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3 . Relatefulness - Jordan Myska Allen
430 Plays2 years ago
Teacher, coach and founder of The Relateful Company, Jordan Myska Allen, jumps onto talk about MANY THINGS.
- What is relatefulness?
- Nerding out on the limitations of Circling and T-Group
- Constraint based practice vs Options based practice
- Opening to beauty in all its forms
- Meditation and non dual stuff
- and lots more
Find Jordan at https://www.relateful.com/
References
I think this is all the people and works directly referenced in this conversation, in case you want to explore any of these topics more:
John Wheeler, nondual teacher in the lineage of Nisargadata Maharaj
The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
Ken Wilber, integral philosopher
Alan Watts, spiritual entertainer and popularizer of Zen in the west.
A Course In Miracles - Helen Schucman
Kennth Wapnik, interpreter of A Course in Miracles
Tao Te Ching (linked is Ursula Le Guins translation, a great one and there are many many others)
On Becoming an Alchemist - Catherine MacCoun
Recommendations
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Transcript
Introduction to Santa Miraculous and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, welcome to the Santa Miraculous. I am your host, Robbie Carlton. Today, my guest is Jordan Miska Allen. Jordan is a facilitator, teacher, and coach, and he runs the Relateful Company, which offers relational practice online. So it's a platform that lets people do relational practice.
00:00:25
Speaker
with other people online. We get into a lot of different things.
Podcast Topics Overview
00:00:32
Speaker
We cover a lot of different territory, different schools of meditation, spirituality, nerding out on integral, nerding out on relational practice, and it's a really fun conversation. I had a great time, and I think you will too. Now, before we dive in,
00:00:49
Speaker
There are a couple things I think because Jordan and I have a lot of shared context, I think we go kind of fast and we don't explain everything we're talking about.
Understanding 'Circling' and 'Tea Group'
00:00:59
Speaker
We, because we kind of, we both know what we're talking about. So I just, before we dive in, I just want to.
00:01:04
Speaker
very briefly explain a couple of things that we talk about in the conversation but don't actually stop to explain. So first of all, circling. Circling is a relational practice where a small group of people get together either in person or online for maybe an hour, maybe 45 minutes, something like that.
00:01:24
Speaker
Just a little chunk of time. And they have a conversation about what it's like to be with each other in the moment. So it's a kind of relational meditation. And there's a lot more to say about circling than that. But I just wanted to give you an image so when you hear us talking about circling, you'll have an image of what that actually is in case you don't know what circling is.
00:01:50
Speaker
Tea group is another very similar practice. So we also talk about tea group. There are differences. I'm not going to go into the differences today. Look out for a future podcast where I get real nerdy about differences in relational practice, but it's not right now because I want to get to Jordan as fast as possible.
00:02:06
Speaker
But just know when we say T group, it is a different variation on that theme that has some different kind of structures and different constraints.
Ken Wilber's Influence
00:02:14
Speaker
And then the last one is we reference Ken several times. Whenever we reference Ken without any qualifiers, we're talking about Ken Wilber, the integral philosopher.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I just, we never stop to say, we're talking about Ken Wilber, but that's who we're talking about when we say Ken. There is another Ken in the podcast comes up briefly, but it will be clear from context who we're talking about. If you're not sure who we're talking about when we say Ken, we're talking about Ken Wilber.
00:02:40
Speaker
So there you go. There's some additional context. Don't worry about it too much. I just wanted to make sure that you had some images for some of the things we're saying. And so that's enough of all
Parenthood and Evolutionary Reflection
00:02:53
Speaker
that. And without further ado, I bring you Jordan Miska Allen.
00:03:14
Speaker
It's going pretty good, yeah. Let's see, what today started by waking up and with my son crying and grabbing him and knowing he would sleep a few more hours if I...
00:03:26
Speaker
was pulled him into the bed with me. So yeah, I started with parenting, which is awesome. I love it. And that's new. Yeah, it's new. Yeah. 16 months, almost 17 months. Another baby on the way, but it's, I mean, everyone talks about how being a parent or being a dad or whatever changes your life.
00:03:46
Speaker
And in some ways I feel like it's, it's hard to name the changes because they're, you know, frog boiling and water situation. But in some ways I can, I can speak to very specific, like felt sense visceral shifts that have lit me up.
Continuing Conversation Post-Editing
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah. Tell me, give me, give me a couple.
00:04:06
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. One, one is, I had a moment where I was hiking and he was, this was early. I go, you know, Jack, my son was probably four months old. He was strapped onto me. It's hiking on lava rock. And I was like, holy shit. It took us a few billion years, but like lava rock finally learned to walk and self reflect. Cause I could, I could feel like through the linear, I'm like, okay, his, I'm his dad.
00:04:30
Speaker
I had a dad, he had a dad, you know, eventually we go back, eventually somewhere way back in the day, there were some sort of like self organizing proto cell virus thingies in lava rock that were learning to be alive. So like this, there's a visceral felt connection to the whole like evolutionary train that I never had before.
00:04:53
Speaker
I love that, I love that. I've been talking about that. It's funny, my wife will be delighted that this is the conversation we're starting with. That's something I've been feeling into in terms of the idea of fatherhood and considering fatherhood. Exactly that, this sense of being part of the main current of life.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, there's this huge kind of vote or investment or hope in the future, I think, in saying like, yeah, like I want this to keep going. And I've got friends like I rock climb with a friend who's like, we're destroying the planet and we've got to like, like, intelligent people should not have kids. I so I respect I'm like respectfully disagree. I think that that is like, if you want to keep living today, you should also want to have kids.
00:05:45
Speaker
Editing Robbie here. This is a slightly awkward how the sausage gets made moment So after the section you just heard there was a little bit that I ended up cutting out just for kind of flow reasons Just wanted to keep keep the energy moving and kind of get to the heart of the conversation but but then the conversation really starts up with Jordan coming back to that thing you just heard and
00:06:08
Speaker
Bringing an adjustment to what he previously said and kind of saying you know what actually I want to say that a little bit differently and So this is just me saying that's there I couldn't find a good way to transition it in the edit without just saying here's a little break and then the next thing you're gonna hear is is From a few minutes further down the road in the conversation and we'll carry on like that
00:06:30
Speaker
But there's still something tickling my mind. I want to backtrack for a second. I said something like, if you want to live, we talked about Kamu, if you want to live, you want to have kids. And I think that's a little too extreme. And I want to honor that, like, people that can't for whatever reason, biology, age, there's all sorts of factors that I could imagine someone
00:06:51
Speaker
misinterpreting what I said that I'm like, I want to honor that that not everyone can even if they want to. And there may be other reasons that people don't want to.
Personal Growth and Healing
00:07:02
Speaker
So yeah, just some way I wanted to include anyone who's in that boat and, and that that might still be tragic. And I feel like I wasn't attuning to that.
00:07:15
Speaker
Well, now I have to segue. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about, I read a training manual, if you send me kind of in preparation for this, and that kind of reminds me of the, or brings out the, the central thing that stood out to me. There were a lot of things I liked about the training manual because I love that I have a teacher who kind of talks about like every human life has dignity and there isn't a failed life.
00:07:43
Speaker
But that doesn't mean, like you said, it doesn't mean they're on tragedies and that doesn't mean they're on regrets. And there was something in your, maybe it wasn't in the manual. It was somewhere you were talking about, we might never heal. You're talking about healing and these wounds from the past and kind of like, well, and we can resolve them and have these openings and have this kind of beautiful new capacities. And some things might never heal.
00:08:09
Speaker
And just kind of saying, that's okay. Like, that's okay. And really kind of taking away this trance.
00:08:20
Speaker
that there's a way of getting it right. And that the stakes and the stakes are high. I mean, you know, there's a song lyric from a guy who I think has now been canceled. So I'm not going to name drop it. But for kind of reasonable reasons, I don't know. I just don't fucking know. But he has this great song lyrics. So I want to say it. He says, everything's at stake. It makes it hard to concentrate.
00:08:43
Speaker
And, and everything is at stake, but it's not, but the stakes are not black and white. Maybe that's the thing that I got from that communication of yours.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really important that I am surrounded by this kind of personal growth, which even that name is kind of funny. There's something like interpersonal growth or God growth. I don't know what it is, but there's some like emphasis on the self or the ego that I balk at with the term personal growth, but fine, let's use it. People know what it means. But in this world of personal growth and healing and therapy and coaching,
00:09:19
Speaker
There's a kind of materialism. It's not quite the Trungpa-style spiritual materialism. It's almost like developmental materialism or healing materialism where people
00:09:32
Speaker
are just trying to get more and more shadow integration or more, more whatever it is and not realizing that that comes from this deep thing. I think you were actually speaking about earlier, like there's a deeper existential sense of like, I'm not enough. I don't belong here. Um, there's something fundamentally wrong with me as existence, probably even beneath the personality.
00:09:56
Speaker
And there's some kind of subtle, gentle relaxation that I want to bring to people saying like, it's okay, you do belong. Sure, things are fucked up. It might suck. It might be absolutely terrible. Some of those wounds are ridiculously bad and harmful and created these situations where we're very limited in our range. And even within a tiny range, we can have incredible lives.
00:10:23
Speaker
And there's something that we, like, it's actually, I think intuitive.
Meditation and Enlightenment Insights
00:10:27
Speaker
Like you have your dogs, I've got my cat. Like we don't really think like, Oh, what a, what a shame that our, our cat can't, I don't know, do all the things that the human can do. We're like, we're like, man, like he's just laying around and napping all the time. That looks amazing. You know, the same is true when you have, if I think parents of special needs kids really get a sense of this, of the beauty and joy of life within a limited range.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it makes me think of like, uh, when you meet a dog that has three legs, right? This lost a leg in an operation or something. That dog is never self-conscious. Like the dog is never like, oh man, like I'm not like the other dogs. The dog just is living its best life, right? I think that's one of the amazing things that kind of having these, having these animals around teaches. I think it teaches a lot of different amazing things, but that's definitely in there. We have a two year old dog and, uh, he's not living up to his potential.
00:11:21
Speaker
And it's now a fault because he's really smart if you teach him a trick. It takes him like five minutes to learn a new trick and he really loves to train. So if like we were less busy or more disciplined people or whatever, we would just be training him all the time and he would be able to dance merengue and do backflips and whatever.
00:11:40
Speaker
So he's not living up to potential, but you know, even talking about that, it's kind of, it's ridiculous, right? It's like, it's fine. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm thinking as you're saying about, like what, one of the reasons I think this is challenging for people is that they, it feels like, Oh, are you giving up? You're not going to, Oh, you're not going to train the dog to its potential. Like.
00:12:02
Speaker
Um, and that feels like scary personally, but also like, are we going to end up back in a cast system and like, where, oh, you're just given this and that's what you have to be. And, and that like, I think that's in some ways a reasonable fear, but a misinterpretation of it's okay. Like it's okay. And you're totally free to train or not train the dog. You're totally free to heal or not feel, and you can't do it all at once anyway. So look, look for what's next, take
Healing and Present-Oriented Approach
00:12:30
Speaker
that step. And then.
00:12:32
Speaker
see if you can balance moving and growing with enjoying and being. One of the ideas that came to me as well is like, well, yeah, I'm in a class right now and it's a meditation class and the focus is really on enlightenment.
00:12:46
Speaker
And the teacher is pitching full enlightenment, like, and you got it, you get to the sun and it's very structured. It's like, there's this stage and this stage and this stage. You get to a particular stage and then you're going to stop burning off your comic residues. And you might get through all of that in this lifetime, or you might just like clear out the path for the next lifetime.
00:13:05
Speaker
And I really don't like that idea. It doesn't feel true to me. It doesn't inspire me. It actually shuts things down for me. It creates like a comparing mind of like, well, am I enlightened yet? Definitely not. So therefore like, I'm not really there yet. And what I have to do, you know, I find this, like I, you know, I, I have a lot of time for Sam Harris and I think he's doing a lot of good stuff to.
00:13:29
Speaker
to bring meditation to a lot of people and kind of really to sanitize is not a nice word but like make it palatable to a lot of people that otherwise would not translate or bridge or be a Gnostic intermediary if we want to be I love that. I love that. Yeah, like, you know, like a sleeper cell or like an undercover agent or something. I mean, I don't think you would would characterize itself like that. But again, like this this non dual thing that's like, there's a thing
00:13:57
Speaker
And you're either getting it or you're not. And if you're not getting it, you got to keep going until you get it. That's like, has this, yeah, it just, again, it sets up. And I think this is almost certainly typological. Like some people typologically really like that. Like, great. You know what I'm working with. And then some people like myself and I'm kind of feeling you're in a similar mode, just saying like, there's not a goal as a path.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah. So this has kind of come back to what you were saying of like, people will heal to the degree that they heal and healing is really positive. Like while it's happening, it's really great to have an intention to heal, to work towards healing and to experience healing in your life is really positive. And there isn't a final there that you are trying to get to. There's just a state of increasing openness to
Relateful Company Platform Overview
00:14:48
Speaker
life.
00:14:48
Speaker
And part, yeah, I mean, part of the issue with having an orientation towards like, there's a final there there is that you end up assuming that here is not enough and all you have is here. Right. And the there there is here. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the, yeah, the great irony is that that that's the non dual teaching is like the, the love, the enlightenment, the presence, the basic knowing, whatever you want to call it. It's, it's only always here.
00:15:15
Speaker
Or I guess you could say it's almost like outside of here and a timeline. There's just kind of empty holding that everything is inside of and you're like, all right, like all the rest of it is play shadows. So, yeah, there's something I sympathize with. I like I really like the there's this whole kind of like Nisargadatta Maharaj lineage.
00:15:40
Speaker
that, um, I like this guy, John Wheeler, and I think he speaks really nicely to the, both the like, the thing is art. He does the non dual thing of like, it's already, you're already here and, and like, don't fuck with all the other stuff. Like all the mind stuff, all the, whatever, like it's no big deal, but he does it in a very casual way. He's not making you wrong for it. He's like, that's really not it. And if you want it, like, here's where it is. Just, just do a little looking, you'll find it.
00:16:04
Speaker
I don't know, I've never heard him speak but that's what I get. That's the vibe I get. I want to ground this a little bit in, I read your training manual and I want to first ground it in a little bit of our shared context and then I want to know some more about you because we know each other tangentially. Right.
00:16:21
Speaker
I think we've been in the same place. We were at one conference together once. I don't think, I think that's it. And we, you know, we have a lot of shared connection and we have a background in relational practice. That's your kind of main gig now. And that's the context that we met in. And then I think we also have a lot of shared background in integral. Yeah, you being an integral nerd. I am also an integral nerd and.
00:16:45
Speaker
maybe as part of that I'm getting like there's a lot of shared references in terms of Meditation and spiritual practice and stuff like this. So this is kind of some of our shared context I'll just also say this very weirdly and I think this is public so I'll just say it that my mom works for your company She's one of your facilitators. So that's another fun point of connection. So I hear your name from time to time to my mom's, you know
00:17:09
Speaker
talking about the work she's doing with your platform, which do you want to name? I don't know what it's called today. So yeah, yeah. And your mom is awesome. I love it so much. She's
00:17:20
Speaker
a wonderful, as we talked about briefly in our little prep call, it's just a wonderful, deep woman, and I'm really grateful to have her. So yeah, the platform historically has been called Circle Anywhere, and we're moving to focus on relatefulness, like mindful relating. She can say be relateful, use it as an adverb, use it in a bunch of different ways to kind of point to something in in experience or culture that isn't
00:17:48
Speaker
a very, a specific process with a trademark on it or like bounded in a particular way.
Relational Dynamics and Focus Sessions
00:17:53
Speaker
So the company is now called the Relateful Company and Circle Anywhere is becoming Relateful Anywhere. You know, we have this history of circling. We have an influence from integral theory, all these influences. So there's no rush to move away from the term circling. It's totally fine. And we'll see this kind of organic unfolding as we change the name and see what people do with it.
00:18:16
Speaker
And I mean, while we're talking about it, do you want to just in a little more detail, kind of give a pitch for the platform and what it is that people would, would get and do that? Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Yeah. I forget because the pitch, I'm not so good at pitching. I forget. I actually just think it's fucking amazing and I love it. And I'm like.
00:18:35
Speaker
So excited to share it because it basically being relatable is in its most simple form is mindfully relating. Like what's it like to be right here, right now with us? You know, what's it like to be you with me? What's it like to be me with you? And then what's our we like? Well, we're not assuming that we're creating a relationship from the primacy of our individuality, but we're also assuming that our relationship is creating us.
00:19:03
Speaker
So there's this kind of like interpenetration of, it sounds a lot more complicated than it is, like the actual fact is like, let's just go and see what it's like. Like say some stuff that's here, discover things, fuck around and find out. You know, you're going to mess up, you're going to discover emotions that you never realized were there. I thought I wasn't an angry person until I started doing this practice and I was like, holy shit, there's a lot of anger that I have been
00:19:28
Speaker
completely and utterly blocking out of my self identity. And it's been running me anyway. And everyone else probably codes it as arrogance or whatever other ways that it was sneaking out and keeping me from the kind of character and ideal that I was aiming for. But anyway, so the platform basically is we have session six or seven sessions a day that are led by facilitators like your mom, who do a variety of things. One is
00:19:57
Speaker
working on fundamentals, which are basically doing a certain thing like, hey, let's really focus on naming what it's like here and now. Seeing you nod, what's it like for me, all this kind of stuff, just naming or let's focus on what's the experience of awareness like right now? Can we name that? Anything, it could be any bit of like a, just take a bit of experience
00:20:18
Speaker
put an arbitrary bound on it and then give a very simple structure like a sentence stem or a set of instructions and go back and forth relationally practicing. So yeah, typically often people say, say I notice and then you go back and forth. But you can use the same structure to say like, let's inquire into the nature of
00:20:38
Speaker
being. Or let's use the same structure to say, okay, as soon as you know what you're going to say, stop talking and only speak if you don't know what's coming out of your mouth. These kinds of things. There's a ton of creativity and fun. So yeah, if you come to the platform and go to fundamentals, you'll get breakout into pairs, triads, small groups and practice different aspects of relating presently.
00:21:02
Speaker
If you come to a focus session, we'll pick one person for a certain amount of time. Sometimes they do speed focus, they'll be like 10 minutes. Sometimes it'll be a full on 45 minutes an hour. It sounds so intense, but this is of course historically called the birthday circle.
00:21:19
Speaker
done a ton of these and let a ton of these and you know like almost everyone who's like holy shit 45 minutes attention on me after like two or three minutes is like thinks it's wonderful and is surprised how quickly the time goes yeah 45 minutes sounds like not enough time but but but from the from that seat from the seat of having done those i like the rebrand by the way i think focus circle is uh works better than but they circle
00:21:42
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, it's a little more descriptive, like we're focusing. And I like the birthday makes it seem like we're giving you something if we're focusing on you. And we are, but on the other hand, it's not like people didn't get the mindset of like, Oh, the attention's on me. So I'm the one that is like getting something out of this and everyone else is here to support me or holding space or something.
Concept of Relatefulness
00:22:03
Speaker
And I just don't think that's how life or reality works. Like,
00:22:07
Speaker
In actuality, that person is the breath of our meditation and everyone is doing a transformative practice. And the person who doesn't say anything might be the one growing the most or the facilitator. That's absolutely right. And I love that, like exactly the, the reframe, because then the other thing that happens, especially in a, in a weekend is like people are just waiting for their birthday.
00:22:27
Speaker
That's right. It's like, well, you know, this other time it's just me kind of hanging out and then, and you know, as a facilitator, you try and steer people away from that, but everything you can do to steer people away from that I think is valuable. I would say like the thing in a circle, which we haven't really described.
00:22:44
Speaker
Uh, but maybe we should, but I'll say this and then maybe we can, we can do that. But the thing in a circle that distinguishes the, the one in the focus is they're the only one that is not practicing a discipline. Right. So everybody else is, is doing concentration meditation and they're just doing chicken Taza both great. Like if you're going to meditate, it's good to do concentration meditation. It's good to do chicken Taza. So there's something different, right? But it's not a, it's not about.
00:23:10
Speaker
who is receiving and who is kind of having something, believe them. Right, exactly. I actually don't know what Chikentaza is. Chikentaza is just sitting is the literal translation. So in Soto-Zan, it's the kind of main practice of Soto-Zan. And it's literally, there is a description of the posture that you're taking and the amount of time that you're doing it for. And that's the instruction. It's not strictly true that there's more stuff, but like essentially it's just get into this posture, just sit. Right.
00:23:40
Speaker
And, and you can kind of hear it as like, the only instruction is sitting. So it's just sitting like, and then beyond that, do whatever you want. And you can also hear the instruction as the only thing you are doing is sitting. Right. And you're not doing anything else. But so there's, you know, a fun like Zen is often like that where you kind of, it's like.
00:24:02
Speaker
playful, foolish. Yeah. And also the kind of, I think it's called the necker cube, like that cube that you look at it one way and then it kind of flips and you suddenly see it the other way, right? Yeah. Like there's a, there's a quote. I have already have said this on the podcast, but I'll say it again. Somebody's saying Zen is good for nothing is another one of those. So anyway, so that's, so she can toss it, right? Like there's no additional discipline beyond the discipline of being in the seat of meditation.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, if you go to, you know, Relateful.com and you sign up for a session, you'll notice like there's sessions you can sign up for and you can show up for an hour to do a practice and you know, we'll give you, you can also get like a free orientation course if you want instructions, but a lot of it's similar to Zen and we're like, come in and give it a shot. And you know, if you want instruction, you can get it. If you don't, if you want to just come in and play,
00:24:55
Speaker
That's great too. People really come in with a wide variety of experience and history. And so it's like, let's have some fun. Let's go crazy.
Community Integration and Dialogue
00:25:06
Speaker
Those forms are more structured and allow for people who haven't done much of all to still get a good experience. And so we actually have a free membership. So anyone who wants to can go practice four hours a month.
00:25:20
Speaker
um, repeatedly as much as they want for the rest of their lives without paying a dime. And that's, that's, you know, partly a, uh, like entrepreneurial kind of freemium business model, but also a way to say like, I think this is just fucking great for everyone or anyone actually is a better way to say it. Not for everyone, like definitely not for everyone, but it's for anyone and want to be able to make it available. And then there's deeper ways you can go in and, and
00:25:48
Speaker
you know, sign up for weekends and trainings and courses. But the other thing that people really love that we do is what we call now a flow session and has like roots in organic circling and all sorts of stuff, roots in probably in tea groups and in all this, roots in everything, roots in Quaker meetings, roots in sitting around the fire and talking about deep things.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I think this is what a lot of people will talk about as like emergent dialogue practices or kind of we space practices. I think giving it too much of a name misses the beauty of like, so we call it flow cause it's like all I know for sure is there's a flow. And actually there's a lot of room for multiple constructs to be present simultaneously on what it is that we're even doing. We don't have to resolve it. We don't have to come to shared reality. We don't have to like,
00:26:44
Speaker
You could be here for healing. I could be here for collective sense making. Someone else can be here for running an experiment on if they can do their Zen practice in the midst of chaos. And these all actually support each other.
00:27:02
Speaker
So it's like this very lightly... The other thing that's really beautiful about it, it's really challenging for a lot of people. And that's a beautiful thing because they can't rely on the kind of typical structure of like, wait, I know what to expect and I know how to be in the room and I know what to do to be good and to do it right. I know what the rules are.
Group Dynamics and Meaning-Making
00:27:25
Speaker
And so they're confronted with what are the rules that I think I should be following and which ones do I actually want to claim for myself?
00:27:33
Speaker
And the collective or the group has all these silly norms and I've gotten the benefit of being able to lead in different countries, in different languages. So even when people are like, oh, these are, you know, relatefulness norms, like a lot of times they're not, they're very specific to that culture or even that micro culture of that group.
00:27:53
Speaker
It's really nice, new people come in and they're like, wait, why the hell do you guys constantly say I feel? Do you ever think things? It's a good one. Sure enough, thinking is part of presence and being related too. Very important actually, turns out. It turns out evolution created this incredible self-reflective capacity that transcends and includes everything that came before it.
00:28:20
Speaker
We shouldn't throw it away if we want to have rich, meaningful lives. So in T group, I've spent a lot of time in T group since leaving the circling world. And this thing you're describing is very T groupy, right? Like, yeah, this kind of flow. And T group does have some constraints. There are some kind of specific, which I mostly flaunt. Anyway, but one of the things that will happen periodically in T group is part of what you do in a T group is you share a feeling.
00:28:48
Speaker
Or kind of in the moment experience, which typically is a felt sense or some kind of like, not so much a thought. And then you can tie it with a thought, right? And you kind of have this, this form headline, exactly a headline.
00:29:00
Speaker
And, and so, and that's a way of giving people context. And periodically, somebody will say, let's do a T group without headlines. Like, let's just do a pure, like, let's get to the pure, like, let's cut out this heady, trying to explain things. And what happens is completely disconnect. Right. You can get into a fun state where you're meditating essentially and saying, I feel
00:29:23
Speaker
this, I feel that, but me just saying, I feel sad and then you going, okay, and I have no context for that. Is that about what I said? Is it about a thought you had? Is it like the only thing you can say in response to that is like, well, I feel confused or I feel, and it just becomes completely like a bad trip. It becomes completely incoherent. So anyway, yeah, just to say like the mind is really great.
00:29:51
Speaker
Right. Well, I like to think about meaning making, like there's some sort of like life or happening sense and there's some sort of interpretive framework. And I mean that in the most general sense, like my butt on this chair is interpreting stability. I don't know if it's actually stable, an earthquake could come and a meteor could come, like it's not guaranteed, but it's a good bet.
00:30:14
Speaker
And so there's some sense in which like there's a bunch of meaning making happening and it's all, I think of it almost as like a cube where each meaning making separation that we, all these are, maybe a diamond is better with a bunch of different faces. Could be 70 faces, I have no idea, but like thought is one of the faces of the diamond, emotion is one of the faces of the diamond. You can't get one without the other. I've never seen it.
00:30:41
Speaker
I've never had a thought that wasn't accompanied by sensation and feeling and vice versa.
00:30:50
Speaker
So yeah, T group is already saying let's focus very, like I think also I've never had a thought that was in isolation from society or like the world around me. Like there's a relational face of meaning making that's always happening. And it's very hard to be with all of these at once. So we naturally focus on one or try to box a few out so we can practice, you know, like you would isolate a muscle for lifting or something.
Constraint-Based Practices and Skill-Building
00:31:16
Speaker
But T-Group is already kind of isolating the individual experience, I think, from even though it's in a group, there's a sense in which you don't follow up what someone says with, oh, could you say more? Or what did you mean by that? That's right. You don't bring your curiosity, your empathy, your compassion as a relational thing. You bring it as a kind of phenomenological, personal thing. Like, I notice I feel empathy, or I feel compassion hearing that. I'm tender.
00:31:43
Speaker
So, yeah, the more you isolate the meaning makings to one face of the vastness of the diamond or whatever, I think the less and less connected it feels.
00:31:57
Speaker
I love that. And I love the metaphor, like this is something I've been thinking about a lot recently in terms of group practice, specifically group relational practice is like the difference between a constraint based practice and a, um, and an options based practice and a constraint based practice is really valuable. Exactly. We say isolation, right? It's really valuable for learning.
00:32:19
Speaker
A particular thing. Yeah. And T group is a really, really useful constraint based practice for teaching people how to track and reveal that the impact people are having on them.
00:32:31
Speaker
in the moment, right? And for a lot of people, that is a skill that is not very readily available. So there's this great development that you can have from drilling something like that. And it kind of sounds to me like the thing you're saying, like you go play the noticing game or you go play some other curiosity game or something as the, as a, as a skill building thing. But the thing that you really want to do is.
00:32:56
Speaker
respond to what's happening with the, with the richest response available. Yeah. And sometimes that's not sharing impact in the moment. Sometimes that's something else. And so like, there's this maybe a tension and I want to drill into this cause this is the thing that I, I'm very curious how you handle this
Community Dynamics and Martial Arts Metaphor
00:33:15
Speaker
in your community. One of the things that's.
00:33:17
Speaker
challenging in the T group community is it's, it's very, it leans green. Yeah. Meaning it leans like everybody's truth and perspective is of equal value and weight.
00:33:34
Speaker
And we're not going to get into the stages today in great detail, but there's a great beauty and wisdom in that. And it's kind of, it's coming in on top of some things that were more limited view. There's great beauty and wisdom in that, but what it loses is.
00:33:49
Speaker
recognizing development and recognizing. And so I'm curious how you handle that in your community of like, there are people who presumably have been practicing with you for years, have taken a bunch of trainings, have learned a lot of these skills and can really play in an unconstrained way. You can put them in a, in a flow group and they'll flow and they'll make magic out of what's happening. And it's beautiful. And then there are people that have never.
00:34:17
Speaker
talked about their feelings with, you know, with a relative stranger before that this is brand new, they're coming in. And, and so how do you integrate that? How do you work with the, that kind of rate?
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah. I love the question because I'm actually really passionate about the range. I'm passionate about the moving beyond the pluralistic green, whatever we want to call it, the postmodern contradiction of all truths are equal. The contradiction is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a little bit of like, wait, that's asserting a truth above others. Right.
00:34:53
Speaker
And there's a thousand different ways that contradiction shows up over and over again. Let's include everybody except those that don't include everybody, which turns out is nearly everybody. Right. Maybe just everybody. Just maybe everybody, yeah. So yeah, I'm passionate about both. And so one way you can solve this is by having a kind of tiered system of like, okay, well, once you've gotten this level of development or this level of practice,
00:35:19
Speaker
Now, we know we're doing the black belts class and only the black belts practice or whatever.
00:35:25
Speaker
I think this is a totally legitimate form and we do it to a certain extent by like in our coaching course like you have to have done level up for our kind of nine month transformational program. You have to have some basis to do the coaching course, to do the flow course and so there's a place for that but in general as a practice or as a movement, I am personally passionate about having one foot
00:35:50
Speaker
in the mainstream or like in, I think it's a Zen ox herding that, you know, that you go back to the marketplace with open hands. So there's something that I find really, really valuable and important. Like I lead every Monday night here in Austin. If I'm in town, I'm there. I'm leading. It's my church. I'm there every week. I've been since 2013 or 2012. I don't even remember.
00:36:13
Speaker
when I was leading it in my bedroom. I had to move it out because that was really sketchy for women coming to a practice group. Like, wait, I'm going to this guy's house and I'm going to go to this bedroom? What? Sure, there's like 20 people in there, but like- Does that make it better or maybe not? Yeah, even more sketchy. Yeah, I think it's really important to honor the need for people to have Black Belt Club if they need it, but also
00:36:38
Speaker
When it comes to what I'm actually trying to do, we're like being present in relationship, and I want that to move into every aspect of people's lives. With your family, with the coffee shop at the barista, with work, and the vast majority of people we interact with, unless you go isolate in Auroville or something like that.
00:36:57
Speaker
are going to be not spiritually oriented in the way that you are or not developmental or not practicing T group. And so, if you require others to be at a certain level in order for you to get your kind of intimacy needs met, you limit yourself more and more to less and less people.
00:37:17
Speaker
And it's kind of the opposite of what I want. People end up more isolated, more demanding. I want to show up and help others show up in the world where it's like the trees are bringing me to my knees with tears and their beauty and the trees aren't good at communicating. I mean, maybe you could argue they are, but from that point of view, so is the person who's deeply triggered.
00:37:39
Speaker
and the boss that's getting mad at me and where I can open my heart to them still having healthy boundaries and not letting myself get walked on or whatever it is and be like, holy shit, look at that pain, look at that beauty. And so we need to continuously be practicing with people who have no idea what the hell is going on in order to cultivate that capacity.
00:38:01
Speaker
So yeah, so that's, that's not an answer to your question, but that's, that's my passion for, I really like mixing people. I like having these Monday nights be open instead of a close. I love close groups too, but people come in, they have no idea what's going on. And it's like, yeah, right. Like let me re-find every single time, why am I doing this? What am I here for? What matters to me? And not assume that I know the answer, but like look at this person's eyes and connect and find the new human that I am with them and speak to that from that place.
00:38:32
Speaker
I love that. I like the metaphor, the black belt metaphor. Cause what happens in, I mean, I'm not a martial artist, so I'm picking this up by osmosis, but my understanding of what happens in, uh, martial arts dojos is that the black belts train with everybody spot with everybody. Yeah. Exactly. Like you say, and then they also will go and do their own kind of special training and kind of dive deep and.
00:38:54
Speaker
You know, you know, when you're sparring with a black belt, you can let loose a little bit and get a little more freaky. I mean that, you know, I think that that's one of the things is like calibrating, just being responsive to whoever is in the group.
Truth, Love, and Intentional Practice
00:39:08
Speaker
Naturally, you're going to bring different things depending on who all is there and what's happening.
00:39:13
Speaker
Right. And that being able to be more freaky, you know, in relational practice, it's often the things that are not at all welcome in other relating contexts, anger, sexuality, joy, like excessive triumph. That's like not, if your team just won the game, then you can be triumphant. But otherwise, like it's not, if you walk around kind of being like, yeah, and like singing, people are like, are you okay? Are you on drugs? Do you need something? Should we call someone?
00:39:42
Speaker
So, yeah, being able to bring anger to somebody who's not going to take it personally or to be like, wow, I'm just so turned on right now with somebody who's not going to assume that means you want to hook up with them or that stuff is really important. I still will try to answer your question if you want. Yeah, if you have more answer, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, so I think the way that I try to keep the community from getting too green, it's like first of all saying yes wherever I can to the healthy aspects of green. And there's a lot, there's a lot of healthy stuff. So it's like when I can say a full wholehearted yes, my nose are not so disgusted or reactionary and the boundaries are much more clear.
00:40:28
Speaker
So the next thing I think is some sort of being really clear of what the higher aim is and being unapologetic about it and being okay with people not liking it and wanting to come anyway or not liking it and not coming. So for us, the higher aim is truth slash love or truth and love or where love is
00:40:51
Speaker
you know, has to include truth, like if I love you, it means I have to include myself, I have to include telling you the thing like long term love, not short term pleasantries, and vice versa, where you know, so each one kind of inter penetrates and holds or sees each other. So yeah, I think that's that that was a bit of a change for me moving away from circling was
00:41:15
Speaker
which has traditionally been
Context in Relational Practice
00:41:17
Speaker
much more like, yeah, it's reciprocal, it's equal and pluralistic. And I'm like, no, we're aiming at something. It's not actually really healing. It's not even necessarily presence, like presence is always here, presence is the mode or the method, but what presence is like revealing the truth love value or something like that. I don't know exactly what to say.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I kind of want to come to the defense of at least one branch of circling and circling is many things to many people. Fair. To me, that sounds very similar to at the Integral Center, which is the kind of circling that I spend a lot of time.
00:41:54
Speaker
Value the concept of alethea right and that there is this a certain kind of truth, which is a truth Which is revealed in the moment in relationship, you know I think that was the I would say the orienting kind of value of that community and if that body of work Which I it sounds pretty close it does and I
00:42:14
Speaker
actually was originally introduced to circling through an integral conference, the what next integral conference. So my exposure was integral circling. So it's no surprise that in a way it's coming back to my roots, you could say. But the other thing is like, there's a constant, the way I see, and this may be a departure, maybe not from the way you see things, but I see context as something that's like unavoidably being set 100% of the time.
00:42:41
Speaker
There is something like the words that I say at the beginning of a session are have often an outsized impact so that that's kind of the traditional idea of context you set the frame and then you enter into it and I think that's true and I want to include that but beyond that there's like a
00:42:56
Speaker
I can't not be contexting. So one of these contexts that I've been obsessing over recently that people don't even realize they're in is an individuality primacy for lack of a better description. And we briefly touched on that with birthday versus focus, but there's a ton of ways. I'll ask a facilitator or a facilitator in training to design an exercise.
00:43:19
Speaker
And without realizing it, they'll design an exercise that's very individual focused versus, say, relationally focused. So let's all take turns doing our unique expression as if your unique expression is independent from the group you're in or the people that are there.
00:43:37
Speaker
I don't quite know. These are such weird frame shifts that I don't have a great demo. What would you do instead? Probably a totally different exercise. But if you had to do a similar exercise from a different frame, it might be something like, what is this group drawing out of you right now uniquely?
Consent and Relational Decision-Making
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah. So it's really subtle, but it shifts the emphasis from my ego
00:44:01
Speaker
to like the, the collective orientation. Yeah, I love that. And you say it's subtle and for sure. If I'm sat in a circle and somebody says, demonstrate your unique expression for 20 seconds versus what is the group evoking in you right now? Let us feel left for 20 seconds. That's, I'm definitely going to do something completely different. Exactly. So another subtle example of this is like, who wants to be circled?
00:44:29
Speaker
desire now is the metric of whether or not we should circle someone. Alternatively, you can say, who's called to being circled? Now we're, we're looking for inspiration or a calling. You could also say, okay, looking around the room, like, where does your attention go? Where do you want to focus? Where do you, where does your attention want to focus? You know, there's infinite creativity and, but we so often just default to who wants,
00:44:54
Speaker
as if that's the metric, but that's a subtle context that will then move throughout the whole community of like, okay, desire, want, personal desire is the thing that we should orient to. Even if we say, we're going to be integral, we're going to be fifth order, we're going to be whatever the hell it is that we want to be,
00:45:13
Speaker
if all of our subtle communications are about like the individual, you know, even consent, and this is a very dicey area. Like I'm hope I don't get you canceled here, but uh, you're the one saying it. I'm not saying anything. There you go. Yeah. But there's a certain sense in which we talk about consent as if it's a individual thing and it's actually a relational thing. And it's a moment to moment inquiry. It's a, it's attunement. It's,
00:45:39
Speaker
Of course, it's individual. If you're the one that's deciding yes or no, I actually think it goes deeper. So another example, it's going to relate. I'm sorry, I interrupted myself. Let's say there's something in the room where I'm like, I actually just want to give this person direct advice.
Boundaries and Integrity in Practice
00:45:59
Speaker
I think that's totally appropriate for me as a leader and someone as a newcomer or probably more likely someone who's in my training program. I'm their coach. So I'll often ask directly in the moment, like, are you up for a little bit of coaching? Are you up for advice on this? Which is totally not circling. I mean, it's not circling. I can't certify you if you give people advice.
00:46:22
Speaker
Nevertheless, in that moment, yeah, it might be the most appropriate thing. And if somebody says, yeah, that's a no. So there's a sense that like, that's an example where like consent, you might think that I'm sort of like violating a principle of autonomy. Like, well, they, they said, yeah, why not go with what they said? Well, because I also, and the trick there for me is to not make it necessarily about them. Like,
00:46:50
Speaker
they may actually be fine with it. But I have made this mistake too many times where somebody said a yes in a way that indicated they weren't sure. And I don't like the results for me. Right. And I'm not attached to giving them advice. I'm not attached to them getting the thing I think that they need to get. So fuck it. It's gone.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, totally. No, I mean, I think that's I mean, that goes into so many. I mean, you know, when you say consent, it kind of very naturally raises the the relational like, you know, romantic sexual domain, right. And I think there's a similar lesson in that that like, yeah.
00:47:24
Speaker
that the kind of lukewarm, sure, I guess we could make out or whatever that's like, it's so liberating to say, Oh, well, no, let's not like, if you're not like, and there's something about that. And interestingly, sometimes what happens is, you know, somebody says, Yeah, okay, give me the advice. And you're like, Oh, it's actually it doesn't seem like you
00:47:47
Speaker
You really want it. No, no worries. Let's move on. Not in any kind of punitive or like, I'm taking my ball away, but just like you said, you don't need to give them the advice. And then they're like, well, no, actually I think, no, no, tell me. Right. And it actually gives room for the real desire to find, to find itself. Yeah. Like, and I think that, I mean, just, this is a very specific thing, but I think it's a really beautiful thing of like, you know, I'm kind of making up the stories here in this circle of like not
00:48:14
Speaker
participating in their trance of tolerating relationship, you say, Hey, I have advice for you. They go, okay, fine. Like tell me the advice. If you go, well, here's my advice, then you're, you're reaffirming the idea that like what they want or what their enjoyment, their satisfaction in the exchange is not really important. What's important is their verbal ascent, which is, you know, almost certainly parental, right? That's almost certainly they're replaying something from.
00:48:43
Speaker
Exactly. ... that people have raised them. This is a very subtle thing, but you're dismantling that a little bit. You're breaking out of a trance. Right. Yeah. As we're talking about it, I'm realizing part of it is continuously bringing the attention back to the purpose. It's almost like the focus
00:49:01
Speaker
you know, session practices the skill to continuously bring our attention back to something, whether it's a person's experience or a meeting agenda, or in this case, it's like, what are we here for? And if somebody is in a, let's say, like an experience I could imagine this coming up, it's like, let's say, or that it even has come up.
00:49:22
Speaker
there's a conflict in a circle and someone is like, coming out, what did you mean by this? And I'm thinking of an example with a guy where I think I waited too long, but I realized that, oh, like he's not trying to get more present. He's not trying to understand, he's trying to like close down to like force a
00:49:45
Speaker
and interpretation. So I asked like, Hey, are you, are you trying to like, I don't remember, I said it better than that, but you know, something like, are you, are you trying to be more present and open to the truth or are you trying to like,
00:49:59
Speaker
demand a certain thing that you already think is the case. And the guy was like, I think I'm trying to demand something that's already at the case. And so at that moment, it's not like, okay, well, let's just respect his boundary. I was like, cool, we can't circle anymore. So let's stop what we're doing right now and do something else. Like we can do breakout groups or now we'll do focus circles. Because if we can't move towards presence together, we can't do the thing.
00:50:24
Speaker
So there's some like reorientation to purpose. It's like somebody can say a no, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep doing the same thing and honor the no. I'm going to find a different way to honor their no.
00:50:34
Speaker
that also honors the thing that matters to me.
Meditation Journey and Challenges
00:50:37
Speaker
Yes. I love that. I think in the coaching manual, you talk about this, that you have a particular context for coaching that's about, and I've kind of butchered this, but about discovering somebody's participation in the circumstances of their life and what's their part, which is a great coaching question. I sometimes joke about this. One of the differences between coaching and therapy is the therapist takes your side and the coach takes everybody else's side.
00:51:03
Speaker
But in your manual where you're training people, your process, it's kind of telling people like, you can check with the client, like are they still up for that context? And if they're not, of course, like you're not going to try and make them stay in the context, but you can no longer do the thing that you said you were going to do together. Exactly. And I guess that, so that's the simple, simple response to the question 20 minutes ago.
00:51:29
Speaker
How do you keep the community from being two pluralistic boundaries? Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah, I think that's a great answer. I think that's a great answer. We got that.
00:51:42
Speaker
Give me like your origin story a little bit. Like here you are today, you're leading, you know, this, this community of people doing this kind of slightly niche, increasingly being integrated into the culture set of practices and relationality with this, you know, I'll just say about you, like you, that you're holding this very broad map and this very kind of broad view of the world is what I'm, is what I'm getting. Thanks.
00:52:07
Speaker
Let me say one more thing, which is kind of part of your setting up your origin story, which is, and I don't know if this is true, but the perception that I got from reading the book and from whatever else is like that there is a baseline of wellness.
00:52:22
Speaker
that you, it seems to me like it comes pretty easily for you. Like it kind of, it's just like something you have a lot of access to. And I'm curious, like maybe that's a part of the origin story, but like, were you always like that? Did you have to work to find that? That's a big prompt, but tell me a story. One place to start that story is
00:52:47
Speaker
My mom wanted us, my sister and I as kids, to always do something spiritual every Sunday. So we went to church maybe half the time. And the other times, her and my dad would sit down and we'd read a Bible story. And one day my dad was like, I'm going to teach you guys to meditate. And I was six years old.
00:53:09
Speaker
And the washing machine was going off in the distance. He was like, you hear that sound of the washing machine, this kind of drone. Every time you have a thought or anything comes up, you just bring your attention back to the washing machine. That's it. And it was such a great concrete concentration meditation instruction for a six-year-old.
00:53:33
Speaker
you know, no, no bullshit, no frills, no weird metaphysics. Like there's a sound focus on it. So somehow it planted a really, really deep seed. Um, and he did a few other things like that. And I think that's a cool story because it includes both my mom, like saying, we've got to do this. And my dad showing up. Yeah.
00:53:54
Speaker
And I think they both are responsible, but like another, I'm sure I was similarly aged, but I remember taking a shower with my dad and being upset about something mean my sister had said, you know, because she was the mean one and I was the annoying one. She's two years older. Right. Yeah, makes sense. And he was like, you see how the water hits the wall and just drops down and then goes in the drain. I was like, yeah, and he's like, everything she says to you is just water on the wall.
00:54:26
Speaker
It's a very masculine response, right? Right. Yeah. So, I mean, they've got their own problems too. My dad's had drinking problems my whole life and my family totally ignored that and hid from it and pretended it wasn't the problem and all this kind of stuff.
00:54:44
Speaker
not like, Oh, like, what a perfect upbringing or anything like that. In high school, I was super busy, just filled, filled up my time with any and everything. And I think because I didn't want to be home where my parents were fighting. So there's, there's plenty of that. But, but I think they gave me an incredible foundation where I went off to college and again, both think it was my dad gave me Ken Wilber's cosmic consciousness CD set.
00:55:11
Speaker
And my mom handed me the What is Enlightenment magazine that had randomly gotten mailed to her office, this Andrew Cohen evolutionary enlightenment kind of stuff. And right around the same time, I don't know why, probably from those upbringings, probably just my grace or karma or whatever. I just I wanted to study religion. So I studied Christianity, Buddhism at Rice University. And one of my professors just randomly invited me to a spiral dynamics workshop.
00:55:41
Speaker
Another one invited me to a meditation, a Buddhist monk on campus was teaching meditation. So all this kind of happened at once. I was 17 turning 18, my sophomore year of college. I was reading these Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, I got this hollow sync.
00:55:59
Speaker
you know, meditation, binaural beat thing. Did that work? Was that any good? You know, I remember that I don't think I ever. Yeah, go ahead. I have no idea. Well, here's what it did for me. For some reason, with all this stuff coming together, I just committed I was like, and again, I don't know why I don't know where I got the
00:56:17
Speaker
Diligence from but I was a sophomore in college. I was drinking I was running the bar on campus and I I committed to meditation every single day and hollow sink had a 30-minute track and they're like for two weeks do 30 minutes for After that do an hour a day and I just fucking did it and then I just didn't stop I'd be literally drunk You know like wobbling like after a party and being like oh I gotta get my meditation in Wow my my drunk meditations didn't last very long but I
00:56:47
Speaker
My hungover meditations did and it was like literally a hangover cure. Like I would wake up and be like, fuck. And then I would just feel the depth of awfulness. I would just stay like deeply, unavoidantly present to the awful feelings in my body for an hour, however long it took.
00:57:08
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I just committed really,
Commitment and Resistance in Practice
00:57:11
Speaker
really early on. And I think call a sink, whether or not the binaural beat had anything to do with it, just the structure I found really supportive. I'm going to interrupt you. Uh, I'm enjoying the story. So I, I like to know the time and place of all this stuff. So give me a, give me the decade and give me the, where did, what city were you born and raised in?
00:57:32
Speaker
Right. I was born in Houston, but my family moved to Austin, Texas very quickly. I was two or three. So the washing machine story happened in Austin, the water on the wall, Austin, that would have been 92 probably. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Rice is in Houston. So I went back to Houston and that was 2005 when I said I'm like, I was 17 or 18. Great.
00:57:56
Speaker
Yeah, and then I didn't stop meditating. I just committed for the rest of my life, just six or seven days a week, an hour a day, sometimes more, occasionally less. About five to seven years ago, I was like, I realized that the commitment itself was in the way of the practice. So I kind of surrendered that and let it go for a little while and then it came back because I wanted it to, because it was from my heart.
00:58:24
Speaker
So essentially, um, not, not including all my time doing therapy, doing, like being theropized, being coached, doing circling, leading it and being a practitioner or whatever. I've probably meditated every day for 17, maybe 18 years now. That's amazing. I'm 36. Yeah. That's fantastic.
00:58:44
Speaker
I am in a moment right now. I've been, I was meditating every day. I go in and out. So I'll meditate every day for a while and then I'll kind of, you know, get distracted or kind of forget about it and whatever. And then every time I come back to it, I'm like, Oh my God, like, why am I, why do I have a stop? And I kind of had that cycle a few times and I'm, and I'm now in a new phase of that cycle where, um, I'm not meditating every day right now. Cause I'm just.
00:59:06
Speaker
insanely busy and I'm craving it and I'm, and it's like, I'm feeling the difference between my desire and reality still of like, I actually really just want to be meditating every day and, and I'm not setting up my life for it, but it's, it's interesting to see the, the evolution from like forgetting about it to now like no craving it and not doing it, which I like better. Actually it's like, I'm like very ready and I'm going to be.
00:59:34
Speaker
I don't know, in the next couple of days, I'm going to get back into the routine a little bit. It's funny because my first exposure to meditation was from, well, not actually, not my first, but an early big influence was Suzuki Roshi, who's a Zen teacher, and he has a book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in which he says, yeah, you probably want to meditate about an hour a week. Don't get fanatical about it. Don't make it into a big thing, which it's so great for a meditation teacher to be like, yeah,
01:00:02
Speaker
you know whatever and and it's also like i think that's a little you're on the playing a little there in terms of what's actually useful amount of meditation to do for most people. One interesting thing was that for the first ten years probably and and even still.
01:00:20
Speaker
there are times it's much less so in the past few years, but there are times where much less so because I just deeply like you're saying long for and love, the kind of stillness. And I go into deeper states of joy and love and wonder and emptiness and all these things. But even still, there's like for the first 10 years and sometimes like there's there was resistance.
01:00:45
Speaker
I, despite the daily commitment, I would still be like, Oh, maybe not today. And the grace is how come I decided to do it anyway.
01:00:55
Speaker
But it was amazing to have done it, you know, literally thousands of times and still and love it and see the effects on my life and still feel resistance. And I think that speaks to the attachment we have to suffering, to ego, to the world, the seven deadly sins, whatever frame you want to put on it. There's some sense of
01:01:19
Speaker
Fear of non-existence, I think, or being confronted with the places we lie to ourselves. There's some sort of attachment to a false sense of self that makes the commitment itself hard to do.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that resistance is very interesting. I wonder about it. And yeah, I mean, one of the things I, this is a little pithy aphorism, which is not true, but it's like captures something is like an addiction is something you want to do that makes you feel worse. And a practice is something you don't want to do that makes you feel better.
01:01:56
Speaker
And so there's like, that's, you know, a lot of like going to the gym is like that, like, and of course there are people that want to go to the gym or they want to sit and meditate. I mean, I, you know, want to sit and meditate, but not, not enough that I've actually structured my life so that it's, you know, non-negotiable, right? Right.
01:02:12
Speaker
I think there's just a weird, I don't know what the, is that the ego's resistance? Is that about homeostasis? Maybe it's another way of saying ego resistance. Like, yeah, I think it's really an interesting question of why is it sometimes hard to have a good feeling going into something that's going to give you a good feeling coming out of it?
01:02:34
Speaker
I think about this a lot actually. From a kind of inquiry standpoint, if I feel the resistance, I'm often like, cool, what a great, now I'm in. I can meditate with drama now. Right, there's something to chew on. Yeah. But no, I think it's really fascinating because
01:02:54
Speaker
my own experiences, the experiences of every mystic that's ever written or shared anything, which is a tiny slice of mystics. I'm sure they speak to the quality of experience of being in this more clear state is amazing. It's amazing even in its boring simplicity. It often feels simple and mundane, and yet it's still amazing.
01:03:24
Speaker
And so I'm like, Well, yeah, it's so strange. What is it that keeps me from staying there? And sometimes it's pure, like self organizing systems habit or homeostasis, like you're saying, it's like, Oh, yeah, I just, I just have a habit that I never looked at. That's so strange.
01:03:44
Speaker
I never realized was driving me. The cool thing about that is that view is kind of outside of the attachment to that system.
Experiential Meditation and Awareness
01:03:55
Speaker
If you can look at the self-organizing system of perpetuation and call it that, you're not it. That's right. So then you can look around and be like, well, what am I? And boom, you're in this beautiful state of awareness.
01:04:09
Speaker
It reminds me of Alan Watts saying, if you get bored meditating, just realize that being bored is a really interesting sensation. Yes. Yeah, exactly. As soon as you're like, well, what is that actually, you know, what is letting me know I'm bored? Oh, actually like a vast gulf of howling grief, like nine times out of 10, right? Or like something like that, right? Like, it's like, oh, it's the reason that I was
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, had the cap on that. I also, I just want to name like the, it's interesting to me, the, you know, where the hollow sync works on it. I have my own, whatever. I have a binaural beat story, which I'm not going to tell. It's not super interesting, but hollow sync. Oh, it's really, whether the binaural beats work or not, it's striking to me that your dad taught you to meditate using sound. And then you had this practice for years of.
01:05:00
Speaker
using sound and like that's uh yeah the ways that we get in and maybe that was the the object that that worked for you for sure it's and even doing um what is uh jumbo roshi's thing camera there's there's an integral zen person who's suddenly they're mondo zen oh sure uh-huh
01:05:21
Speaker
um uses sound in a similar way and it to kind of do heart listening and it gave me I can often find a kind of uh labels are terrible but I can often find a experience of oneness through sound much more quickly than through sight or or even
01:05:45
Speaker
Sensation's weird. Sensation, if you cut off site, I think is a lot easier. I think this is fascinating. It's interesting to talk on a podcast. Like I find listening to teachers really valuable. And a lot of my, part of the reason I'm doing a podcast is a lot of really profound experiences of me happened through listening. I would listen to Alan Watto, I would listen to Eckhart Tolle and I would walk around and there's something about
01:06:09
Speaker
That means, and I love an audio book written by, read by the author, whether you're actually getting the transmission and there's some, some reason like words, audio.
01:06:22
Speaker
has a very direct way of transmitting for me. But if I'm meditating, injunctions about sound don't do anything for me. I've never understood it. Like, listen, I've never understood it. It just doesn't work for me. And sensation is very, very easily the most effective door for me. Like the thing, the way I meditate is I notice the sensation. And as soon as I notice the sensation, that opens up the whole universe.
01:06:50
Speaker
Can you give us a quick taste, like me and whoever's listening? Bring us into your world of infinite sensation. Editing Robbie here, just jumping in to say in the recording, I'm about to jump into a little story and then we'll kind of slide into an impromptu guided meditation, just a short one.
01:07:12
Speaker
If you are driving, operating heavy machinery or otherwise doing something that requires your full attention, maybe don't actually follow the instructions of the meditation. It would probably be fine. It's pretty simple kind of mindfulness meditation stuff. But just to be on the safe side, maintain as much focus as you need on the task that you're currently performing. And we'll be back into less kind of hypnotic meditative territory soon enough.
01:07:41
Speaker
I'll tell even another little story. Like I got this, I was, I was reading Eckhart Tolle for very like, uh, nefarious purposes. I was reading Eckhart Tolle cause I wanted to get better at talking to women and somebody has suggested that reading this book would help. And so I was reading this book. Exactly. Oh, the inner body, he would talk about the inner body. And so, and I was reading and it was making sense to me. He's talking about be present and like in the present, there are no problems. And a lot of it was making sense to me. And then chapter five.
01:08:08
Speaker
Remember very vividly, I hope I'm right about that, but I think it's chapter five. He talks about the inner body and he, and he's saying there's this inner body and you can pay attention to the inner body. And it has these qualities and it has this kind of tingling or this aliveness. And I don't remember exactly what he says about this, but I remember being like, I have no idea what he's talking about. No idea. And I'm just like.
01:08:30
Speaker
wrestling with this thing and I'm wrestling this thing for days and days and days and I was sitting on a train in London in the subway the underground and Just kind of like trying to find the inner body and then I suddenly had this tingling sensation in my hands There wasn't heat and wasn't contact. It wasn't the air It was it just the sensation of having hands. So this is my This is my meditation my invitation to you is just notice
01:09:01
Speaker
The sensation of having hands. Just allow that to be in your awareness. Do you feel the sensation of having hands? Yeah, instantly, as soon as you said it, and it puts me in an altered state. Like I'm, my vision is bright and golden and I can feel my hands. It's, I'm, I'm both my, I'm both that sensation and the whole world of awareness.
01:09:29
Speaker
And can you feel, can you kind of expand that out into feeling the sensation of having a body entirely? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:47
Speaker
So like that, like that. And can you keep going? Do you ever keep going? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that's good. I will start. I mean, you know, the next step is to feel the space in which that is, right? Which you're already doing, right? But it's to feel the sensation of having a body. Feeling your center.
01:10:11
Speaker
And the kind of weird, for me, when I feel my center, there is a, a Schrödinger's cat quality to it. That's like, that is my center, but that's also just sensation in awareness.
01:10:30
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. That was, that's awesome. I was wondering where you're going with the center. Cause I feel a kind of centerlessness that is also still here. Right. It's yeah, there's a centerlessness, but for me, there's also, if I invoke the idea of a center, it's not that I can't find something, but then, and then, you know, having, and then feeling that all of that is going on inside of awareness.
01:10:59
Speaker
And that there's this boundless space that, that is contained. Right. So you're feeling, you feel your hands. So now like my hands are my center and there's this tingling kind of sense of the inner body of the hands.
01:11:19
Speaker
And it's both there and not there, right? Like you can feel it. It's real. And yet there's no, there's nothing you can pin it to per se without thinking about it. But the actual sensation is kind of there and empty or something. Yeah. The way I might say that is that there is an image of hands that also arises with the sensation.
01:11:44
Speaker
but that they don't, it feels like that is conditioned. Right. And so I think it's, it's nice to notice it with hands because like when you feel, so it's like, okay, yeah, now I can feel the same with my body. There's this image of body. It's easier to access the body because I have a conditioned sense of being that uniquely.
01:12:10
Speaker
But if you expand to be the felt sense of the awareness, and you can sense the conditioned nature of the hand image, then it's easier to be like, Oh, yeah, that, that boundary I put around my skin is not necessarily, it makes sense, but
01:12:31
Speaker
It's not exclusive. Well, it's a, it's a, yeah, I mean, it makes sense in a particular worldview, right? It's a constriction of the imagination. I mean, I think that's a really interesting thing of like, there is this cloud of sensation. Right. Like, it does that stop at the boundaries of my skin, my
01:12:50
Speaker
My kind of rational mind tells me that it stops at the boundaries of my skin. But what actual, like, it's just not the same thing as if I touch my skin, that sensation stops at the boundary of my skin. That makes sense. Like I touch the air. Well, I was going to say, if I touch the air, I don't feel it. Actually, I feel it a little bit. I actually feel it in the, in the, the energy a little bit. Right. So, and then we're, you know, we get into this kind of.
01:13:15
Speaker
really weird, interesting territory that, you know, what Ken would say is that this is the subtle body and it has a physical correlate, that there's something physically existing that we're feeling that.
Interconnectedness and Individuality
01:13:29
Speaker
I don't know about that. Is there a physical correlate to the energy body? Like, like really am I feeling the inside of a physical thing? Anyway, I've kind of drift into nutting out a little bit about ontology, but
01:13:44
Speaker
Well, I think it's yes, it's there's a lot of open questions here, even even with the brilliance of integral theory. And it's part of the trickiness. And the one of the reasons I like integral is like,
01:13:56
Speaker
There's this kind of helpful separating certain things to ask questions somewhat independently, even though it's all intermingled. So we're kind of talking about two things. One is the state change. Like, oh, is there a subtle? So when I feel the whole, if I'm the whole room, the whole of everything that I'm experiencing is arising inside of awareness. And I'm actually awareness.
01:14:25
Speaker
Is there an energy of the room that I am, or is there a subtle energy? These are in some realm of states or showing up or quadrants or something, but there's some other commentary on
01:14:44
Speaker
the physical world, actually, it's more like a kind of perspective maturity shift or something of the interconnectedness of the whole of everything like, you know, I'm supposedly feeling my hands separate from the rest of the world. But like you said about air or the radiation of the sun, or it's like all the feeling that I have is actually related
01:15:06
Speaker
probably less and less, you know, this invert inverted square of something, blah, blah, blah. There's some mathematical formula for it to like a certain locality, but nevertheless, like I'm in like inextricably touching in some true sense of the word, even from my rational mind, like the sun right now. I love that. Yeah. I mean, literally.
01:15:29
Speaker
We are bathed in the radiation of the sun. Yeah. Yeah. But also you're reminding me of Alan Watts again and like the, do you have, have you had much exposure to Alan Watts? Barely, but the bit of scene I love. Yeah. I mean, he was one of the people, he's very helpful for bridging, you know, the gap between the rational and the kind of numinous.
01:15:55
Speaker
where he will do things like that, that my rational mind, when I was kind of first engaging in this stuff, could actually get on board with of like, you know, and, you know, this is the classic line of his, but in exactly the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing, you are something the whole universe is doing. Like, then there's no separation between the wave and the ocean. There's just, you know, there's, there was the big bang.
01:16:22
Speaker
And then there's just the thing which has been happening ever since. And here we are part of that happening.
01:16:29
Speaker
And this ties back to the lava rock walking and that fear of, we didn't name it this way earlier, but like, you know, this kind of fear of surrender, like, oh shit, if I realize I'm the ocean, am I going to lose my waviness? And it's like, nah, like, nah, you just lose the singular importance of it.
01:16:54
Speaker
Um, but, but not because it diminishes, but because the, the total value in the ocean is so much greater, but like the value of the wave is still maybe even more. So from the point of view of the ocean, you've just introduced a lot more relative to. Yeah. I've just, I love that. Like the feeling of like, well, if you value the wave, wait till you're the ocean, like it's like, again, right. Yeah. Right. And then the felt sense of that, cause I mean, I'm kind of talking about it rationally, but like.
01:17:25
Speaker
from the side of like being afraid of losing, yeah, it feels like somehow something important is going to be taken away from me. And from the other side of like, yeah, being the ocean that's fully wave-ing, or the universe showing up as me, it's like, wow, I couldn't lose anything that mattered.
01:17:49
Speaker
Like whatever I thought I was trying to hold onto love or connection or intimacy or success or whatever the success or achievement or connection or community or whatever this life itself was going to give
Spiritual Texts and Personal Growth
01:18:00
Speaker
me. It's like, I've, I've already got that times infinity. So no, no worries here. I think this is a fun place for us to transition into the recommendation section. Cool. You're going to share something you love with me, but also with the folks listening.
01:18:18
Speaker
Okay, so I was, I planned to do a different, I was gonna talk about Babe the Pig and maybe even Lego Batman. So I'm still gonna talk about those. Great, great, great, great.
01:18:30
Speaker
But first, there's at least one more important piece of the story of my own development that I think is worth mentioning as a recommendation. But it's been ridiculously influential on me, and that's A Course in Miracles. A Course in Miracles is this super weird
01:18:52
Speaker
spiritual texts that was like automatic writing by this kind of atheistic Jew psychiatrist in the 60s that was like didn't believe in any channeling or whatever and thought literally thought she was going crazy when she heard the voice of
01:19:10
Speaker
Jesus in her head that was saying, take notes. And she talked to her colleague and was like, Bill, I think I'm going crazy. And the bill was like, have you thought about taking notes? She's like, fuck no. So the legend goes. And then he was like, take some notes and let me know and out popped this very deep, incredibly complex, like the language is Shakespearean blank verse, like I am big pentameter. And but it's this incredibly psychologically astute
01:19:40
Speaker
treatment of human dynamics or in a lot of ways relating. It's constantly moving back and forth from this, you could say, a non-dual view and a relative view. Often in one line, the classic opening is like,
01:19:58
Speaker
fear and love, sorry, fear is the opposite of love. This is the relative, but what is all encompassing has no opposite. This is the non-dual. So it's kind of constantly saying, yeah, everything is symbols of symbols, including this course, including forgiveness, including whatever. And like some symbols will help you remember that everything is just symbols and others won't.
01:20:23
Speaker
So, there's something about – I've often kept this in the background because the text is so hard to read and so weird and easily misunderstood and easily made into another kind of post-modern, channel-y, blah, blah, blah. And it definitely doesn't do itself any favors in that department, but –
01:20:46
Speaker
But it's crazy deep. It's crazy. And it's been really, really influential on how I think this quality of me that you speak to that seems to be deeply well. One of the basic, the whole tenet is absolutely bonkers from the standard view. But it's also the classic mystical view of this is all a dream. The whole entirety of the universe is a dream.
01:21:13
Speaker
It's a projection to hide from a fake thing that you don't need to hide from. And so yeah, there's some sense of like, from this view, and it kind of says over and over again, like, the end is certain, you know, free will just means you can decide how long it takes for you to realize that you're already woken up. So no, no worries. So you can't fuck it up. You just absolutely cannot fuck it up. Maybe it takes
01:21:39
Speaker
millions of lifetimes. I don't know. It doesn't, it remains agnostic on karma and reincarnation. I think as a text, it specifically says like, worrying about these questions is like not that helpful. Um, but you can like whatever, cause it's fine. The questions of karma and reincarnation. Yeah. But yeah, I think I've, I studied that for a long time and did, there's a workbook that's like daily lessons. I did that a few times. And I think over time it really sank into me along with everything else I was doing. And
01:22:09
Speaker
Even the wrestling with how do I, how do I understand integral theory with a course in miracles, which aren't necessarily, they're often seemingly opposed to each other. The course will speak from this non-dual point of view and say like, there's no order of difficulty in miracles and a miracle's forgiveness, seeing through the illusion.
01:22:28
Speaker
So then I'm like reading that while also learning about levels of development where things are better and worse. And I'm like, is this just some weird green thing? Or, you know, like having to wrestle with that, I had to find I couldn't just take the.
01:22:42
Speaker
the lyrics of the text and sing them, I had to find it for myself and still do. I pick it up today and read something, even though I've read it a dozen times and I'm like, wow, it's as if I've never read it before. I think that's always a hallmark of a good spiritual text. You pick up the Dai De Ching and you're like, holy shit.
01:23:02
Speaker
I have been saying that line for 10 years and now I finally think I know what it means. And probably that means I don't know what it means. There's no way, right? There's no, I mean, this is, I mean, I think there is a, so much I want to respond to all that channeled material, super interesting. Um, yeah, that's, I've, I've also been massively impacted, uh, the Seth material.
01:23:24
Speaker
Which is also nuts, completely nuts. It's not something I like lead with or recommend all, I mean, I recommend it to people, but like you have to be ready to suspend your skepticism in a big way or just go in with a completely different mindset because it's easy. And I think Seth is even weirder than A Course in Miracles.
Rationality, Numinous, and Art
01:23:47
Speaker
In some way. And I've tried, of course the miracles I've, so I'll just say, I love the recommendation and it's going to make me pull it out again. I've tried and I've a number of times and bounced out every time. And I intuit that there's something in there and there's some way the language is challenging or the, the, I think there's something about like, I get into a, you know, what it is really is I get into a, doing a good job with the daily lessons of like.
01:24:12
Speaker
I want to do the thing every day. I want to do the daily, okay, there's 365 lessons, one a day, and then I'll miss a day and then I'll miss two days. And then I'm like, ah, fuck it. I fell off the train.
01:24:21
Speaker
So maybe I just need to read the book and forget about the daily practices or something. My favorite teacher of A Course in Miracles is this guy named Kenneth Wapnick. So I've got two Ken W's, Ken Wilbur and Ken Wapnick. It's so ridiculous. But Ken Wapnick, he seems to really get it at a deep level and speaks to this exact phenomenon you're talking about.
01:24:43
Speaker
where people like start to beat themselves up, bouncing out is a better option. Honestly, a lot of people then are like, Oh, now I've got to set my timers and make sure I do it. And they're missing the point because the point is really forgiveness. It's like the deepest possible forgiveness where you didn't do anything wrong. And so anytime, if you're, if anyone is, if you're ever doing the workbook in the future and you forget the lesson, like the real lesson is right there. Like what do you do with having forgotten the lesson?
01:25:11
Speaker
Do you love yourself or do you beat yourself up? You know, there's the fear of love right there. If you, if you're like, Oh, I didn't do anything wrong. It's totally fine. That is the greatest gift. You just got a course in miracles right there. Nothing else needs to be done.
01:25:26
Speaker
I love that. The other piece I wanted to respond to is the Dao De Ching and this idea of there are texts, I'm finding with Ken that I'm not getting that experience anymore. I've drunk it dry and it's fucking brilliant. It was transformative for over a decade of my life. I was reading everything he wrote and applying it to everything and doing exactly what you're saying, trying to integrate other
01:25:50
Speaker
Spiritual teachings and trying to figure out how it all came together and and really with ken is like the framework that was kind of holding the whole thing because his framework is as big as it gets in terms of like a framework it really gives you a lot of room to integrate other pieces into it yeah.
01:26:08
Speaker
And I feel like I've kind of hit a point of like saturation of the text where I like, I can kind of model. I mean, he's brilliant. I can't model him in terms of his writing or like how, you know, even his thinking of his novel thinking, but in terms of like, I can kind of model Ken internally about most subjects. I'm like, well, Ken would say, well, Ken would, you know, like that's it.
01:26:29
Speaker
And I couldn't do that with the Tao Te Ching. I couldn't do that with lots of, right? I couldn't do that with Seth. Like, maybe a little bit more with Seth. And I think there's something about one of the things I'm playing with in this project is, is what is the role of art and
01:26:46
Speaker
And like, you know, there's, there's this kind of tension between like the, the rational and then the numinous, but then like, what is the role of art? And, you know, cause what La Tzu does is the Tao Te Ching is poetry.
01:27:02
Speaker
And the thing about poetry is you can keep coming back to it. And it doesn't explain itself. And so it doesn't limit itself to one understanding. And you come back and you read it five years from now. And, you know, and another book that's like that for me is Catherine McCoon's On Becoming An Alchemist, another fucking book.
01:27:19
Speaker
absolutely crazy book that I love. She doesn't explain anything. And every time I read it, it means something different and it's richer and it's relevant to this moment and to the development that I'm in now. And so that phenomena where you like, you keep saying the same line over and over again, but every time you say it, it means something deeper.
01:27:43
Speaker
I just think it's fucking cool. Maybe that's what I was like. Yeah. No, I'm with you. It's like, and it's a nice, it's also in a way, it's a nice shoehorn out of a kind of materialist only mindset where you realize like, oh yeah, like it's not the same line or as the ancient kind of Heraclitus, like
01:28:03
Speaker
You never step into the same river twice because it's not the same river and you're not the same man. You had another Heraclitus, I just got a call out because I loved, that's the only Heraclitus line I know, right? It's the most famous one. And I know that one and it's great. But you had another really great one that you quoted in your book. Do you know what I'm talking about? The road up and the road down are the same road. I love that. I don't know why. I just, I read that and I laughed, I buzzed out laughing. I was like, that's fantastic.
01:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know why I love that so much, but so good. So thank you Heraclitus, but soon. Thank you, Jordan, for bringing my attention to
Leadership Styles in Films
01:28:37
Speaker
that one. I know we're wrapping up, but I'd love to briefly plug, um, Babe, the pig or, or Lego Batman, because I think people get so excited about all the doubt Hing and of course miracles and you know, non dual blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, also just like the regular, like literally Babe, the pig, I think is one of the best leadership movies ever.
01:28:56
Speaker
Well, I'm going to use the categories like yin and yang. They're more PC or whatever. So like Babe is the ultimate yin leader. He builds coalitions. He relates with everyone. He's friendly with everyone. He's empathetic. He's compassionate. He's understanding. And the farmer is like the ultimate yang leader. No matter what comes, his wife being humiliated with him, the whole community throwing tomatoes at him, he's like,
01:29:27
Speaker
this pig is going to win the contest. So he's just kind of like eye on the prize. Like no matter what he's going to, he's going to risk it all and get it done. And he hardly says anything, right? Except that'll do pig. It's just like beautiful, like Yang, like penetrate, cut through and they need each other.
01:29:48
Speaker
And so you see like at the end of the day, like, babe. So the farmer needs needs babe to win, you know, the contest or whatever the ultimate prize. And babe needs the farmer to stand for him. And babe needs the the yang leadership or sorry, the yin leadership, the the kind of relational to actually get through he and it's so beautiful. Like if you man, I could go on and on about that. But like,
01:30:17
Speaker
I'm gonna spoiler alert in case anyone hasn't watched this 30 year old movie. At the end he has the sheep dogs and the sheep hate each other and because of their love for babe, the sheep dog risks
01:30:32
Speaker
humiliation to go ask for help from the sheep. And because of their love for Babe, the sheep risk giving, enslaving themselves to the sheepdogs by giving the sheepdog their secret password to go help Babe do what he needs to do. So it's just like,
01:30:51
Speaker
Epic beautiful thing where like this they're willing to surrender their defenses to help babe And then and then you see the meeting of these two styles of leadership like intertwining to like have the beautiful Successful winning of the contest. That's fantastic. I gotta watch it again through that lens. Yeah, it's been a long time I read have you read the book?
01:31:12
Speaker
No. Oh, if I mean, when I was a kid, I think. Uh huh. Yeah. Cause he's a, he's kind of, yeah, beloved English, um, children's writer. I read, I read the book when I was a kid, but I'm in, I will watch babe again. It's been a long time.
01:31:24
Speaker
High recommend it's it's a weird movie actually. Yeah, but it's like it's beautiful. Oh, I For whatever reason the recommend and because you keep talking about Lego Batman, which I want to hear about But let me give you a recommendation and tell me about Lego Batman the recommendation that just came to me I'm like, what am I gonna recommend to Jordan is? The HBO Harley Quinn cartoon. Oh, okay
01:31:48
Speaker
I could tell you kind of some like there are reasons psychologically, spiritually, that it's somewhat interesting. But really, it's just a really, really well made, funny, silly deconstruction of the Batman stories. And it's well written and it's well acted and it's genuinely moving in places and it's very funny in places. And it's just great storytelling and great art.
01:32:13
Speaker
So that's my plug is, and you know, it's a little bit racy in places and it's a little bit violent in places if you can stomach that, but as you know, it's a cartoon. But yeah, so that's my, my recommendation for you and for the folks out there is the, the Holly Quinn cartoon on HBO. And it's by far, you know, Holly Quinn is this character that's kind of popped up in the last few years and there are several iterations of her, but, um, all the same actress actually, but.
01:32:35
Speaker
This is by except for this one and this is by far the the best that I've come across anyway So yeah, cool. I look forward to that. I love that I also I popped into my mind and I was like, I don't know if recommending like a Three season TV show to a new dad is like really gonna be that effective a recommendation So, you know if you watch a couple episodes this
01:32:55
Speaker
So, okay. So yeah, so like Lego Batman, if, if babe is like the positive or the healthy yin and yang Lego Batman is like shows you the unhealthy where Lego Batman is like the ultimate unhealthy yang, like completely isolated, unwilling to ask for help from anyone totally immature. And Lego Joker is not at all like the
01:33:18
Speaker
you know, like the jokers we've seen in other films or whatever, is just the totally unhealthy yin like uses all of his is constantly trying these like, you know, super like trying to get Batman's attention and like you complete me and like, you know, all this stuff is fucking hilarious. And then, you know, manipulates all of his connections, all of his fellow Arkham Asylum, like villains to like, you know, take advantage of their
01:33:48
Speaker
It just uses relationships in the exact opposite way that babe uses them. So it's freaking hilarious. It's great fun, great writing, similar, and kind of cool balance where you're like, okay, this is what the healthy yin and yang looks like, and here's what the unhealthy yin and yang looks like. The extremes. I think everyone can see those in themselves.
01:34:10
Speaker
I certainly can see where I'm like, like a Batman and where I'm like Lego Joker. And it's great. I love this kind of archetypal language of, of, yeah, of the, the, the mature and the immature, uh, aspects. That's Lord and Miller, right? Who wrote it? Yeah. Or directed it. I don't know. Okay. I think it is who also did the original Lego movie and then, uh, Spider-Man into the spite of us, which is another.
01:34:35
Speaker
Fantastic yeah i mean i was i walked out of that movie weeping with just the light at the anyway superhero movies but super hero cuz.
01:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, we can, we got a whole other podcast on that. That's right. That's right. Well, we are definitely coming to the end of our time and I want to let you get back to all the things you're up to. So you've kind of, you talked about the platform, but maybe just say a little bit about where people can find you and if they want to dig deeper. Yeah.
01:35:07
Speaker
The best place is Relateful.com. We've got tons of stuff. There's a lot of great free stuff like the sessions, for example, where you can show up and practice. There's intros, there's free downloads of orientations. There's a ton of writing on the blog. I do a weekly email that has just three things I've been thinking about. Some of it's like
01:35:31
Speaker
this type of stuff with Lego Batman, some of it's more about presence, some of its integral stuff, it's just whatever I've been learning or thinking interesting, I try to summarize it in a paragraph. So there's a ton of that. But yeah, most of all is a big invitation for people to come practice come. I mean, there's there's courses, there's
01:35:52
Speaker
uh, deep transformational programs, there's coaching, but, um, come get a taste and see if it's some, you know, if relatefulness or being relateful is inspiring to you. And then separate from that, if our particular community is inspiring for you, um, it's like I said earlier, it's, I think it's for anyone, but not for everyone. So it really may not be a fit, but a huge invitation to come check it out. Thank you so much for, for taking some time with me today. It's been,
01:36:20
Speaker
It's been delightful to get to hang out. Yeah, likewise. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks for reaching out.