Walking The Camino, Opening The Heart

Zemirah welcomes Randy Ferguson to share the transformative experiences and profound insights he gained while walking the Camino de Santiago. From moments of challenge to deep revelation, Randy reflects on how the pilgrimage shaped his life and inspired his book The Opening. This conversation is a heartfelt exploration of spiritual growth, inner clarity, and the power of the path beneath our feet.

Transcript

So I want to welcome you to this podcast.

Today,

I have a very special guest with me.

Randy Ferguson has joined me and I want to introduce Randy.

He is,

Not only is he a corporate trainer and a one-on-one life coach,

But he has been,

His mission and his work in the world has been to provide transformational seminars for other people.

And he has done that partially through his founding of Love,

Courage and Achievement,

The Love,

Courage and Achievement Project,

Which is simply known as LCA.

And what he does through that is that he gathers folks together who feel a call,

Feel a call to transform their life in some way and to develop a deeper connection and an authentic relationship with their higher power.

And he guides them in that.

He has also written a wonderful book called The Opening.

But what he is here today,

Particularly what I have invited him to share with us is that he has had a wondrous pilgrimage.

And a few,

And a year ago or so,

A little while ago,

He was called to walk the Camino in Spain.

And if you're familiar,

If you're listening and you have tuned in like I have,

I lived in Spain once upon a time and I have always been called to read about,

To listen about,

To people who have been drawn to this pilgrimage.

This pilgrimage,

The Camino being a pilgrimage that has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The Knights Templar originally were known to have established this more prominently.

It was a place where they established the first banking system,

Actually,

For pilgrims who were called to walk across the border between Spain and France.

And you can begin the pilgrimage in many places.

It can begin in the French Pilgrim Pyrenees on the Spain side of the Pyrenees up there,

Or you could also start in Portugal.

People have many different ways of walking the Camino.

But when I heard Randy's inspirational story about what he encountered and the revelations and the inspirations that awakened for him on the Camino,

I really wanted him to share it with all of us and in this form of a podcast.

So Randy,

Welcome.

And I just,

I'm just so curious to how did you end up walking across the upper border of,

Between Spain and France?

How,

How did that even come about?

What called you there?

Oh,

I got a phone call one day from my sister who I love and respect.

And she said,

You know,

I have a friend who's walked the Camino de Santiago three or four times.

And she said,

I think you should do this.

And well,

I go,

Okay,

Well,

What is it?

And she says,

Oh,

It's just a hike,

A pilgrimage,

Starts in Southern France,

Goes over the Pyrenees mountains,

And then all the way west across Spain and ends up in the city of Santiago.

I said,

Well,

How far is that?

She goes,

Oh,

It's just 500 miles.

And normally I would just laugh that off,

But because it came from my sister,

She said,

She said,

I think you should speak to my friend.

And so set up a phone call with her and about halfway through our conversation,

She looked at me,

It was a Zoom call,

She looked at me and she said,

Randy,

If you do this,

You will not come back the same person.

And she said it in a way that just like,

Wham,

Hit me.

At the end of our call,

This journey,

Never had a chance to go on my bucket list.

I just,

I called the airlines and flew to Paris from Denver.

And from Paris,

Ended up with a short trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and then took the train to Southern France.

The French Camino begins in St.

Jean-Pied-de-Port,

Which is about as far south in France as you can get.

And I walked through this archway of a church and that's the launch,

That's the start line.

And that's where it began.

That's where it began.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so it sounds like you deeply felt a call.

You know,

When she said you won't come back the same person,

I wonder,

You know,

All of us go on pilgrimage for different reasons,

Right?

Some of us it's to strengthen a connection with ourself.

Some of us is to strengthen a connection with the divine.

Some of us,

It's to put ourselves in sacred places that we feel vibrationally might shift us.

Was there a specific transformational outcome that that resonated or hit within you when you thought,

I won't come back the same?

Was there something that you were hoping to transform or were you just,

Let's go,

Let's see what happens here?

It was more of the let's go,

Let's see what happens.

I did have two objectives and one is that I really wanted some alone time.

I've got a pretty public life and I just wanted to walk on the sacred trail.

And then the other was I wanted to have an experience of God's love.

I feel like there is a big gap between not believing in a higher power and believing in a higher power.

That's a pretty big change in somebody's life,

But it's just as big a change to move from believing in a higher power to experiencing loving relationship with higher power.

And I didn't have those words at the time.

My words were,

I just want to feel closer to God.

But oh my gosh,

I got just hit with a spiritual two by four.

It was amazing,

Amazing gift that I would never have been able to anticipate.

Wow.

Yeah.

So you came to this church at the beginning of the route and it sounds like there was a threshold experience of some such that you walked through a gateway and then you launched yourself onto this trail that's been walked by thousands of people every year for centuries,

Since maybe the 1300s,

1400s,

Sometime early on.

Yeah.

It's actually been over a thousand years.

Over a thousand years.

Yeah.

And so you stepped through that gateway and you said,

What was the experience of entering onto the trail?

Was there a threshold?

Yeah,

There was as I'm walking along.

I remember looking up and seeing the sign and it said Santiago,

790 kilometers.

And I thought,

Oh no,

That seems longer than 500 miles.

But you know,

I just had too many friends that I told that I was going to do this.

And if I ended up taking a shortcut or not completing it,

I wouldn't be able to face them.

So I just kept putting the next foot in front of the other.

And it was so beautiful that it is part of the Spanish culture,

Part of their religion to love and support the pilgrims.

So all along the way,

They have these beautiful markers and their logo,

If you will,

For the Camino is a scallop shell.

And so these markers would have the scallop shell and then a little note on each marker that would say how many kilometers until Santiago.

And by golly,

The more I walked,

The lower that number got.

And how did you have an average per day?

How many kilometers,

I guess?

Yeah,

I'd walk 10 to 15 miles a day.

Okay.

I think the longest I walked was like 18 miles.

And,

You know,

It sounds monumental,

But oh my gosh,

The great lessons I got out of this.

When you wake up in the morning,

You have breakfast and the only thing on your agenda is to walk,

To walk and pray,

To walk and meditate,

A walking meditation.

And notice who comes in front of you.

And I had this experience.

I'll see if I can put it into words.

It was an experience,

Not so much that I was walking down the trail.

As it was that the trail was being brought to me.

So my body's moving,

But the trail's being brought to me and that tree's being brought to me and that rock and that field of bright red poppies is being brought to me.

And this person over here is being brought to me.

And not only are these things being brought to me,

But they are being brought to me with infinite love.

And so there were waves of experiencing,

Not just believing,

But experiencing God's love for me.

So I'd be walking with tears rolling down my cheeks.

It was just life changing.

If it had happened for five minutes,

It would have changed my life.

But it happened for hour after hour,

Day after day,

Week after week,

For a couple of months.

It just permeated every part of me.

It took me to a place where any doubt about God's love just evaporated.

So it sounds like you stepped into this vortex of such that not only was the repetitive walking movement moving you along this trail,

You know,

In a meditative way because it's a repetitive movement.

We chant words in repetition in order to move ourselves into kind of a centered place.

But it also sounds like walking in the path with thousands upon thousands of pilgrims throughout time with the energy of that,

As well as being surrounded by the nature and being out there with nothing to do but to surrender to the walk,

That it was a multifaceted way to move you into this experience of the divine,

As if the divine were supporting you.

Did you encounter any sort of challenges along the way or things in which you felt like,

Oh,

I'm going to have to,

You know,

Go deeper into prayer or deeper into my meditation as I'm going along?

Yes.

There was a few days where I got sick and so I just stayed in a little hotel.

And there was one point where I fell madly in love with a beautiful woman from Sweden.

And that was,

How should I put it?

It didn't fulfill my fantasy.

Unrequited?

What?

Unrequited?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Very.

And,

You know,

Off they went.

And that's one of the cool things of the Camino.

You fall madly in love with these people and then you don't ever see them again.

Or you see them periodically along the way.

And then it's like a long lost friendship being rejuvenated.

And so anyway,

So I had a little heartbreak.

But,

You know,

There's a difference between having a broken heart and having a heart broken open.

And on the trail,

It was like,

Okay,

God,

I let her go.

I let her go,

Even shed a few tears.

I let her go.

And then there was just this wonderful release of walking with an open heart.

So in hindsight,

All of that was a gift.

It just opened my heart that much more.

Yeah,

Sounds like it brought you to a place of surrender.

And what would you say about the spiritual principle of trust and how that might have been accompanying you on this journey?

How did that change?

What would you say to what happened for you in the sense of trusting the divine as you walked?

Well,

That's a great question.

As I experienced being loved by God and loving God,

And there was that cycle that was taking place,

It lifted me to a higher place of consciousness.

A place that is beyond the mind and very,

Very much in the heart.

And it's like a different realm.

It's like a different realm.

So it's like living my whole life in black and white,

And then all of a sudden experiencing color.

It's that big of a transformation.

And as I'm walking in that place of the heart,

Life shows up very differently.

I see things that otherwise would just skip right past me.

There were six things that I focused on as I was walking that ended up being the mainstay of the book that I wrote on our spiritual destiny.

And the first was to love God with all my heart,

Soul,

Mind,

And strength.

And I'm a Christian,

So for any Christian listeners,

That's going to sound very familiar.

It's like,

It's not very original,

Randy,

But that's okay.

It works.

So to love God with all your heart,

Soul,

Mind,

And strength.

And then the second was to love yourself and others in the same way,

With all your heart,

Soul,

Mind,

And strength.

What do those two have in common?

We're commanded to love.

Because when we love,

We enter into the dimension of the heart.

And that's where miracles happen.

So I was thinking about those as I'm walking along,

And then to surrender and trust.

So surrendering,

We know this.

It's not about quitting.

It's not about backing down or submitting.

It is a conscious choice to let go of our death grip on life.

To let go,

Let go,

Let go,

And be carried along.

So again,

It wasn't so much like I was walking along as the trail was being brought to me.

So I surrendered,

And then to address your question,

Trust.

In our culture,

We undervalue trust.

And trust is enormous because there is an inverse relationship between trust and fear.

The greater our trust,

The less our fear.

The greater our fear,

The less our trust.

And of course,

In our culture,

What we're taught is you know that you can trust a situation or a person if it behaves the way that you want it to.

And the problem with that is that it's giving away all of our power to trust,

Which is so essential,

To something outside of us.

So what I discovered was two keys to generating the experience of trusting.

And one was to surrender to what is.

If God is all-powerful,

How could God's will not be done?

So God's will is always done.

And that takes us,

You know,

A lot of questions are brought up with that.

But God's will is always done.

So surrendering to that,

Knowing that even the things that might bring a lesson are always,

Always,

Always God's will brought to us with great,

Great love,

Always.

And the other key to trusting is to realize that we can trust.

We've always,

Always been cared for.

Now,

Since the moment of our creation,

We've always,

Always been cared for.

And we are right now.

And we always,

Always will be.

We haven't certainly always gotten what we've wanted.

But we've always,

Always,

Bye.

We have always,

Always,

Always been given what we need to evolve as a being.

And sometimes those lessons are bitter,

But we've always been supported.

When you think about it,

You've made it through every single tough time.

Or you wouldn't be listening,

Right?

Yeah.

We all have.

So in that way,

Who you are,

Who you are is not the physical body.

Who you are can't be hurt.

Beautiful.

I love that so much,

Randy,

Because I can almost feel the deeper meaning that was unveiled for you with each step as you went through the weather,

Through the sickness,

Through the comings and goings of other people along the way,

Through the difference in terrain,

Because you start way up in the mountains,

Right?

And then you end up in the plains and then all the way over at the sea,

You know?

And just how,

What a symbolic nature of the grander experience of life that can be experienced on the Camino or on pilgrimage alone,

Where you're going out with the intent for a deeper relationship with the divine.

Yes.

And that it became such,

It sounds like it became such a felt experience,

Such an embodied experience for you as you were moving in along the route.

Yes,

Yeah.

You know,

As you were going along and you moved in solitude,

In and out of solitude and silence and in community and out of community,

What would you say that did you,

Was your sense of,

I want to experience the solitude and the silence of the walk.

You said that when you felt the transformational call.

How was that experience?

And was there a deep,

Is your relationship with solitude and silence changed now after having done that 700 kilometer walk?

Yes,

It has.

Yeah,

It has.

I have never in my life felt this close to God.

To me,

The nature of God that we can see when we're in the realm of the heart,

The nature of God is,

You know,

The all-knowing,

The all-powerful,

All-present,

We're familiar with that,

But also all-loving and all-available.

And if that's so,

I share with my students,

I ask them the question,

Consider the possibility,

Consider the possibility that a key quality to our higher power is the quality of beingness.

That,

You know,

It's hard to be in relationship with a dynamic,

It's hard to be in relationship with a law,

But we can be in relationship with a being.

And there's a beingness to God.

So what would happen in those beautiful moments of solitude is a condition,

It would be like,

It would be like walking into a sacred cathedral.

Mm-hmm.

But the cathedral are the trees arched above me,

And walking into a little village and seeing buildings that were built 900 years ago,

It was like wherever I went,

I was bringing that cathedral with me.

Right.

It's like when they talk about oneness,

That sense of separation sort of fell away for you,

It sounds like in those moments.

And then there's just that,

I know Meister Eckhart refers to it as the isness of God,

Just that isness,

The very being of God and how that resonates within you.

Yes.

So has the resonance that was created or the experience that you moved into,

Has it sustained since you came back and re-entered this material world of regular life?

Or what has it continued?

Is there still a note?

Well,

There's a saying that the Camino begins in Santiago.

So Santiago being sort of the finish line,

That's where it begins because then you go back and how do you take the Camino with you?

How do you maintain this experience in the city?

Right.

And what I want to share is that it is absolutely possible.

It is absolutely possible.

It is,

For me,

It's my destiny.

And I would suggest that's true for a lot of other people too when they're ready to explore this.

So you get to Santiago,

That brings up a really interesting thing.

You get to see Santiago and there's this quote in your book I want to share with everybody right now because I'm thinking about what it must have been like to have walked 700 kilometers and then to walk finally to the cathedral in Santiago,

To see it on the horizon and to enter the plaza and to be there with all these other folks that have just had monumental feats of physical and emotional and spiritual stamina that has been needed in order to get to that moment.

You have this quote in your book that says celebration isn't just about feeling good,

Woohooing when you're the first one over the finish line.

Celebration is downright intelligent.

In fact,

It's critical for maintaining the machinery of higher consciousness.

I love that.

First,

I'd love you to talk about that sense,

That feeling,

That celebration or that moment that you arrived in Santiago.

And then I'd like you to talk about this quote.

How can the rest of us,

You just said the Camino is absolutely possible to experience in our own lives,

To take this essence and to create it.

How can we do that?

How can we achieve this sense of using the essence of celebration as a machinery of higher consciousness?

That's a two-part question.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well,

There's no particular structure to the Camino.

People come and go as they wish.

I remember walking into the city of Santiago and there were so many villages and cities and my gosh,

If there were five buildings in a little village,

One of them was a church.

That's just how much the church has permeated into the culture.

And so walking into Santiago and seeing the cathedral and walking towards it,

I could feel this energy building.

If you've ever run a marathon or a half marathon,

It's as you approach that finish line,

It's moving and it's almost like you can hear angels cheering.

And as I got to the church,

There was yet again,

Another archway to walk through.

And I'm hearing the sound of bagpipes as people are walking through and then entering the plaza,

The courtyard.

And as they walk through,

They're weeping.

They're jumping up and down.

They're hugging each other.

Some,

Of course,

Do travel in groups and they're just hugging and there's this experience of celebration,

Like each person just won their own individual Super Bowl.

And it's beautiful.

People are leaning down,

Kissing the ground.

They're laughing.

There's music playing.

And I turned around to the right.

There's one guy on one knee proposing.

It's just this beautiful,

Beautiful space of celebration.

Nobody says on the count of three,

OK,

It's time to celebrate.

It's just a flow.

And it goes on for hour after hour after hour,

Day after day after day.

I changed my plans and stayed in Santiago just to be in that environment.

It was just absolutely stunning,

Beautiful,

Beautiful gift of completion.

So then how,

You know,

In this gorgeous quote that you've put there,

How can we take a bit of that home?

How do how do I,

You know,

Manufacture,

If you will,

How do I generate that sense of elation in a daily life situation?

If I was going to think of Camino and that moment where I loved what you said,

The celebration of completion.

You know,

Often it's hard to get to that sense.

Even we complete things every day in our life,

But we don't necessarily have that depth of,

Wow,

I'm going to harness this.

Really,

This energy can be used for good.

How can I use this?

First,

How can I generate it and how can it be used in our life?

Well,

You make a really good point.

If you think of the concept of having an inner child and what you do day after day after day is you complete,

Complete,

Complete,

Complete,

And there's no celebration.

That little kid inside goes,

I am not having a good time.

And we got to get some fun in here or I ain't playing.

I'll get sick or create an emergency or something.

But this is not this.

This does not work.

When we develop the habit of celebration and,

You know,

It could be doing the laundry.

It doesn't matter.

It's anything.

Maybe you should show me that piece.

I never celebrate my laundry.

But anything,

You know,

Get to an appointment on time.

Yes.

And just going,

Woohoo,

Just celebrating just that playfulness.

And that inner child knows that you're going to have fun today as you accomplish.

That little kid inside goes,

I'm in.

Count on me.

Let's do this thing.

You and me,

Let's have some fun today.

Let's get stuff done.

So there's a celebration brings an inner alignment that is quite beautiful.

That's why I say it's downright intelligent to celebrate.

Celebration is where the joy comes in in our life.

We work so hard.

We have such disciplines and we're doing so much that is effective and good.

It's important to bring that joy in.

Our nature is joyful.

In the book,

I say that peace is love at rest and joy is love at play.

Ah,

Lovely.

We get to bring all of that in.

And what happens as a result of this is our quality of life soars.

There is an experience of deep fulfillment that goes way beyond increasing standard of living.

I love that.

And I love the idea that you bring in both love at rest and love at play.

So it's both and,

You know,

That every day,

If it sounds like that,

Bringing the essence of the Camino into our life every day can be that sense of remembering.

To put love at rest and be in that stillness and solitude that you experienced on the Camino.

And at the same time,

Reach for joy.

Reach for how can I reach for things that generate that sense of celebration,

Honor,

You know,

Honoring.

Even if it is doing my laundry,

I might have to reach a little bit farther.

Randy,

I must say that it might be one that I need to think about a little bit to reach,

But to really set that intention to reach.

Because that playfulness is the generation of that love and that sense of connection that you so beautifully have explained in your experience on the Camino.

Yes.

So as we get to the close of our podcast and our time together,

If you had one spiritual practice that you would maybe suggest for people to really begin to generate this experience that you've shared throughout your pilgrimage on the Camino,

What might be something that we could all apply in our daily life from your experience?

Oh,

Thank you.

That's one of my favorite questions.

There are six things,

And these are the things that I contemplated over and over and over again on the walk.

And I've already shared a few,

But just in summary,

One,

To love God with all your heart,

Soul,

Mind,

And strength.

Really,

Really crank it up.

To love yourself and others in the same way with all your heart,

Soul,

Mind,

And strength.

The third is to surrender and trust.

Let go,

Let go,

Let go,

And know that you're cared for.

That truly,

There is nothing to worry about ever.

The fourth is to listen and follow your guidance.

Deeply listen.

When you're in that higher state,

You can hear.

And in your hearing,

You can commune.

And in your communication,

You can ask for and receive guidance.

And then follow the guidance.

Do what God says.

Take right action.

And celebrate,

Of course.

And celebrate,

Of course.

So number five is to appreciate and to celebrate.

Beautiful,

Beautiful.

And then number six is out of that incredible inner abundance that's created in that state.

It is your privilege to give back,

To serve,

To create a life of service.

Beautiful,

To circulate.

I love that.

Well,

Randy,

Thank you so much for circulating your joy and your sense of the divine in your experience and sharing so graciously with us today.

It really has been beautiful to accompany you for a little bit of that Camino experience.

Thank you so much,

Randy.

And we're just going to keep on circulating this beautiful sense of joy that you have so graciously shared with us.

My pleasure.

Thank you.