Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

Day 26 - Define Abundance

April 27th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

abundance, book of mormon, community, nature, presence, quality, shame, stillness, success, utopia, warlord, wealth

What else happens when you get still is that you become aware there are many places in your life where you have not showered yourself in glory. You have to face up to a certain amount of shame in your own behavior that frankly if you keep busy you can hide away. To be still means that you can really revisit those moments. Even if you don’t want to it will come up.

Day 25 - Sidetracked

April 26th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 43 secs

ancestors, camp life, elephant bull, elephants, feral, friends, kettle shower, leopards, mating leopards, parfuri, presence, stars, tracking, whales

My quest to track a big bull elephant has still not happened. It keeps getting interrupted by lion tracks and pegasus rhino. Still this is a mission that remains high on my priority list. An animal like that has presence who has walked the ancient paths of his ancestors. There are myths of elephants who used to frequent the eastern seaboards of Southern Africa and commune with whales. These animals exist in a conscious that is beyond the verbal mind. There is no future and no past.

Day 24 - Pegasus

April 25th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

aware, mission, pegasus, present, purpose, retreats, rhino, st frances, tracking

Losing tracks is part of tracking. Losing yourself is part of life. I consoled myself with knowing that some of Londolozi’s elite trackers lose the tracks from time to time. St Frances said wherever you go preach the gospel but only where absolutely necessary use words.

Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit

April 24th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 35 secs

africa, caprivi, chief seattle, chobe, innocent ngwenya, kruger, lions, mana, okovango, serengeti, spirit, tracker academy, tracking, ubuntu

How do we get back to the spirit of life?

Ubuntu - I am because of you, you are because of me.
Your presence helps me be a person.
It seems to run deeper than that. Deeper than people, the animals, plants, rivers.

Get quiet enough to really hear the voice inside you. Follow that and I suspect it will take you back instantly to the spirit of life.

Day 22 - Trauma Healed is Medicine

April 23rd, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 47 secs

alone, boarding school, boy, compassion, dysfunction, intimacy, loneliness, solitude

If you would like to understand your own darkness ask yourself how you have hurt people in the past. If you want to understand trauma look for where you feel helpless, frozen and isolated.
If you want to understand shame ask what you are afraid to share.
If you want to understand how to truly heal find out what your gifts are and share them.

Day 21 - Mystical Visitation

April 22nd, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 28 secs

lazy, leopard, monkey, mystical, running

Waking up I felt no motivation to get out of bed. So I just lay there.
I thought of all the years I suffered from depression when I woke with the dreaded weight on me.

Day 20 - Centered

April 21st, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

attention, elephant, elephant bulls, felt experience, firelight, goshawk, meaening, spurfowl, termites

Day 19 - Track Awareness

April 20th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 19 secs

ant bear, body compass, career, david rattray, david whyte, martha beck, shaman, track awareness, tracking, wet

There are worlds are information in our worlds that we don’t even know about. As I was walking past the ant bear hole a miraculous thing happened. A honeyguide came and invited me on an adventure. The bird hovered near me chattering with intense excitement. I was deeply moved by the collaboration between man and nature. I stood alone really feeling it, my own ties to the hunter gatherers. Unfortunately it was late and I could not go with the bird.

Day 18 - Golden

April 19th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 55 secs

buffalo, comparison, judgement, leopard, life, lion, psyche, purpose, tracking

I’m also aware of how I have objectified myself. We think of ourselves as an object on a scale. We should be much further ahead or I’m not where I should be. I’m talking about a continuous comparative dynamic that is structured into a culture where everything is automated and commodities until your own psyche makes you a thing and judges that thing comparatively. Just think about how you drive yourself when you are exhausted. Just watch what you do to yourself when you start duding yourself. Inside that mind all the dimension of person gives way to something terribly binary. Good bad, failing winning or losing.

Day 17 - On the Trail of the Wild Man

April 18th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  15 mins 38 secs

emily lamb, horizon, imagine, intention, masculinity, men, porcupine, simon bannister, wild man

What does it mean to be a man? It was often a question that seemed to be asked out of profound sense of something that had not been attained or out of the question is this it? That question is only ever asked in modern culture where all our definitions are from outside of us. Society makes us but what does it make if society is flawed.

Day 16 - Glimpses

April 17th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 35 secs

david whyte, lion tracks, miraculous, ordinary, raymond, roshi, storm, zen

Day 15 - Storming

April 16th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  19 mins 29 secs

byron katie, chris rice, death, fear, how great thou art, life, lightning, lions, londolozi, rhino, scared, storm, the work, thunder

Then the world fell on my head. At 11pm I sat bolt upright and smelt the storm on the breeze and felt it in my body. It was windy instinctual but I got up and erected the tarp. I’ve watched myself learn fast how to handle the rain. My body had a current of energy running through it, it was like I could feel the future. Then came the mother and father of a thunderstorm. The volume was turned up to holy shit!