Episode 65

Awakening Our Soulful Intelligence: What the Octopus — and Sy Montgomery — Know

Guest: Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus

What if resilience doesn’t come from thinking harder or pushing faster, but from listening more deeply to the intelligence that already lives within us?

In this episode of Resilience Gone Wild, host Jessica Morgenthal explores the quiet, embodied wisdom of the giant Pacific octopus—and how soulful intelligence can help us navigate our own lives with more clarity, connection, and compassion. Joined by Sy Montgomery, bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus, we step into a world where intelligence is fluid, intuitive, relational, and alive in every moment.

Episode Overview

In “Soulful Intelligence,” Jessica takes us into the cool stillness of a Northern Pacific kelp forest to meet the giant Pacific octopus—an animal whose distributed, sensory-rich intelligence reveals a different way of knowing the world. Through vivid storytelling, we witness how octopuses perceive, choose, communicate, and relate with a depth that challenges human assumptions about consciousness.

This exploration becomes the foundation for a rich conversation with Sy Montgomery, who expands our understanding of soul, presence, and cross-species connection. Through Sy’s stories—of octopuses, dolphins, turtles, caterpillars, dogs, and the living Earth itself—we learn how soulful intelligence deepens resilience, awakens awe, and invites us into a more relational way of being.

The result is an episode that reconnects us to our own inner wisdom, to the creatures who share our planet, and to the subtle intelligence that thrives everywhere life is paying attention.

What You’ll Learn

• How the giant Pacific octopus models soulful intelligence through presence, perception, and attunement





• Why soulful intelligence integrates mind, body, intuition, values, and relationships





• How slowing down expands our ability to sense meaning and choose wisely





• What Sy Montgomery has learned about consciousness and soul from octopuses, turtles, pink dolphins, chimps, and caterpillars





• Why love and curiosity are powerful tools of inquiry in science and in life





• How awe, reverence, and “beginner’s mind” build resilience and restore connection





• How small acts of mending—of relationships, ecosystems, and daily choices—strengthen both the world and our own internal steadiness

Episode Highlights

[00:00 ] Intro

 [02:00 ] Distributed intelligence: sensing, learning, and decision-making across the body

 [04:00 ] Camouflage as expression: color, texture, emotion, and attunement

 [06:50 ] A quiet greeting: two octopuses meet with curiosity

 [08:50 ] Defining soulful intelligence

 [11:15 ] Why soulful intelligence strengthens resilience

Conversation with Sy Montgomery

 [12:21 ] Welcoming Sy: the writer who opened the world to octopus consciousness

 [14:00 ] Sy’s octopus teachers: Athena, Octavia, Kali, and Karma

 [16:10 ] Soul as connection to the rest of creation

 [18:25 ] Why naming animals changed the science of behavior

 [22:39 ] Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas, and the revolution of relational science

 [27:07 ] Scar tissue, resilience, and the sacredness of mending

 [33:01 ] The living Earth, Gaia, and the soul of the planet

 [35:06 ] Awe, reverence, and the responsibility of connection

 [37:36 ] Mending as antidote to helplessness

 [49:20 ] How humans silence their own intuition—and how to restore it

 [53:49 ] Being massaged by pink dolphins: a story of cross-species soul

 [56:42 ] The feedback loop of doing good

 [59:16 ] Caterpillars, memory, and the persistence of soul

 [01:02:10 ] Closing reflections: the intelligence that waits beneath our first thoughts

Meet the Guest

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, bestselling author, and one of the world’s most beloved interpreters of animal consciousness. Her book The Soul of an Octopus was on the New York Times Bestseller List, was a National Book Award finalist, and reshaped public understanding of invertebrate sentience. Sy has written 39 books about animals—from hawks to pink dolphins to turtles—illuminating the relationships that remind us we are part of a living, soulful, interconnected world. Her work invites readers to listen more deeply, love more broadly, and honor the wisdom that exists beyond human boundaries.

Tools, Frameworks, or Strategies Mentioned

• Soulful Intelligence: alignment of values, intuition, sensation, and meaning





• Distributed Intelligence in Octopuses





• Beginner’s Mind in cross-species connection





• Awe as a tool for resilience





• Mending as a daily practice of healing





• The Sphere of Influence: acting where energy can truly make a difference





• Gaian consciousness and interconnected living systems

Closing Insight & CTA

“Soulful intelligence grows in the space between stimulus and response—the pause long enough for our deeper knowing to rise.”

If this episode opened something in you, share it with someone who may be searching for more meaning, more connection, or a more soulful way of navigating their life. Follow, rate, and review Resilience Gone Wild to help these stories ripple outward.

Resource Links

Sy Montgomery – https://symontgomery.com/

 The Soul of an Octopus – Available wherever books are sold

 Resilience Gone Wild – https://resiliencegonewild.com/

 Listen to more episodes – https://pod.link/J4yd77

 Produced by: Balancing Life’s Issues (BLI Studios) – https://balancinglifesissues.com/podcast-bli/

the whisper of light through kelp, the subtle information carried by the water itself. Her world is built from details we often rush past, and her wisdom rises from a kind of quiet listening that begins long before action. And that’s where today’s story begins. In a place where intelligence doesn’t rush, it simply breathes. Where awareness flows through every part of the body. Where a creature teaches us something humans often forget.

that there is a deeper way to know the world and a deeper way to know ourselves. I’m Jessica Morgenthau, and this is Resilience Gone Wild, where we explore how nature’s quiet brilliance can help us care more deeply for ourselves, for each other, and for the wild world we all share. Today, we’re stepping gently into the world of the giant Pacific octopus to explore soulful intelligence.

Transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:03 .758)
Inside the cool stillness of a rocky den in the Northern Pacific, something extraordinary is happening. Quietly, slowly, almost invisibly. A being waits here, not in fear, not in hiding. She is intentional, attuned, present. If you pause long enough, you can almost sense what she senses. The faint shift of a current.

a form of inner wisdom that can strengthen our resilience in ways that reconnect us to what matters most.

Speaker 1 (01:35 .662)
The afternoon light softens as it filters down through the kelp forest, turning the water into a slow-moving tapestry of greens and golds. This is her place, a quiet stretch of the Northern Pacific where cold, oxygen-rich water, drifting kelp shadows, and deep rock crevices create the perfect refuge for a giant Pacific octopus.

Speaker 1 (02:02 .306)
Beneath the basalt ledge, she rests, eight arms loosely folded, mantle rising and falling as water moves across her gills. Her siphon makes a faint pulse with each exhale. Two dark, forward-facing eyes, shaped much like our own, watch the flicker of shifting light. From a distance, she seems still. Up close, she is quietly awake. Her world is built from subtle information.

Tiny shifts in current, faint chemical traces, the pressure wave of something moving nearby. Nearly 2,000 suckers line her arms, each able to taste and feel at the same time. Her arms, each containing clusters of neurons, make small decisions right where sensation happens, while her central brain integrates everything into something more. Judgment, learning, interpretation.

Scientists understand much of how she senses her world, and they’re increasingly recognizing something else in her behavior too, a thoughtful awareness that goes beyond simple reflex. There is a soulful intelligence in the way she pauses, senses, and responds, as if each moment carries meanings that rise from more than her senses alone. She slips an arm out of her den, then a second, then a third. Each moves with unhurried purpose, curling over a rock,

through crevices, along sand. Giant Pacific octopuses grow astonishingly fast, from hatchlings the size of grains of rice to powerful adults in just a few years. And the only way to manage a life like that is to learn