog post, which I'll make sure we do a link in the show notes, I have dived much, much deeper into all things priming, putting it to work in my own life. And of course the work that we do with students. And as I've said, I've also joined the dots backwards in how I was doing priming long before I realized, which I'll share a little bit more about later. Priming. So small word, but, It does a whole lot all of the time without we, without us even realising. And we're going to look at this through lots of different lenses, our myths, our culture, and of course, soul. But before we do all of that, I want to start with what the word priming actually means. You know me, I'm all about precision. So prime comes from the Latin. Primus meaning first. Originally in English to prime meant to prepare something for its next action. And so you might, for example, prime a pump so that water can flow. Before you paint, you might prime the surface you're going to paint on. You might prime a mechanism so that it then functions as intended. So very simply put, priming means to prepare for what will come next is setting those conditions that then go on to shape the outcome. So it's not the kind of thing, the action itself, it's what is going to make that next event more likely or effective, or I guess you could say the thing that we want to happen. And so in ordinary usage, if we look in a dictionary, for a dictionary definition, tongue twister. Priming means something along the lines of the act of preparing something for use or action, the initial preparation that makes a later process possible or more effective. And now we're going to look at the psychological definition, which is where it gets really interesting because it's how it applies to our minds. So in psychology, priming refers to a phenomenon where exposure to a stimulus and the stimulus could really vary, we're going to look at a few during this episode, how exposure to a stimulus influences a person's response to later stimulus and often that happens without conscious awareness. And again I'm going to keep talking about this idea of it happening whether we are conscious to it or not because it's important, you're going to see why.

And so in practical terms, something happens, a stimulus happens, and then the mind responds to it. And so I'm going to give some examples. If you read the word yellow, for example, and you're then given a number of other words, you will focus in on the word banana more quickly. Your brain has already started to activate related concept.

And this is concept rather, and this is called semantic priming. And it's one of the most reliable findings in cognitive science. the research in all kinds of ways has shown this. Here's another example. And we're going to see an inverse really great example of, of something similar to this in a moment. So when people are exposed to words that are associated with aging, so

Florida, bingo, retired, Zimmer frame. They then later walked slightly more slowly. And another example is if we're exposed to money related cues, we then can be influenced about how we behave about money, the type of decisions we're going to make. And so, It's just recognising sometimes studies of these kinds can be, guess a bit overblown or overstated. They can't always be replicated in the same way. And so it's important to not to go, okay, so literally it happens exactly like this. You know, there's a priming and then we have this reliable response. Hey, humans are complicated. Context really matters. And That part about context is actually really what we're going to be exploring today. So there is priming as a whole, but then there's also how context itself can prime, which is again, so important to recognise.

If we just touch back again on how the brain works, it's not like a filing cabinet where things just kind of like sit in isolated files. It's a network. And so when something is activated, other things that are related become activated too, or more accessible or more likely to become the next thing that we are aware of.

You may have heard the saying, neurons that fire together, wire together. And this is what this means. It's like the more of this kind of grouping of ideas, stimulus, concepts are activated, the more we're going to be in that kind of part of our mind. I probably shouldn't keep mixing the words mind and brain, but it's actually quite hard to separate them, particularly when we're going to be talking about things that we're talking about here. But in short, our minds are constantly predicting and also creating what comes next. so priming is playing a part and also adjusting what those predictions are. And so it makes certain interpretations and bearing in mind that's a whole other episode. In some ways life is all just an interpretation. so priming can make certain interpretations more available than others.

And if I've just blown your mind, please don't worry. You don't really need to completely get what we're talking about in terms of how this happens in the brain to benefit hugely from understanding how you can start to prime. Before we do that, let's have a look again at how this is happening all the time. Priming isn't something that's just happening in research laboratories. It is how our world works.

How our culture operates. And of course we've built a world that to some extent knows this and works with this. So advertising primes desire for the product it's advertising. We can use language that can prime us to feel fear or feel safe. How we are speaking about a meeting will shape, I mean, even the wording that what we call a meeting will change what takes place in that meeting. It's happening all the time. And again, whether we're conscious in it or not. those conditions, primary conditions come first and then everything is downstream from that. So that means there isn't, because our lives are constantly going on, it's not like we get a chance to pause and then start.

We are always being primed every moment. This is a bit of a mindblow again, just think about it, every moment is being primed from what went before. And so again, this isn't about whether priming happens, it is what it is shaping.

And so again, the mind is always being shaped, it's always being trained, it's always rehearsing what it thinks it needs to know. It's always predicting what is going to be most helpful. And that's going to happen from the pace you live at, the images you consume, the language you're surrounded by, those habits that you have. And very much, and again, this is one of the areas we're going to really focus on in this episode, the environments that you are, living in or moving through. And coming to the focus of this episode and really the focus of our work, Soul, it's really important to recognise that most of the time our souls don't fight for airtime. Souls don't compete with the noise that's going on in our minds. Soul

So I'm going to ask you a question. If your soul is speaking to you in a whisper, would the way your inner world is currently set up provide the conditions for you to hear it?

Is the way your mind is already being behaving, thinking, swirling, is it giving you the conditions to hear soul? And so I'm going to ask you some follow-up questions about that. What do you notice that your mind is most likely to notice?

What does it quickly filter out? And some of these questions, we don't know the answer. So there is a kind of power in the question itself in that we're starting to wonder something that we're not usually even aware of. What do you think your mind might be quickly filtering out and what really gets space?

So moving back into priming. So priming again isn't about willpower, isn't this idea of, I've got this goal and I'm just going to keep trying harder. It is about recognising that what we're surrounding ourselves, and again, that is all kinds of things, not just how our environment looks, that is what our minds are steeped in. And It's particularly, our minds are particularly receptive to repetition, this immersion in the same things over and over again. So the more we are being primed by something, the more our mind is going to be shaped accordingly. So take a moment and look around at the spatial in right now.

Just have a look. Don't judge it if you can help it. Try not to redesign it in your mind based on what we've already been journeying with. Just have a look. Just have a look around you and see what you notice and perhaps jot down some of the things that stand out to you. Again, they could be things that you're like, oh, I'm glad that's what I'm surrounded by. Or it could be there's things that you're like, oh.

That's a, I can see actually that's priming me in a way I don't want, but for the moment, just see if you can just jot a few things down that you notice, and I'm going to ask you some other questions.

What qualities does the space you're in and bear in mind, this is just one room, presumably if you're listening to this in a room, this is just one room of your life. But taking this as a starting point, what qualities does this space you're in repeatedly reinforce?

And just jot down some words. I'll give you some examples, but it could be that some of these are true for you, some of them aren't. It could be efficiency, comfort, beauty, stress, meaning, convenience. What version of you does this space train? So again, if we go on the idea that our mind is being shaped by the priming it's receiving from the environments we're in, what does your environment right now, what is it training you to be?

And lastly, what version of you does it not make room for? Is it not shaping?

And as much as you can, please be gentle with yourself throughout all of these questions I'm giving you. It's very easy to make ourselves wrong, beat ourselves up. And that really is not the intention of this. This is about gently bringing these things into your awareness so that you are conscious of them. So if you choose, you can make changes and change only comes when we're able to see what's there and accept it.

So be gentle.

Okay, now I invite you to notice what you are wearing because again, we can often think of environment as being out there, like looking around a room, but that includes how we're adoring ourselves. So notice what you're wearing, how it feels, how it invites you to move or hold yourself.

What's it saying to you? And I'm going to ask you another few questions and feel free to share in the chat as well. It's always so interesting to see what other people are saying. So what state does this outfit prime for my body? And again, when we say body, mind and body aren't really separate.

So you could say body, but you might also say mind, depends on what is most powerful. Maybe ask both. What state does this outfit prime in my body? What state does this outfit prime in my mind?

Who are you dressed to be today and who are you not dressed for?

Okay, we're going to now dive in to a bit more science and this is one of my favourite research studies ever. I can't remember how long ago I discovered about this study, but it's so exciting. It has so much in it that's relevant to the theme we're exploring today around priming, even though the word itself isn't used. If you haven't come across this study before, you are going to love it.

Okay. And this again is very specific to environment. So back in 1979, psychologist Ellen Langer, Langer, Langer, Langer, right, I'm going go with, worked with two groups of men aged between 75 and 80. Both these groups attended five days residential retreats. One of those groups, the whole environment they're in, was recreated to reflect the year 1959, so 20 years earlier than when this study happened. And so they were surrounded by all things that spoke to that year. And so that could have been the newspapers, the music, what was on television, the cultural references, I guess, food, maybe furniture. In short, it was like stepping back in time.

Importantly though, and this is a really important thing to recognise, they were also asked not just to speak about the past as if it was a memory, but actually to immerse themselves and live in this environment as if it was now. So to speak about 1959 as if it was the present tense, to refer to themselves as the men they were back 20 years ago.

Which included also being encouraged to behave in that way. So were carrying their own bags, they were being independent and they really were inhabiting that space fully. And so the priming is clear. The whole environment was one of very, very intentional priming for 20 years earlier. The second group, remember I said there was two groups, the second group attended a very similar retreat. The difference is, they were reminiscing about the younger years. And so they'd be like, remember 20 years ago when, you know, this was the, you know, number one in the charts, whatever. After five years, the immersion group, that first group I've described, showed measurable improvements across a whole range of ways that we can measure, I guess you could say, aging versus youth.

And so some things that they measured were grip strength, which is actually a really key indicator for longevity, joint flexibility, posture, fine motor coordination, hearing, vision, memory and cognition. And even they had independent observers look at, I think it was photos or videos of them and they rated them as looking younger than how they were rated for they went in.

They had a reduction in arthritic swelling. And remember, nothing else changed. There was nothing in terms of new medication. There was no physical intervention in terms of exercises. What changed was the environment they were immersed in and the fact they were allowing themselves to be fully in it, to really allow that priming to be something that they were living, not just remembering.

And so the environment was priming a different younger identity. Their mind was shaped around that new younger identity and the body responded. Isn't that incredible? Absolutely. It delights me that study, it really does. And so...

Again, and I'm going to ask these questions in different ways and some of might seem like we're repeating the same questions, but my hope is after each time I share something, you will see more. so again, recognise we're going to journey through similar questions. That's okay. Just recognise new things will be shown to you because of what we're journeying So what identity?

Is your current environment priming you into each day? So again In that study, they were being primed for an identity that was theirs, but 20 years younger. What identity is your environment priming you into each day? And again, it's important to recognise that that is how we tend to receive our environment anyway, isn't it?

They were told to experience it as if this was their reality. That is how we experience our reality normally. And so what is your identity, is your current environment priming you into each day? And what future version of you is being rehearsed? So does that make sense? They were primed for a version of them that was from 20 years ago.

Could you be being primed in this moment for a future version of you? If so, what is that?

And now moving into stories. If you've watched this show before, you know, I love a myth. I love a myth. I love an archetype. And there's good reason for that. We can see ancient truths shown over and over and over again in myths throughout history and across the world. It really was the way that our long ago ancestors were understanding, capturing and sharing these truths about humans and the world that we're in and how to live well and then sharing that wisdom down through the generations. And for those of us that are aware of that, it is wisdom that we can still receive now all these years later. And so I'm going to share a little snippet from the Odyssey, called the Lotus Eaters.

We then sailed on and reached the land of the Lotus Eaters who live on a food that comes from a kind of flour. Here we landed and sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the place might be and they had a third man under them. They went at once among the Lotus Eaters who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious, those that ate of it left off caring about home. I didn't even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the lotus eaters without thinking further of their return. Nevertheless, I dragged them back to the ship by force and made them fast under the benches. Then I told the rest to go on board at once, lest any of should taste of the lotus and leave off wanting to get home. So they took their place and smoked the grey sea with their oars. There's so much in that very short passage, which I'm going to illuminate some of the parts that stood out to me. But also notice if there's something that really spoke to you that I don't mention, capture that because that's your soul, being spoken to directly by the story, which stories have a tendency to do. And so again, this is, this is such a great example of priming, of course, it's through the mechanism of them eating something and often in myths, things are exaggerated, more literal, more noticeable. But what it's speaking to is something really interesting that we can notice happening all the time. So nothing obvious is threatening the men, quite the opposite.

It actually seems like something is lovely is given to them. Something that, how is it worded? I think tastes delicious. So they're like, this is lovely. We're given something. Yes. It gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious. So delicious. So they're given this lovely flower. It's the opposite of feeling threatened.

No one's trying to convince them or compel them, obviously, there's no violence used. It doesn't seem as though they're being persuaded of anything. And yet, the Lotus is removing any sense of longing, any sense of purpose, any sense of wanting to be somewhere that is more true for them. In this instance, the way that's described is home. And so it's not like they make a conscious decision like, I'm going to just give up thinking about going home. It's just like their desire for it dissolves. And this is this environment through the mechanism of the Lotus. And again, recognise even the way it's described is the land of the Lotus Eaters, the land of the Lotus Eaters. And so that land

is training them.

That land is training them to leave off caring about home, priming and action. And you would have heard me say this many, many times before if you listened to the show before, but myths in general aren't meant to be read outside of context. They're not meant to read outside, like outside of any sense of land. They are rooted in land and climate and our cultural ways and food and rhythms, the seasons, and that's important to recognise because just like this particular myth is talking about very directly, they are relevant to the land, the environment we're in. Island myths like the one of, about the Lotus Eaters often specifically do warn about things like this, like comfort, drift, forgetting, loss of orientation.

something interesting there to recognise. And so again, it's not like the Lotus Eaters are baddies, it is an environment. And so this is what this story is telling us, the environment can shape us, stay long enough, and it will train you to become something that perhaps is the antithesis of what your soul came here for. And in this sense, you could say that all myths have something about priming in them. And of course, myths show us so many different facets, so many different truths, so many different things that can be relevant to us at different times. But looking again through these lens of priming, we can see that Persephone goes to the underworld and is changed because she eats the food of the underworld. Quite literally, she eats the pomegranate and she is changed.

The Fisher King's land mirrors and reinforces his wound. Hansel and Gretel are captured by a house designed to train hunger. So these aren't kind of moral lessons of right or wrong. They are showing us something important about how life works. Myths are telling us the land we're on. has an impact. We have a relationship to it. It's speaking to us. It has an impact on our memory, courage, appetite, soul.

So now let's move to the land that we're living on today. The cultural waters that we're swimming in today. So for many people, whether or not they're choosing to consume the news, one way or another, most of us, you might be like me and actually consciously not consuming the news. And yet, unless we are like, la la la.

No one speak to me about any current affairs. We're going to get to know some of the news and we are going to be bombarded with words like war, crisis, recession, pandemic, inflation, attack, shooting, corruption, sanctions, disaster. There's constant stimulation, constant opportunity to be scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

There is so much comfort, whether that be fast food or heating at the flick of the switch, but without true nourishment. It's so fast. We are moving so fast. It gives us so little space to listen to that inner voice. And so just like with the Land of the Lotus Eaters, for most of us in our everyday lives, is not that there's anything kind of overtly creating harm in an obvious way, but these are conditions that are repeatedly priming us for short attention, fear, a low tolerance and a lack of space for depth. And I think maybe most, I don't even know the word. I kind of want to say lots of different words here, sadly, significantly. The land we're on makes us forget what we're here for. And so here's some questions for you to reflect upon. What are the Lotus Fields in your life? Differently said.

Where are you repeatedly immersed in conditions that make forgetting easy?

What environments soften your appetite for meaning rather than strengthening it?

And if you were to leave the island, leave the land or the lotus eaters, what would you need to change physically? And again, bearing in mind, this is about environment. The mind will follow. What would you need to change physically in your environment in order to leave the island? Hmm.

And so again, recognise priming is always happening, whether we choose it or not. So it can seem as though what I'm talking about here is like all of a sudden start to like care about your environment or put things in your awareness. You already are, you already are, we all already are. This is about being conscious about what we're allowing to prime us and whether it is in service of our souls, if that is something you care about, which I'm assuming given you listen to this, you do. And so if, if you care about coming home to your soul, what would your environment be repeatedly reminding you of, calling you into?

What qualities would it train you into embodying more deeply?

And I guess we could look at this really simply. What is your soul calling for your mind to be primed with right now? Could be depth, courage, beauty, trust, presence, love. What is your soul calling for you to be primed with right now? Because again, these are, these are soulful qualities and the mind is really a servant and it can be a servant to your soul. Or it can be a servant to the ego and linked to that, can be a servant to the land of the lotus eaters in short.

So really important questions, those. And the important thing to recognise, some of these questions might be hard to answer because there is… even to stop and question what it is that our soul is calling us towards creates the space to learn more about our soul and so the more we pause to listen the more we're going to hear what it is our soul wants us to know and so if you don't have the answers yet even pausing to ask those questions is creating an opening to hear more.

I'm going to share a little example of my own and I could, I could share lots. before I do that, I'm going to share a kind of, um, almost the opposite of what I intended to share first. And so I went to the doctors today. I don't know if you call them GPs in other parts of the sounds for general practitioners. So if, if you might have your I don't know. Do we call that in, is that just a British thing? I don't know. Anyway, I went to the doctors today and it turns out I hadn't been to the doctors for 11 years. So this isn't, this isn't environment I'm usually in. Quite the opposite. And because I had this episode in my mind earlier this morning, when I went to the doctors, I was even more aware of that environment and what it was priming for.

And so I was taking notice, recognising like, my goodness, it is primed for not being well. It's primed to fear this happening, that happening. It was like the posters were, you know, watch out for these symptoms, get a vaccine for this. Have you checked that this is go okay? Have you, it was just filled with messages of that kind. And even the… it wasn't, it's not horrible, you know, it's not like it's particularly awful in terms of environment, but it's certainly not priming for, I guess, beauty or depth or even health or wellness. It's very neutral, but it certainly doesn't have a kind of what we might say is a positive type of priming, which is kind of ironic, isn't it? Given it's meant to be a place of healing. The environment itself isn't speaking of healing, it's speaking of illness. And so I was so aware of that all the way through the, like as I checked in, as I sat in the waiting room, as I was in with a doctor, as I came out. And I was thinking, this is such an interesting experience. Because again, it's...

It feels, it felt synchronistic that it was happening today of all days after 11 years of not being in that environment. And I was like, it's actually been helpful for me to have that experience because so much of my life is consciously curated. certainly these days it's actually not as often that I'm going to be in an environment that isn't somewhere I consciously primed for. And so if you're listening, that's the case for you. If you are, for example going to work in an office that is not your office, it's a building that belongs to the company you work for for example, or for example you have a reason that you do need to keep going to the doctors or the hospital, it's really important to recognise that I'm not at all saying therefore you're doomed. It's recognising what you are able to consciously prime for that is going to serve your soul and I was thinking back actually to When I did work in the corporate world, again, this was long before I consciously knew anything about priming. People used to laugh at me because I used to have my whole desk and I had a notice board next to me, absolutely filled with beauty. There were all sorts of things that I would smother my area with so that I could go in and not be kind of like primed by the fluorescent lights and the filing cabinets and all things like that. I think in some ways, being autistic and being very sensitive from a sensory perspective, I think I was just aware that those things had a negative impact on me, not really realising the full impact of those things. And so I was really aware of, I need to create somewhere that I can go to and feel okay.

And so again, if for whatever reason, you're often in environments where it isn't fully

a place that you can prime for, recognise there might be ways that you can either protect yourself in some way from priming that doesn't serve you or just make adjustments that will help. And again, these are the kinds of things that we can get much more into in uni or next week in that integration circle. You can bring specific examples and we'll work through them together. Anyway, so back to the priming example I was going to give you.

And you may have heard me talk about this before, because it's a story that is so, my gosh, it's, it's kind of everything in terms of my origin story, how I've ended up doing the work I do, how I've ended up being who I am. So in, in our bedroom hangs a painting and it's a pre-Raphaelite painting, it's John William Waterhouse's The Soul of the Rose. And it's now been there for coming up to, I think nearly 20 years.

And so when I first hung it, I guess, you this is way back before I knew any of the things I'm talking to you about now. And I guess I thought it was like, decor, you know, like I loved, I loved the painting, but it was just like, yes, this is a nice, beautiful painting to hang on my wall. Turned out of course, I couldn't have been more wrong. It was orientation. It was a North star. It was a catalyst for who I really am. But yes, it was a bit of a Trojan horse in a good way that I had no idea when I was placing this on my wall, what I was actually doing. But I certainly would have done it had I, had I realized. And so every morning, literally just as I open my eyes, cause it's, it's just to the side of me, it is training my mind towards what that painting.

In fact, I've got the painting for those of you, I took it off my wall to show you. So those of you who are watching, I'll show you now. We're trying to put a link to it in the show notes as well for you that are listening. So this is the painting. Look at that. I have to make sure I'm still speaking to the microphone.

My daughter when she was younger used to ask if it was me, which I was so delighted by. But anyway, you can see, I hope, ⁓ the painting and it's a woman breathing in pink roses in a kind of what looks like a kind of country house setting. Hundreds of years ago, wearing this beautiful robe.

And for me, at least it speaks of Well, the soul of the rose that couldn't have a better title. But he speaks to me of love and...

Ancient times, meaning, slowing down, the feminine, mystery it's like there's something more beneath the surface it's like what you can see is already so beautiful and yet it's saying there's more there's more there's more just linger here there's more so that painting speaks those words to me it may say something different to you and again it's not not trying to convince all of you to go get the painting it's more to say that is what the painting says to me. And so those qualities I just shared with you were being primed in me every morning when I woke up. And then as I've become more more aware of the power of priming, I've extended the iconography of that painting. So roses, beauty, ancient times, that sense of something beneath the surface.

Basically, painted that across my life in all ways. So the way I dress, in fact, the fact that I pretty much only wear dresses, it's very rare to see me not wearing a dress. well, unless I'm naked, sometimes I'm also naked, but if I'm wearing clothes, it's never going to be something like a tracksuit, it always be a dress of some kind. I have… roses themselves, like so many in my garden, in my house. I'm actually on my desk here. I can't really show you because my Mac, my keyboard are on it, but I've got a huge desk mat, like a big mouse mat, but it's this mat covered with roses. I've got some things here I can show you for those that watching. The incense that I light in this room every day is this beautiful rose one.

It's actually made from temple flowers that have after they've been used, they make the incense with them. It's really this is my favourite rose and it's a bit of a luxury, so I ask my loved ones to buy them for me for Christmas and birthdays. So it's a diptyque rose candle and it is just the most rose rose candle. ⁓ I have this perfume that my husband bought me for Christmas, which is liberties. I have such a beautiful bottle. ⁓ Rose. These are things that are just on my desk, just to be clear, apart from the perfume I brought down and the painting I brought down especially.

I have rose water hand cream that's already always on my desk. And so just these are some examples of the way I just surround myself with that. Those symbols I know prime my mind in ways that serve my soul. And again, talking about how intentional we can be. mean, my whole environment, my whole wardrobe, everything, I am more and more being intentional with. the point with just recently, was like, I don't feel like my socks are priming very, very well. So I'm having a sock amnesty and I've got rid of all the socks that aren't priming my mind to serve my soul and bought some others. I've brought an example here. So those of you looking, I've got this gorgeous like rose coloured, sparkly sock. It has a pair that's upstairs where I'm extending this priming into my clothes. And I was thinking as I was intending to share this with you, I was like, I know some people would be thinking like, I can't believe she is talking about socks for goodness sake. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. Surely there's more important things to talk about. And I completely understand why someone might feel that way. And my response is, I don't see that there is anything more powerful in us being able to meet the division of this world than us living from soul. And so if we're going to buy socks anyway, if we're going to be dressing in things anyway, if we're going to put things on our walls anyway, why not have it be ways that we can prime ourselves so that we can be more soulful, so that we can meet the world, our lives.

With more love, more beauty, more depth and those particular qualities that are unique to each of our souls, the gifts that we've come to be to the world. And so again, all of the things in my life that I'm priming myself are reminding me again and again and again and again, moment by moment, every single day of the way that I am devoted to living. And this is what conscious priming, because again, priming is happening either way, but consciousness priming does. It's kind of doing the work for you, almost imperceptibly, but consistently and powerfully.

So I'm going to give three invitations and I'm going to do it through the lens of the primordial strands of wild sovereign soul, because they're really, You've probably heard me talk before about those strands that our work is based on. They're well, ancient time honored ways of us living fully in the way that we've come here to live, not in the way that the land of the lotus eaters has conditioned us to forget. And so the first one is in alignment with reclaiming your wildness. So the first, primordial strands choose one physical space you're in every day and change a sensory element. And so it could be the lighting, could be something textural, could be scent, it could be sound. Something that by this being in your environment is going to repeatedly remind your body that it is alive, it's precious, it's moving towards healing.

It's the home for your soul. What can you place in your environment that is going to repeatedly remind your body? And again, when I say body, we talk as though we've got a mind and a body and they're separate, you know, in so many ways they're the same, but honoring that animal of our body, isn't something that we can just skip over. And so, looking at your environment, how can you prime your body to remember this powerful, vital, beautiful animal that it is?

And then into actualizing your sovereignty. Identify an environment that again, you are often in that is currently priming for things like a lack of choice, deferral, control, overwhelm, procrastination. And so for many of us, we have a place that we go to work every day, a desk, you know, what you're surrounding yourself for a long period each day. If you do do desk work.

And these are the environments, especially places we're in a lot, especially places where we are, you know, needing to make choices, but are being reinforced within only a very small set of choices, change that physical environment so that you are reminded of your own agency, of your ability to choose, your sovereignty.

That you are able to choose things that are right for you, not just go with the crowd, not just do what you're told, not just do the thing you've always done. So clear something away, you know, get rid of something and put something else in that is going to keep telling you, this is my choice. I can choose. I can act.

And then lastly, awakening your soul. So just like my example with the soul of the rose painting, choose again, something, somewhere that you see every day, particularly those important ⁓ inflection points. It could be where you wake or go to bed, where you work, somewhere you're regularly in and place an object there. That has that real meaning for you, that speaks to your soul, that creates that orientation and reminds you over and over and over again what your soul is here for.

So priming is not about trying to just control your thoughts, it's about shaping the conditions that your mind lives inside is being primed by. Whatever your mind is repeatedly primed for is your life.

So again, what is currently priming your mind most strongly?

And what might change if you altered that?

Okay and so if you feel called to walk this way of orientating yourself in your life and in the world you heard earlier where to find us and so as I said earlier if you're struggling with challenges or walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and honestly I think most of us are in some ways and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for wild sovereign souls. UNIO is the living home for the wild sovereign soul path where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. And as I said, exclusively for UNIO members, so if you're not already a member, come join us before now, before then.

Next Thursday I will be answering your questions in a special integration circle about how to take everything we've just explored in this episode into your home and your life. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to bemythical.com slash unio or click the link in the description. And if you're called to go deeper.

Come join us for the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul Course, a three month immersive, initiatory journey into becoming a Wild Sovereign Soul. Rest your interest at bemythical.com slash WSS. If you'd like to hop on over the show notes, which aren't live yet, but will be once this episode goes live on all channels, they are at bemythical.com slash podcast slash five three eight.

And if you don't want to miss out next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including of course, YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode to live in straight to your device, auto-magically, as soon as it comes out. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you prime your environment and walk your wild sovereign soul path.

 
 
Lian Brook-Tyler
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Unlock the soul secrets hidden in your voice - Barbara McAfee