Greg Quicke

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Greg Quicke: Astronomer

Full transcript

“And what have you got to lose? There is only one way forward and to be able to share your thoughts and follow what's in your heart and to do that without hesitation i think is the key to living a full life, anything else you are following your hesitations or you are following what you think someone else thinks you should do. Even if somebody else isn't even thinking that. Sometimes we hold ourselves back with those sort of things.” – Greg Quicke 

Madeleine: How often do you think about the fact we’re turning? 

I have to admit, it rarely comes to mind that we are spinning at 1100km per hour as the earth turns on its axis, or zipping around space at about 107,000km/hour as it careens around the sun. It’s much easier to get lost in the tangle of day to day life. 

But since reading outback astronomer’s Greg Quicke’s book, Is The Moon Upside Down, it’s been a great comfort to notice we are turning, to expand my mind beyond what’s happening in my own life, or even what’s happening in the palm of my hand as I scroll news feeds. 

As Greg writes: “Often we think within our 10-foot radius that everything is happening to us. Step outside of that 10-foot radius and you’ll frequently see that the same things are happening to others around you at the same time. Perhaps that can make it easier if we’re able to see that it is not just all about us.”

We know this intellectually, that we are turning, but what would happen if we really acknowledged this direction each day?

For Greg, this “aha” moment of really feeling the colossal movement that we are taking through space gave him direction in his life. And he firmly believes that if we all started really looking at not just the world around us, but the universe we are nestled within, then our collective ahha’s would open the doorway to great understanding.

That might sound abstract or even impossible to notice such movement, but it’s possible to embed reminders into our ordinary lives. Greg, for example, doesn’t sleep until he has seen a shooting star in the sky.

After chatting with Greg, I’m quite convinced that such a ritual has turned him into star. Perhaps it’s not so far fetched – we’re made of stardust after all. Or perhaps it’s just Greg – his approach to life seems to have always been spacious and patient, just like the universe. He started out as a marine biology student turned pearly diver turned self-taught bush mechanic turned astronomer and host of Astro Tours in Broome Western Australia. You might also recognise him from Stargazing Live which earned him the moniker Space Gandalf. But as he likes to put it, he’s just an “Ordinary bloke from the bush who has learned a few things about stars.”

In this conversation, we delve the awe-inspiring ways astronomy can stretch our minds and hearts – how it can be a reminder that we’ve got nothing to lose, and the relationship between order and chaos. We talk about meeting challenges with joy, how to find and follow your flow, cultivating patience, and choosing to see beauty in the ordinary and extraordinary. 

So, given we are on a planet that is orbiting the sun, here’s Greg on noticing where we are in the universe… today. 

Greg Quicke: Oh, that's that's a great question. I love that perspective. And it's certainly one that occupies my every day and every night, is where is the earth on its journey within our solar system, and in relation to the other entities that are in our solar system too? There's certainly interactions that go on constantly, and these are interactions that are going on in our lives, and that's whether we have an awareness of them or not. Even the cycle of well, particularly the cycle of the moon is one that everybody is subject to. Being aware of the sun, the moon and the earth lining up with each other is something that goes on once a fortnight and these are things that we can learn to tune into within our own lives. 

And certainly there are cultures on the planet that do that already. The Western calendar was kind of hijacked and taken off us about four hundred years ago with any relationship at all to any natural cycles that go on around us and I guess I'm talking about the Gregorian calendar that turned up about four hundred years ago, where we still use it today and it's still got these things in it we call months, which makes us kind of think they've got something to do with the moon but a long time ago, they stopped having anything to do with the moon at all.

Madeleine: So what do you think distracts us from tuning into these cycles?

Greg: Oh, this so many distractions on this planet at this time. I mean, there's so many tools that do their best to make you think about anything other than those cycles, you know that taking away of that calendar four hundred years ago, I think was a part of that. But certainly in today in our in our world of television and multimedia, there are so many distractions from and so many encouragements to think things that other people want you to think, rather than actually tuning into your own self, which despite that many of us managed to do, which to me says good things about humanity.

Madeleine: I'm just thinking about other cycles that we definitely seem more tuned into. Well, some of us anyway, in terms of the news cycle and getting caught up in that. What's your perspective on things like worrying about the day to day cycles of the news cycles of the the cycles of out of our human lives?

Greg: Well, Madeleine, I'm somebody who lives without a television. So the news cycle to me is not a real life at all, it's like a cartoon world. And, you know, if anyone wants to engage in that sort of conversation or generally sort of look off in the distance and don't worry about it too much, because I can see how engineered it and the occasions when I do find myself in somebody's house and there is a television going on in the room, I go, wow, this stuff is just poison. It's manipulating people's thoughts and holding their attention in a very powerful way. I mean it's an incredibly powerful tool, television and the the rest of the media that we deal with in this day and age. And it's potential for use for good is absolutely amazing. But we tend to use it just for trash. 

Madeleine: Well, you've definitely got other things to watch. Like we all we all do, but we so easily ignore it. But I would like to go into your incredible life calling – you never set out to learn about the stars. And I love how you put it that they were there and you were there. Could you talk to that moment of noticing what the world had to offer us, or the universe?  

Greg: Well, I've always been curious about pretty much everything, so to me, the stars were just another part of everything – they were there, and I certainly noticed their beauty as I do of all things on earth, too, but I spent a lot of my life living in a swag and I still do, and  that means sleeping under the stars. And the Kimberley where I live certainly lends itself to that sort of lifestyle. So spending that time, and particularly in my twenties, I guess doing that, doing work out on the Kimberley, sleeping every single night under the stars because that's the sort of work I was doing and I reckon there was a time when I'd been looking up there and seeing how beautiful the sky was and just being absolutely in awe of it, every night, but I reckon they came a night when I went, "Yeah, but what's going on? And and I have to know more about this" and I guess that's when I really started to watch and to take notice of what was going on in the sky. And, you know, I got curious enough to get myself a star chart and start to learn some of the star names. And so I came to realize that some of the stars that I was watching in the sky were actually planets and that if I watch them for long enough, I could notice that they were moving amongst the stars and in relation to each other, so I guess that was my early beginnings of tuning into what was around me all the time anyway.

Madeleine: It really is so surprising how we know it intellectually, we seem so separate from it, from the reality of it. You do describe yourself as an ordinary bloke from the bush who's just learned a few things about the stars. But now you're known widely as Space Gandalf. And I'm wondering if success has changed your your day to day existence, or your routine?

Greg: Not really. I still do what I do. I met somebody in the street the other day and they went, "How come you're still in Broome? Shouldn't you be in Sydney or New York or something like that? "And it's like no, this is where I live, his is where I feel good and if I need to go to Sydney or I need to go to New York I can do that but certainly where I live is a pretty special place. I guess it really helps to keep me grounded. And, you know, I guess I've been described a couple of times as having my head in the stars. But, you know, people have also recognized that my feet are pretty firmly on the ground as well.

Madeleine: So what do you do all day? You've obviously got your tours in the evening when it's the dry season. But if day to day life hasn't changed much, what does that look like for you?

Greg: My biggest challenge in the morning is to remember where I left my shorts so I put them on and walk out the front door and go down to the beach. So, you know, that's how my day starts is wandering through the bush that's between myself and Cable Beach. And that's where I find my clear space in the morning. And doing that sort of sets me up for the rest of the day.

Madeleine: So is that quite early in the morning that you wander out to the beach?

Greg: Well, I'm pretty much at the top of the sand dunes as the sun's cracking over the horizon, so for most people that's pretty early.

Madeleine: I can't remember the last time that I saw, I was going to say sunrise and then the sunset in the same day. But you've got a different perspective on sunrises and sunsets. Yeah, it seems like quite a special way to to start the day. But maybe you could talk to us a little bit about how it's actually, you know, "Let's go watch the earth turn away or towards the part of the sky that the sun is in" and how maybe our language or our words for things can even limit us.

Greg: You've nailed it there Madeleine for sure. That is one of the things that I like to tune people int,  the fact that we're not watching the sun go down, we're watching the earth turn away from the part of the sky that the sun is in. And and I guess that's my little play on a recognition that the language that we use in everyday lives is a very powerful thing, and it affects our lives in a very intense way. So if we're talking about the sun going down, our mind will think that the sun's going down. But even though if we stop and think about what we've said, we realize that, oh, hang on, the sun isn't going down. It's the earth that's turning that makes it look like the sun's going down. And with a bit of thought, we can quite easily put that together. But for most people in their daily lives, they might not ever do that in their whole life, or maybe once and then completely forgotten about it. But, you know, it's almost like it's one of the next things for humanity to just step into a realization of. And by that I mean, to just living as if that's you know, a real part of our lives, the fact that the earth is in fact, turning and traveling through space and that these are things that we can see.

I get asked this question a lot, how come we can't feel the earth turning? And and my suggestion is that if you start watching some of the things that I like to set people up to see, perhaps you will start to feel the earth moving through space. And that's certainly a part of my reality for sure and I love leading people in that direction so that they can jump off that cliff on their own and have that same experience for themselves.

Madeleine: Hmm. Just makes me think it's a beautiful thing to meditate on. If you could have those markers of the day as reminders that the world is turning and maybe our small, ordinary problems or worries will also turn with it, it just feels like lovely freeing approach. Do you do that? Do you use the universe and its different cues and sort of built those into your own daily rituals of some kind?

Greg: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, meditation is a very powerful part of my life and it's something that I begin my day with and carry on through the day, too. So and I was talking to somebody about it yesterday and suggested that there's probably never a time when I'm not meditating. And occasionally I've heard it said that my presentations are like taking people through a guided meditation and, you know, I guess if we say meditation as a recognition of things that are around us and that includes our own self, a recognition of ourselves and what we are and by that I mean what we are as physical beings and the needs and the desires of our physical being, and what we are as feeling-beings as well, or emotional beings and a recognition that's a reality. And then our thought-life comes into it. And I thought-life is where we can have kind of rubbish thoughts that pull us down and perhaps try and pull other people around us down as well. Or we can have higher thoughts, which uplift ourselves and everybody around us, too. So becoming aware that we are all of those things, the physical, the emotional and the mental being and that perhaps if we get all of those ducks in a row, get all those things in order, we can have a unit of consciousness here on earth that becomes more effective, not just for the running of our own life, but for the benefit of everybody around us as well.  

Madeleine: Do you still fall prey to those rubbish thoughts, though? Even with all of your decades of being so aware?

Greg: Oh, only with laughter.

Madeleine: It's a good antidote.

Greg: You know, if those things are around I generally see them fairly quickly. And I think the best thing you can possibly do in your life is laugh at yourself. So, yeah, I enjoy a good laugh for sure.

Madeleine: Yeah, I think that's a lovely way to approach it. And one ritual that you mention in Is the Moon Upside Down? is waiting for shooting star or meteor to fall before you sleep. Is that still part of your day?

Greg: It is, absolutely, yes. And it's a part of the thing that we do on the Astro Tours with our crew, at the end of the night after everybody's gone home and the crew is finished packing up all of the telescopes, that's a compulsory part of the night is to lie out on astroturf and nobody's allowed to go home until we've seen a shooting star. And it's only ever a 10 minute wait. And I guess that's a bit of a ritual that I began for myself many, many years ago. And like I said, I've only ever waited 10 minutes to see one, and it sort of sends you off to sleep with a bit of a spark. You know, there's is an electrical aspect to shooting stars, to falling stars, which are more correctly called meteors in that they enter into the earth's atmosphere and not only burn up, which is what we see, but they also strip the electrons of the air molecules that they pass through, in other words, like electrify the air. So what we're seeing is an electric streak across the sky. And I think the electrical nature of these meteors is something that just penetrates to our core. I've never seen anybody look at a shooting star and go, oh there goes a shooting star. There's always some sort of excitement in that. So going off to sleep with that is like ahhh, everything's cool. Everything's in its right place and I am too, so I can sleep.

Madeleine: Yeah, maybe that's why you're so sparkly, Greg, is because you've had decades of getting this spark right to your core night after night. You know, when I have the opportunity to see the night sky, I'm in Melbourne, so you can imagine that it's not in it's full glory, but it is awe-inspiring and it does fill you with this... for me, it's comforting, this sense that of how small we are. And often when I contemplate it, it makes me feel a little bit bolder. You know, it's not as worrying to tell someone I have a crush on them as this tiny, tiny sliver of sand. And I'm wondering if it's made you bolder over time or whether you've always had this kind of spark in you, or do you think you've become sparklier?

Greg: I think that's awesome, you know, I think if you've got a crush on somebody that's really cool and courageous to tell them that. And you know what have you got to lose? There's only one way forward and to be able to to share your thoughts and to follow what's in your heart and to do that without hesitation, I think is the key to to living a full life and anything else is just following your your hesitations or you're following what you think somebody else thinks you should do or even when even if somebody else isn't even thinking that, but sometimes we hold ourselves back with those sort of things. I think if you can be bold enough to have something come into your heart and then express it, if that's what your heart wants you to do, then I think that's a great thing to do. So go for it.

Madeleine: It is a great thing to do, but it's so easy to get caught up in your own head, whether it is a crush or whether it's a creative idea there can be that stifling nature. But there's some lovely lessons from the universe that you touch on In Is The Moon Upside Down? and one that really stuck with me is this idea of Pluto, whether we include Pluto in our solar system or not, Pluto doesn't really care what we think. And I think that it's for me, it's not so much worrying what other people think, but I worry about what I think that they think. I think it's lovely and freeing to just be a little bit more like Pluto.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. Pluto is going to always do what Pluto has always done. So he doesn't care what any humans think at all, well I don't think he does, I haven't asked him. 

Madeleine: Now I'm just imagining Pluto out there thinking no Greg, I really do care...

Greg: That's right, I'm really upset that they've kicked me out of a club. But then I can reassure Pluto and tell him that until every single night at Astro Tours, we reinstate him.

Madeleine: Good! So you have thousands of people come along to AstroTours, or tens of thousands. Just before I was sort of talking about how the numbers for me are comforting, but to some people find the numbers or the the expansiveness of the universe daunting when they come along?

Greg: Well, I guess they do, certainly the response that's there and the numbers are probably the least important part of it for me, even though they, you know, they help to illustrate where we are and what sort of role we might play in the universe. The numbers can help with that, but for some people having an understanding of the moon being four hundred thousand kilometers away is enough, without stretching out one hundred and fifty million kilometers to the sun or seven hundred and fifty million kilometers to Jupiter, or twice as far as that Saturn.

And and these are things that are really close to us. These are things that are within the influence of our own sun, almost like the brothers and sisters of this planet of ours that we live on. So yeah seeing people switched on to these ideas and just gradually taking in as much as they can on that night. And some people are going to get more, some people are going to get less. Well, I guess astronomy is this wonderful tool that allows you to think outside of yourself. And for a lot of people, you know, their whole world revolves within 10 feet of themselves. So just to begin to contemplate some of the things that we can see from the surface of the earth out there in space is something that I think sort of very much a personal growth thing that helps people to just stretch themselves and to literally stretch their minds. If you can take in the concept of where the moon is and the relationship that the moon's playing as it goes around the earth, as it interacts with the sun in the sky at the same time. This is a cycle that governs so many things here on earth. I guess that's a lot more than than what a lot of people will take out of a single night at AstroTours. But some people will take in all of that and some people will take a part of that. And everybody pretty much gets what they can handle on the night for sure.

Madeleine: Mm hmm. You use the term life changing a lot to describe your own experience, as well as the people who come along to AstroTours. And I'm wondering what examples you've seen of someone maybe changing their whole life or their whole perspective or I suppose, what you mean by life changing?

Greg: Well, I guess I don't really even know half of the time how that works for other people. But occasionally I'll randomly run into someone in the street and they'll tell me, "Hey I came out and did your tour 10 years ago on this thing that you told me. And I might be just a particular aspect of what I was talking about on the night. And I've been doing this ever since in my life. And it's helped to create flow is a word that I often get from people. I guess one of the things that I really like to get across to people is that we're on a planet. It's turning it's traveling through space. And we can see these these directions of movement in a very real and tangible way if we simply look for them. And that's that's one of the biggest things, is to set people up to watch this actual journey and with an understanding of this journey, with us stepping into this journey with a interacting with this journey, I notice in my own life that it seemed to create flow, it seemed to give me literally direction, which is a you know, it's a literal interpretation of watching the direction that the earth's traveling in. And I've noticed that when I share these things with other people, they seem to come back and tell me the same things that happened in their life. So although I have no real attachment to what I'm presenting, the feedback I get from people is that they'll pick that up and run with it in their own way. You know, everybody's going to do their own thing with this knowledge. It's like it's just my job to take people to the edge and push them off and watch them fly and they're going to fly in their own.

Madeleine: Does anyone come to mind where you've just thought, wow, I can't believe I've had that kind of impact or the universe has had that impact on someone's life? Maybe they've told you that they've quit their job or they've gone in a whole new direction.

Greg: Look, I guess there's many folks. It must have been nearly 20 years ago now, and I've finished a tour one night I was having a surf at Strickland Bay and riding my pushbike back to the bakery because I've probably been surfing for about five hours that day. And I got pulled up by this big burly fella as I'm coming back through the peppermint trees and he says, "Oh, excuse me, can I just have a talk to you for a minute? I can see you in a hurry, but I just want to ask you something." And he said, "I was on your tour last night, and I've been up all night, I haven't been to sleep because of something you told me, and I just want to make sure I'll go right.. He said, I'm forty six, I'm a farmer, I've been outside all my life, and what you told me last night is that all of the stars in the sky are suns. And I nodded my head. And he said, that's what I thought you said. I've been up all night thinking about that. And what he gave me was the gift of understanding that even sharing some of the simplest things, because I know for a lot of science nerds out there, the fact that the stars are suns is something they know because they learned it when they were 10 years old. But what this fella gave me was the gift that not everybody knows that. And that for some people, this forty six year old farmer, that was a revelation that was major in his life and I've never seen him since, but I could see the look in his eyes that he was just, he was off, he was flying, he was ready to go to whatever was going to happen next in his life. And that's just treasure for me to be around for sure.

Madeleine: Yeah, that is that's a dazzling moment. And similarly, I didn't realize until reading your book that we are part of the Milky Way. And I think that's another one of those obvious things. I thought we were looking at the Milky Way, but I didn't realize we were in it. And that the Milky Way is then just one of the galaxies of an incomprehensible amount. But then looking at the Hubble deep field, I think it's called?

Greg: The Hubble deep field, yes you're giving me goosebumps Madeleine. Keep on going Madeleine. 

Madeleine: Just looking at it, it's funny because I look at that and I think that looks like a cartoon. Yet you look at the news and you see that as a cartoon. Which one's the cartoon?

Greg: Well, it's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I guess we can choose whichever one we want to be a cartoon. And each one of us has the ability to to make our own choices in life. And. Yes, but that Hubble deep field, which is a picture that was taken of a very blank piece of sky with a 10 day exposure, with a school bus sized telescope called Hubble, the size of that piece of sky that was photographed was the size of a grain of rice held end on at arm's length so it was the tiniest piece of sky and that very deep field revealed fifteen hundred galaxies.

Madeleine: Yeah.

Greg: Every speck in that photo is a galaxy. It isn't a star. It's an entire galaxy. And we're jumping a long way ahead here, too, because as you've just revealed, the you know, the notion of a galaxy and that we live in a galaxy is one that certainly not everybody grasps, even the terminology. People mix up solar systems and mix up galaxies and so putting those things together in a in a way that takes people gradually through those steps to an understanding of what these structures are in our universe is a part of my job, too.  

Madeleine: I think it's what leads us to those big existential questions of, you know, if we are as tiny as we are, why us, why do we have this thing called consciousness or whatever it is. And that other question, of are we alone? And I loved how you touched on these just awe inspiring coincidences that humankind has encountered alongside its exploration of space. And I wondered if you could touch on that or how you handle those questions when they put to you about why us or are we alone?

Greg: I mean question time out on the tours is wonderful because it steers in all sorts of directions and I think it's something that everybody on earth has wondered about or does wonder about, is are we alone? It's in our nature to explore, it's in our nature to discover new things and to always want new things in our life as we see life on our own planet in abundance and diversity, and that wondering whether that life is everywhere else is from the highest levels of science to what everybody really wants to know the answer to that question. And we simply don't have it, but if we think about it just for a moment, I mean, the scientists do this thing called the drake equation. And I've sat around with Brian Cox and all of the other academics when we're making the Stargazing Live series and we're sitting around the breakfast table after filming and the breakfast is at four o'clock in the morning or something like that so the sky is still full of stars and these guys are putting together this drake equation where you put in different answers to different questions as to how far away from a star is that planet and how much water might it have. And there are all of these different parameters that you plug in with the idea of finding out how many other civilizations there might be in a galaxy like the Milky Way, which contains something like two hundred thousand million stars, which are two hundred thousand million solar systems, and we live on a planet that goes around one of those two hundred thousand million suns.

So sometimes the answer from this drake equation, depending on what what figures are put into it, comes up with one solar system in the entire galaxy. And when I hear these guys come up with these answers, I'd like to suggest hey, fellas come outside for a minute. Ah nah nah we're busy doing this equation. Yeah. Come outside, come and have a look at this, I and take them outside and we just stand there and look up of that Milky Way. And I say, can really try and tell me that there's only one civilization, when every one of these stars we can see is another sun, every one of them has a similar make up to our own sun, and we know that through a tool called a spectrometer where we analyze the starlight, we split the starlight up into its spectrum or its rainbow of colors. We can analyze that spectrum for emission and absorption lines, which tell us what elements are present in each of these stars, which ones are hydrogen, which ones are carbon and nitrogen, and which ones are metal rich. We've got all of that information and we see that all of the building blocks that we have here on earth, all of the things that stuff is made from is also absolutely totally abundant right through all of the universe. So if we've got this incredible diversity of life here, it would surprise me very much to find that there wasn't life absolutely everywhere. 

As I like to share with people, it's just what I think that doesn't make it right. But yeah, that's what I reckon, that there probably is life pretty much everywhere.

Madeleine: Yeah. Well, I also really liked your philosophy of wait and see. Because I think that sort of speaks to that, too. You know, everyone's indoors doing all these calculations, but maybe all we can really do is wait and see if there's another civilization somewhere.

Greg: I'm pretty patient. I can wait. 

Madeleine: Have you always been patient, or do you think that your experiences have cultivated the patience?

Greg: Oh, look, I think there is some cultivation, but I think it's probably something that I began a long time ago, it was to be the observer, to watch things and to be content to watch things unfold in front of me rather than to try and second guess things. To allow that vision to be a wide one, which can at times be clear and other times where you really haven't got a clue what's going to happen next. And to allow that to be OK. To allow it to be OK to know pretty much just what your next step is and then after that, what your next step is and then what your next step is after that, and you're trying to look beyond that next step is often going to involve you tripping over because you've missed the very next step that you you're supposed to take.

Madeleine: I just have to meditate on that one for a second. That's so true. Have you ever felt lost or it just strikes me that you're incredibly evolved and it seems like the ordinary suffering that many of us face you seem immune to.  

Greg: I guess the worry isn't a part of my vocabulary. You know, I have enormous faith in the actions of the universe. I actually have enormous faith in humanity stepping into what it's supposed to do next as well. Even though it looks like we live on a fairly troubled planet and there's a lot of crazy stuff going on, it's almost like, hey, we got to move, we have to have that crazy stuff come to the surface so that we can see it and recognize it and decide that we've had enough of that and that there are other ways of doing things. I see the heart of humanity as being sound and that we will and do actually make the right choices. And that even though sometimes it doesn't look that way, I think we're on track, I think we're doing pretty good.  

Madeleine: Hmm. Are you referring specifically to things like the climate crisis?

Greg: Well, yes. I mean, the climate stuff is certainly something has probably happened many times on this planet before. To think that our current humanity is the pinnacle of achievement, I think smacks of a touch of arrogance that I guess I see that there could be a bigger perspective, a longer view on that, and that if we take ourselves out, we're probably not the first ones that have taken ourselves out before and we're certainly displaying that we've got the ability to do that and whether we're smart enough to to start looking after this planet in a better way, well, I guess time will tell with that one as well.

Madeleine: Mm hmm. I think that struck for me with David Attenborough's latest documentary, where it's not so much anymore about saving the planet because the planet will endure, but it's actually now about saving humankind.

Greg: Yes, some startling revelations that he had on for sure, what did he say, 70 percent of the birds on the planet or something are chooks?That just blows me away. 

Madeleine: Yeah. So you still watch a bit of telly?

Greg: Haha, yes, I do some of the I guess I'll pick and choose, but I don't have news television on in my house or anything like that.

Madeleine: Earlier you mentioned beauty. The universe is obviously beautiful, even in that photo from from Hubble. It's stunning. Do you think that it makes the things around you in your ordinary day-to-day life, like the stack of dishes also seem beautiful, or does it pale in comparison?

Greg: Yeah, I think it's a matter of choosing to see the beauty in them. We can look at a stack of dishes and go, oh, no, we've got to do these dishes or we can look at a stack of dishes and go, oh, beauty this is the next thing to do and enjoy it and have it simply be the next thing to do. It's even the hard bits then become easy if we have a willingness to deal with whatever's in front of us. Then, yeah, it's just simply the next thing to do.

Madeleine: It comes back to that next thing to do, I love that. Your book is dedicated to "All of you with the power to think for yourself, to observe and to let your heart guide you in the right way through life." 

Greg: Yeah, I think that means you, Madeleine.

Madeleine: Does it? Haha, it means all of us, I guess. I suppose the work that you do at the moment you're looking at the stars, but really it's about people. And so I wondered if there's anything, anything you've noticed about people who might be more inclined to let their heart guide them versus those that might be shut off from it, if you've noticed anything, or how we could get more in touch with letting our heart guide us?

Greg: Well, I think everybody is certainly open to the idea of that. And if they get a taste of the possibility of that, which if I can live a life that that can set an example in that direction, then that's as much of what I need to do is anything. But, you know, certainly I can remember doing a presentation to a group in Sydney. It was about two years ago... it's really cool I get to go to these places and I get to talk about stars and pretty much anything I like. And I guess I've had a fairly well, I've had a very much a fun way of learning about the sky. And I've done it through everything else I've done in my life. I've done it through being a pearl diver in Broome. I've done it through working out in in the wild Kimberley Country of Western Australia and living under the stars and at the same time not just learning about stars, but also playing around with bulldozers and road trains and getting my hands dirty and figuring out how things work. So there's plenty of stories there that I tend to share at these speaking engagements. And I can remember at the end of this night, I guess I must have mentioned something about the beauty of things and if you follow your heart, everything's going to work out all right. And at the end of the night these guys cornered me. You know I'd finished speaking and they come up and said mate,  you got to tell us more about what you've just been saying about following your heart, because, you know, we've all been taught to follow the profits. I was talking to a bunch of financiers or something like that, and I didn't even know that at the time. But, you know, "We've been told to follow the profits. And you're telling us to follow your heart. What do you mean?" And hese guys were hungry for that? Absolutely hungry.

And that's got me wondering whether I don't get invited back to speak for that mob because they've all quick and gone and followed their heart instead. So, you know, having that sort of response from people sort of helps me to realize the power of speaking about things that to me are just a normal and natural thing. That somehow when I speak about it in forums like that, the response, again, is a gift to me to let me know how powerful it is to speak about those things, which at the time to me just seemed like why this is just what you do.But for those guys, it was something was something brand new. Well I'm not even going to suggest it's brand new, I'm going to suggest something that's deep inside them that is wanting to be let loose, that has at other times been let loose, and that isn't going to take too much to be let loose again. That looking at the beauty of everything, that following what's in your heart. 

And I guess our education system is geared towards the intellect, is geared towards nurturing the mind, which is often at the detriment of the heart. The mind also is a useful thing. It's a very useful tool. But if we let it run the show, then it's kind of not very smart, the mind, it's you know, it can figure out how to blow something up but it it's often not smart enough to know not to blow something up and we see that everywhere in our corporate world. Whereas if we were to nurture the heart as much as we nurture the mind, if we were to bring that balance of the heart and the mind together, we'd still know how to make something that blew something up, but we go, oh, well we know how to do that, but let's not do it. And we'd figuring out better ways on this planet. So I guess I'll see there's a bit of an imbalance there at the moment. But I also see that is a very, very much an openness in everybody I come across to nurture  that other part of themselves that other part that that is very much what humanity is. I mean, I think humanity is a beautiful thing and that to encourage that beauty and to encourage that heart and mind balance, is something that's where we're going to see. And we do see it, we see it in a big way already on this planet. And I think it's almost like a tidal wave that's just going to keep on flowing.

Madeleine: Hmm, to just trust that flow is a wonderful, comforting and enables you to sort of trust, I guess, but I'm just thinking that there are systemic inequities and inequalities. And so in that sense the flow is, you know, in some ways cut off to some people?

Greg: I guess what I would say there is that perhaps if I found that situation in my own life, I would expect that I was probably facing the wrong way. If the flow stopped, I would think, oh, I'm actually moving in the wrong direction, and I'd turn around and have a look the other way because there will be a direction that works. Sometimes that's it's not going to be easy. Sometimes it is going to have its challenges. But if you if you're following what's in your heart, then you're going to meet those challenges with joy. And if you meet those challenges with joy, then you can pretty much watch them shift and move and dissolve, but it doesn't mean to say that you might not have a whole lifetime way where it's pretty hard, but perhaps there's a reason for it being pretty hard. But if you can bring an attitude of joy and life and love to that, then I think you're going to move forward for sure.

Madeleine: Mmm just got to wield the telescope in a new direction or different directions. It kind of reminds me of another lesson from your book was the difference between looking out and looking up there.

Greg: Yeah that's kind of fun because here on earth the up and down are the kind of the things that we that we've become accustomed to as well. And certainly as the earth turns once a day, halfway through that day, you're going to be upside down from where you were half a day ago. So all this up and down business is relevant to where we are here on Earth. But when we look at it in the greater perspective, it becomes something that has a different application altogether. 

And so I just letting our mind know that what we've become accustomed to isn't necessarily right and that there are other ways of looking at things, gives our minds that flexibility and allows us to consider other possibilities. And that's one of my favourite things in the world, is to consider possibilities. 

Madeleine: Yeah, and I loved that reminder that the earth is actually tilted and we're kind of you know, the fact that we're a little bit wobbly is what's more interesting and kind of gives us those new possibilities and new perspectives each day that we arrive at a new angle, I guess a new wobbly angle slightly. But I wonder if you could speak to this this idea of routine, even, you know, it implies this perfection of a following, the same line every day or the same order of things. But actually, chaos is what's more interesting. What would be your thoughts on that, on that idea of perfection, order, but also chaos?

Greg: Well, I guess what comes to mind straightaway is what's going on in our solar system at the moment. There are major milestones that are happening which. You know, if you're living your daily life, you might not even consider that they're anything at all. But, you know, there's two two of the giant planets in our solar system that a few days ago lined up with the sun. These two major planets are Jupiter and Saturn, and to have an alignment between the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn is something that happens every 20 years. So, you know, with all of the newsworthy things that are going on at the moment that we touched on earlier that I kind of brushed aside, well I actually probably see these planets as precipitating a lot of this action because, you know, a physical and energetic alignment between these major planets. Jupiter, which takes 12 years to go around the sun, Saturn, which takes 30 years to go around the sun, meaning that Jupiter goes around the sun and catches up with and passes Saturn once every 20 years. So we've got a 12 year cycle. They're mixed up with a 30 year cycle and put the two together we create a 20 year cycle. And these are cycles that are going on in our lives, whether we have an awareness of them or not. And when we do choose to become aware of them, we can perhaps look at what happened in 2020 when Jupiter and Saturn lined up, there's some pretty crazy stuff going on. So that lineup happened on the 2nd of November between the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. But it's going to happen on the 21st of December this year between the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, which means that from Earth, we're going to see these two giant planets, which are very easily visible in the sky right now, we're going to see them come together in the sky to the point where they're going to be so close together that you're going to look in the sky and even if you think you don't know anything about the sky, there's something within the human psyche that does know the sky and that if something is different in the sky, you'll know. You'll look at those two stars in the sky, what's going on there, there's something going on there. So to see that, which is going to happen on the twenty first of December, which is actually already happening, we can look up high in our early evening western sky and Jupiter's the brightest and easiest to see, and not very far from Jupiter is Saturn. So, you know, if if you were to go out tonight and have a look for these and you would to wonder if you had the right ones, you will have, that's how obvious they are. 

And watching them move together over the next few months up until the twenty first of December is to participate in this alignment is to recognise that our planet's moving through space and it's lining up with these two other planets and whatever's going on on here on Earth is probably a part of that. So if we watch them come together on the twenty first of December, you can spend the next ten years watching them move apart in the sky and in the next 10 years after that, watching them come back together again in another 20 years. And like I say, these cycles that are happening in your life, whether you have an awareness of them or not. 

So you know, if there are things to be upset, if they are things to be made a mess of, then that's what's going to happen too. And if we accept that upsetting, if we accept that mess and just become the observer of it, I mean, things are things are born and things live and then things die. And I guess we see that not just with ourselves and with everything else around us, but even with governments and countries and the planet itself, so that seeming chaos is probably just a part of the order, I think.

Madeleine: I loved in the book how you spoke about, you know, even today, you know, we think of it as the 10th of November and that's a date. But actually, it's not just a time, it's a place because we're in a certain place in the universe. And I usually ask people how the measure a day. And I wondered if if I ask you, how do you measure a day whether that ties in?

Greg: That's an interesting question, I guess I thought about that as I walk down the stairs this morning, I thought, Wow. Here we are. Again, with the earth having turned to this place in its relationship to the sun, which means it's time for me to head over to the sand dunes and do what I love to do over there with the sand dunes and then have a swim in the Indian Ocean at Cable Beach. And just I guess I had that quite powerfully this morning, another recognition of that that's what was going on. That the earth had turned once more on its journey around, the sun had shifted. And every day that the earth turns, we shift a certain amount of distance around the sun, which brings a different set of stars into our sky. So seeing that progression through the year is something that I work with. I mean, people often say to me, well, how do you feel about talking about the same things every night when I'm presenting stars. But the truth is that everything in the sky changes by half an hour a week. So every week I get something different to talk about in the sky, because there's new stars that have appeared. And they're the same stars that were there last year, but I haven't seen them for six months, so it's almost like I get these old friends that turn up again. And sometimes I know them really well, and other times I pull out my trusty star chart and I'll look them up again and and relearn them once again, just like, you know, some friends when you're walking down the street, you know them really well and somebody else you haven't seen for a while and you can't remember their name. So pretty much the same with me when I'm when I'm looking at the stars as they turn up during the course of the year.

So I guess I marked the year with the passage of the earth going around the sun, which makes these different stars appear in the sky at different times of the year.

Madeleine: I really love that because it goes back to that idea of, you know, each day we can appreciate the beautiful variance of that day and where we are in time and place, but also it's part of a bigger cycle so gives that sense of belonging, I guess…

Greg: And even even the journey of the earth going around the sun, you know, in six months time we are going to be on the other side of the sun. Now with the sun one hundred and fifty million kilometers away, that means that six months time is not just a different time it's also a different place, which you touched on earlier on. And that's a place that's three hundred million kilometers away from where we are now.   So there's an actual, completely different place that we're in, which I think has being in a different place where we're probably entitled to feel a different way in those different places. 

Madeleine: Greg reminds us to see the light, the dazzle, to see the awe in everything, but most importantly to learn from the universe – it has important lessons for us on patience, on movement, of finding your direction, of flow, of not worrying about what other people think, and of being connected.

When I was reading Is The Moon Upside Down and when chatting with Greg, I was reminded of a 2009 commencement speech by environmentalist, entrepreneur and journalist Paul Hawken. He mentions how Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. How no one would sleep that night, how the world would be ecstatic, delirious. But instead, as Paul Hawken points out, “the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

We are those stars in the universe, facing challenges that haven’t been faced by a civilization in thousands years, in ten thousands years, and we must stay away. As Paul Hawken said, “The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.”