Transcript: 

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Geraldine  0:12  
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the New Earth lawyer podcast where we feature lawyers who are changing the practice of law to change the world. I'm Geraldine Johns-Putra. I'm your host and I'm a lawyer myself based in Melbourne, Australia.

 

Today, my guest is the lovely Virginia Warren. Virginia is a unique individual. She is a higher consciousness lawyer. She's a TEDx speaker. She is a conflict alchemist, an author and a visionary. Until this year, she was a partner with a practice in Mornington in Victoria. Her TEDx talk is 15 minutes of riveting viewing and I really recommend it to everybody. It's called 'Lawyers are Trained to Break the Law'. Her book, 'Let's Kiss all the Lawyers, Said No-one Ever,' is a light-hearted look at the darker parts of practice - the discontentment and the unhappiness. Today, Virginia runs a website called Lawyers for Love.

 

So it's fair to say that Virginia is on a mission to bring love back to our profession. Virginia, it's great to have you.

 

Virginia  1:30  
Thank you so much, Geraldine, for the opportunity to speak on your show. I love what you're doing as well. We're so aligned here. So yes, thank you. I'm honoured to be here today.

 

Geraldine  1:39  
Thank you. Tell us your story. I really want to hear it and I think people are going to get a lot out of hearing your fascinating journey to this place you're in now.

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Virginia  1:52  
Oh, yeah. And I want to start by saying there are no accidents on this planet ever. And the Universe has a great plan for most of us. And I know that sounds woo-woo but you know, actually, if you hear that, and you listen to it, you'll look at your synchronicities in your life and you'll say, oh, yeah, I see how that happened for a good reason. Well, my journey into law was quite fun. It wasn't really at the start, because it was an accident. I got into legal practice, for ... I had my son, and I'd worked in legal practices before and I had the opportunity to go back and do reception. And as it turned out, because I was ... it was four months, yeah, my son was four months old at the time, and I thought my brain is turning to mush sitting at home. And one of my girlfriends was working in a local practice. She said, look, there's a reception job opened up, and I thought, oh, that'll be fun, let's just get back in and get our brain working. And as it turned out, no accidents, there was a brand new daycare centre physically built next door to that legal practice. So I was able to put him in as a baby and breastfeed at the same time.

 

Geraldine  2:59  
Fantastic. 

 

Virginia  2:59  
This was working so well. Then what happened was, you know, I just progressed, there's, you know, it all unfolded.  A new person from the city, he bought into this legal practice. And he, you know, he needed some assistance, because he'd worked in big city firms an hadn't run a small practice, and fortunately, he had all these marvellous staff members that really sort of lifted the game because as we know, most of the staff do run legal practices. And so don't underestimate what your staff do for you. 

 

Geraldine  3:28  
Completely. 

 

Virginia  3:29  
Yeah. And he saw my potential and then said, look, you know, I was helping him out, he said, do you want me to put you through law school? And I said, why not? I've got a toddler. I was married at the time, and I was working full time and, yeah, so not in order of difficulty so as to protect the innocent, I took that job on. I thought, why not? I have a cape. I'm a superwoman. I can do this. So I did, and six years on, or seven years with articles, and doing all that I got through. It wasn't without its challenge, but I really loved it. I love doing and I thought, I'll help people, everything will be awesome. And then I ended up buying into that practice later down the track. 

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Geraldine  4:13  
The practice where you had been a receptionist.

 

Virginia  4:16  
Yeah. That's right.

 

Geraldine  4:17  
I love that.

 

Virginia  4:16  
That's a beautiful train of events. As I say, there are no accidents. And you know, people transition and everything changed, but I bought in and I bought in in 2008, it was. So it's quite a little while ago. And I wasn't really enjoying practice and reflecting on all of those things, but knew something wasn't quite right. And one day I'm walking down Main Street, Mornington, there I am in my suit and heels, and these are my leopard print shoes of destiny I call them, because I was at the pedestrian crossing and I just tripped over. Out of nowhere. And I fall down on my hands and knees, there I am in the middle of the crossing. I thought, would these stripes open up and swallow me whole please? Because this is embarrassing. And a lovely man got out and helped me up, because I just couldn't get up. And I went off to my chiropractor really, as I say, for my bruised ego and knees, and he said to me, go and do some yoga. And I thought, no, no, no, no, no, I can't do yoga. I'm a Zumba girl, you know, I like to shake that thing. And he said, no, no, you do yoga for the knees, and the ego. So off I went to my first yoga class. And what I found there surprised me, you know, it was like, I'd been doing yoga forever. I wasn't excellent at it but it just felt like home. 

 

Geraldine  5:45  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  5:45  
And I had to know why a bit of breathing and stretching and just the philosophies that were coming through the instructor really resonated. And I thought, like any good lawyer, I've got to go and get evidence. So with that, I did a 12-month diploma in yoga teaching.

 

Geraldine  6:04  
So  you decided after you'd been doing yoga for not very long, you just loved it so much, off you go, you've just, you've finished your law degree, you've bought into this practice, you know, you're going along as a lawyer, off you go and get a diploma in yoga instruction.

 

Virginia  6:22  
Because you've got nothing else to do? So yeah, I did that. And it really shifted my perspective, when I got into the philosophy behind yoga, because we know yoga just isn't looking good in lycra, it's about breath, it's about ancient philosophy of connecting to self and connecting to All That Is, and that we are all connected. We are, the beautiful thing is we're like the wave on the ocean. We think we're individuals, but really, we're part of the whole ocean.

 

Geraldine  6:55  
And we rejoin the whole, like the wave does.

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Virginia  6:59  
Yeah, that's it and we're all individual. And the tricky part for me was when I learned all that, and it just really opened up the rabbit hole. And most of us that have been in this space, when we get that awakening or enlightenment in some respect, we start looking for more. Okay, what does this mean? What does this really mean? Because you know that the lightbulb moment is there, like there's more to all this. So bringing it back into legal practice was a real challenge for me. Because I looked around I thought it was the principle of Ahimsa, non-harm. I thought, how do I bring that into legal practice? I've got practitioners on the other side yelling, and, you know, no one's loving their life and everyone's miserable. So ..

 

Geraldine  7:45  
And dog-eat-dog, I mean people are just trying to gain every inch for themselves and their clients.

 

Virginia  7:51  
Despite our professional rules, saying, it's got nothing to do with the other practitioner, don't bring them down, no, those rules are off the table. It's part of the, you know, playing the man and not the whatever it is, I don't know that saying...

 

Geraldine  8:04  
Not the ball.

 

Virginia  8:04  
So anyway, yeah. that's the one. Someone said that to me once I said, yeah, that's what they're doing. And so basically then, what I did is I looked around and I thought, how can I bring this Ahimsa or non-harm into legal practice? And I looked around at then what wellness and all these things that the professions had to offer, and our governing bodies, and I found a pamphlet. Now it wasn't, I think it was New South Wales, Victoria, I can't remember at the time. This is back in 2012, that fabulous year. And it said something like, yeah, you know, eat well, exercise, drink plenty of water, speak to your supervisor, and I think there's probably a supervisor that was causing you the grief in the first place, and go and meditate. And I thought, you're talking to lawyers, you know, how, a lawyer doesn't know how to meditate or why because we're results-driven, you know, we're gotta get an outcome, we've going to get in there and meditate and then something's going to happen. Well, it's the exact opposite of that, you know, don't expect anything. And then that's exactly where you should be. 

 

Geraldine  8:15  
Brilliant. I am giving advice to people on how to cope with long hours. And I've said those things. And when it came to meditation, which I do now, religiously, I said, I don't know how it works, but it works. 

 

Virginia  9:21  
Yeah. 

 

Geraldine  9:21  
Go and do it. And you're right, you have to do it first and see the results.

 

Virginia  9:25  
Yeah. And it's the opposite of what you think, is go in and don't expect anything. 

 

Geraldine  9:29  
Yes. Very powerful. 

 

Virginia  9:31  
Don't have... because lawyers are results-driven. We want an outcome, we've got to get a result because that's what's been expected of us, we're trained. 

 

Geraldine  9:38  
Mm.

 

Virginia  9:40  
So I was laughing to myself at that time. I thought yeah, that's why that's a great idea. Great, but no, they're not going to do it. So then I investigated more and I wrote my book at that point, and I had to write it with humour because I thought no-one's going to read about suicide and depression if it's serious. So I had to make light of it. And I had to bring some of the other reality into that. And the other reality being what I feel, and now science has proven it all, it's really, if you've been hiding under a rock you don't know, it's all energy, people, and that's who we are. So we need to approach our existence and our problem-solving from that point of view. And so yeah, writing, I thought, I'll just introduce people gently to this topic. Yeah, people probably they've said to me oh Virginia, you know, oh do you think you should? I thought, well, I don't have a choice. This is my, this is what I have to do. It's, I don't, I won't, you always have choices, but my pull to do that work was very, very strong.

 

Geraldine  10:46  
It was a deeper calling, right? 

 

Virginia  10:48  
Yeah, that's it. So I had to. 

 

Geraldine  10:49  
A deeper level where if you didn't, you just couldn't live with yourself? I get that.

 

Virginia  10:53  
Yeah. You know that, yeah, that's it. And I think there are many people now knowing this. They think that I know there's something else, what is it? There's been so much shaking up, so much energy shift now, that I believe people are looking into their own lives and saying, what am I doing? What does it mean? Where am I going?

 

Geraldine  11:13  
And looking for answers outside, might I say when what you're really talking about, and my journey was the same, it's an inside job. So you looked inside and you found answers and kept going.

 

Virginia  11:28  
Yeah. And it is, it's about connecting with the knowing that you have. 

 

Geraldine  11:31  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  11:32  
It's the knowing, and many people have, particularly lawyers are switched off to the knowing, because I only know what's on the paper, what's on the case law, what's in the legislation, all these sorts of things. And that's out there. And that's telling me what to do. That's my parent, basically, we're, you know, this is where Lawyers for Love came in, as I've transitioned out of my legal practice, because, for me, I know I had bigger things to do, and that litigation wasn't part of it anymore.

 

Geraldine  12:04  
So you were practising litigation and also a practice in wills, estates, family law, general practice. 

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Virginia  12:14  
Yep. 

 

Geraldine  12:14  
And you've done that then for, for more than a decade. 

 

Virginia  12:18  
Yes, that's right. And discovered how dissatisfying it is for not only the practitioners, but the clients also, because the outcomes were focused more on the physical of what I'm going to get out of this. From a physical perspective. And from a blame perspective, when we're looking at litigation. It's someone else's fault all the time. So they come to a lawyer, they hand over their problem to you, and say, here, you fix it for me. Whereas we need to look inside, like you said.

 

Geraldine  12:52  
Yep.

 

Virginia  12:52  
We need to have introspection, insight, and say, why is this actually happening? Why is it happening?

 

Geraldine  12:59  
So I just want to, before we get on to that, which is fascinating, was it difficult for you to move out of the practice that you'd come through for all of your career and move on to what you knew you had to do?

 

Virginia  13:17  
No. 

 

Geraldine  13:20  
What a great answer.

 

Virginia  13:22  
Because I see many practitioners struggling with identity. For me, it's, I've never labelled myself as a lawyer, you see, and identified with that, it's, I've never really identified with anything, but that's me. And I see  that this is why Lawyers for Love was born. Because it really is a situation, we're saying, and I'll sort of circle back to this, we see the legal, the law, the rule of law as being a fear-based system. So we'll go back to the snail and bottle case, you know, I'm not going to go into the details. But the important thing was. it sort of gave birth to the tort of negligence really, but from, society imposes upon a situation what society needs at a time, and that's a very energetic thing and a very big topic. But what I want to say is Lord Atkin said, love thy neighbour. Now, there's a couple of things in that, but the beautiful thing was that I I've been having a little joke about recently, and this is really the foundation of Lawyers for Love is the law says, love thy neighbour, else we won't love you, we will punish you. Whereas love would say, love thy neighbour. And if you can't, we will show you how to do that. 

 

Geraldine  14:44  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  14:44  
So there's a fundamental difference between the legal system which is punitive: if you don't do what we say we're going to hurt you. We're not going to ask you why you did it. You know, we'll look into it a little bit, but. is there is some sort of defence or whatever but then the defence is generally go blame somebody else, because I had nothing to do with this, you know, because we don't want to be wrong. We're always looking for love.

 

This is the human nature, is we are born as loving beings. And as we've been entrained with the rules of society, including I call it the tribe, the parents, and there's no blame on anybody, again, never, there's never blame. It's not about blame. It's about self and evolution. And we're trained to think you know, boys don't cry, girls don't get angry, these little rules that we've got, or you must achieve to get love, then you go out into the world and try and do that. You have, you're not following the rules, you don't know whose rules to follow anymore, and then you've got the rules outside of you. And what we're saying is, if we're looking at learning to make decisions from a loving place, then you have basically dropped everyone else's rules. So for example, boys don't cry, you know, don't have an emotion, men. I mean, how can you connect with people, if you don't have emotion, if you can't be who you were born to be, you have limited your choices. And by limiting your choices, we're all becoming cookies, you know?

 

And this is coming back to the identity of a lawyer, you know, we were expected, oh you do well in school, oh you'll be a lawyer, you're smart, you know how to argue. 

 

Geraldine  16:25  
Yep.

 

Virginia  16:26  
So, and you've built this amazing identity, which kept you safe. And it got you love. Because everyone loves me, because I'm a lawyer, they say this is important. But who are you under that label? Who are you, who is the authentic you? And what we're seeing now, Lawyers for Love is seeing is that more people are looking for their authenticity, even if they're practising lawyers, I want to do it my way, I want to be more authentic.

 

Geraldine  16:55  
And what you're doing by healing the individual, because you're talking about wounds people create or have had created for them, and once you heal the individual, you're healing much more than that, because the aggression that might come out of a repressed emotion is going to spill out of a person, let's say it's a man who has been taught you don't do that, well, then it's going to bottle up and it's going to come out.

 

Virginia  17:23  
Domestic violence, precisely. 

 

Geraldine  17:25  
Totally.

 

Virginia  17:25  
And you know, I've got plenty to say about that, that people don't want to hear. But it is that. It is simply that man has created a rule. We call them rules rather than trauma and all this stuff anymore, because you're focusing on such negativity, when we're talking, trauma focused. For me, this is where we're seeing it. Because wherever you your energy goes, your focus goes, that's where the energy flows. If you're focusing on trauma, that's what you're creating more of. So we're looking at, oh, you've created a rule, it kept you safe, good job. You created it because in your family, the tribe said, don't cry young man, or you won't be a man. And so that young man decided, all right, I'm going to bottle up these emotions and I'm going to be this stoic creature, which is not me. But it kept me safe at the time. So what we're teaching is for people with a conflict, because you go to a lawyer with your conflict, is to say, let's look at where that rule was created and go back and self-validate. 

 

Geraldine  18:23  
Yes.

 

Virginia  18:24  
At the time you created the rule, you did the right thing by you, you kept yourself safe, you don't need the rule anymore. Drop it. Because you brought the unconscious into the consciousness now. And you're able to flow with that. So yeah, and that brings people back to love because dropping the rules or the traumas, or the self-limiting beliefs, or whatever you want to call them, brings you back to authenticity, back to love. Now, people don't like the love word, but love is simply a state of being. Without the fears being present. 

 

Geraldine  18:54  
Mmm. Mmm. It's the fundamental state of being.

 

Virginia  18:57  
That 's it. It's not a 'doing' thing we're not talking love as a 'doing', we're talking about it as a 'being'.

 

Geraldine  19:04  
So what you're saying occurs to me that it's, you're kind of, we've been trained, or we've been conditioned to do things at a gut level, and then as lawyers and say, business people or professionals, we're working up here in our minds. And it has occurred to me that there's this cut off, which is here, and we don't go through it. We actually just avoid it altogether. And that's what creates this dissonance because we're not understanding the emotions. We've either repressed them or, you know, we've converted them into something that isn't quite healthy. Or we're giving too much of it. You know, whatever it is, it's not a healthy balance. But if we learn to go through the heart...

 

Virginia  19:53  
Yeah, that's it. You know, you're out when you're got a negative emotion, you know, you're out of that alignment. There's that dissonance. You know, you're not in connection with your authenticity anymore. There's something within you that's someone else's rule. 

 

Geraldine  19:53  
Yes, 

 

Virginia  20:03  
It belongs to somebody else, not you. 

 

Geraldine  20:10  
Yes. 

 

Virginia  20:10  
And so you've got to go find it and where, it shows up in your environment. It's your mirror. 

 

Geraldine  20:16  
Yep.

 

Virginia  20:16  
And that's perfect. Because yeah, you go to a lawyer with that. And they say, oh, look at what's happening around you. This is where you've got an unconscious belief, because of course, the beliefs are unconscious, the rules are unconscious, you don't know they're there. Most people can't see what's going on. Why do I feel so bad? And so yeah, that's what we're saying. That's why the legal profession can be used in a more positive way. But they say oh, no, you know, that's the job of a psychologist, I disagree. I really disagree. I just say, why does that have to be that? You see the conflict there. You can very easily show your client where they've got this unconscious belief, and it has nothing to do with the other party. 

 

Geraldine  20:56  
Yeah, 

 

Virginia  20:57  
Nothing. The other party's shown up as your mirror. Simple. Thank them.

 

Geraldine  21:01  
Which is what you were saying, but it's actually not blame. So it's not about blaming the person for creating the conflict. You're not saying okay, well you shouldn't blame the other person, now you blame yourself. It's actually empowering. Once a person realises that they have all of the tools within them, and what you're doing is helping them access those tools, you're not giving them the tools, you're helping them access their own.

 

Virginia  21:25  
Their own. 

 

Geraldine  21:26  
Yep.

 

Virginia  21:26  
Yeah, that's right.

 

Geraldine  21:27  
And they're empowered. 

 

Virginia  21:29  
It's self-validating. 

 

Geraldine  21:30  
Self-validating.

 

Virginia  21:31  
Yeah, it is. This is the key, because a lot of people understand the shadow work. But we've taken it one step further and said, this is the point to self validate, because most of humanity thinks, I'm not worthy, I'm not valid, because they told me when I was a kid, I wasn't valid. My response to life wasn't valid. It wasn't validated by the tribe, it was invalidated. So I'm walking around as a person, apparently, I can't make my own decisions, because they said I was wrong. And we carry that belief with us all our lives. And so when we know how to find them, we just dissolve them, say well, that's ridiculous. Of course, I know how to deal with my own responses. And that goes down to addiction, murder, rape, everything. And when we see it in that different light, it's... we can have compassion for everyone in this story, like, oh, gee, what, you know, what rules did you create?

 

Geraldine  22:26  
Tell me about, because I think this is going to be useful for people listening, tell us about shadow work. What do you mean by shadow work?

 

Virginia  22:33  
Yeah, okay. Carl Jung really was my inspiration here. He has been, he was a bit of a mystic as well. So his work was not taken that seriously until very recently, and there's some very big Jungian fans out there. But he actually drew his work from shamanism, about which, which is really my heart, that's where my heart lies. And it is very simply, we create a shadow and when we have disconnected from a part of ourselves, so we've really just covered up a part. You can't, you're always whole, you're always there, you are perfect, but you're not connecting to a part of you.

 

So let me give you a little example, as when we say in society, when we say, that person is bad, put them in jail, we're effectively, because we are one and we are part of the one energy, we're just looking at that person saying, I don't accept you and the badness of you, which means you don't accept yourself.

 

Or another good example is say, you're in a relationship with someone and they're getting angry. And you think, I don't like anger, don't be angry at me. And you get angry back or you get upset, you're saying anger is unacceptable. That's a shadow. You have, it's actually, you're saying I don't find anger acceptable. But actually anger is perfectly acceptable when it's used properly. It's creates a beautiful boundary, creates motivation, creates action. But when you say it's unacceptable, you're disconnected to your own anger. 

 

Geraldine  24:11  
Yes. 

 

Virginia  24:12  
But it shows up for you in all other people because it annoys you. You don't want to see that anger. You don't want it, you don't like it, whereas if you accept it... 

 

Geraldine  24:19  
You're ignoring it, it's pushing your buttons, it's saying hello, I am actually here. 

 

Virginia  24:24  
That's right. And it's showing you that you aren't accepting anger. 

 

Geraldine  24:28  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  24:28  
Why don't you? You have to sit with yourself and ask that question. And this is the magnificence of the planet, of if we see everything as if that gives me a negative energy, there's something in it for me. It's an opportunity. Everything is good. There's no good or bad. It's whatever you assign to that belief system. 

 

Geraldine  24:52  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  24:52  
So that's basically a shadow. It's a part of you that you've disconnected from because you are All That Is, you are all the emotions, you're all the colours of the pencil box as I say. Because, you know, when we're children, what happens is the parents will come along and say, okay, yeah, girls don't get angry. I just use those classics, because they are generally classics in relationship. But there's plenty of them. And they'll say, all right, so, you know, you're colouring in and you got all your pencils there, and they come along and say, don't use blue, we don't use blue in this household. So you go along your whole life, and you're not, you can't complete the picture. Because you think the picture is complete, and you go out and you think, oh, why are they using blue? That's not acceptable, we don't use blue, and you get angry at it, and but you don't realise actually, that belongs to me. And when I get it back, I've got my full set of pencils, I can colour whatever I want. I have all these choices available to me. And I come back to authentically me and I get peace. 

 

Geraldine  25:47  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  25:48  
Because when you're sitting in that place, of you can make any choice you want, nothing can affect you. Nothing makes you upset anymore. Because if it does, you think what rule is present, oh, I can't use blue. I can't get angry. You know, these rules. They're just rules you've imposed on yourself. 

 

Geraldine  26:07  
And once your whole and you've integrated the shadow, you can recognise that it's a rule and say, oh, no, but this rule doesn't apply to me. 

 

Virginia  26:16  
Yeah that's right.

 

Geraldine  26:17  
I'll use blue if I want to, or I'll get angry if I want to in this situation. And so you're right, you walk in peace, which is beautiful. So do you do shadow work in the Lawyers for Love practice now?

 

Virginia  26:30  
Yeah, that's it. We call it the self-validation technique, now, really, because it is teaching people how to self-validate. 

 

Geraldine  26:37  
Yep.

 

Virginia  26:37  
And we are teaching lawyers how to bring this technique into their own practices. Because this is vital. When you're showing a person, for example, if you're showing a person that they can never be wrong, because as we know, when we're acting for a client, you can act for one client or party, I can act for the other, and we have to find the best parts of their case and say that they're right. And, but we've got a win-lose model. So it doesn't really work. When we, because lawyers are brilliant at perspective, we can see everybody's part in the play. So effectively, based on my, the rules that I created when I was young, based on my perspective of this world, I can't be wrong. For example, I will say, you know, you might love pineapple, and I don't love it. And you're gonna say no, but pineapple is great. And I might say no, it's crap. I don't like pineapple. It's awful. There's nothing you can do to change my mind. Because, and this is war. You know, this is ...

 

Geraldine  27:32  
Yep.

 

Virginia  27:32  
It sounds stupid. But that is exactly what war is. It's just like, well, okay, I see that you like pineapple.  All right, well, you know, I might think that's not my preference, whatever. And even for things that appear negative, they mightn't be a preference that we have in society. But we have to ask, why is that person doing that? Let's have compassion for them on their journey. Why are you, why are you murdering people? Why are you raping people? Why? Let's ask the question, if you put if I put you away. Yeah, there are some very hard cases. And every time I talk about this, I get those hard cases. And I think if we can all just come back to basics and see that everyone's truth is true for them, always. Now, if there's not a preference for somebody else, don't hang out with them. Move on. Don't try and change them. You cannot change, you do not have control over anybody but yourself.

 

Geraldine  28:25  
Because it's about honouring people's free will. 

 

Virginia  28:30  
Yeah. 

 

Geraldine  28:31  
Which is critical.

 

Virginia  28:32  
Yeah. Which society can't seem to do because we have rules. The law, you have to fit in this box. And you have to do it this way. Because they said, but hang on in another country, they've got a different set of rules. And you know, my friends have got a different set of rules. And the beautiful thing is, we have and I love this example is that we have a rule that says don't kill people, yet people still kill people. Yeah, we know, there's defences, we know all that sort of thing. But the bottom line is why we kill somebody is because we feel better in the doing of it. Our internal legal system, the internal laws or rules we're carrying are far more powerful than any rule out there. That is why you will sit and eat a block of chocolate even though you know it's going straight to your thighs. You just thought yeah, I know the rule, eat all the chocolate, it goes straight to my thighs. I'm still gonna eat it because I'm feeling better in this moment doing it. I'll have all the guilt afterwards. And that's what we're not looking at. We're not looking at what internal legal system are you running that compels you to do what you do? 

 

Geraldine  29:36  
Yeah, 

 

Virginia  29:36  
It's just like you didn't obey the laws out there.

 

Geraldine  29:38  
Yeah. I want to come back to what you mentioned about shamanism. You said that that's something that you really identify with. That's very intriguing to me because shamanistic practices, they're about healing people or gaining knowledge when the shaman who's the proponent does that by tapping into something that's non physical, it may be transcending this consciousness that we're aware of or transcending this reality. Can you tell me why that speaks to you?

 

Virginia  30:15  
The shamanism, what I took from shamanism was the soul retrieval.

 

Geraldine  30:21  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  30:21  
What they call soul retrieval. Now, there's a lot of ritualism. And let me get back to when I first went down the rabbit hole of looking at everything, why I wrote my book the way I did is because I found a common thread in all philosophy, which was we are one, we are connected to All That Is. And so shamanism brought in the idea of fragmentation, the retrieval of soul. And whilst I don't ritualise anything, if it works for you, it's called a permission, slip, just do whatever works for you. But the idea of soul retrieval is basically bringing back the fragmented parts of you, the shadow, the rules. So I've related it now, I've taken that idea and we've putting it around the legal system and called the rules that we've created, which create an internal legal system. within you. You're the judge, you're your own judge, jury and executioner. We know that. 

 

Geraldine  31:18  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  31:18  
But you see, the legal system that's external to us is projected from our internal legal systems. This is how it's come to be. So effectively, we have we still want parenting. So we created rules for ourselves. We're used to getting parented because that kept us safe, let's put a parent out there in society. Why? We know if we're really connected to ourselves, we know right action. And if we don't, we need those around us who love us enough to guide us back to right action. So we love you anyway. We love you. Because if something's happening in society, it is my problem, too. 

 

Geraldine  31:57  
Yes, 

 

Virginia  31:59  
I've helped create this. 

 

Geraldine  32:00  
Correct. And you are part of the whole.

 

Virginia  32:02  
Yeah. And that's where shamanism comes in too, because shamanism is very diverse. It's an Indigenous way of being across the planet. I think it started in Siberia. And, you know, we have our Aboriginal people who are shamans, you know, amazing shamans as well. And there's slightly different practices, but they all follow their own practices. Mine is a very simple way. It's a modern idea. And we don't need a ritual to do that. We just need to look at our reflection and say, okay, there's the part of me it's out there, that I'm not accepting that, why not?

 

Geraldine  32:38  
I would say and tell me what you think about this, that in the times we're in, which is really about massive change, we are moving to a simplification of those things, away from ritual.

 

Virginia  32:53  
Yes, I believe we're moving away from ritual. Absolutely. So enlightenment, to me, simply means finding the shadow or the unconscious belief or rule, shining a light on it, that is bringing the unconscious into the consciousness again, then you're enlightened, the trick for humanity is keeping it there. Because we have, we have grown up with patterns, that the unconscious programmes that you are used to, you just you drive your car, you don't even think about driving your car, and you'll just drive it. If someone says to you drive it on the other side, you know, the left side of the right side, you're gonna have to relearn.

 

This is the hard part for humanity is relearning a different way of being, and not slipping back into your old pattern. And often, with a lot of techniques we've provided people, it is all self learning.

 

And when you get excited about it, and the only thing I really say to people is check in how you feel. It's all about how do you feel? How do you feel? How do you feel? How do you feel? That's the mantra. How do you feel? Because if you're feeling negative, you know, there's a rule present. And it's as simple as that.

 

Geraldine  33:59  
So you're helping lawyers.  Are you're also helping clients who might come to you with a legal problem, so you were talking before about how people say, here, fix this for me, because, you know, I want you to find a way to blame that other person. Are you also working through that with people so that you're showing them? 

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Virginia  34:16  
Yeah.

 

Geraldine  34:17  
Ah.

 

Virginia  34:17  
Yeah, it's about our ability to respond. Life, your life is your reaction to it. So if you've reacted negatively to your partner, or your business partner, or whatever it is, that's your work. It's your ability to respond to them that's in question. For you. 

 

Geraldine  34:33  
Yes.

 

Virginia  34:33  
If you want to feel better about life, learn how to respond. It's called response ability. 

 

Geraldine  34:38  
Yes. Yes. 

 

Virginia  34:40  
So that's, that's where we're, we're looking at what we're doing Lawyers for Love as sort of scaling this up now. 

 

Geraldine  34:45  
Okay.

 

Virginia  34:47  
To where we're training the lawyers to work with it, and we're bringing in the clients so that clients that want that approach will find lawyers through our platform.

 

Geraldine  34:55  
A-ha.

 

Virginia  34:55  
...to be treated that way. It's all very new. We've only been in operation for nearly 12 months now. But now I'm just running a programme very shortly with lawyers globally, I've got lawyers in China and America and Australia that are beta testing this program with me now. So I've got feedback so that it's palatable for lawyers, because of course, you know, it's called perspective-based lawyering. So because we say every perspective is true

 

Geraldine  35:23  
Yes. Yes.

 

Virginia  35:24  
And, and then it's all based in energy, you need to look at a human now as if they're an energetic being with different frequencies. So if you're resonating with something negative, that's a shadow, that's a rule. Let's look at that.

 

Geraldine  35:39  
Yep, different frequencies. Going back to that idea of, you know, we're all energetic. So we'll hit a frequency that we recognise or not like a radio station, tuning into a certain frequency.

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Virginia  35:53  
Because people say, you know, I've got a high vibe, you know, I'm feeling the vibe.

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Geraldine  35:57  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  35:57  
You know, everyone says it, everyone knows it.

 

Geraldine  35:59  
Don't lower the vibe. Yeah.

 

Virginia  36:01  
People know it. Yeah. But they're just dismissing it as reality. And it's come in to the High Court of Australia now.

 

Geraldine  36:07  
Okay.

 

Virginia  36:07  
It has been spoken about in the High Court. We had a case last year Love v The Commonwealth.

 

Geraldine  36:12  
Ah, yes.

 

Virginia  36:12  
It was handed down in 2020. But there's some beautiful words in there about the Indigenous peoples and they're talking about their relationship to land, was being as, they're identified as being an organic part of one indissoluble whole. And I thought, well, how does that differ from any other human on the planet? It's our belief system. So they're saying the common lawyer deals in one way, proprietary rights, but that doesn't apply to the Indigenous because of their connection to all things. I thought, well, you know, we actually all are connected to all things. 

 

Geraldine  36:13  
Yep.

 

Virginia  36:34  
So this no longer really is in the realms of the common lawyer. 

 

Geraldine  36:51  
Yes. 

 

Virginia  36:52  
And I've got a lot to say about that. But that's for another time. And also, you know, I bring into this training, that we are the scientific basis of our energetic nature, that we're in a magnetic field, electromagnetic fields, all these beautiful things that it's beyond doubt who we are, yeah, but it's just retraining ourselves to see it that way. And bring in an entirely new perspective to the way we're dealing with conflict.

 

Geraldine  37:15  
Internalising it, because what happens when one begins his journey, as you said, of finding out what the true nature of reality is, it's fascinating, but it's kind of parked in one section of the brain, shall we say? And more and more and more, it becomes central until you've completely internalised it, and then that's a way of life. So what you're doing is you're spreading that message. So people can actually say, no, no, it's not just something that I read about, you know, after work, or I do as a hobby in my spare time. It's how I live it. 

 

Virginia  37:51  
Life.

 

Geraldine  37:51  
Yeah, it's life.

 

Virginia  37:52  
You've embodied it now. 

 

Geraldine  37:53  
Embodied it, perfect.

 

Virginia  37:54  
Yeah. It really is an embodiment of this way of being. And when you've seen it, it's like one of those 3D images, you know, when you look into those weird pictures, something pops out at you. When you see this, you can't unsee it. 

 

Geraldine  38:06  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  38:07  
And you think, why didn't I see it before? But it's just our programming, simple as that. 

 

Geraldine  38:12  
So Lawyers for Love, you're doing that in partnership with somebody else? When you say, we? 

 

Virginia  38:17  
Yes Tim Williams.  Yeah, Tim Williams, he's the co-founder of Lawyers for Love. We're both very much in this space.

 

Geraldine  38:25  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  38:25  
We see life completely differently. But we worked together for some time too, we come in from slightly different angles, but it's all about love-based decision making. 

 

Geraldine  38:34  
Okay.

 

Virginia  38:34  
So when you're when you're making a decision based in love, all of you is present, and you don't have influence from another person outside of you. So it's just like, this is the authentic me making, because we make decisions, thousands and thousands of decisions, every moment of every day. And if we're making them based on somebody else, we're not living an authentic life. 

 

Geraldine  38:53  
Yeah. 

 

Virginia  38:54  
And that's when we go out and we find a conflict so that we can say, oh, okay, I'm not being authentic, oh, let's correct course, work with our internals and move back to love-based decision making, then I get a satisfactory life, I'm content with what I'm doing. 

 

Geraldine  39:10  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  39:10  
And so yes, Tim Williams is is the co founder of lawyers for Love. And yeah, we just were so excited to bring this concept into the legal space. We're brave enough. And people can see that, oh yeah, we see what they're doing. And people are slowly peeking out. Ooh, what are they doing there? We don't necessarily like that 'love' word, but...

 

Geraldine  39:31  
But there's something that's drawing them to it.

 

Virginia  39:34  
Yeah. They're intrigued, which I found. I've had lawyers say, I'm intrigued with what you're doing. And I love that word, intrigued.

 

Geraldine  39:42  
Virginia, thank you so much. This has really been a beautiful and uplifting conversation. I know that Lawyers for Love is going to be successful. I know you're going to reach lawyers and their clients and you're going to change the world with it.

 

Virginia  39:56  
Yeah, thank you, Geraldine. And it just takes all lawyers like yourself as well just to bring this beautiful shift of energy into the legal system. And as you know, you can't bring it into a system, you really have to create an alternate system.

 

Geraldine  40:09  
Yeah.

 

Virginia  40:09  
And people just it's like the non-smoking movement,  people eventually become non-smokers when they see that it feels much better.

 

Geraldine  40:18  
Very true. Thank you so much. 

 

Virginia  40:20  
Thank you.

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