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Growing Past Illusions with Kim Barta
339 Plays17 days ago
In this heart-centered, mind-expanding conversation, Scott and Kim explore how releasing the rigid expectations of how life “should” be opens the door to greater presence, adaptability, and personal freedom. They examine how attachment to ideology—across politics, relationships, and even self-concept—limits our capacity to engage with what is real, emerging, and alive, opening the floodgates for presence, love and fulfillment.
Kim Barta - Psychotherapist, Shadow Work Expert, Evolutionary Guide
Kim Barta is a globally recognized psychotherapist, award-winning speaker, and international workshop leader. He is widely known for his expertise in shadow work, including his meta-model for shadow work, his unique Shadow to Spirit protocol (developed during his 30 years working on a Native American Reservation), and his shadow trilogy: Illuminating Shadow, Healing Shadow, and The the 7 modalities of Shadow work. Kim cofounded STAGES INTERNATIONAL with Dr Terri O’Fallon, an organization that researches and teaches the evolution of consciousness. His new work is focused on launching his meta-model on relationships. Kim founded kimbarta.org, where you can get a free shadow assessment and a free relationship assessment to help you start and deepen your consciousness journey.
Scott Schwenk - Master Coach, Spiritual Teacher, Culture Architect
Scott’s teachings, courses and private mentoring guide leaders, seekers and creatives to explore their deepest selves in service of thriving on all levels of being, both individually and relationally.
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Scott spent several years living and studying in a meditation monastery which introduced him to the core body of Tantric meditation traditions which continue to flow through each of his teachings. Scott continues to study and teach from two key Tantric lineage streams.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
Scott’s teachings support the entire person to not only progressively recognize, stabilize and embody our inextricable oneness with the source of creation (Waking Up), but also to resolve the wounds of the past (Cleaning Up), continually expand our capacities for wider and more inclusive perspectives on any moment (Growing Up) and creatively and joyfully participate and collaborate with all of life as a loving thriving human being (Showing Up).
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Choice to Grow'
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life.
Breathing Exercise for Relaxation
00:00:23
Speaker
Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold the breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:41
Speaker
Ah. Now let's dive in.
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome everybody.
Introduction to Kim Barta and Shadow Work
00:00:50
Speaker
My name is Scott Schwenk and it is a joy to welcome you to this series of dialogues we're calling The Choice to Grow. And it is my deep honor and joy and playful, fun time to have to welcome us all to be here together with Kim Barta. Kim Barta is a globally recognized psychotherapist, an award-winning speaker, an international workshop leader. and He's widely known for his expertise in shadow work, including his meta model for shadow work. We'll unpack that.
00:01:21
Speaker
His unique shadow to spirit protocol developed during his 30 years working on a Native American reservation and his shadow trilogy, illuminating shadow, healing shadow, and the seven modalities of shadow work.
00:01:37
Speaker
Quick aside, shadow is a term that some of you may be familiar with, some of you may not be familiar with. And Kim has a lot more to share about this than I do. I'm always learning. But my understanding of shadow is these aspects of ourself, challenging and even really wonderful qualities that we are unaware of. We have walled them off for one reason or another.
00:01:59
Speaker
We've separated some aspect of ourself from them. And they're such a gift. in working with somebody like Kim or people he's trained to bring these aspects back into the light of day and really recognize, excavate not only our own wholeness, but our capacity to bring forth wholeness for the greater good, for all beings.
00:02:22
Speaker
He's worked deeply with Terriel Fallon, who happens to be his sister from Stages International that they co-founded.
Kim's Meta Model on Relationships
00:02:29
Speaker
It's an organization that researches and teaches the evolution of consciousness.
00:02:35
Speaker
His new work is focused on launching his meta model on relationships. Kim founded KimBartja.org, and this is where you can get a free shadow assessment and a free relationship assessment to help you start and deepen your conscious journey.
00:02:50
Speaker
And I'll just say from my own experience, I've spent time and with Kim in personal settings with groups offline and retreat together where we were all sitting in circle.
00:03:01
Speaker
One of the most enormous hearted people I've ever encountered In watching Kim deal with life, there's nothing that's not workable, not one thing.
00:03:12
Speaker
There's a way he's worked with himself and continues to go through the process of waking up, growing up, cleaning up and showing up that allows him to bring a level of compassion that's free from any need for personal recognition. So with that, I say welcome to you, my friend, my brother and mentor, Kim Barta.
00:03:34
Speaker
Scott, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. That was so sweet of you.
Emergent Dialogue Format
00:03:38
Speaker
And i just want to let you know that I hold you so deep in my heart in the times that we've been together in these different workshops and places that we've been together, these gatherings.
00:03:49
Speaker
Your heart is so big, your mind is so open, and your spirit is so alive. And it's just been nothing more than an absolute delight to get to know you and let our relationship evolve.
00:04:04
Speaker
Awesome. I feel the same way. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. So for the listener, the way these dialogues emerge, they may partially sound a little bit like an interview as we're drawing out certain things, but really it's a dialogue and it's under a heading that we call emergent dialogue.
00:04:22
Speaker
And emergent dialogue is something we're going to learn about together as we go from episode to episode. It's a way to meet life where our past or our distorted memories of our past are not what's organizing the present or the future. We actually become more and more ah available to what life can bring for the highest good of everyone involved. So with that said, Kim, when you hear the term, the choice to grow, what does that evoke about your own life?
Kim's Upbringing and Personal Growth
00:04:54
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Well,
00:04:57
Speaker
The choice to grow is actually ah profound decision, what probably the most profound decision any of us can make. And on a personal level, just being raised on a farm in central Montana where we had to get the crop in or we might not have but enough money to live, might lose the farm, you know, in a place where i was raised devout Catholic and our decisions were made for us in a way.
00:05:24
Speaker
you know, in a environment in rural Montana where, you know, open-minded thought was maybe not the most rejoiced experience. To make that choice, and and I had beautiful mentors that allowed me to do that.
00:05:42
Speaker
So sometimes when we say we make the choice, The choice is ours to make, but the choice also comes about by those beautiful people that we have met or connected that help awaken us a little bit to see that we do have choice.
00:05:58
Speaker
Choices that we never knew that we had. My sisters, my brothers um were great models for me. ah Even my mother and my father in so many different ways.
00:06:12
Speaker
were great models for going, you do have choice here. And each one of them in different ways. ah So maybe closed in certain ways, but open in other ways. And by putting together all the open ways, you know I kind of discovered that as ah as a teenager, it's like, wow, I don't just have to be a particular format. I can choose the best of everybody I've met.
00:06:37
Speaker
and and choose that modeling as a way to enhance my overall growth. yeah So the choice is not just, you know ooh, I'm this great individual peak person that that does this all on my own.
00:06:53
Speaker
It's about the nuance and the deliciousness of being with other people and going, oh, wow, look at the treasure in them. And we're all humans. We're all part of that human spirit.
00:07:06
Speaker
And if they have that treasure, i can I can find that treasure in me then and grow. so when I talk about the choice to grow, it's got nothing to do with, oh, look at Kim, he grew.
Shadow Work and Personal Treasures
00:07:16
Speaker
It's about, wow, look at all the amazing people that I've had a chance to meet and interact with and draw on that helped me on that beautiful journey.
00:07:26
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And 30 years working on the Native American reservation, yeah, they were multi-generational trauma abuse victims, but oh my God, every one of them had just these beautiful, beautiful gifts to give me. So I never considered it, ooh, I'm the guy coming in to heal all these people. It's like, ooh, this is a beautiful relationship where I can give them relief and healing and they can give me all this beautiful wisdom they've had from their life. And that's how I treat every single person I meet.
00:07:53
Speaker
And that's how I treat every client that I have. Not that just that I'm this top down, I'm going to heal you. But what what is the beautiful deliciousness of humanity that we have to share together?
00:08:06
Speaker
The beautiful deliciousness of humanity. Is that what you would say? Is that the same as the treasure within that you mentioned earlier? Yeah. yeah Yeah, everybody's got a treasure and everybody has some kind of a treasure that you haven't discovered yet.
00:08:22
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So when we do shadow work, we're exploring our own shadow and treasures and stuff. But when we're interacting with others, we're discovering theirs as well. And in that, a mirror of our own.
00:08:33
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even if Is there one treasure that we all share? Are there multiple treasures? Are both true that there's a universal treasure and individual treasures? I think both.
00:08:44
Speaker
And in fact, if you take a shamanic point of view, not only is there an individual treasure in the global one treasure, but there's these in-between treasures, such as the treasure of our species, the treasure of humanity.
00:08:58
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So we have the treasure of my own spirit as a person, the treasure of humanity as a species, and the treasure of that which is above and beyond our own being and our own species, which brings us into the treasure of, like, maybe we have a pet that we love. Maybe it's a dog, the treasure of that spirit.
00:09:18
Speaker
But then we have the treasure of all canines.
00:09:23
Speaker
And then we have the treasure of all the one spirit that holds all of them together. And that's true for every species, cats, dogs, dolphins, whales, deer, bear, everything.
00:09:35
Speaker
And so, and plants and minerals even. And so when you sense into the relationship of everything that you walk through, even your computer, every you know every item that you have, it's like, what relationship am I having with it?
00:09:55
Speaker
And then that us into the spirit of not only our own essence, but if we spend time truly with another animal or with another human being, the essence of that individual.
00:10:05
Speaker
And if we do a lot of experiences with lots of different individuals, lots of different people, we start getting a sense into the treasure of the species.
00:10:17
Speaker
And the same same with an animal. Maybe we spend a lot of time with our one dog, but what happens if we spend time with lots of different dogs? We start getting a sense of the species. What happens if we have an experience with bears? Like I've had a lot of experiences with bears.
00:10:31
Speaker
I've had bears attack me. I've had bears just kind of hang out around me. And it's fascinating because every bear attack is a little bit different. I live on a mountain, you know, I walked back, bears are in company.
00:10:46
Speaker
I had one bear, you're going to love this story. I had one bear, I was talking to my mom, I came, i was going, oh I have this feeling that I need to hang up. And, and so I said, Mom, I'll talk to you later. And I hung up and I walked around the corner. And here was this two little baby bears went up a tree.
00:11:03
Speaker
And this mama bear comes out and she's coming right at me. And she's just eye contact, direct eye contact. She's just coming right at me, but she's not, you know, she's just coming right at me.
00:11:17
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And, and I'm looking at her eyes and all I see is absolute motherly devotion. She had no desire to hurt me. She had no desire to kill me, but she had absolute mother devotion.
00:11:29
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And there was no doubt in my mind that she was going to take me out if she needed to. But that was the point. I got so mesmerized by her eyes that I forgot to run. I forgot to do anything.
Understanding Emotions and Reactions
00:11:41
Speaker
So I just sat there and as she was coming at me and she got within like literally 25 feet of me. And I was just lost in that mesmerized, just absolutely the beauty of that motherly love.
00:11:56
Speaker
And then I finally go, oh no, I need to run because she's going to, so I ran and she let me go. no big deal. Right. Right. You know, this, this, uh, well, as anything can do like a fractal, this story really is a portal into everything that I'm curious about that we're dialoguing about, um, the capacity to be there in that moment. So starting with emotion itself, just the energy of emotion. There's two things I've heard over the years. One I heard from the famous photographer, Norman Seif.
00:12:27
Speaker
He's who shot the so many rock and roll icons. But there's a you might remember the ah picture of Jim Morrison with no shirt on, arms stretched out, and long curly hair. That's him.
00:12:38
Speaker
But he started out as a doctor in South Africa and emigrated to New York in the 70s and became this photographer, just a completely different thing. And he said to me when he was shooting my portrait, he said, emotion is an epiphenomenon of being in an animal body meant to adjust behavior and be moved on from That was number one.
00:12:57
Speaker
The two was more recently working with this fellow. I've been experiencing his work for about 30 years, Donny Epstein, who founded Network Chiropractic. And he's got the experience or view, it may not be the entire view, of emotion that emotionally lasts seconds, maybe a couple of minutes at most. Anything after that is a thought.
00:13:21
Speaker
So I'm just curious about your staying with the story of the bear. So I'm imagining myself there with the bear. If I don't have Kim Bartos experience of previous bear experiences and I'm in this new thing, maybe I'm a city guy and I see the bear.
00:13:36
Speaker
And then what happens first in me is emotion like normal, right? Like be alert. Be alert. Look around, right? What happens next is often seems to be based on if I pull on my past, anything that gives me some idea of how to meet this moment, but it might not.
00:13:55
Speaker
It might shut me down. It might get me to do something that upsets the mother bear and gets her to actually fulfill my fear of chasing me or whatever it is. So I'm just curious how you see this whole interaction with the bears that can happen anytime anytime.
00:14:12
Speaker
Angry humans. In the sense of how we work in a simple way to upgrade our capacity to be with the treasure of life, even when the treasure seems a little scary or a lot scary.
00:14:27
Speaker
hmm. Yeah. So I really love what you're saying here. And so often we don't actually have an experience with the external event that's happening.
00:14:39
Speaker
We have an emotional experience with the internal thought that's happening about it. And thought and emotion, they're so fast and so quick. They interact with each other in fractions of a second.
00:14:50
Speaker
Um, so I've also been attacked by a bear that was ferocious and did want to take me out that I survived. Okay. And so, so contrast in these two, let's, you know, the difference between being present in the moment of what is versus assuming, right?
00:15:09
Speaker
So I was going up to, and I'm going to tell this story so that we can compare and contrast, uh, I was going up a narrow corridor early in the spring with my dog, who's really good bear dog. He'll always tree bears and everything. He's never had a bear not... He's always been able to tree a bear or chase a bear away.
00:15:28
Speaker
And so he was up ahead of me and he got in a tuffle up there and I go, that's interesting. I didn't expect the bears to be out yet.
00:15:36
Speaker
And all of a sudden he came running downhill towards me. This bear turned him. was the first time and the only time a bear has ever turned this dog. And that bear was coming after him. wow And he was angry.
00:15:49
Speaker
he was pissed. He was going to kill. He was going to do whatever he could. You could feel the difference between that and the other bear, right? This bear was getting up out of the spring.
00:16:00
Speaker
He was hungry. He was annoyed that the dog bothered him. And he was angry enough that he could turn a really good bear dog. And he was coming down. I was in a narrow corridor. I couldn't go left. I couldn't go right. I couldn't run away.
00:16:15
Speaker
this bear was gonna take out me and Louie and everything else. And Louie was running as fast as he could as, you know, he was just scared. I've never seen him that scared. And the bear was just ferocious and angry.
00:16:26
Speaker
And in that case, what I did was I played grizzly bear, dominant grizzly bear in his own territory. Just went,
00:16:34
Speaker
And Louie's eyes got this big, he thought he saw God. He turned around and started barking at that bear. And I didn't think that bear could stop that fast, but it didn't. It ran back uphill. And again, that one was within 20 feet of me too by the time that happened.
00:16:49
Speaker
So noticing the moment, right? Because I could have interpreted the mother bear in the same way, right? And then I could have just gone raw and been mean. And she might've just said, well, fuck you.
00:17:01
Speaker
yeah I'm going to kill you. right And I could have been kind of docile with this one and just kind of tried to run away. And he would have taken me out without a doubt.
Learning from Life Templates
00:17:12
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But by playing grizzly bear, by meeting the moment and going, what's the appropriate response to this moment, given the external circumstance, not treating all bears the same way and not all moments the same way.
00:17:28
Speaker
You can respond directly to the moment. And these are like extreme examples of how you can survive. Right. But in terms of humanity, it's like meeting the person in the moment and going what's present there.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so I want to slow down a little bit because I've told a couple of big stories now, and I know that what we really want to do here is emergent dialogue. Yeah. Want to let that start evolving now.
00:17:54
Speaker
So we've got a variety of people listening and a variety of places people find themselves in this very moment. One of you may be dealing with the loss of a loved one. Another may have had a big financial change up or down. Another of you may have had a diagnosis.
00:18:08
Speaker
And so some of you might have done years and years of meditation and things like this. So we're all hearing these stories. We're all hearing meeting the moment from the moment we're in.
00:18:21
Speaker
not even actually in the moment we're in, but our so our i idea about ourselves and life is this like filter that we're listening through. How do we start to become aware of the difference, Kim, in your observation of, am I actually available to meet the moment as it is, as opposed to bringing my undealt with past and projecting it onto the moment and the people involved or the gri ah grizzly bear?
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much. So the first thing that comes up in my mind as you ask that is how we have constructs that arise.
00:19:04
Speaker
And those constructs usually come in the form of like ideologies. I have an idea of what this moment means versus what does this moment mean. And so if I come from a Buddhist meditative place, you know, I might think that every moment needs to be met with absolute tranquility, in which case I would have been dead without bear.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. And that would have been okay too, right? Because it's all tranquil, right? Right. But there's also the idea of of how do you meet the moment in a variety of ways, not just one way.
00:19:38
Speaker
And so ideologies often give us one template about how to meet a moment. And so what I really invite people into is getting the spirit of every template and getting the wisdom of each one of those, but then letting go of the templates.
00:19:57
Speaker
boom And that allows us to get have gold everywhere we go. And when we do our shadow work, we can go what are what are my templates that come up?
00:20:08
Speaker
These are concrusted ideas of how life is or what a moment means. And when we take time to observe that arising, like if I responded to every bear the same way, I would be dead by now, first of all.
00:20:23
Speaker
but But if I respond every moment through the same ideology, I'm actually not relating intimately. I'm relating through an ideology.
00:20:38
Speaker
So how do I meet Scott right here in this moment? If I'm responding out of an ideology, man how does Scott meet me? If he's responding through an ideology, all we have is two AI ideologies talking back and forth to each other.
00:20:54
Speaker
There's no intimacy there. It's like, you can predict those conversations. Yeah. It's reminding me of the the four levels of listening in Theory U. Level one, i i project my past onto the conversation that's downloading the past. Number two is I'm just debating. um Well, what's the one thing i I want to hear from Kim and I'm internally discounting everything else? My goodness, how could Kim think creatively in that space unless he's got a lot of strength?
00:21:23
Speaker
Three, empathy. And four, listening for... infinite possibilities, like anything is possible. there's a way I can listen to you, the bear, the moment that's actually free from preset ideas.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I may be terrified, but if I can be with the terror and be open and listen for anything is possible, then maybe I start to sense the guidance of the way forward for everyone involved in the moment.
00:21:52
Speaker
I love that. Yeah. Hmm. So
00:21:58
Speaker
There's some things that you've explained really, really, really precisely and deeply over time. And that's kind of what this work really calls for in your courses. And I've taken Kim's courses, except for his trainings to be a facilitator, um in particular his Shadow Matrix course and Love Matrix courses.
00:22:18
Speaker
So these are very, very involved. I mean, there's a book with each one that's something like 200 pages, like the amount of work, study, training, an academic understanding that's in life experience flowing through all this.
00:22:32
Speaker
But it really, really helps, especially I'm thinking about the Love Matrix course, where I had never thought about the fact that I could have a different expectation and understanding of what showing up is in a relationship.
00:22:50
Speaker
I didn't consider that you could do you could rub my feet this week and next week I might buy you dinner and that that's love, that it doesn't have to be at the same time in the exact same way. So I'm just going to leave that there for You have a launching off point about this.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's finding or noticing the inner treasure in a moment, a person, a bear, a tree. Mm-hmm.
Life's Creative Nature and Attachment Styles
00:23:14
Speaker
finding the inner, recognizing inner treasure in all of us and being available to the creative nature of life rather than trying to control it through my ideas of certainty and trying to downsize everything so I can control it.
00:23:29
Speaker
So what are your thoughts there? Thank you. Yeah. So the love matrix is i love a love child of mine. They grew out of working on the reservation for 30 years. with these families. And and I actually had this beautiful opportunity to have five generations of women, Native of American women, in the room at the same time talking about the trajectory of their life and their experience through the generations. I mean, what an amazing blessing. Five generations. Five generations in the room at the same time of women.
00:24:01
Speaker
Wow. Well, one was, an m I guess you can't call her a woman, but she was a baby. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. And, uh, and so this trajectory is just beautiful. So yeah, the love matrix came out of just realizing that first of all, working in a multicultural environment that love shows up in lots of different ways and that, um,
00:24:24
Speaker
And so I started looking at and studying not just what we're supposed to love will still look like, but how does it look like? Because we had all these ideas of what it's supposed to look like. And we have them from our own personal life experience, our primary attachment styles.
00:24:41
Speaker
But we also have them from psychology. And pause for a second, just for anybody who needs a refresher or doesn't know, what is an attachment style? An attachment style is a way that we attach to our primary bonding.
00:24:56
Speaker
OK, so maybe it was mother or father. That's the most common one. Right now, sometimes we don't have a mother father, but we have a mother father figure, somebody who steps in for that. But anyway, the way that we primarily found attachment is sets up a style of the way that we perceive attachment in the future. So let's say that we had a very loving, caring, doting parent who just took care of us all the time.
00:25:23
Speaker
It's really easy for us to
00:25:27
Speaker
maybe we we can develop that attachment a couple different ways. I can model that attachment and I can become a loving, doting, caring human being in my relationships.
00:25:38
Speaker
But I can also create a complement to that, which is I expect everyone to be loving, doting and caring towards me all the time. Okay. It is a lot more complex than, in my opinion, than then all the attachment books that I've read, that I've seen out there.
00:25:56
Speaker
because you have matching attachment and you have complimentary attachment. Now that it happens the other way. Sometimes I might have ah maybe an alcoholic parent. Now I might match that and become an alcoholic on my own and not be present for anybody.
00:26:11
Speaker
Or I might compliment that and be become a very loving, doting, caring person. And now this kind of understanding of attachment helps us understand why people from horrendous homes cuts sometimes become the most loving, caring people there are.
00:26:27
Speaker
And people from loving, caring homes often can become a very narcissistic, self-centered people. Wow. So this whole story that there's an attachment style, yeah, there's an attachment presentation, but there are ways to respond to that attachment presentation.
00:26:44
Speaker
And sometimes we complement, sometimes we match, sometimes we do a combination. And that's true everyone. That's true for every attachment style.
00:26:54
Speaker
What have you noticed in your own self, your own development and your senior students that that has has developed or the skill sets that have developed to be able to really be flexible and nimble in meeting whoever, however. Yeah.
00:27:15
Speaker
So this is a part where we talk about, you'd said earlier about walling off. Now, if you think about a wall, that's a rigid structure. Right? Yeah. and And often that's what people come up with. it as It's walled off or it's blocked off. These rigid structures.
00:27:32
Speaker
Now, if you're inside the rigid structure, you can only operate within that structure. And if you're outside the rigid structure, you don't have access to what's inside the rigid structure to draw upon. So a lot of what healing work is about is about making those structures softer, more gentle, dissolving them, making them at least porous,
00:27:54
Speaker
or actually dissolving away completely. And the more we dissolve away those encrusted um storylines that lock us into ideologies or belief systems, as they dissolve away, now we have all of our consciousness available at any given moment.
00:28:12
Speaker
Not just the dominant ego, what I call the dictator ego state, the one that says, oh, I'm the dominant ego. And all these other ones are here to serve me. Right. Right.
00:28:23
Speaker
you As we get into an egalitarian, I'm a collective. I'm a collective. I'm not an individual. I have all these aspects that have all these wisdoms that got to it from different perspectives.
00:28:37
Speaker
And as they come together in this coalition of oneness, so now I'm a oneness, but I'm a coalition at the same time. And every every aspect has its own history.
00:28:48
Speaker
And so it can draw on that wisdom in different ways. And yet they can all be together as one. And so they can dissolve completely and be oneness. And so there's this dance between Seeing the walled off, experiencing the suffering of that, dissolving that, bringing the other part in, and having the uniqueness of it as an individual within me or the emergence of it as a oneness, as a whole oneness.
00:29:16
Speaker
And the me even disappears then because the me is also an ego state, third the one that I think that I am.
00:29:26
Speaker
I was having an extraordinary conversation. In fact, that this was the first podcast I recorded. I don't know if I'll release it in that order with this gentleman who teaches out of Australia. yeah He goes by the name Fish because his last name is Gil, James Fish Gil. And he he seems to have boiled down his entire body of work. It's all about repair, really. That's what he teaches is conscious communication and repair. And he said, for this to really fly,
00:29:53
Speaker
we We have to be aware four things, my very real longing and my very real pain and your very real longing and your very real pain.
00:30:04
Speaker
For me, I'm curious how you hold this. It seems to give me a space to not get lost in my intellect about all these different parts that I have and you have. And then if there's three of us in the conversation, we're trying to track all these parts. I go, wait, can I just sense?
00:30:20
Speaker
everyone's very real longing and they're very real pain. So that if if you started shouting at me and I'm and i'm with this with you, i can go, oh, what's happening for Kim? that What's his very real pain? that this is This is what needs to happen for him to feel like I might hear him better.
00:30:38
Speaker
as opposed to reacting and pushing back. I'm just curious in your own work, when you bring the simplicity to, okay, person A is going to go see person B and practice listening for sensing the treasure in themself, the other, and the environment.
00:30:54
Speaker
What are kind of like the simple boiled down, if you could be aware of these things, you're likely on your way even though there's way more deeper to go, what are the simple levers and dials of this?
00:31:12
Speaker
So for me, when I'm in interaction, I'm looking at what's the treasure that this person in front of me is bringing. So for right now, Scott is bringing a lot of treasures of all these different people that he's met.
00:31:24
Speaker
Now me, I live alone on a mountain. I don't meet a lot of people, so I can't bring that. All I can bring is my own consciousness. Right. But Scott has all these different people.
00:31:36
Speaker
And he brings those in, he ties them in so that there's this community happening. And so by noticing the treasure in the other person.
00:31:48
Speaker
That just creates a better relationship. Now, maybe a little bit of a contrast, what is the longing or what is the pain that only seems to look at half of the interaction?
00:31:59
Speaker
So I want to look at the treasure. want to look at the passion. And generally, if I stay present with that, the longing, the pain is in a safe environment now.
00:32:12
Speaker
So the longing and pain comes up more cleanly generally. And even if it doesn't, it's I can still hold my own space, right? Yeah. Want to create a safe place where people bring up their own longing and pain if it's arising or they can stay in their passion if that's what it is.
00:32:29
Speaker
What's happening if you slowed down at the moment radically? What's happening in your body when you're in an interaction with somebody who's going from a from like zero to 100 in terms of their passion has become hostile energy and emotion, whether it's directed toward themself, the environment, or you.
00:32:52
Speaker
What's happening with you physiologically if we watched you using your tools to be able to meet them, see the treasure, and create a safe environment for what's unfolding?
00:33:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:33:06
Speaker
Okay, so the first step is curiosity. Okay, the first step is actually owning who I am versus who they are, because I'm not going to absorb interjects or projections, right?
00:33:20
Speaker
Real quick, what's the difference between an interject and a project for people who don't yet know that there are three classes of shadow? Yeah, so a projection is when I take my stuff and I put it on somebody else.
00:33:32
Speaker
An interject is when somebody else is there and I'm absorbing it inside of me. So they're kind of intimately related. Person A projects, person B interjects that statement and it feels awful about themselves.
00:33:48
Speaker
Okay, so now if someone's projecting because they're yelling at me, that lets me know they're projecting. I don't have to I don't have to participate in that exchange.
00:34:01
Speaker
Just like if somebody came up to me with money and said, hey, I have a thousand dollars. I got it from doing, you know, from ah from trafficking young children.
00:34:13
Speaker
Right. i can. Yeah, I'll take the thousand dollars or no, I'm not going to take that thousand dollars. Right. Yeah. That's not money that I want.
Radiating Personal Treasure and Peace
00:34:22
Speaker
Right. Same energetically. If somebody comes at me with a bunch of anger and projection, I can choose to take that exchange or not.
00:34:30
Speaker
I don't. Yeah. And then what happens is ah curiosity. What's going on with this person? What's this passion about? Because energy is energy.
00:34:46
Speaker
And obviously the person has a lot of energy. They're raging, right? So what is that about? Curious. So tell me about your anger. What are you angry about? Help me understand. You're this and you're that and you're this and you're that. And it's like, oh, you're really upset that somebody isn't the way that you want them to be.
00:35:07
Speaker
How is it that you really want people to be? Well, want them to be this and this and this and this and this. Okay, I want you to imagine that world. What would that world be like if everybody was like that, the way that you want them to be?
00:35:21
Speaker
Now they start calming down, right? Because they get to go into their own world and it's not being imposed. Instead of me saying, you know. While you're doing this, what are you doing with your breath and your body while you're asking these questions and being with them?
00:35:38
Speaker
So for me, I'm not controlling my breath. Like a lot of people say, so focus on your breath, focus on your body. What I'm doing is I'm radiating my treasure.
00:35:50
Speaker
And if I'm radiant, if I'm full in my own treasure, if I'm radiating, then nothing can come in. Okay? It can't come in because I'm full with my own treasure.
00:36:01
Speaker
What's the difference between radiating one's own treasure in an authentic way and stepping into... unknowingly or knowingly trying to be the hero and do radiating. that I'm radiating my treasure right now, but I don't recognize that I'm actually not able to be intimate with what's arising.
00:36:21
Speaker
So I'm actually putting myself, I'm putting a mask on of the hero What you're talking about is different than that, about radiating a treasure. It's not about, I need to look good or avoid anything. There's something happening that to me doesn't sound like a normal um or our our but the ego structure we're accustomed to when two people are into greening.
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah. So when I'm radiating, what happens is I'm in peace and calm, which means I don't have to try to change the other person. I don't have to try to change myself. I don't have to do anything. There's no push or pull going on.
00:36:58
Speaker
Right. So like if I'm just radiating and I just have curiosity. Then the person just starts sharing and they can feel that.
00:37:08
Speaker
Generally, people. Remember when you said earlier, the first few moments of anger, everything else is a thought, right? Yeah. There's some truth to that. There's just a little bit more because if you get angry enough that you get cortisol in your body, it takes about 20 minutes for the cortisol to dissolve.
00:37:25
Speaker
So even if, yeah. But the the premise is still very accurate. And that is that if I don't augment the anger, their anger is just gonna burn out over the course of usually a few minutes.
00:37:40
Speaker
That's just pointless energy. If I don't keep aggravating the cortisol There's no, it's really hard for people to yell at people much longer than a few minutes.
00:37:51
Speaker
they They stop. Run out of steam. They just run out of steam when there's no reaction, right? Right, right. I'm just radiating and just holding that. And then I come from curiosity about what they're but their passion is because I'm living my passion, right? I'm not angry. I would like them to be able to live their passion, but they're not living it because they're angry.
00:38:15
Speaker
I imagine there might be one or two of you out there like me who are on the sides of your awareness wondering if bears are at all like humans, is there ever a moment to come out like you did with the other bear screaming and shouting and waving a log?
00:38:32
Speaker
Even if I'm not personally actually upset, but to act like it, is there ever an appropriate moment for that kind of interaction being called for?
00:38:43
Speaker
yeah so
00:38:46
Speaker
I wasn't angry at the bear that was attacking me. I just knew that that was the method that I needed to use. So I think that's the the reason I'm responding to this very carefully is so many people justify their anger as righteous rage.
00:39:02
Speaker
That's right. And as soon as you say that, I would say you're probably just angry. Yeah. I don't lie into righteous rage in general. Okay. Yeah. um I do think that you need to respond in appropriate ways to take care of yourself. If someone was literally going to attack me, I would defend myself or I might not, depending upon the situation.
00:39:24
Speaker
I'll tell you about a native American boy that gave me this wisdom. Okay. He had, somebody had done something to him and he had done something back and and hurt them a little bit, right?
00:39:38
Speaker
they They had hurt him, he hurt them back. They went back to their group, right? And now that group came out after this boy, okay?
00:39:49
Speaker
And this boy was surrounded by these people and he knew that he couldn't beat them all, right? Now he could have gotten angry, he could have fought, he'd have just gotten beaten like crazy.
00:40:01
Speaker
But what he did is said, okay, you got me here. I am. Do what you want to do. And he just laid there and they hit him a little bit and kicked him a little bit and there was no response. So they just went away. It's like, it fun to keep fighting somebody who wasn't going to fight back.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah. So Yeah, sometimes righteous rage is the way to go. That person hurt me first. All I did was defending myself. You guys suck. Get the fuck out of my face, right? Something like that. Right, right, right.
00:40:31
Speaker
Or you can just go, hey, this a situation right here, right now. They're more powerful than me. They want to avenge the pain. I'll let them do it. that's That's the cycle that's going to happen here, whether I fight it or not.
00:40:43
Speaker
He could see it. He could see the cycle that had to happen. But he also also could see that... If he didn't push the system, the system would resolve a whole lot faster.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yeah. I've been contemplating some version of this for quite some time, and I love that this story came out. I've been finding myself to myself and clients and students saying, you know, shouting at somebody to create a change.
00:41:13
Speaker
If they make a change or you shout at me and I make a change, it's likely because I'm avoiding being shouted at, not because it's the right thing to do. And like how can I organize my nervous system in such a way that it actually draws out your treasure without me having to say a word?
00:41:32
Speaker
is really what I'm so touched by in this whole dialogue so far is like that opportunity to discover even greater coherency in my nervous system that draws the best out of all of life for the benefit of everyone, not just for my own sake.
00:41:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you. That's beautiful. And as we stay in that treasure within and we just don't buy the exchange if the exchange isn't worth it or if the exchange is going to happen, just going with the exchange in a way that's going to minimize the problem, you know we don't have complete control over everything.
00:42:08
Speaker
But we do have control over how we're going to respond to the moment. And so we can be at a lot more peace with that. And as the exchange occurs, Like if i if I stay in peace, like if I meet rage with rage, obviously rage invokes rage. You know, hate, if I meet hate with hate, more hate occurs.
00:42:30
Speaker
This one of the problems I think we're having with the liberal conservative divide right now. yeah Hate, and then we go, well, that's unjust. I'm gonna meet it with righteous hate. and they go, oh yeah, I'm gonna meet you with righteous hate.
00:42:42
Speaker
I'm gonna meet you with righteous anger. I'm gonna meet you with righteous anger. I'm gonna meet you with righteous violence. I'm gonna meet you with righteous violence. It just escalates. Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. Rage begets rage.
00:42:54
Speaker
So if you want more hate, anger, and violence in the world, meet hate, anger, and violence with more hate, anger, and violence. You'll get more of it. But if you meet hate, anger, and violence with calmness and peace,
00:43:07
Speaker
then they don't they don't get that cortisol doesn't have a closed loop that keeps ah moving up the spiral. It's one way and it stops and there's nothing else going on. And finally, it just dissolves.
00:43:22
Speaker
And now you can have a decent conversation with somebody.
00:43:27
Speaker
Have you noticed, I've noticed in myself what seems like over the years, uh, an addiction that I've chosen to meet and heal to stress hormones in my own body that I didn't realize that I had an addiction to living at a certain energy state, even after decades of meditations and mentors. And this is, I would, I would find myself after a retreat or after, and after a big happening, bumping heads with somebody and going back to a familiar state of stress hormones and energy.
00:43:58
Speaker
Do you see this in your clients? I see that in, A lot of people, I see it in myself. um Facebook is a great way to do this, right? You go through Facebook and there's all these wonderful comments, blah, blah, And then you find that one that triggers you and it's like, oh, and wow Facebook is a cesspool for reinforcing your negative shadow, right?
00:44:24
Speaker
It's just filled with it and you can just watch it happen. And as well as beautiful things too, right? I mean, it's a very broad platform. But for me, if I want to understand where my shadow is, all I do is go on Facebook and go down until I get triggered.
Recognizing Shadows via Social Media
00:44:40
Speaker
And it's like, oh, I got a shadow there. It sounds like you actually are in a place in life where you can actually willingly do that as an exercise. likeking Like, let's just see if there's any shadow ready to be worked with today. Not like you're looking to hurt or suffer, but you're actually interested in something that not only frees up your treasure, but frees up your treasure for the benefit of others. Like, I don't get you as a guy who's just like, how can I get more goodies just for myself?
00:45:08
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, no. Yeah.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah. So this training, this opportunity to train for folks, you know, some of folks who are listening, you may really have some established, wonderful strategies and ways of meeting life in your nervous system.
00:45:26
Speaker
And yet the work is never done. The opportunity to grow is never over with. i I'm thinking actually of Gurdjieff, who I'm told had paid a man from France a lot of money to be an annoyance to his senior students.
00:45:44
Speaker
Because they they were able to establish themselves in ah in a sort of a consciousness that seemed really, really peaceful, but the work wasn't done and there were aspects of their own psyche. They weren't yet dealing with.
00:45:56
Speaker
So he literally paid this guy who ran back to Paris and they sent somebody after him, paid him more money to get him to come back because his role seems so important to perturb some of these things back up into awareness so they could get worked with. Thoughts about that?
00:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, and that's right, because it's so easy for us to do bypasses of our own work. And we can do that through any form of addiction. And one of the ones that you you and I are aware of is spiritual bypass.
00:46:22
Speaker
Right. If I can just sit in this blissful state, I'm fine. Then I get out of it and I let the, you know, dog that pooped on my friend, but you know. never Right. you know Yeah.
00:46:34
Speaker
Like, am I really there or did I just spiritually bypass it? Now, there's a value to it. I mean, I have a ah mixed feeling with the term spiritual bypass. There's a valuable insight into it. But it's also it's valuable to be able to sit in presence and in in and and practice a calm neural neurological system so that you're in healing and you're in these spiritual states.
00:46:57
Speaker
But the rest of it is to also hold that when we walk through the rest of life. Yeah. Well, I know in and in the model that we're both familiar with the stages model that really shows how we can grow if we're if we're in circumstances that are conducive and we get these later um awareness is mirrored back to us, we can recognize them that in the later stages,
00:47:21
Speaker
um It can be really easy to set up camp and think we're right and everybody else is wrong. In my experience, it's not about getting somewhere, but it's about, as these later stage materials point out, recognizing that there's not an over there and an over here. On a relative level, the fork is in the drawer where the forks are and the spoons are where the spoons are, and that's how they're organized.
00:47:50
Speaker
And I know the difference of which one for which purpose. But I also want to recognize the treasure in everything. I also want to recognize that that they that every challenge can be a gift so that I get this nimbleness.
00:48:06
Speaker
I guess that's what I'm trying to pull out through our dialogue about the choice to grow is like everything is an opportunity to grow everything and to be nourishing presence for everything else to grow.
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. And it's like that nimbleness again means if I'm in a template that says, oh, I can only be again, you're still the storyline of there's a place to get to in consciousness or spirituality.
00:48:34
Speaker
And it looks like this. And therefore, I'm going to hold on that mask, a truly embodied mask for most people. Right. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to be in this spiritual, peaceful state. And that's the pinnacle of awareness.
00:48:47
Speaker
and I'm at the peak and I'm so this amazing. Oh, no, but I don't have an eye. So I'm so selfless. Aren't i amazing? how and And you just see the spin happen. Right. And I'm speaking this because I know living through it. Right. We all live. We live through these things. so I'm not making fun of other people out there. I'm saying this is this is a natural flow of consciousness is, you know, our own little little nuances. People do these little head trips on themselves, on ourselves.
00:49:16
Speaker
This is part of the spirit of of humanity, right? The humbleness and the narcissism both. And so we touch into that and go, oh, look at my narcissism there. Oh, look at my low self-esteem. Oh, yeah. What happens if these two talk? You know, the low self-esteem can teach something to the narcissism.
00:49:33
Speaker
The narcissism can teach something to the low self-esteem. And now we can be in balance and equilibrium. with just what is life. And this is the problem is that we know that we're not there when anything in life bothers us.
00:49:47
Speaker
Because ultimately, either I am in acceptance with reality or I'm not. If I'm bothered by it, then I'm saying that I'm smarter than reality.
00:50:00
Speaker
Hmm. superior What do you mean by bothered as opposed to encouraged to like some things happen in life that are not comfortable, but they're an encouragement to to go in a different direction?
00:50:11
Speaker
Every time we feel discomfort, that's a wake up call for more wisdom. never e Yeah, I need to own something in myself. I need to release something in myself.
00:50:23
Speaker
I need to do something to bring life into balance here. But so often what we're doing is running around trying to change the external world rather than going, what's going on with the internal world that I'm having a problem with the external world the way it is.
00:50:40
Speaker
i'm I'm having a movement here about shamanism since that's one of your backgrounds. And and there's ah it sounds almost like the worldview coming through in part through the the shamanic worldview, which is like,
00:50:56
Speaker
When I'm arguing with reality, I'm actually under the illusion that what I'm seeing is fixed and it's stuck that way.
00:51:08
Speaker
I'm not able in that moment to recognize that everything is made of creative energy and how I meet it makes a difference in how it shows up. What what does that evoke for you?
00:51:19
Speaker
love that. i love the way you describe that. That's so intimately delicious. And that is, you know when we when we see the external world, we're having an issue with it. we We have a fixation of in our mind about what the world should be because I'm so superior. And and if everybody did things the way that I want them to be done, then it would be fine, which of course breaks down because everybody wants the world to be a little bit different. And that's why we have to work together as human beings. Otherwise, we devolve into hate, anger and violence.
00:51:51
Speaker
no But even if your idea is the most supreme idea of how to create peace on earth, it's still your idea of how to create peace on earth. It's not everybody's idea.
00:52:02
Speaker
and And it also comes down to the whole idea that somehow I am wiser than... reality I'm wiser than evolution. I am wiser than God. I'm wiser than spirituality. I'm wiser than the universe in general.
00:52:19
Speaker
And that's kind of a bold statement for someone to make. i would I would encourage us every time we think we know better than reality to maybe step back and go, the universe is a little bit bigger than we are, maybe.
00:52:30
Speaker
And it's got a little more history behind it than... A little bit. A little bit. And maybe, maybe there's a little bit of arrogance and we think we know better than the entire history of the Or a lot.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yes. Might be worth contemplating that a little bit. Actually getting ready to suffer more.
00:52:52
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking about, um, not thinking, I'm feeling, uh, this kind of remembering the love matrix course and, um, the piece about how the ways we exchange or show or or share and receive and recognize love back and forth may not be at the same time.
00:53:12
Speaker
That's coming forth right now in this moment about how I can actually be more free and nimble with reality by by remembering, recognizing, and maybe seeing that,
00:53:23
Speaker
my idea of the timeline of something happening or unfolding may not be the most supportive for me or other people. And that there's a way I can actually learn to be curious more and present more such that I'm recognizing how life is guiding me at right timing, right timing. What about right timing, Kim?
00:53:45
Speaker
Is that for you? I love that you're bringing this in, this asynchronous aspect of reciprocity. So in my experience, the universe is always bringing in balance. It's always creating some kind of a balance. and um And so, but that balance doesn't always happen on our timeline, the timeline that we want it to be.
00:54:08
Speaker
So if I actually hold a wider timeframe, I might realize that actually things are happening really beautifully just the way they're happening. And this moment is the most perfect, exquisite moment.
Presence and Consciousness in Each Moment
00:54:22
Speaker
If you think about it, this moment, Scott, is the pinnacle of consciousness.
00:54:31
Speaker
say or This moment right here is the pinnacle of consciousness. My consciousness the pinnacle of my consciousness. Your consciousness the pinnacle of your consciousness. Right now is the moment of the pinnacle of the evolutionary of consciousness.
00:54:43
Speaker
Every moment is. And what if we treat each moment as for what it is? It's the pinnacle of the evolution of the universe right now in this moment.
00:54:57
Speaker
When I lived in an ashram, a monastery, there was a temple and it was considered the the most one of the most powerful spots in the ashram. hu And I would spend hours in there doing you know meditating and there would be chanting practices or different things that would happen in there.
00:55:14
Speaker
And i moved to Los Angeles in 1999. Los Angeles is generally speaking mostly a very different environment than a monastery, um give or take.
00:55:25
Speaker
And I have found that in 22 years of going to the same gym in this busy city of Los Angeles, anything that could come up in life comes up at that gym. My judgments, my worries, my self-assessments, all sorts of things.
00:55:40
Speaker
And I remember at some point feeling stuck. in a way that felt like I felt as a kid, not enough, pick blast, and something's wrong, and screw those guys, right?
00:55:53
Speaker
Not just one time. um When my energy had dropped, and then i and then something came through, like the treasure of life started to whisper in my ear and said, how would you be seeing this if you were in the temple at the ashram?
00:56:07
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Would anything change about how you'd see the so-called others in the gym if your context was, I'm in the ashram right now? I was like, of course it would. My job was to be welcoming. I was on the security team, but my job was to be welcoming regardless of how something was presenting. So I had a context and I had ah belief that there was an energy that was supporting my ability to do that.
00:56:34
Speaker
Well, that's available everywhere.
00:56:40
Speaker
And just being willing to consider that was enough that I could start to see the so-called other people i was feeling judged or judging differently. And they didn't do anything different. the The room didn't change, but in an instant, everything changed.
00:56:56
Speaker
think What do you see about that in these moments, these human interactions, like these ways we can resource ourselves and then everything looks different? Like what are the simple resources that you see that anybody at any stage of development could work with and practice for this treasure to reveal?
00:57:15
Speaker
i think you just described it, Scott. You draw on your resources. You go, how would mom have done this? How would God look at it? How would... People in the ashram look at it.
00:57:28
Speaker
Life is the ashram, right? Every moment. Yeah. Right? What would love see? What would love say? What would love do? Exactly. How would Jesus do it? Whatever your whatever your thing. How would Buddha handle this situation?
00:57:42
Speaker
Right. Whatever. But then the thing that I step back one more step then from is, and then what if I let go of the template of that? Right.
00:57:56
Speaker
Because now I don't have to live in the template. I can use the template as a wisdom sourcing, but not be trapped by the template.
00:58:06
Speaker
So I don't have to pretend to be Buddha. I go, how would Buddha handle this? Oh, that's a great way. How does that work for me right now in this moment? How would Jesus do it? How would mom do it? How would dad do it? How would Scott do it?
00:58:18
Speaker
Right. How would Kim do it? Right. And now I've got a variety of things. And eventually the templates fall away because you just have all those resources, all of these ways of responding.
00:58:33
Speaker
Like an upshift to that I'm imagining could be something like at an earlier stage, I go, what would, what would the Bible say? Or what would Jesus say? Or what would Buddha do as though there's only one answer.
00:58:44
Speaker
And then as I grow in these practices and I'm kind deeper relationship with my body and my breath, I go, huh, What did Jesus feel like when he got confronted with a bear and got resourced? What did his resourcing feel like? What did it feel like to be Buddha in a difficult moment and suddenly recognize my resources?
00:59:05
Speaker
So I'm not focusing on my projection about a historical Buddha or Jesus or Moses, but I'm more interested in like, what might it be like to feel resourced?
00:59:15
Speaker
Right. were Where I'm not freaked out, I'm not shut down, I'm curious and I know I'm safe. What might that be like? And if I can feel it, can I radiate it into the environment without needing anyone know it's coming through me?
00:59:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:59:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. and the more of us, the better. Right. they There's a saying –
00:59:44
Speaker
What is it? May you live in interesting times.
00:59:48
Speaker
And that difficult times make strong people. When you think about that, given the time we're living in, like there's some folks, maybe a lot of folks um who didn't vote for the current United States administration who are really, really scared, angry, worried.
01:00:06
Speaker
And that's inside of a context that things are going wrong. And I keep wondering, well, what if it's not pretty the way things are playing out, but in the longer arc of time, what if actually this is the best way to actually accomplish a more luminous future for everybody by confronting us with some things that we have to look inward in ourselves too, not just point the finger at the White House or the Congress or the state governance. What what are your feelings about all this?
01:00:39
Speaker
I love that. I love that. And one of the, one of the, what we can draw back on history with this too. I mean, Hitler, one of the worst experience of global harm and destruction in, know, the history of the world.
01:00:57
Speaker
And what came out of that was the United Nations. We brought in more peace to Europe than Europe has ever experienced since the dawn of Europe being a a European aspect of multiple nations, right?
01:01:11
Speaker
Longer period of peace than ever before. So the point is, even in the face of what we might call horrendous people,
01:01:24
Speaker
it's how we handle that. that leads to the evolution of what's going to be. And if we meet hate with hate, we're gonna grow hate. If we meet anger with anger, we're gonna, if we meet judgment with judgment, we're gonna grow judgment.
01:01:40
Speaker
yeah But if we hold the treasure of consciousness in our hearts as we walk through the world, now we're not spewing hatred on Trump Republicans.
01:01:58
Speaker
And if liberals are not spewing hatred onto Trump Republicans, eventually Trump Republicans are going to start viewing us differently. Because if you take a look at it from art from a liberal perspective, look at all the hate that's coming at us from the Trump Republicans.
01:02:14
Speaker
but if you can And vice versa. Exactly. If you put yourself in their shoes, look at all the hate that's being spewed from Democrats towards Republicans. and I know some extraordinary human beings who happen to align with, for one reason or another, aspects of the of the Trump Republican platform.
01:02:36
Speaker
And they're really wonderful people. They're great with others in their lives. And they're being attacked. Yeah. Just because you see the treasure of gold in it.
01:02:47
Speaker
And that's where I come back to. No matter what's going on, there's ah there's a bit of gold. There's a little bit of treasure. There's bit of treasure in what the Trump Republicans are doing as much as ideologically I might have issues with it.
01:03:00
Speaker
If I can see that treasure of gold, if I can see the treasure, then I don't have to come from hate. I can go, oh, let's work with this. Instead of coming to a knee jerk reaction, go anything.
01:03:13
Speaker
I mean, this is what the Republicans did, right? When Barack got in anything that Barack presented, they're going to do the exact opposite. Right. No questions asked. Right. We're just going to do the opposite.
01:03:25
Speaker
And we're doing the same thing. Anything Trump proposes, we're just going to do the exact opposite. We're going to completely demonize it immediately without actually taking time to go, what's really going on? what What value might be going on here?
01:03:38
Speaker
Right. And not even just in the United States. it's It's happening in Italy. It's happening in Germany. It's happening in the countries in Africa. It's happening in South America. like There's this, seems like this global opportunity for A fresh consideration of how do we share earth and the resources with all living beings, whether those are trees or bugs or people. Mm-hmm.
01:04:10
Speaker
without getting lost in how we did it yesterday is how we're supposed to do it tomorrow. You know, the United Nations, yes, wonderful gift, NATO, wonderful gift, but how do we know for certain that those are the best structures going forward?
01:04:23
Speaker
like We don't. And that's an example of a bigger system of templating as Kim was talking about, I think, which is like, oh, well we have to preserve social security exactly the way it was and Medicare exactly the way it was. and do,
01:04:37
Speaker
Life is dynamic and creative. I mean, I've heard it said that don't eat the same thing three days in a row where you start developing reactivity to it, even though that could be a healthy thing. Like if I eat eggs every day of the week, I'm likely to just develop a reactivity to eggs.
01:04:54
Speaker
So how do I develop more nimbleness and ability to be interested in the what life can bring forth as opposed to attaching to things for this illusion of safety through certainty.
01:05:09
Speaker
Right, right. I love that illusion of safety through certainty because the mind feels safe that it doesn't have to think of creative new ideas, but that doesn't mean you aren't really safe.
01:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. The narrow mindedness, the illusion of safety by making the mind feel safe that it doesn't have to be spontaneously reacting and responding and and adapting.
01:05:34
Speaker
Isn't this really safe? And I what you're saying right there.
01:05:41
Speaker
We have these ideas that we recognize about how things we think things should be without realizing that that is such a limitation on the wonderful possibilities of life.
01:05:55
Speaker
Anytime we say should, it lets us know that we're in a constriction.
01:06:02
Speaker
And so we go with the shoulds and we look at what are the possibilities, what are the opportunities here? We free ourselves from that constriction. And that makes us more nimble, makes us more flexible, more adaptable.
01:06:15
Speaker
So what is the beauty and the juice in this? I mean, it's interesting because when Obama came up with his version of Obamacare, it was virtually the same thing as Mitt Romney's.
01:06:28
Speaker
but the Republicans rejected it outright. I mean, the difference was so minor, but it was like, oh my God, Obamacare, worst thing in the world. When Mill was proposing, they're going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:06:39
Speaker
And the same thing here, here's a good example. They're looking at not letting the pharmaceutical industry control the FDA. That's something the Democrats have been saying we should do for a long time.
01:06:51
Speaker
Well, they're actually doing it. But here we are, here are the Democrats screaming and yelling, oh my God, this is so awful. But it's like, look at the truth here. They're doing the same thing, right? They're doing what we said we wanted to have happen, but never did.
01:07:07
Speaker
And it's like, this um this is the ability to zoom out, you know, we talk about zooming in and zooming out. like if I zoom in like a camera too close to something, then I'm like, this is not that I don't like it. But if I can zoom out in time and space, I can see, wait a minute.
Zooming Out for Broader Perspectives
01:07:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah let's just give them a minute and see if this is actually going in a direction we were all working towards in our own ways. Or in the relationship in the car, you want Thai food and I want Mexican and we're both really hungry and on the verge of angry.
01:07:39
Speaker
If I can just zoom out and we both care about food. we both care about each other and we both want to have a good time. How might I breathe and soften my body to contribute to that?
01:07:51
Speaker
And then there trust that there's actually a way forward. Yeah. What if we all sent massive letters instead of sending massive letters about how awful they are? What if we all sent massive letters to the one thing that we think they're doing right?
01:08:04
Speaker
Good job separating pharmaceuticals from the FDA. Pharmaceutical corporations should not be running the FDA. What if we all sent 350 million letters of approval for that? Right? You think that would take their behavior?
01:08:20
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Look at this. And given quantum entanglement, we don't have to write a physical letter. It's nice because that might be their love languages, words of acknowledgement and appreciation. However, to actively be aware that I am connected, you are connected, we are connected to everything inextricably.
01:08:39
Speaker
And that if I actually extend without trying to be special, if I actually extend a blessing stream, it's not mine to you, whether you know it or not, I don't have to call you on the phone, but it will impact you.
Concluding Thoughts on Growth and Energy
01:08:53
Speaker
Like what's the nourishment blessing stream that doesn't have to agree with things we we know are egregious or or problematic, but that sends coherent energy to the representation or to the people in the corporations or to my boss or to the my you know disenfranchised parent.
01:09:11
Speaker
If I actively can move into that blessing stream for myself and whoever I'm considering, what might happen you differently? Exactly. It's no wonder that the garden doesn't grow if I cover it up and don't water it.
01:09:26
Speaker
But if I expose it to sunshine and clean water, well, what are the elements of that energetically and how we relate to one another? Yeah. So this is where we have this beautiful conversion of the material world and energetic world coming together. So if I exude the energetic blessings, then I walk around in the concrete world.
01:09:46
Speaker
with that energetic blessings and people in the concrete world feel that and feel the difference of that. And that populates on the concrete level, which when their energy changes on the concrete level, it changes on the energetic level, of course.
01:10:01
Speaker
And now that just spins and spins and spins and spins. sand powerful And if I meet you energetically with anger or rejection, then that solidifies that anger and rejection and that populates all around.
01:10:19
Speaker
So we're moving towards, and I can feel that we're more moving towards this completion. There's a question I like to ask every dialogue partner on the show. And it's, stands on the foundation of this beautiful saying that I've brought to my students over the years from Suzuki Roshi, Shunryo Suzuki, who opened the Zen center of San Francisco in the sixties, very realized Zen master, an extraordinary being. and he'd say he'd say, death is certain, the time is not.
01:10:48
Speaker
What is the most important thing?
01:10:53
Speaker
What does that evoke for you in your life, Kim?
01:10:57
Speaker
That is certain that time is not. What is the most important thing? It invokes in me that the most important thing is to stay fully present and alive and energetic. Because if stay present, alive, and energetic without templates, without concepts, without constructs, without deriving me or controlling me, that that will help spread that energetically in the world.
01:11:21
Speaker
and that the real change in the world comes from each individual's grassroots change, personal change and growth. And as that energy spreads, it spreads in these secret ways that can't be controlled, top down, through dictatorships, right?
01:11:38
Speaker
Like you can't dictate, well, your energy level has to be different, right? Yeah. eight But, you know, my consciousness can't be clear, right? Right? So the most radical form of that is to just stay, I'm going to just stay clear in my consciousness, in my love, in my openness, in my adaptability.
01:12:03
Speaker
And actually what came to me is to just be exactly the way I've been being when you said that.
01:12:13
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for being you. And bringing all your curiosity and openness to the moment here with me, with us.
01:12:27
Speaker
As we mentioned at the top of the show, and they'll be in the show notes, you can explore Kim's work at kimbarta.org. ah There's some really powerful self-paced courses there.
01:12:40
Speaker
A deeper you go, you have the opportunity down the road to be on the list to work with Kim. last I knew, he's got a, at least a three-year waiting list for private work.
01:12:51
Speaker
But if you start doing that work with his courses, you bump up on the list and there are other opportunities to engage with Kim around the world in person. So you can find out about all of that at KimBarton.org.
01:13:03
Speaker
Do we have the possibility looking forward to a book from you at some point? Yeah, my books, I have a trilogy on love that's coming out. um It should be out this year sometime. I can't guarantee when. We're shooting for Thanksgiving Day, but we wanted to tweak some changes and um wanted to get the make sure the quality was good rather than the speed. so um I think we'll have it ready to release by this spring. I might choose not to release it until fall just because a lot of times in the summertime people go on vacations and aren't into reading a book. Maybe they are.
01:13:41
Speaker
I'm open to feedback, everybody. Should be released in the spring or should it be released in the fall? I don't know. So but at any rate, yeah, there is love relationship and flow, which is the meta model on love that we kind of dipped into a little bit.
01:13:55
Speaker
It's got the love matrix. It's got the golden triangle. It's got flow tools that help us understand how to be in flow with people so that we don't end up in in these problem spaces.
01:14:06
Speaker
so much. This works for any kind of relationship, whether it's parenting, whether it's romance, whether it's friendship, whether it's the neighbor, whether it's a business colleague, whatever, you can use these tools. And and I'm getting a lot of positive reviews on them.
01:14:27
Speaker
And then there's the love relationship and flow journal. So you can apply it directly to your life very well. And then third one is, I'm going to hold back the title yet, but it's more an inspirational book.
01:14:39
Speaker
It's a little more of a... Wonderful. Yeah. Well, I look forward to having you back to dialogue together again, particularly to support the people getting connected to the material in these books. So we'll stay in touch about that. Okay. And...
01:14:58
Speaker
Just love you, man. Just really, really love you. i love you too. It's so delightful to be with you. You've got such a beautiful glow and I just have always enjoyed being around you. Thank you.
01:15:09
Speaker
Thank you. All right, listeners, I recommend you listen to this maybe more than once because we cover a lot of ground pretty quickly together. And I also invite you to listen in such a way that you're listening past the words.
01:15:24
Speaker
to the feeling because there's something present that Kim and I are experiencing with one another. That's not just for us and it's not owned by us. And that really is where the juice of this podcast is, is the space between the words. We're going to share concepts and tools and practices, but the real juice is the treasure of all of life pulsing behind and between the words.
01:15:46
Speaker
So with that said, may the fruit of all of our inner work uplift all beings as well as the earth. May we be happy. May we be well. May we feel thoroughly loved. Maybe so. And so it is.
01:15:58
Speaker
Thanks, Kim. Thank you.
01:16:03
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
01:16:23
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.