Cool. Yeah, you know, we could we could just just a quick aside, we could update our community course page and just have one yellow button at the top. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. I think we should just do that. We'll do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
I guess it also helps to have upcoming dates, but okay. I'll fix that later. I have an idea. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Okay.
You may want to, there might be other people not getting in, cuz. Follow the link from your message. Louise. It takes you to the page that doesn't have today's date. So
yes, yes. I'm wanting to lorilee I did it.
I did it. I did it and did it. What did you do? I just sent her that. That thing.
Okay, awesome. Yay. You're faster than I am even. Alright. Okay. Cool. All right.
So
welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. It's so nice to see you all. And we're going to do a little bit of a presentation, I think we're settling into our, our tendency here, our creative tendency, creative community tendency, which is to start off with a bit of a presentation that Jeff is going to handle today. And then open up for dialogue. And we're not quite enough people for breakout rooms. So I think we'll just stay in plenary. And I actually don't quite know what we're going to talk about. So I'm going to pass it over to Jeff, do we want to do a quick chicken? Do we have time?
Yeah, I think I think just hearing what people are coming in with is good.
Okay, awesome. So just make it short and sweet. But just give us a tiny window into your world. It could be just feeling words. Could be a an explanation.
Yeah, just question. Whenever you're coming in with I would say,
wants to start.
Okay, cough. I'm, I'm feeling okay. But I'm feeling quite heavy from what's going on up here. I don't know if people are following but some very dark news around the finding of a, an unmarked grave of indigenous children. And that sounds like news. But what's actually really sad is that it's not news. But people are surprised. So I'm sad that I live in a country where genocide has been playing out for decades and been swept under the rug keeps being a
surprise, surprise, surprise,
instead of actually dealing with it and coming to terms with what has happened. And then what, what it looks like to heal forward. So I've been holding that and talking to my indigenous friends and my white friends and trying to
be thanks for rain. Next,
I'll chime in, I guess relieved is my main feeling. I had a little shock this week, when I checked on my status of being in the country and realize, well, it says on the website that I was due to leave may 17. So that put me into a bit of a tailspin of Oh, my god, it turns out it was an error. So I'm getting that rectified. But yeah, I have to do some work on my visa status, which brings up emotions. And but right now I'm feeling kind of, okay, the emergency is off. Now. There's just diligence to make sure I get things going, right. I don't want to leave this place. So
thanks, Karen. Who's next? Hi, laureline.
Sorry, we overlooked the critical thing there. And so a lot of people have the same question. So our apologies.
We're just doing a quick round of chickens. So just speak what you're coming in with and make it short and sweet. Now, who wants to go next?
I missed the last session. So I just listened to it yesterday and just felt that sense of So many people feeling tired. And it made me think about leadership and how just trying to work with the system, how tiring that is, and exhausting and depleting. So I'm sort of still carrying that today. Thank you, Mary.
I'm coming in Well, I'm trying to think what to share. But maybe one thing that's come up here sometimes is that I'm leading this racial equity team and our in our team and our organization. And we actually had a really transformative session yesterday, it often feels like sort of two steps forward and one step back. But yeah, one of the ways that I understand transformation is when the roles kind of shift and the role that you thought you were in, you take on the role of the other and the other way around. And that basically happened with me and the person that I've been leading this work with, which was really yeah, it's just really beautiful to see. So it felt like this hitting the bottom of the you are this, this moment of transformation. So I'm still appreciating that as I been moving through today.
Cool. Thanks, mula wants to go next bit, so we're just doing a quick check in. So we've we're halfway through.
Yes, my primary feeling is a little bit of disorientation. They started me on some new blood pressure medication yesterday that has some dizzying side effects. I'm learning to reorient in my body at a lower rpm.
Thanks, Tim. I'll check it. Sorry, I'm running late. I'm on a new schedule. And I'm going to take a deep breath and refill my water and then sit down and be fully present. But I'm listening to you while I get my water.
Laura Lynn, I think your last Okay, yeah, I'm sorry for being late to have noticed there was fun. We had a good day. And like it's a holiday in Germany. So the kids were here. And each time we tried to go outside there was like heavier rain. So we got drenched at least three times today, which was actually quite fun. And and that was it was going here was more curiosity and desire to be with the group. Awesome. Thanks, Laura lien.
I'll check in I had a bit of a hectic week, actually, we submitted a five minute video to a
okay.
Money winning challenge for my university. So I was working on that. And we were going to start raising money anyway for donations for investments for different things. So it was a good opportunity to just like, build out a slide deck, which became a real video with graphics and everything, and it's not perfect, but we got it in on time. And that's, that's something we can use going forward. And we're also
just a lot going on. So there's a lot of great stuff going on. I'm excited about it all but it's, it's um it's kind of building it's like, I guess the other thing to report in is that we're finding, finding a lot of people in the world who have the questions that we're carrying in this group. So I'm checking in with some excitement about that.
Awesome Never know if I should chicken or not just give us a quick Yeah. All right. I'm, I'm good. also excited about the work that's going on in the background. I'm a little distracted because my horse is not doing so well. And I'm researching into allergic reactions. She's a redhead, she's a chestnut. So she's got a lot of swollen like, lymph node not draining properly stuff going on. And horses are very nervous since as a as a being. And they are very energetically connected. So they can also carry a lot of different energetics. And it's a real puzzle, to figure to figure out what's actually going on. Is this emotional? Is this from the area is this her own thing is always interconnected. So but luckily, I have help with figuring out from my friend who's a who's got all these modalities, so, but it's just in the back of my mind. Anyway, that's my chicken.
Yeah, so sorry about the technical glitch, everyone had another technical glitch, which is that last week's recording, haven't figured out how to convert like, usually zoom just converts it and I put it up on Vimeo and then I add it to the community page. So Mary, that that latest recording that you watch was actually from two weeks ago. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. So I'm trying to solve that it probably can be solved, hopefully, hopefully, the recording tech isn't broken. So, but I'm just gonna give super quick rundown of where we were last week. right on to the recordings where the topic is. Yeah. You don't have time to watch all the past recordings.
Jeff, can I interrupt for a moment? I don't think I've been gone for two weeks. Anyway, I'll check it out. After
No, you just missed last week's Right. Yeah. Yeah. So last week's didn't isn't on the site yet. Because I've had a problem converting the zoom file to something that I can put on the website. So if you watch the if you watch the latest one, it was from May 27th. Not June 3.
But I think very saying she was here for that. Yeah, she's gone for two instead
of Oh, check it out. Okay.
In any case, sorry. The latest recording is from May 27. Not June 3. Okay. Okay. Just for what it's worth. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that would be really good to actually maybe get started to get these transcribed. Would it be helpful or interesting to people? Yeah. Because then you can just open up the transcript and skim through it. And you and
Jim typically does do that. You've got a transcript?
Well, it gives the chat transcript but not the actual audio transcript of the video, right? Yeah. It does do not does.
I think you have to go on switch that on specifically. But you can easily transcribe from Jim now.
Okay, cool. All right. Well, but it's not the grade, it still needs refinement.
Yeah. So what I typically do is I'll get the audio file, and I'll upload it to otter.ai, which does pretty good. Not great. But what it does do is allow you to actually play the audio recording while you read the transcript if you have a question. Anyway, we'll try a few things and see if it works. In we don't have the person power to manually transcribe these things. But we can we can use some sort of AI to get it done. And that and that at least helps you see what was discussed. I mean, I guess
we could at least have some topic, main topic that we could refer back to because we've often done presentations about topics that we don't actually cover in the course. And sometimes they are covered in the course. And we're aware that this is stacking up.
Yeah. Well, the other thing we can do is when we do these slide decks, we can post the slide decks. Would that be interesting for people?
Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do that. We can be a little more aware of how we structure the slide decks, a little bit like a cheat sheet maybe.
Okay. All right. Well, let's put some thought into how to reorganize That page is okay.
Yeah, I'm making a note. Okay.
Yeah, so we've got most, most everything saved somewhere. So we can just reorganize and start to post that stuff. But let's jump in where we were last week was, I'll just do, I'll just do something really, really quick. where we were last week was looking at looking at this idea of disease consciousness, and working our way towards a concept of disease culture. And, you know, one, one distinction there is to is to contemplate social engineering versus social sculpture. And Mila and I have just written an article contemplating that which we look forward to sharing when we figure out what's going to happen to it. But the, the basic idea is that this, this distinction can help us further contemplate what this actually means, in practice at different scales, what is what does it mean to co create healthy society, and in one picture, there is this social three folding, which we're going to explore. And we just briefly revisited this, this old idea of, of what a human being is, and that this version of human being that we, that we came up from, you know, back here is the mud and simple organisms, and finally, ape like ancestors and humanity is very different from all previous cosmologies, indigenous and religious in which the human being comes down from the sky, not up from the earth. And it will be interesting to marry these two concepts together in the near future, to to, to consider how our physical form and our spiritual form arose, without necessarily just ignoring one or the other, but really looking at both. And as a beginning to that contemplation, we kind of looked at Well, in childhood, when people are so innately creative when the creative forces are bound, shaping both the organism and the consciousness, there's something really magical and special and amazing going on there. And one way to think about it is that where the animals specialized in become great swimmers are great fliers, they have, you know, fangs and horns and fur and scales and tails and all this the human form holds back from specialization. Okay, so this is a very different way of thinking about the human being that the human form holds back from, from physically specializing, and that the consciousness becomes generally available. Okay, so instead of the creative forces specializing in organic and mental sense, they become available to the operator, so to speak. So the so in human, at a certain point in the life and puberty and young adulthood, there's enormous creativity from the from the childhood years becomes available to the operator becomes available to the to the person, but that these extra or superfluous energies, these creative potentials, can also spoil, they can go unused, so to speak. And this is a picture that we're going to elaborate more in the third module, which we're writing right now. But we just contemplated last week, what happens in in your own life or your family or those people that you know, with adverse childhood experiences, or traumas, these superfluids energies and potentials for creative vn for individuation in the human, mind and soul, instead contribute to the formation of closed loops. This is what we kind of went into last week, and we began to contrast that with, with with self transformation, which is that when we when we when we go into these inner patterns, and release them from their habitual formations, we actually are also at the same time releasing these potentials, from their patterns from those closed loops. And we begin to have the possibility of activating or strengthening our creative capacity in the broadest sense our capacity for presence, generosity, and love and
Shifting roles in important moments like Mila mentioned, and holding space for others and holding space for processes and, and that kind of thing, that kind of socially creative, regenerative work. And we we don't we diverted yet last week, and we kind of ended on this quote from Joseph Boyce, that I read through and I won't read it again. But it was it was right in here where, you know, we were talking about, well, how is this, this inner abundance of creativity? How does it become available to us in practice, and I wanted to revisit this because so much of the talk, well, I'll keep sharing this in a minute, but I want to face you for a second is, so much of the talk of art in our culture is about abundance. In a kind of light, li te way, at least the way that we think here at magenta. And Laura Lee, and I talked on the back channel, emailed a bit about this, you know, this manifesting or financial abundance or inner abundance, and you can see it in different aspects of our culture as if there's a switch to flick on to experience inner abundance. And that really contrasts with this picture that I gave out of out of Boyce's work, which is that it's really difficult. And he says it like four times. And I just offer that because our experience is that when you're working in service to others, and your motive for doing self transformation is to really release the creative potential. in service to others, it can be very difficult, it can be an arduous path. And so
that's not to dissuade us. That's, that's to just sort of put it in some perspective that when it gets hard, let's not be surprised, and let's fortify and, and, and prepare for that and organize ourselves to take that long path. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So I just have a few more points here. When, when these superfluous potentials, these extra energies of the human mind and soul form into closed loops, then, and this is one of the things that we we mentioned in Module Two, then these loops act at all scales to keep us stuck. And I'm sure that you all have your, your own experiences of that. And you just bring that to mind, whether it's in your relationships, or your team or society or your multistakeholder work. So one thing that we just barely touched on last time is that that on mass, and this is, you know, Mila, and I've been writing that article which we'll share when we can, it contributes to a diseased culture. That's it's open to being manipulated, it's open for being manipulated or manipulating itself. We open ourselves to exploitation and reductionism at a large scale. When we look excuse me, when we look at the future, on the one hand, we can imagine this getting worse, because all these superflous potentials, all these creative potentials of humanity going on used, they spoil and they they wreak havoc, we we wreak havoc on the world and each other. And in the ancient world, the potential for that was seen, and it was called the apocalypse. Or, you know, that was john john of Patmos his word for it. But there's lots of indigenous views of the future where, you know, we go through a rough spot in the future, or ancient cosmologies. And in my view, that's, it's related to this, this more evolutionary development. It's like part of our part of the code part of what's happening in our
big story.
And so, in this course, we're just we're kind of taking this micro view about our inner patterns. But we're also taking that macro view, which is to say that, you know, as we go forward into this future, and then these multiple crises at all scales and whatever's coming to us, whatever we are dealing with in our lives and work and whatever humanity is facing, whatever we're going into That there's going to be both, right. And this is a picture that I wanted to kind of end this presentation on today's that, that, okay? In one sense, social future has this potential to be more chaotic and, and grievous with climate change and with pollution and all these kind of crisis, you can just name a long list of them. And on the other hand, this potential for people to find new ways together. That and that's this piece that when we talk about social sculpture, we're talking about a kind of emerging art form, if you will, of us figuring out together, how we can create new realities. And back in a certain sense, there's just a few points down here of creating the conditions for co creation. You know, like Mila opened with this idea and also Lorraine's opening this morning with these I with these observations of really, that, in a certain sense, relate to creating the conditions for co creation, one of which was facing the truth of, of the genocide of the path that many genocides of the past and another of which is just experiencing, what it means to hold that space where there's some significant development, like Mina mentioned, and growing into our capacities to lead and facilitate co creation. You know, some of you do this professionally. And some of you do this as a hobby. And some of you are figuring out how to do this. And it's all for me, and Louisa, it's all connected in this co creative work. And I want to end on this idea that, or this observation that this is, this is a work of the future. And this is the way that we see it. Something that we're trying to learn in the next century, two centuries, three centuries, you know, it's, it's how is how has humanity goes gradually, at all points and all the all around the world, disconnected from each other people figuring it out together, out of common intuition or, or related intuition related discoveries across cultures, to, you know, create the social sculpture.
So I wanted to tie that back to personal experience and say, when, when we're talking about this personal transformation, that can be really difficult. The, the practical key to that is, you know, I just get into big pictures and all this humanity and evolution and stuff. But it really boils down to when you, when you boil it down to your own life. On the one hand, you're your self transformation. And on the other hand, you're strengthening your creative reservoirs, which is anchored in daily practice. And that's kind of the next frontier that we're going to start covering together in both the course and in these calls. Because in the daily practice, which is just study, meditation, creative work, exercise, you know, in building these capacities comes through comes through rhythm. So, I'll just end on this, this observation, that is one thing to have it in your mind and understand it conceptually, it's important, whatever you're doing, but that kind of capacities that we're moving into a grow organically, they reveal themselves, they are the teacher, they, they're the phenomenon. And they reveal themselves through practice, and daily practice. So that's where we're kind of moving in the course in this next module, and then these dialogues is into the phenomena of that abundant creative possibility, just through a rigorous, grounded, daily practice. So that was a lot. I only had like, five minutes to put together this presentation today. So I'm sorry if it was a big, it was a big dive, but I wanted to move from where we were last week to this concept of of daily practice in service and just talk about that a bit with the time that we have left So can I can I just turn it over to y'all and hear what what's coming up for you and what you want to talk about what you want to explore further.
I'm happy to chime in, I'm really liking this, this perspective that you're providing. And what I'm noticing on. First of all, a personal perspective, reactions haven't been as strong, like, I'm really noticing, I'm not reacting to, you know, things like breaking my glasses. Last night. Now I've got them taped together, and neither spilling coffee all over my desk, or you know, just those little things, I'm not having such a reaction, because I'm thinking in much more awareness. But then the next layer of that is then how am I working in relation to people and what I'm getting to the point of really relaxing into a lot more vulnerability and openness and inviting that offering that and inviting that. And then, with the end goal of being able to be in an in a non hierarchical organization, that is my true desire to really make something that's co created. And the struggle internally is that the business mindset and get it done mindset and the pressure of everything, pulls me back into the command and control sort of mechanism. And I'm really, really interested in how to relax into and trust into the non hierarchical sensibility. And because I love technology and gadgets, I'm going to share a link to, to something that I got a demonstration of this morning it's mapped to, and it actually shows you the circles and the circles, it's a way to orient people around what circle they're in as part of nested within this organized so you can get this, this, you know, flat organization or definitely dispersed leadership. So, yeah, that's, that's just some thoughts around my own personal journey with this subject matter.
Jeff, I was wondering if you could say a little more about daily practice? Are you mostly referring to meditation or
what Yeah, just I'd love to hear other voices as well. But real quick, where where we're planning on moving is from First of all, like a journal, journaling, practice. And then into actually a practice of study. And so just taking some time, in the week, or in the day to read, and, and read a book, and study. And, you know, there's benefits to that, and which books and all adds another question, but that's, in our experience, a really powerful part of a daily practice, and can help people move into then meditative practice, which we're going to build up in kind of stages from concentration, which is not meditation, but it's, it's training this muscles to contemplation, which is sort of training. Concentration is like training the muscles in the thinking and contemplation is training the muscles in the feeling. And meditation is really in our school. And our way of thinking, also, including will, you know, it's meditation is we don't use a breathing meditation, we learn to do it without that. So that's kind of the path that we're going to roll out in Module Three. And people can take that for what it's worth. But we're going to try to build out that so that if people do want to learn to meditate or or consult contemplate the meditative tools that we're sharing, they can. I think all of this, what we're trying to structure is that you know, including creative work, which we'll touch on in module four. or bad in our experience looking working on this for 2025 years that the rigorous exertion in the inner Rome with a daily practice definitely builds capacity. So that's kind of why we're why we're offering because it's tried and true and proves effective. And we're hoping that this kind of ladder, well, we'll meet you all, where you are, and afford you an opportunity to kind of build those capacities rigorously, if you choose to, if you want to, if it's the right time for you and your life without or if this appeals. So that's kind of where we're going with that. Okay.
I'm happy to react a little to what you shared, Jeff. First of all, just the sequencing of what you explained building on last week, really, resoundingly resonated. Like it just was like, a chord at the end of a Burnham's piece or something, and just like landed, and, and yet, I was thinking like, but I didn't write it down. Well, I remember. So I'm going between, like trying to learn the things versus just trying to feel the things when they feel right, well, maybe you already knew them, you just didn't have those words or something. So it's just a bit of reaction, I know there's more to learn. And then on the daily practice piece, I found myself reacting in a funny way, which is, um, so I brush my teeth. Every day, I get up in the morning, I brush my teeth. And then the last thing I do before I go to bed is I brush my teeth. And I've done that for years and years and years. And I I love brushing my teeth, I have like a really positive relationship with my tooth brushing habit, I have no cavities, and a pretty nice tea. And that daily practice, I never question like, I've never been like, I don't know, maybe today or this week, I'm not gonna brush my teeth. It's like a for sure thing and very extreme circumstances have to happen for me to not be able to brush my teeth. And, and yet every other daily practice that I've tried to build into my life, I've resisted. I do a lot of creative work. I meditate I run exercise to do a lot of things you just described, but almost none of them everyday, over consistent periods of time. I read a lot I journal a lot I you know, so I'm finding myself, maybe just noticing, other than my tooth brushing daily habit hasn't felt right to me, it doesn't mean it can't or it won't. But it makes me wonder if there's like a kind of Rubik's cube of practices. Because for sure, every day I at least, maybe exercise, maybe do some create, like I do some combination, but I can't fit them all in, they just don't fit. So yeah, my reaction is like another daily practice, but it's probably going to align with what I'm already doing. But it probably won't happen the way brushing my teeth happens. And I'm very curious and open to what it is.
I can really relate to that. Lorraine.
Well, I have noticed that I'm putting both exercise and meditation on my iPhone calendar has, and my obsession with not deleting them has meant that they get done. I mean, most days meditation is now I can say an everyday practice after working on it for years. And I think that it's finally because it comes from the inside. Rather than it having to come from the outside kind of like tooth brushing, it comes from the inside, like that need that. Wanting to feel that way in your mouth. And meditation, I want to start my day there. And if I can't start that day, then it's like the first thing that I do when the task is is is done. But it started with me putting it on as a line item on my calendar that would get moved to whatever time I woke up and exercise the same thing. And I can tie into the daily practice of journaling doesn't happen every day, but it happens almost every day. Working with Jeff in relation, Louisa as meditation is an exercise of will power because I'm not somebody who I would say has very strong willpower. Even though I'm pretty stubborn, I don't know how that works. But that daily practice is built my capacity to trust myself, to handle what comes at me. In my day.
I was wanting something else that I was going into that I don't remember where I was. But definitely see that the building capacities comes through rhythm. And it was the pandemic that made me put exercise and meditation on my calendar every day. And that's been such a gift. Now I need the creative practice. Oh, Bri serious.
Yeah, this is a is all good timing. For me, I agreed to kind of CO teach a six week course on combining what's sometimes referred to as the six basic exercises, self development and the Eightfold Path for for six weeks trading from June through July. And the day that I've committed to help guide everyone is Thursday. It's a really complicated puzzle there on the Thursday piece, which is basically don't do anything that's outside of your capacity. And also don't leave anything on done. That's within your capacity. That's a really interesting, caring, striving balancing act to really know your role, and how that's gonna evolve. And that's been probably the biggest gift I've received out of my practice for two years. Now. Once you get really steady and rhythmic about it, you really start to notice exactly what things what ways what parts of you lead you off, track, or lead you to miss a day. And then what forces you and resources you then have to come back to it. So it's almost feels like at this point now missing a day gives me more forces or lets me know helps me develop more forces than doing each day. But I'm all for it. And definitely never the same thing for to live though. I have some practices I've been trying to do for three years straight, this couple simple ones and set myself a goal to make 90 days in a row doing exactly the same thing exactly at the same time. It's still three years and haven't made it. Yeah. Any other thoughts?
Um, my mind's not so much on the daily practice. I'm actually not at the moment recreated that I've had phases of doing meditation but um, but at the moment, I I think I'm a bit like Laurie and I do different things at different times, but not necessarily on the same day, but where I'm actually or I'm not necessarily every day. But I'm a little bit stuck on what you said earlier about facing the truth. Jeff and about vulnerability, and that's, that's where I'm, that's where I'm dwelling on what you said
and remind me of remind me what I said. You said,
you were I think you were building on what Lorraine said in the check in. And yeah, one ability at your time, right facing the truth. And Lorraine talked in her check in about you know, being surprised even though we all know, or you should know about something and and I've had an experience with a colleague in the last couple of days who sort of like doesn't want to ask certain questions because he does To know how he would respond to the answers, like, you don't want to ask how the team feels about certain things, because what if they don't feel good? And then what if I don't know how to respond to the critique, and therefore I don't ask for the feedback. And I mean, that's at the very sort of team level. But I think this this thing about, you know, having the courage to be vulnerable, and to ask the questions about and I mean, this is at the team level, but it's this the situation in Canada or, you know, all these others, climate, race, all these other societal issues? Like, sort of, like, do we have the courage to ask the questions and to receive the answers and to be open to those answers, even though it's painful, and like, how do we build the capability to, to be with that and, and still pending pull, I think you were talking about co creating from there, it's like, facing the truth, and then being able to be vulnerable and absorb that truth and still be able to co create from there feels like, that feels like super important in these times, and really tough to do. And maybe hopefully, the daily practice helps with that. But I think it's you know, there's, there's a lot more to it, I guess. So that's where that's where my that's what's stirring in me from what you said.
Yeah, can I just jump in there because this is something I've been thinking about all day, all morning. Our youngest daughter, Farah, Nika, she was at a, a protest of a nother police shooting of a young black person, probably a man. That happened a couple of days ago. And she was confronted by a man who accused her of being a undercover police cop person, even though she's 17 years old. But she was one of the few, there were a few but she was there weren't very many white people there. And this young black man was confronting her about it. And he she felt stunned and shaken by the, by the hatred that was and the implacability of it. And there was nothing she could do nothing she could say, because there wasn't a way to speak in the moment, but she felt vulnerable. Because was he telling all the other people that he thought, you know, so she felt a little scared. And it was very, you know, we've been processing this over the past couple of days. And one of the things that we've been talking about is, there, when it comes to racial equity, there are a lot of there's so much trauma, and such strength of feeling of rage, and hatred. And yet, the conversations have to happen. And if we are able to handle the projection of hatred and rage, if we're able to hold space for feelings of that kind of intensity, then, you know, then we can, as white people help move the situation forward, not just for black people, but also because we can handle the truth, instead of being defensive, and fragile and not able to hear it. This is all inner capacity. We cannot do this, we can't really face implicit bias collectively if we don't have these kinds of capacities. So this has been Yeah, our conversation over the last couple of days. So yeah, thanks for for mentioning that Mina.
And I appreciate your sharing that Louisa because I'm in process of trying to hold the feelings of the Israeli and Palestinian girls or our girls in you in the midst of the conflict over there, which is down for the moment, but their feelings haven't. And, and, you know, it's it's difficult but but I can do it in a way that I couldn't do it two years ago, or four years ago or even last year. So I'm grateful for the perspective I don't think I've given myself any credit. But it's a it's a. It's progress. It's small, but it's, but there is a growing inner capacity to, to hold that into, to have the conversations. And some hard conversations here in this country that have to go on, related to my role there.
Yeah, and just to build on that, something I've also forgot to say is that meditation is where a lot of that soul muscle building happens, where we build the strength to be able to hold space and stay present. And listen with compassion when someone is angry with us. It's not easy to do. So in the rain, if you need a reason for meditation, there's one.
Yeah, I like what you said Louise about, we can handle the truth, because I think that's what people so often don't believe that we can handle it. Right. It's like a question of capabilities. I think I was just looking at this thing with Tulsa as well. You know, and how much people have just been hiding away from this, this Tulsa story, massacre that happened 200 years ago, because they just couldn't handle the truth. But we can handle the truth, right? Like, we have to believe in ourselves that we can handle it. Because hiding from it, this doesn't, doesn't work. But these are capabilities that we have to learn. And that aren't necessarily that we haven't necessarily been taught. So like if we think that we're finished and that we have nothing more to learn, then we'll never learn, have a truth. And like if we can't handle the truth about climate and about salsa and about the indigenous and Canada, then where? I don't know, it's not a pretty future. No,
I mean, yeah, part of it. Sorry, one more thing. Part of the problem is that it's traumatizing. And so we protect ourselves when we're not prepared for the truth. So it's, this is why this strengthening the invisible realm of culture is so important.
I mean, I think,
for me, for a lot of people, you don't even have to look to that macro scale. You can't, the truths are playing out in their families and in their minds and souls. I've seen so many change leaders try to change the world without brushing their teeth. You know. And if you just observe them, if you have the opportunity to observe them for several years, you can you can see these patterns playing out which I've Of course, seen in my own life, too. But it's not just me, it's it's that these truths. They they almost are like stones coming out of the earth, you know, they are things coming out of the earth that can be that can be taken up and healed and transformed. And then their creative power is released. We can imagine what kind of creative power would be released in this country if we were facing these truths. But But my point is it plays out even in the family in the community in the small scales. I'm just looking at time, I would like to invite anyone who can who wants to stay on to stay on for another 10 minutes. If you need to roll you can roll. But I doesn't. It seems like this conversation needs a little bit more time to close. And I can stay around. And Louisa you can probably stay around. If you if you want to just if you want to stay long. You're welcome to.
Does anyone have to bounce?
Pretty close.
You want to just check out? Sure.
Yeah, I
think for me, lack of looking at truth isn't as big as the ability to disintegrate your persona. So that again, the ability to disintegrate your persona, like that, that it's really facing revelation, which is what apocalypse means right like that. That undermines your sense of who you are. You know that you're not and I think that's, the more we can practice that as individuals, or at least that's for me like, the more I've gotten comfortable not being what I thought I was or who I thought I was or falling apart and having to rebuild myself and trusting that I can rebuild on the other side of whatever New River requires me to shed everything makes me feel like it's pot like, like the nation could go through that the nation could go through a full ego dismemberment and reconstruction out of the best of itself, you know, that the world can do that. And that's the piece from me that does really correlate that, that we cannot make real progress without making individual progress. So that's what I keep trying. Thanks, john. Nice. Nice. All right, y'all. Alright, man, thanks. Great. We'll see y'all soon.
I think to me, the question is not so much that we may be afraid that we can't hold the truths. I mean, although we may think this way, but anyways, he is gonna come up, you know, like airasia doesn't work, or hiding the truth within oneself or anywhere in society doesn't work, like it's going to come up. Anyway, like anything that's hidden ends up surfacing in no way or another. And there's, I think, there is no way out building this capacity of, of facing it, of facing all it implies on a hurt sense of identity or sense of belonging, or a sense of our relations to each other and to the world. And maybe this, this period of lockdown has enabled lots of troops to come up with lots of hidden things to come up with personally and collectively, which I think is a good thing, but I'm not, I think it's gonna continue. And so there may be no other way to, to go into the future than to, you know, trying and see what's hard for us in facing those truths, or, like what needs to be done for each and every one of us personal level, because it may not be the same thing. Like, we may not all need the same type of tools or practices or work to be able to face those. And that's the question that came back to me also, when you talked about daily practice, or no, like is this is like one common practice or like one type of practice good for everyone? Or should we kind of adapt it to our own needs or situations or moments, which would go you know, follow what Lauren said about this, Eric, maybe we do all those things, but at different times in the week or different different timelines and, or maybe I just want to I like this idea more, because every time you think of a daily practice, I don't want to do it. I don't know why I hate daily practices, like there is this pattern here is so like, please know, like anything but the daily practice and
future master medicines. Human
end of life, you know, like, I mean, I don't mind working like 15 hours a day, I don't mind doing so many things, but no daily practice. Either. Like, I want the flow, I want the emotion I want I want to move around. I don't want to have like a plan day. Like, my, my marriage was actually so much like a daily practice. You know, it felt like, hey, this man was like, so planned, like, everything was predictable. And it felt like the best to me, like I remember at some point being like, I can't do that. I just can't do that. And this regularity of things, was one of the hardest thing for me. I mean, lots of other hard things. It's not the only reason but it ended but in the end, you know, like this, I don't know why regularity equates something that's that's the opposite of Life to me. And I don't know. And I at the same time, I see the value of being regular. And I know that I'm really bad because I don't sleep enough. And sometimes I forget to eat or, you know, maybe I would need I hate this idea. You
know, I feel the same way. But I have learned that the one thing that that my cell needs every day, is meditation. Otherwise, I'm like Lorraine, I sort of fit all the other stuff, and I do a pretty, I do my writing practice pretty much every day. But not every day. But the meditation.
Um,
it's, it's like, I created it with my happiness. And with my serenity. And with my ability to, to see, to see the world. And I don't know, it's, it's just, it's been life changing for me too. And was the Uberti that said that you now you've you, it came from inside. It comes from inside now. But it took a long time, Laura lane to get to get that from outside to inside. And I just find that, that sometimes I just have to stop everything. If I can't do it first thing in the morning, I just have to stop everything and do it. Because it's I don't know. It's that necessary.
We don't have much time left. But this is going to be something that we revisit a lot in the coming module. I think one, one way to think about this is it's basically brushing your teeth. You know, who doesn't brush their teeth, right? That would be just disgusting.
So
I think there is something important about a clockwork or a machine like regimen. And there's also something really strengthening about, about meditation, potentially. And there's all different schools of meditation, the one that we're going to be working with is really phenomenology. It really based on phenomenology. And it's optional, of course, you know, everything in this program is optional, but, but the practice essentially equates to looking upstream, you know, to use that language from the course. More and more, I would say, skillfully, and that's a place of joy, you know, I would just put it like, put it like that, like, it's more like weeding a garden or brushing the teeth, than, you know, a regimen but you force yourself into, it's letting the light in, you know, it's, it's really connected with sleep. So if you ask, Well, this is one practice for everybody. No, but everybody sleeps. You can't live without sleep. And in sleep, your body is refreshed, but your mind has also refreshed. And so so when you're when you're struggling with an issue, you're thinking about a relationship or a particular puzzle. And this is, you all know this from your studies of culture. You can have breakthroughs, from sleeping on it. And so what we're going to be doing is kind of looking at those phenomena, and just gleaning from them, well, what can we practice so that we get good at that, that we get good at death and rebirth? So instead of having, you know, life teach us with two by fours, and continued crisis and continued guesswork, there's, there's, we could like any artist, you know, look at the discipline, look at the phenomena and practice those inner phenomena and get good at them. And there's no one art practice that suits everybody and there's no one in our practice that suits everybody, but the phenomena will will, will show themselves So that's those are just some thoughts to, you know, contemplate as we go forward, that it's really not about forcing yourself to do anything, it's about the opportunity. And, and the benefits that come to the creative life, to the soul and the mind. And they're like sleep, you know, imagining if you if you don't sleep for a week, you'd be probably be dead, you'd be very tired. So imagine if you could take the benefits from sleep, and just just hold them in a little place where that red where that refreshing renewing energy from sleep becomes a little bit more available to you, in your waking life. So, you know, so you're not reacting when you spill your coffee, or, you know, you learn some equanimity, and some balance and some positivity. And all we're talking about is how do we, how do we grow that, you know, that reservoir of potential and capacity and the most direct way that we know of, is meditation, I mean, art helps exercise helps physical work helps journaling study. But meditation is
like,
in the nerve center of that, so we'll get into it, we'll get into and it's up to y'all whether you want to, whether you want to do it, and how, how, at what pace, we're going to be rolling it out in Module Three. And we look forward to just you know, seeing what you take up and what resonates and rings true for you. We'll try to ease you into it. So you know, we just love meeting with you guys. We want to offer everything that we can to support you. But we're not going to you know, grade you.
That's encouraging.
But I just want to say something on on top of that in terms of the daily practice. So it took me many years to get to a daily practice. And it really does feel like brushing my teeth is just as imperative in my world. But it took a long time to get there because I'm in what we call in the Waldorf education. I'm very sanguine, which means I like to float along the top of things. And I'm not. Yeah. So. So a daily practice was tough. And the specific exercises that I use a constantly evolving, depending on what I need, how I'm feeling, they don't tend to change from day to day. But they change slowly over time, depending on what's going on. And what I'm faced with in my soul life, what I'm challenged with, so and there's a lot of different permutations as well that that come in and out. So anyway, just some, some quick
addition to Australia. I've been doing the same meditation since 1994. It just opens and opens and opens and opens and opens and opens independence. And so it's not the same meditation, but it's the same meditation. So there's different ways, you know, people find their patterns. I'm not sanguine. I'm like, No, you're definitely not sanguine, like cleric, cleric when something's a tie. Anyway,
there's a lot to say about meditation and daily in practice, and it's connected to the will. And the will needs warmth, the fire of enthusiasm. And when that warmth runs out, yeah, it's a really damn good reason to keep going.
Yeah, it's really just all about building you. That's what it's all about. It's not about imposing a practice, and saying, oh, to be a good student, you have to meditate. It's not that it's really just building, building you. That's the goal. And there's, we're gonna do lots of things in Module Three, and it's probably 20 different things that we're going to do in Module Three for exercises and experiences and stuff that look at the soul like a sphere and you can approach it from this rate and you can bridge it from that way you can do this and you can do that and, and you know, the whole thing. So there's not going to be a regimen of like, this is the way to do it. There's just going to be aspecting all of these questions from multiple points of view and law. dialogue about what works and and it's going to be more like a candy shop where you where you have lots of things to try and you do what works for you. And then you can come back and try something else after a while and you'll you'll find what works for you for what you need.
What you want. Cool. Well, why don't we stop there? I don't know if we have time for a quick Checkout, maybe a couple of feeling words or maybe just one feeling word, just so we can hear your voice before you leave. Who would like to start or start? grounded?
centered baseball.
Oops. grateful.
grateful. And who was the other one? Who was the other person?
Is that you basically peaceful.
Right? Yeah. I'm also grateful and I'm fading a little bit
yeah. It's light for you.
A little tired.
I was just waiting for learning.
Yeah, sorry. A little tired too. And I think I have to go. Oh,
I'm dizzy Asti. I'm loving out with you all. So looking forward to seeing you again soon.
