So she would do a quick chicken. Did you What? Have we done a chicken yet? No, huh? All right. Well, why don't we? Why don't we do that first. And just tell us how you doing? Hi, Laura Lee. And then Jeff has a presentation. Continuing on from a couple of weeks ago. So that's I'm looking forward to that. So cool. Who wants to start?
Don't mind jumping in. I'm coming to you straight from a nap. Which I took straight after my therapy session with my amazing shamanic Brazilian therapist. So I feel like I've been on a journey. I've been on several attorneys today. And I've This is one of the sort of huts along the trail where I've stopped for spiritual and intellectual refreshment. That's where I'm at. lovely to see well,
cool. Awesome, thank you the rain. That's a really good description. I like that. I feel like there's a lot of disruption in the air, which is good. But it's sort of like that feeling like a shoe is going to drop. So I appreciate just the benefit that brings I mean, sort of an eerie, strange feeling. But also, with the background of the work we're doing, it's a good sign. Thanks, Mary. Marlene, how you doing?
I'm good. I was supposed to do lots of things today. And I came across some information. And then I started reading. And super late. So and then I'm here and I'm like, should I be here? I'm here. And I guess I'm also enjoying a bit of fun. It's August, it's a bit more quiet for people. So we noticed immediately you don't answer emails, which is weird. And, and the kids are not here. So I also had this like huge freedom. So yeah, it's been this trend instruction, they heard cool.
Praying. I'm glad to see you. Oh, yeah, it's August. And we tried to take a mental break, and we did take a mental break, we just didn't get a real vacation. So that's a little bit dangerous. Because when we don't get a vacation, we kind of burn out more quickly. On the other hand, we're having some very invigorating conversations about magenta studios. And
our
next phase of growth, and, and life and energy. Finally, we got the module three written. So we're going to be producing mode, the rest of Module Two in module three, and then four, three, whatever, we're going to just be PDFs, as I've mentioned before, so that's great. There's there should be some content, new content for the course. But we're enlarging the video division at the studios that we can integrate art and other things that we do into our world. So that's pretty exciting. Yeah, so I'm feeling the need for a break, but also the need to produce, which is a bit of, you know, typical tension in August. For me, it's like wanting to take a break, but having to keep going. Yeah, and then and then our daughter is leaving, supposedly, if we can get the visa and all that she's leaving at the end of the month, for a year or nine months or 10 months, and that will radically change everything. So we're kind of looking forward to that for her but kind of wondering what that means for us as well. to Sweden. Yeah. Definitely means we're going to try to spend more time in Europe.
I'm very excited to go to Europe. springs chateaus, your calling.
I can't remember if you have two or one or two. Yeah.
This is the elder. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So should we dive into the presentation? And then we can see what comes up? And you guys?
Yeah. And Laura Lane? Are you feeling good to be here? Or do you? Are you feeling torn and needing to go do other things? And I'm here, I'm here. Okay, cool. I'm glad to see you. I know that last week, we had a couple of people, we had at least one person show up to the call, because I saw the email that someone had tried to join the call. So Oh, whoops. So Alright, so where we have been is with just going to share my screen
is kind of Continuing from this worldview question that we, you know, began in Module One, really, but it comes to the fore when we stay within the world of the phenomena and find their that doing that challenges that dominant worldview. Because the dominant worldview has over the last 150 years incorporated a way of thinking, that is very useful in a certain domain, but has consequences if applied to outside of that domain. Does this ring a bell is this sounding familiar? So just to do the inner work, and also to, to learn and get good at being creative. And our experience, one has to learn to, to, to stay within the realm of the phenomena. And to be able to perceive moment to moment what's emerging, and to be able to kind of let go of fixed ideas, and fixed constructs and abstractions. So fixed ideas about what we want to create fixed ideas about ourselves about others, about reality. And it's the fixed ideas that are very useful in one domain, but very big cast a long shadow. They prevent us from perceiving and thinking, in the moment, they prevent presence, because they kind of clutter up, they clutter up the mind and the soul as sort of fixed content and they become like flotsam and jetsam in in the mind and the soul. So in our culture, there's a preponderance to think about the human being as a kind of biological robot. And there's a world of atoms and energies and tissues, and there's an autonomous objective reality on the surface of which we've sort of float, or that produces us. And that we can never really access that objective, autonomous reality, which creates a combat worldview creates a kind of barrier, and it creates a fragmentation because there's a sense in the self that I don't belong to the world, or that I'm just a visitor or that I can never really know or that I'm just a spectator and all these all these things. So to stay within the realm of the phenomenon is to, in a way, incorporate the dominant worldview, but to expand upon it and to say, okay, whatever, whatever objective reality Is it is I who deem it so? Okay, it is humans in their consciousness and in their thinking, who describe and define objectivity or objective reality. And when we forget that we create a world that's supposedly objective and outside of us, but we forget that we've created that we forget that we've defined that. And we then turn around and think that we're beholden to it. So this is a this is it, what we want to do is, is kind of push against that a little bit, and say, okay, it's we humans in our thinking, and our meaning making, who play an active role in constructing the world in which we live. In other words, the reality that we construct that we think is real, is something that we help construct. So we have a role in or there's, there's something that already implicitly includes us, okay, which is the meaning making function or the, in the ancient world, it was called logos, the function of the word
a word has two sides, a visible and the invisible, visible is the characters and the invisible is the meaning. And so she to construct a concept or reality, or a worldview, or world picture, always implies this meaning making activity. So consciousness and human human consciousness is therefore implicated in the world reality, right? So the worldview shifts from being one where consciousness and the world don't really interact to consciousness and thinking are part of the world. And when we go there, we can start to see in the phenomena, certain potentials in our consciousness, that we usually overlook those meaning making faculties that that ability to freshly perceive and pay fresh attention. is important. Just want to make sure that Yeah, is is is part of reality. Okay, so sorry, I was distracted by a technical question. So we can, we can begin to discover in ourselves some phenomena that are playing themselves out that we normally overlook. And in Module Two, those are the phenomena that have the shadow and the habit and the compulsion that that played themselves out in us at our expense, you could say, so I'm not talking about good habits, or what I mean is I'm not talking about like, brushing your teeth kind of habits, what I'm talking about is the habit habits. So by paying attention to where we're bound against our own intention, or against our own intimations of what's possible for ourselves, we can start to see our shadow. And with the same organs of perception turned a different direction, we can start to see the higher self or the superconscious. And as we work on the superconscious, with concentration and contemplation, and meditation, and other other things, we're going to talk about those three, in particular in Module Three, because they're very sort of stripped down, very basic, very kind of hygenic, and approachable and rigorous modality modalities. And we'll go over them again and again, concentration, contemplation, meditation. As we practice those things, we began to build what our teacher used to call the hut, which is a kind of a familiar space of perceiving, what we didn't perceive before we begin these practices. It's, it becomes a familiar place to us like a, like a place that we can go. And there's where our perception begins to grow. And we can, we can become used to this. We can habituate ourselves to this we can grow capacities here, to learn to go into that space, to perceive a new to perceive Freshly into practice these faculties that are starting to appear for us. Okay, so all of this is review by now and we're going to, we're going to spell it out in in the module three, especially, and the rest of Module Two. But I want to give you one more picture in the new concept for the day that I want, that I want to chew on with you and talk about with you. The the taxonomy here that we'll be contemplating comes out of steiners work and is amplified in the work of trulove. And, and many others, to to, it's very useful, powerful taxonomy because it's open. It's not rigid, it's not dogmatic. It's just saying that there are these three distinct realms, within the inner life, that we can learn as a taxonomy, we can do our phenomenology with those who are thinking, or feeling and our will. And what we've shared in previous videos is that if we, if and as we begin to really peel these apart and look within them and become perceptive, in these faculties, in our soul, in our mind,
they change thinking can gradually become more self aware, and less habituated, and less a churn of past ideas, stuff, we've already thought and beliefs and kind of fragments, of notions and meanings and become and can become quite energetic and alive. Okay, so, the same corollary, or something similar can happen in the life of feeling, and even in the will.
So,
I realized that this might all be very abstract, and it might seem very remote. But what I want to land is the contemplation, just the consideration, that, that in the effort to become more creative, to become a creative person in service or to love more to transform to be in service, there is an active agent, there is the the eye, or the true self. There's, there's a faculty or a potential in us to pay attention to this discern, in our own in our taxonomy, in our own anatomy of our minds and souls, and begin to discern and then piece things apart and make choices and, and perceive these phenomena of consciousness and, and ask of them what what's possible here with my thinking, or my feeling, or my will. And this is a very exact way to kind of chart one's own development as a creative being. It's a very rigorous way. So one more picture. As this happens, there's something that very, very curious and interesting and almost archetypal. That happens, and there's a picture of it often in, in literature, in indigenous culture, in in many kinds of rituals and initiation ceremonies, which is the division of the self. into, you could say, the true self. And the word in you know, in 19th century European culture was the doppelganger or the double. So for example, the Picture of Dorian Gray has this in it. Frankenstein is a picture of many things, but among among others, is the devil and zombies, in some sense, our picture of the sum total of accumulation and habit, in our whole life of thinking and feeling and will, which after a while, begins to become distinct. And what I mean is, we begin to see it as a complex. So in Module Two, we've talked about the shadow. And if you imagine all of those shadow elements, like extracted into a being Okay, which is like a double or a twin of you. And it says this very esoteric concept. But it is very helpful. Because one can actually begin to see that there is a compulsion in a kind of strength, and in an intensity in a, in a will almost, in this in this double this double is, in some sense, an enemy. But in some sense, it's a teacher. And there is, there's a lot of wisdom around this doppelganger in an esoteric literature and steiners work. But I found pictures of it throughout literature throughout indigenous cosmologies, especially around initiation ceremonies, when something is distilled out of one's being. So, the picture that I want to land on use in your inner work is that humans are complex beings. And there's all kinds of things at work in us that we're unconscious of.
So on the one hand, I want us to contemplate these things, if it's useful for you. And on the other hand, I want you to all, I want us to all give ourselves a bit of a bit of a hug, and some love and some self compassion. Because what we're transforming in us, is very, very real, and very fierce. And it sort of doesn't mean as well. But it also means as well, in other words, it's, it's there, so that we can learn to see it. And as we learn to see it, we learned to be free of it. This is just one way of talking about the human being as a complex, complex being. But what I want to land on today and talk about is a bit is that, you know, as if, and as you contemplate this work in the self transformation. And, you know, your inner taxonomy begins to go through a real metamorphosis.
Who do you become
as you metamorphose? And that's, that's not a question for an answer. You can answer it, but it's a question to what is it? It's a rhetorical question. If we guide our own metamorphosis, and we become more present, and more creative, and more more spacious in our minds and souls, and less triggered, and more generous and less negative and less unhappy and less self focused all the time and self involved, and I'm just speaking from my personal experience, who do we who do we become?
So just want to stop there? Oh, my mom. I just want to stop there and maybe ask you to do a little bit of journaling or or thinking about this for just a minute or two. And let's, let's talk about this, this path of transformation and what comes up in you where you've seen in literature or cinema or an art, pictures of this alchemy, or, or what this means to you. And if you think it's all crap, tell me that, be interested in that. So let's just do a few minutes of journaling and then let's let's talk about it. Do y'all remember
this?
That's Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back where he visits Yoda on the swamp planet and he he goes into a cave Yoda takes him into a cave and Darth Vader comes out of the cave and he has he fights Darth Vader and the Darth Vader's mask breaks open and he sees himself there's pictures of this principle in even in popular culture
so any thoughts let's let's just open this up.
Jeff, I have recently in the last week, I guess two weeks been able to identify shadow piece that I've been trying to get my hands on for my whole life and I can see the value I can see it as a being I can see the value it's like every ugly thing about me is that that that being but when you're talking about that it's it feels like now that I can see it maybe I can dial up with it I'm I'm outside of it. But I wouldn't say I'm free of it. I mean I've just been able to step outside of the habit loop and and and see this being so I'm not sure where to go with it but but seeing it that way as the devil I've never understood the devil in Steiner but now I do. I can see how useful it is. And I'm I'm very helpful.
I've been reading about collective trauma and thinking about that and how that gets passed on and actually goes stronger through the generations. And I also recently met with someone who experienced abuse I'm not sure exactly what it was. But as a young mother, she's determined not to pass That she's the last. And it's a struggle with her every day. She's a wonderful mother. But she describes her life as very difficult in terms of every day struggling with that.
I have a picture to share. Am I muted? Nope. And in experiences with the horses, so they are the host consciousness is very different is almost alien to human consciousness. And they don't understand humans, they think humans are very stupid. Because we have these monkey minds, and we talk, but we don't feel we feel into the sort of universal consciousness into which they are constantly in tune with, that's their natural way of being. And so when you're with horses, when you're just very superficially, with horses, you first experienced that horse time is different from human time. And you can be you can spend half an hour at the barn with the horses, and then you go home and realize that actually, it was an hour and a half. So this is a very common experience for people, you lose a sense of human time. And as you as you spend more time if you want to, you start to experience that they're trying to get you to listen in like a herd. And and and think like a herd. And then you get, you can get to the point where you know, when you're thinking like the herd, and you know, when you've fallen out of it. Or maybe more accurately said, you like, Oh, I was thinking like a herd, but now I've fallen out of it, kind of thing. And the carrot, so far as I have experienced it, and I can only speak from my own experience, the way that I would characterize it is this, this creative consciousness that Jeff has been referring to this, this fresh attention at every moment, because the horses are present. And they're present in ways that humans can scarcely understand. But they represent a way of being that we can strive toward, they just have it naturally because they were never like, you know, kicked out of the garden of Eden. But like so many analogues in nature, they represent an archetype that can teach us about how what it is like to, to strive to pay fresh attention and become more present. And it's a fascinating study. And a very cool being around these magnificent creatures who really do I think, believe that they're here to help us learn how to do this. So that's my, that's the picture that I wanted to share with you ever get a chance to be around horses. Some of you have had horses in your lives before. It's very cool. Anyway.
It reminds me of a story that Steve Carlin Yeah, how's the animal sanctuary about going into the enclosure with a wolf or coyote if he isn't really present? The coyote will start howling and
yeah,
you can get pretty dangerous. Yeah. If you're not present, because yeah, or like get present. They will use the tools that they have. Yeah.
A few things come up. Hearing this one is something I've had many times on these calls Louisa which is a desire to get back to my horse life, which I left as a 18 year old without these spiritual and intellectual, I guess tools and frames of reference and, and it wasn't the healthiest. So anyways, I am reminded of the why horses have been so compelling. And then we kind of modernized and commodified our experience of them. And that's not been good. And I feel like that's really related to something that came up. Jeff, as I was listening to you, if I were to paraphrase how you described the human the typical human interpretation of our biology, it's like there's this biology. And we're kind of separate from it, or it's like, it's a done deal. And we can experience it the way we experience it versus like, no, we're actually integrated into it, or we have some kind of agency in What does or doesn't happen, that and I'm probably poorly paraphrasing what you said. But that's how it kind of struck me. And it when you were saying this could seem really esoteric, I was thinking, well, there's actually a really handy reality that we live that I pay attention to, which we call the economy, I feel like is one subset of that where I often hear people saying, you know, when I talk about my intentions to create the shift towards a regenerative economy, and people are like, Well, isn't that kind of utopia, or, you know, the economy is what it is, there's always been poor people or whatever these like, but it just is this way. And I'm like, but we designed it, like the economy is an expression of ourselves. And of course, it means different things to different people in different parts of the world across time, but but it's a cumulative expression of all of us. And so we can cumulatively express it in different ways. And so you, I guess, you were sort of validating for me, the fact that we really are live agents in this stuff, whatever it is, we're doing, like, we really do have agency. And then on a, on a tinier level, it just aligned, like a bunch of things have happened in the last 48 hours that have been kind of uncanny or not, like I'm, I'm learning again, for the millionth time, like it's not uncanny. It's it's the thing, like it's the thing that's, and so your, your words remind me in a very profound way that we have a lot of power, and I don't mean it in the like, oh, like, I'm way more powerful than, but more like, No, we really can do this, we really have capacities and abilities that are very powerful. and allowing them is essential, like it's a great gift to all of us. But then it's also not doing that is I think, where that disease consciousness starts to come in if we deny what we're truly capable of. And I guess the punctuation Marco put on this is like, I've been feeling there's been some darkness around the virus and the kind of main stream dialogue on the pandemic. And I keep feeling like it's, it's our doppelganger, like, it's, it's an expression of our lack of taking us taking ourselves up on our gifts. And, yeah, I mean, again, that means very, very different things, obviously, for different individuals in different circumstances, but writ large, it's like, it just I don't know, it seems kind of obvious to me. And when you describe the thought, thoughts, feeling and will. And our ability to actually notice those and energize them in different ways. It just yeah, it just feels like this universe of capacity. So that's what's coming up for me.
Thanks for sharing. I stayed with the first minute the last question as Jeff Like, who do we become? Like, who do we become? And as I was looking at the different images, there was something that was making me feel uncomfortable with the choice of the colors and you know, just the, the Holy majorie that felt very much a chill very Christian, you know, like, very much influenced by this idea of Christianity, you know, with the paradise and the angel and, you know, and the white The gold behind the head and I didn't grow up in a religious family at all, like my parents were totally anti religion. So there was always this, whenever I see the images that feel religious in this kind of Christian, where there's a part of me when is this kind of all the about, you know, where does it come from, and how much of how much of a social construct is it to serve certain powers to and and that's always an end with this, this very binary that I mentioned. Also with this idea, you know that you have a higher self and lower self, and you've got a cell that's all white and clear, and, and pretty, and another one that's all messy and red and winded. And just before I was on this call, I was listening to a call session by an intellectual from Nigeria called biocom, lfv. I don't know if any of you know him. But he is, he has very interesting way of looking at the world. And he, so he is black, obviously, coming from Nigeria. And he, he talks about how much freedom and the duration we can get in the cracks or in the ones and, and it will be like a two week opposite vision of where we could get higher, you know, in the type of the tutorials you showed, like, it's not by trying to flee or like move beyond the ones or see the wounds and dissociate from them, like going into them. And as a whole cartography of ones and cracks as openings towards liberation, which makes absolute sense, I would say, if you can't identify with this kind of white shiny image of the angel, that is also the one that is associated with Christianity, and that may have played a part in the history of oppression. And, and so I'm always I can see the use of the binary and how it can help in some situation, and I can't say that I've not felt it like, like some kind of light energy and dark energy and wanting to move away from the dark energy offering dark energies around me and feeling that they were, you know, oppressive, and that I had to acknowledge them and be able to deal with them. But at the same time, you know, if if those wounds or this darkness is a teacher, why would you want to get rid of it? And if you think you're actually getting rid of it? Are you actually are you not, you know, either bypassing something or trying to stay in a state that's meant to be fugitive that's not meant to remain, so we're not supposed to be constantly going from one to the other, instead of trying to remain our highest self, whatever that is. And if we're in a higher self, are we actually positioning ourselves above others, which in itself would be an issue? Not not, because I think there shouldn't be leaders or power over but because it's maybe there is like a, like a denial of a part of, of the human being or the human experience that that we may not be able to take advantage of when we position ourselves above or or beyond continuously, you know, any who wants to stay there? I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense or easy to follow. But that's Yeah, that's what
makes it it makes a great deal of sense. And I think as usual, you ask excellent questions. And I think we are I, what comes up for me, if I might? I'm sure Jeff has, I think we everybody has will have thoughts about this. going between the cracks, I think describes it really well. Because it's not about bypass. You know, we all know that bypassing is denial, ultimately, right? So it's not it's not that we're trying to spy wouldn't want to set up a duality. The higher self and the lower self, they are tools, but they should not be abstractions. And so ultimately, it comes down to felt experience and the cultivation of an intuition that gives you a feeling for the truth. So when we talk about the higher self, that's kind of like a languaging of an experience that you must have for yourself, somehow. And so what, what we do is lay out a path to help you get there. But ultimately, your path is your own and going between the cracks, to have the wounds, you know, the habit loops, and the compulsions and the addictions that we all experience. Who is the one who is choosing to go between the cracks? Who was the one that can take the wound and as our as the ancient alchemists used to say, cooks and eats the shadow? not denying it, not bypassing it? Not, you know, saying, Oh, yeah, there's the shadow. It's not me. But taking it and cooking it and eating it. So I'm just going to pause there and see what comes up for others in response as well. Oh, yeah, nice loray.
But then I would think that there should be some kind of almost celebration of the cracks in the ruins, like not a setting apart, or not a distance creation from and I don't really know how it can be even shown, you know, in the drawing, or, but if, if that's the idea like that this symbiosis should remain like the two elements should not dissociate at some point. Or you should see the light through something like that, which feels more like, Okay, this is the ones I see them, I set them apart, and they become, you know, this white, super pretty being with the fold around my head, and I'm safe now. And I'm like an angel of some kind. Yeah, that's how it works. That's the impression it gives at this the movement that we should aim towards. And if it's really about like, you know, feeling the cracks, getting that, opening them up, letting the light out, or finding the light at the bottom of them, then it's it's a much more organic, messy process. That's that doesn't look clean, maybe put that that feels like the stuff of this human existence, or the way I'd experienced it. In some ways.
I think that confusion comes in, because what happened in the history of Christianity is that power
appropriated the mysteries. So the history of Christianity is one of the church and aristocracy and group and other groups,
putting themselves in the place of the angels, so to speak, the higher powers and with the pretense that they were superior, and that they could know God's will, and that they could be morally superior to others. And on that basis, all kinds of terrible things happened. But in the mysteries of every people, including in Christianity, there's not that that is not what is at play, in my understanding, what's at play is the suffering of going into the woundedness in the cracks, without shame, without fear and with a huge amount of compassion and suffering, the imperfections of self and other but in that there's also
a bearing witness to the potential to do that. There's a bearing witness to to love. So your friend whom you mentioned, whose name I didn't catch your African friend, if he has, if he has gone into those cracks. And released his own attachment or, or, in a way, if he sees what's there, and he is present there, then he will not be bound or traumatized by what's there. And until he'll have a certain amount of wisdom about those things. But he would not claim to be the source of his inner calm, he wouldn't he would not, he would not put himself in the place of the angels, he would not put himself in the place of a master, and promote himself as a glorious being, because that would be gauche. And it would just prove that he doesn't really understand the world, he doesn't understand how things work, right? Well, that's not what he's doing. It's not what? So I would, I would guess that it's not what he's doing. Because otherwise he would, he would lose authenticity. If he did that. So does this image ring a bell for you? Have you seen this image before? The module two, isn't it? Yeah. So in Module Two, we, we go into this idea of the shadow and the shadow fabric. And these are the cracks. This is the this is the, the immersion into the wound, and the fabric of the shadow. That's, that's, that's described in Module Two. And the reason we do that work is not to
make ourselves above or make ourselves into some sort of glorious being, you know, this, this being is, is like that, right? But this is the future state, and it's not. This is another picture of it. Okay, this is a sun mask from the Donner tribe. So you're, you'll find anywhere, anywhere, where you find any remnant or any practice of initiation culture, which is a which is metamorphosis culture, so is the culture of the transformation of the human being, the human being wakes up in the tension between dark and light, good and evil, love and hate lots of polarities, and has to reckon with that, and, and realizes that the human that as a human, we have agency, we have a possibility of being with it all. And now this picture, just for clarity, is or even this picture is not about separating out and, and rejecting this arbitrarily and saying I'm better than it's, it's really about diving into the fabric of the shadow, and gradually teasing apart these knots, these bound feelings, these, these unmet needs, what else is there here? It's a bunch of shit down here. I mean, it's a bunch of stuff that we make, and we can't just cast it out, because we don't like it. We can't just rise above and be angels, like, we're not going to reach the stage of angels for you know, until the next planet, like, not for a long time, if ever, right? So it's not about bypass. Oops, I just lost literally in the picture that we're trying to give, I think to Louise's point is about the alchemical transformation. And on that journey, at a certain point, you realize that the thing that you're transforming you're responsible for it but you're not it's you're not a bad person. You're not there's a gift in seeing the double that realize that in which The self can have compassion for the self. The self can say to itself, oh, I am more complex than I thought I was. And I don't have all these problems because I lacked something. I have these problems because I'm implicated and in society and world and evolution. I think anybody who takes these thoughts theory seriously and soberly enough, would not have the pretension and the illusion to, to somehow do some bypass thing where one pretends to be enlightened, just not what we're showing and not what we're going through. So I think there's just a misunderstanding. And it probably comes from not going to the, you're not going to those videos, because the video is very clear that we're going into the woundedness. We're going into the shadows, but we're not going to be overwhelmed by them, we're not going to judge them, we're not going to say, Ooh, that's bad. But we also wanted to come aware of them so that we're not bound by them. Right, it's a choice, you can choose to remain bound in being bound. But that's a state of health, to be knowing we bound and to choose being bound. That's a self. You know, there's no freedom there. Those those beings in my experience do not give you freedom. So anyway, those are my thoughts about that. I'm sorry, we lost Lauren. And I don't know if she if she just lost patience or just lost connection.
embedding it was the letter.
Yeah, I don't think it was that. This
Dell with these doppelgangers, he's angels.
But it's an interesting, it's an interesting, as usual, she asks really good questions. And, you know, the, you know, it's always the dilemma of how how, you know, oversimplifying the concept so that we can land it, and then we can go into the complexity of it. But first, we have to have something. And it is tricky, because when I think about the enormously long and you know, complicated, and I'm sure you guys can totally relate, journey of personal healing. I'm at the point now where I can have experiences of objectively seeing my shadow or my internal dynamics, right. But not all the time. And I nearly 50 it's taken a long time. So yeah. So that those those images, those two images do feel objectively real to me, and to Jeff, which is why we use them. Because we're not after abstractions, but sometimes it it kind of stops up abstract. And the questions are super great to help us. You know, see what happened. We lost you. Yeah, internet was just gone for 10 minutes.
I have no idea what happened. I'm really sorry about that. Okay, yeah. Yeah.
We're at the end, we're at the top of the hour. And it was such a juicy question. And this is like, I'm sprouting with questions and, and directions. So
I'd like to pick up here next week. I like your question, Laura lane. It's very thought provoking.
Yeah, Laura Lee, and I was just saying that in our way of thinking, you have laid out the hygenic path, which is not a path of bypass, or wishful metamorphosis. It's a path of going into the woundedness and the cracks, not with judgment. There is a certain think at first if someone has, has never experienced, if someone has sanitized, artificially sanitized one's mind and soul, then then dropping those walls and uncorking those bottles and going in going there is a liberating act when I just recognize that What we're talking about really then is what do you do with the remainder? That isn't helpful. What do you do with the the bitterness and the resentment, resentment and the hatred and the fear and the self destructiveness? And of course, I think I was just saying, as you left, there's there's no antidote in running away from it or bypassing or pretending it doesn't exist. In fact, it can only be transformed with acceptance. Now, as to the question of, if you want to transform it, maybe you don't. And I don't think transformation equals running away, or bypass or wishing to avoid, I think of transformation as done so that I'm not such an asshole to my wife, or to my kids or so that I don't pass on the trauma to my kids that I inherited from my mother, and she transforms herself so that she doesn't pass on the trauma that she inherited from her mother. And so so this is not I just want to repeat this is not some sort of artificial sanitarian. What's the word? Why washed, white washing? I swear, Protestant ethic holier than thou kind of stuff. This is instead, okay, we're flawed for flawed humans with resentment and hatred and self doubt. And, and, and how can we heal and become creative and loving. And it's not to, it's not to reject a part of ourselves. But it's to say, at least as I see it, I don't want to remain resentful, angry, bitter, weak, you know, we guys in a blame the world. From you know, I want to be able to experience life without resentment and bitterness and hatred and those things. So now I'm stuck and stuck with me. And if I'm not going to remain stuck with those things that I don't anymore want my own resentment hatred and, and self pity. If I really want to grow, then I have to take respond 100% responsibility for. For me, that's where the path and shadow transformation begins. Not in Oh, this is terrible. I want to be an angel, I'm going to bypass and I'm just going to pretend that all that shit doesn't exist. So just want to be super clear, because I've heard this a few times with you. And I want to say that me and Louisa in the School of the school is that we're on that page. So somehow we're talking across purposes each other, but I don't think we should be because there's a fundamental agreement about the value of the whole. And, yeah, so So anyway, we can pick this up, but I just want to end on this note of well, if we're, if we take 100% responsible villainy, for for for all of me or all of you or all of us, do we or do we or do we not choose to transform that in us which we know which no longer serves? Or which continues to bind us in patterns of behavior that harm others?
Yeah. Can I want to interpret something that Laura lane said, which is very different than what you're responding to just to offer some additional reflection?
Yeah, I'm not pretending to understand or
Yeah, and literally, I'm just sharing Yeah, just very simply, part of what I heard was a response to the aesthetics, to the colors to the choice of kind of drawing on, recognized iconography, and associating light with good and dark with that. Even though there's, I think where you're bringing us to is a paradox where and we're, that's my own interpretation. It's a it's a paradox. We need to go into the darkness and mess around with the shadows in order to Bring out the light. And that's kind of this dance We do all day. But But I didn't want to lose because that I realized I hadn't seen it at all until Laura Lee, and you made those comments about the colors. And I think it's a choice, you get to decide definitely hold, you hold the pen, and you're actually the artist and you know, the lead of the school. But it was a very interesting sort of, Ah, right. There are some aesthetic choices there that do skew one's interpretation, separate from the meaning, but attached to the meeting, because we are, you know, the semiotics of color and iconography are so powerful. So I just wanted to throw that intervention in because I felt like we got lost in the explanation, but I cut you off before you could start early.
And I mean, maybe it's late in a row, because it could continue for a while. But I think what I was trying to say is that, I mean, I know, I know, we're on the same page in terms of the value of the cracks or the winds, and that's not it, it's just, it's just the way you see transformation. And the way I see it seems different. And maybe this is hard to explain. But I, when you were saying like, okay, maybe there is a point where it serves, it doesn't serve its purpose anymore, or you're left with, you know, the hatred or the anger and and this, this doesn't serve a purpose to me, when you're at this point that you've not gone deep enough into the woods, somehow, I would see it as like a stage in the process of the exploration of the wind, like you've not completed the cartography of the woods, you have not like, not gone deep enough into the abyss, you've not reached this point where you lost all of those feelings, or all that ability to even categorize those feelings to be in this space of Unknowing where you can actually maybe at some point that you don't even know that you can't even really control like you're going to get out of it, and then you'll be done with the wound, it may still be the or it may not be there, like it doesn't even matter, because you're not seeing it as a wound anymore. And I guess I did sporn like it stopped serving you. And that's when it's gone. It's not even a conscious process of leaving behind anything or, or trying to transform feelings, like the transform with the feelings will transform themselves on their own, by this staying into the cracks, or the ones long enough, or going there enough so that they transform, so it's less conscious or calm, controlable process somehow, like it's just something that happens if you have this, this determination, I guess, to go back into the woods as often as needed, so as to complete the work. And you may need to go back there all your life, you know, and there may be like new ones opening and new cracks coming up that you will need to explore at some point. And you may end up looking like a totally messed up heap of broken things. But that's okay. Because actually, this this doesn't really matter, you will never really want like that was like as a body that was an illusion somehow. So that's, that's how I kind of see it. But I don't know if it makes sense. And it's just purely intuitive in the way I share it. But that's why there is no idea of transforming or leaving behind or moving. You know, or like, there's not there's no need to transform anything, there is a need maybe to explore and to come back and to to be in that space as long as needed. But you're not actively transforming something. But why not? Because you don't need to? because initially did.
Is that what you mean? Because it's already transforming?
Because I think when you try to transform you may miss something. And you may think you're doing something you may think you're out of it, but you're that's where there is this risk of leaving behind are coming out too early to actually complete the exploration.
I just one small thing I wanted to respond to now if you go is is nearly quarter past one, one hour time, I don't know what time it is where you are. But if you do need to hop away no problem we'll understand but I feel like we're not really complete so and we may need to continue next week but it didn't he rate my experience of wound and trauma both for myself and when working with people is that it's like an octave you know music is a beautiful like, analog of healing processes in that you never really are done. Right, you, you meet it at a certain octave and you and you have a you face it, and you and it's there, and it's dirty and messy. And then there's some kind of resolution or cathartic experience or a new understanding of insight. And then, and then that's it, you know, and then later you revisit it, revisit the same thing, but at another octave, like at a higher octave or, or just a different, there's a different harmonic to the wound. And it's, it's almost like, you know, we are born into a culture into agenda into a family inheritance. And we bring our own stuff, there's like four different levels, I've only identified four of all the potential nuances of wound, and there's no way we can face that and be done with it forever. So there's this constant dialogue that is going on. But one thing I know for sure, in my own experience, is that in order to be able to see it, I have to see it, in order to be able to find a new relationship to a wound, I have to be able to see it. It It is my It has been my experience that that the the imagery of the of the shadow being outside of me or being separate from the higher self is kind of like a, an attempt to describe that experience of Oh, now I can see what I'm doing, I can see my habit, I can see the shadow as it's manifesting in this moment. And I'm in that moment of witnessing it, I'm actually outside of it, otherwise I couldn't see it. And that's the, that's the kind of the intention of the imagery is to describe that experience of I have to have some kind of objectivity, which is why we go so much into the habit loop exercises in Module Two, in order to be able to have any kind of relationship with with the wound and its healing or, you know, maybe the word transformation is metamorphosis. But healing is really the, the the ultimate word for me. Anyway, those are those, those are things that come up for me. I'm not, I'm not sure if I heard understood you well enough. But it'd be cool to keep, like, hunting for that shared understanding, you know, in dialogue. I don't know if we have time now. But you know, to continue to keep to keep going.
Yeah, I want to continue this next week. But I still think we're on the same page or lean. Maybe we're using different images and different words, but I'm gonna go mom's here. Mike experience of doing what you described, of staying staying with it. First of all, my experience is you can't run from it. If you go into it, you can't. There's no kind of escape. But my experience is going into it enough, also dissolves its compulsive nature. And that's for me, the point is, if I if I go into it enough, then I'm not bound by it, then I can gradually have a choice where I wasn't really able to have a choice before because I've immersed myself enough into the cracks and the wounds then I find there that I don't have to continue to act out of that wounded place. But I'm not compelled and habituated in the same to the same degree that I was before I went into that woundedness. So in the Video, there's this picture
of the word being a gift. Because going into it enough, again and again and again and again and again. And again and again, is
it becomes the, it becomes the the guide the teacher, it becomes the, it shows you, it shows you itself. And it also, it also is possible to have the experience that i'm i'm not not just my wound. So for me and for Louisa, that has been very liberating. Because if I'm not just my wounds, then I then I don't have to just act out of my woundedness I have more agency and choice. And that's not a construct, that's an experience has to be an experience to be real. So for that reason, I think we're we're going towards the same goal. And I'm very interested in this question of aesthetics and language. And one of the reasons we have these calls is because we need we want to find a way of describing these phenomena accurately that's helpful for people. Not in a way that encourages bypass, or more confusion, confusion. So that's why the reason I always like, oh, man, it's such a great question, because we find the questions helpful, but we've taken some more time today to to go into this and I encourage you to maybe watch those videos and see, you know, see if we're by your with with your sensibility, are we on on the right track? Or have we mischaracterized something because this is a beta version, this is a version one, but we're attempting to provide something that's useful and helpful and true to life. Not something that's dogmatic and, and bypass see.
Well, and also that triggers the wrong. You know, that's like, well, that's overly Christian. Can we you know, that that can be problematic? And it's a question that's coming up, and you're learning and you now in the rain, you're like, Oh, yeah, I see that, then it probably is going to come up and others, right. So that's all of the questions is, if it comes up on one person that probably lives in many more. So anyway, what about you guys? What comes up a new, especially you lonely? Married as well? In the rain?
Yeah. And I mean, it's the first time that I see this image this way that much, because I must have been like, right before I was talking with this. I mean, listening to this talk, right? This Nigerian intellectual and it was like, about blackness. And they were totally questioning all the representations that we have about, you know, the good and the bad and the right and wrong and, and it was a very interesting talk, and they love with this intellectual input does, because you really press everything upside down. And, and so that's why when I saw the image, there was like, wow, this this, this could really resonate terribly in that context. For instance, you know, it just shows this absolutely, like the very strong Christian influence. And you know, it's the whiteness is the good and the gold around it, and kind of Yeah, transformation of evil being always in the dark. And why Yeah, again, like his whole theory is, is a reversal of this. And, and it's not that again, you don't have this dimension of the wound as a gift, but in the imagery or in the binaries. That's your show. It's not it doesn't come up, you know, very strongly, or even this idea of transformation towards the highest self, which Yeah, looks like an angel to me. Like a small drawing of it is a very, is a very Christian vision of the highest self. I mean, if you think of the Yoruba tradition, or more semantic traditions, like there's a man in itself, which which is someone who is who has a specific knowledge also about healing and transformation may not see transformation in that way at all, or it's not how I imagined they might see it, you know, in terms of imagery again, and it's more about maybe being able to navigate different worlds and be able to, you know, hold different spirits around and deal with those energies differently. So it's, it's again, like you don't escape that work world or you don't put things apart, you know, there is always this contiguity and this connections that remain. And so everything that seems binary, or about distance creation, I see the value of it, and I see how it's inherent to our way of thinking and our way of communicating. But I can also see how it any distinction and binaries create the appetite, the opportunity for hierarchies, and I don't have no idea how we can avoid that. I mean, that's the same number of French philosophers also, like Danny Dyer, and others, who, you who ask very relevant questions to me about language and or European languages as creating a very structure, the possibility of hierarchies. So I don't think it's easy to fix the time I'm just seeing it today more than others, it doesn't. It's that that's why it came up. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, you understand the difficulty of the of the challenge, and that it's very important, at the same time, that we have, avoid inadvertently continuing the colonialism that we're all to a greater or lesser degree focused on and working to transform colonialism being a shadow that we have, you know, an egregore that we've inherited, and that is alive and well in the world today. Yeah. You we do not disagree. Yeah, I will say that my experience of working on my own shadow, which is an ongoing struggle is what has become more and more and more this duality of the shadow, I'm seeing it and working to every, you know, every day in meditation and everyday in my various studio practices, the horses and with my singing, set forth connecting more and more consciously to a higher my higher nature. And as as you know, as we know, the word higher implies a hierarchy which is problematic in on so many levels, because colonialism is, is maintained through hierarchical power, power structure. So we have to find a way to, we'd have to find a way to use the language or definitions. We don't mean higher as a hierarchy. We mean higher as in better,
still the same. Right? No, I think, just to take another minute. I'm
just looking in the background for this poem that Rumi wrote. I'll try to find where he he describes a mystical vision of a single I can't remember the poem exactly, but it was like one hair of one feather of the wing of the ark Angel brushed him and he was blown open and speechless and astonished. And so I wanted to share that point because throughout the ages in every tradition, it in less Sharman is a very beginner level shaman, not a true seer, like credo Mutua for example, who was a shaman in the South African Zulu tradition and died I think he died last year two years ago. When the when, when they its perception advances to a certain degree. There is a beholding of beings and in, in all cosmologies, whether it's you can find them in all cosmologies there are hierarchies of beings and their hierarchies because these beings unfold each other. But that's a perception, not a belief. So, hierarchy became part of our culture. And it's, you know, in the ancient days, it was one thing now it's something else. But I think if we, if we take our perception far enough, we can start to feel an experience that astonishment that Rumi described. And at that point the the protestation about language loses. It's not not, it's important, but it's certainly not true that everything is the same. It's not, it's not post modernism. And the relativist the relativist philosophy that everything is good, everything is embraced is a non it's just a it's a convenient fable, right. But I don't want to stray towards belief or dogma, I want to stay with perception. And that's going to be the challenge, to be exact and rigorous. And not to continue a tradition of Christianity or any tradition, but to look at phenomena. So I appreciate your questions, because I want to remove and, and distill and like scrub the course free of something that can be misconstrued. But I, but I'm not interested in laying a blanket of French philosophy or postmodern philosophy of relativism over the phenomenon at the same time.
Well, I think we have to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like, oh, we have, we have a problem. A very big problem with colonialist mindset. Yeah, we have a very big problem with hierarchy as an archetype being appropriated to uphold colonialism, right? This is this is what holacracy and the teal organization has any of you ever come across? This is a little bit, you know, this whole integral theory.
And what's it called the rainbow belief that the hierarchy of colors? Yeah, right. masquerades as evolution of consciousness. What's that called? Isn't that integral theory? No, no, it's spiral dynamics.
Yes, that's what teal organization is based on spiral dynamics, right? And it's like, are you orange? Are
you green? Or you're not to magenta yet? And it's this categorization of people based on their level of consciousness. And that is not what we're doing.
No, no.
Even though you're magenta,
I was gonna say, I don't think that's okay. So somebody that came up is not
the highest color in spiral dynamics, indigo.
But something that did come up for me, which I think might be in our favor, is that magenta is the color that you see as darkness, you know, in light meat. That's and and I don't really know much about color theory. But that was one of the reasons why we chose that as a name because it's, it's not an easy like in color theory, from Newtonian from Newton. It doesn't it's not supposed to exist.
Yeah. magenta is the color that the dominant worldview leaves out. They say it's not a color. Yeah, it's rygb. That goes from red to violet. And you only get magenta when you bring red and violet around and you cross them. That's where magenta shows up. You can't do it as long as you view as long as you construct the experiment as white light being split into seven colors. You won't see magenta. You'll see it when darkness intersects with light. Yeah, you only see it when you include the darkness. As part of the phenomena.
The Newton Newton thought of
white light splitting into seven colors because he only wanted to include light. And Curtis said you have to include darkness. And in the phenomenon, by including it, you get magenta.
So we need the shadow. We need the dark. We embrace the dark. And that's where this we're so much of mythologies around the divine feminine. reside in the dark Madonna. Yes. But we have to be careful not to be too simplistic about light and dark black and white, because we have white gold nations of people who have black skin, then we and it's just we have been imposing this overly simplistic and, you know, religious symbology and you know, to justify racism so you know, yeah. Yeah. If you have any ideas, we'll have too many.
But it says feels like I don't know how to describe like, even the experience that you're talking about Jeff, you know, like this feeling of being touched by the feather an angel or something like, and you get to this, like other dimension is, doesn't really fit any kind of hierarchy either. I don't know how, like, it feels like almost like a parallel universe. And I don't know how to express that there could be some kind of parallel universes at some level, that have very different qualities. But they're not necessarily above or below or, you know, so this this like this kind of like verticals thing was the hierarchy. That is one thing that I think is very much aligned with this more colonial approach to things like the light on top and that I can, but then this kind of experience to describe to see that everything is not equal for sure, like there is going to be in this kind of relativist mindset, you will still have not solved it myself, but open question, but you would still need to find a way to express it so that you don't have this kind of like vertical, you know, scaling, like scale thing coming up. And they don't know how to do that. So that you could keep the kind of very different type of experience that you're describing that is different from the rest, or that you may feel is like out like extraordinary in some way, like the etymological sense of extraordinary, and the more like ordinary or mundane stuff, but it's still doesn't make it necessarily superior. It's more like this kind of flash thing, and was the epiphany that comes in that it doesn't, even if in your own life, it's gonna come up at one moment in time, and then the time is going to continue like, and it has may have changed everything, but it's still at the same level as the other moments in time, although it has this different quality to it. Do you see what I mean?
If you're speaking from a purely experiential point of view, then then then yes, but if you're speaking from a, let's not create any hierarchies anywhere, because we must avoid intimations of colonialism, but that's not the experience, then then that's a problem, right? So, so we have to base all of this on experience, and then we struggle to articulate it because when you're talking about spiritual experiences, the English language, I don't know about other languages, but the English language is not built to describe spiritual experiences a very materialistic language, and it's very difficult. But I don't I encourage I hear you about the dangers of hierarchical languaging and concepts, right and structures, I hear you and let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, don't be afraid to consider the possibility that from an experiential point of view, there's there's both the vertical and horizontal in our life experience and in dialogue with these invisible realms of spiritual experience. Yeah,
I think the confusion comes when we place ourselves
higher than
that's, that's when we are getting very confused. We say certain kinds of people are higher than or this is a higher condition of self worth. You know, if we place ourselves on that vertical, then we're going to get very confused because we always want to be higher and not lower, or we want You know, blah, blah, blah, it's about being better. Or, you know, I mean, Joseph boys did this wonderful thing in his work where he brought together very mean and humble materials, and created magic. And so he thought art was way too highfalutin, and gilded gold and white, and thought, we need to bring it back to compost and fat, and cardboard, and like the humblest of materials. And yet, when he composed these materials, the viewer could have an experience of their own intuition. Right, they could actually have an experience of a spiritual phenomenon happening in and around them, but it was it was a very low, it was like compost and fat and cardboard. So it was like impossible to mistake for churches and in any form white and gilded gold, superior, blah, blah, blah, hierarchies, because it was it was the lowest of the low, it was the rejected, it was rejected. Where he was saying is the redemption and the healing. Now, I haven't figured out how to do that in a digital form. So I I'm gonna go away from this call thinking, you know, all these white and gold things are problematic because they, they too easily get associated with this church where we don't want to do that, that's just a red herring, unhelpful distraction, I think it would be really more helpful to find something that is more equivalent to Joseph voices fat to to bring people into an experience of the phenomena where there is no hierarchy in that artificially constructed sense. And they can evade if they're, if they have the experience of one of those hairs of the feather of an archangel they can, they can experience that. But I think our job is to keep it on the ground. You know, keep your keep your hands dirty, stay between the cracks. Stay with the woundedness doesn't mean you have to be forever bound and chained by your wounds. But we certainly don't want to give the impression that we're flying away and avoiding and going into church.
You know,
whatever, we do have to watch model two before we watch model three.
That's why we're having this conversation because we're gonna we're gonna go in and produce this, this next module and we, we just can't afford this big misunderstanding about the language and the imagery
of a possible image, or at least notion, literally, you said something that really struck deeply when you describe like, if the hair of the feather of the wing of the angel brushes, us how I heard it was like, it isn't necessarily a better world or a higher world, it's a nother world, and or another experience a parallel experience. And two things come to mind. One is a visual and the other is a an auditory, the visual is like a door or a passageway. So I'm here now and this allows me to go there, and there is there, which is neither if I might experience it as better because it might bring me relief or awareness or something that helps me have a more positive experience. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's better, because it's maybe taking me into a place that's terrible, because it's from a bad experience or some very, you know, easily labeled not good thing. But the experience I get from it is is very positive. So it's like it's tumbling all the time it isn't up or down, it's kind of moving around, but I felt a sort of a door or like a seam and allowance into a space that I couldn't get into. And then auditory thing that happened is I remembered. So I've played I haven't played in years and years. But I got it I had a chance to take some lessons briefly when I lived in New York. And so if you've ever played flute or any other instrument with keys, you know that there are certain fingerings that produce certain notes. And in some of the notes on the flute, you can use a whole the same fingering for For an octave until your octave thing kind of sparked something, lose that. But it turns out I had this amazing teacher and she taught me about. I think the word is harmonics. Yeah. Where with the exact same fingering, you aren't going up an octave. There's these other notes that live inside with name fingering. Yeah, that's Yeah. And so it's your, and it's not like you blow harder or less hard. You don't even really change your arbitrary you just decide. Yes, that note. And when I had no idea this even existed, and I've been playing for a while and then hadn't played for decades. And then it was like, she showed me these doors, like, Oh, you don't know
about harmonics, check this out. I was like, but I'm still playing
a C, or D, or whatever it is. And she's like, Uh huh. And then there's all these layers, and they're there all the time. They were all around me all the time as I was holding that instrument and playing it. And I feel like, viscerally when I'm thinking about this. Like, is that other note better? I mean, technically, it's hired the way we write we annotate, you know, the logos of music as we put those black dots that way. But is it a better? No, no, it's just a different note, and it was there. So I don't know, I was having the sense of like passageways into these other spaces, that are magnificent, and informative, and gave me a whole universe of music that I didn't even know I was holding, and created. So I don't know if that's useful.
But would you call like this, say you are an athlete, or maybe you're a musician, and you start out and you're really crap at playing. And then you develop and you develop a practice every day, and you get to a pretty high level of mastery? Is that a horizontal experience? Is that a beautiful experience? Is that a? Is that a neither? nor? To me, it's passageways, you, you pass into
another phase of the experience. Because you couldn't have like, Is it better to run a marathon than only run? 5k? No, not at all. But if you've never run more than 10k, you're gonna have a hard time passing into the phase of a marathon, you could probably do it, but you'll have some challenges. Whereas if you practice the things you need to do to do it, you will pass into that space. So it just to me feels like, like embodying types of milestones and doing the trigger, journaling, recognizing habit loops, the beliefs, the like, the layers of things. It's a skill set that allows me passageway into being able to perceive things I couldn't before being able to play those notes in my own scale. Like, it's my born with the fingering I'm born with.
Um, yes. Yeah. So this is interesting, because what is mastery then?
The journey? I mean,
sorry. I mean, I think that's a separate track. Like,
I think that's a good answer, though. The journey is the, you know, like, staying with it. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.
No, no, sorry, I'm speaking. But it's the mastery is being on this journey to me. And so that's why I also like the Masters country, these stop, I mean, they may be perceived as masters when they reach a certain level, because society feels like there's so much above somehow, but the master himself or herself will know that she cannot stop perfecting the skill, because otherwise, you know, you stop being in this movement. That is the master Oh, that's how I perceived, like the mainstream perception. But if we could go towards this type of perceptions of mastery as like being on the journey, then it's, it's, how can I say that? It acknowledges that the mastery starts with the movements or you know, the determination and it's not about where you are at in your journey that matters is that you're actually on it. And so in this way, you don't you don't get into this kind of relativist mindset where you know, everything is equal. But at the same time, you would not say that someone who is starting in a sport is like less good somehow than someone I mean, you could if that's the way you say today, but that's not the way we feel it like this person is not as good as just at the beginning of the journey. Right. He may be much more determined than someone who feels like further down the lane and he's not you know, working as much I would say the person who is like very much in it and present in The journey and determined to go on it is being the master more than the one who may be acknowledged as the master today, but maybe actually, you know, dissociating from ego, like out of it in some ways out, like not moving anymore.
It's like a word puzzle, because mastery, we use it to say like, Oh, she can charge more for that work, or like we go to her for classes and not him. But you'd never say to a toddler like that kids are really bad Walker. Right? Because they're literally toggling, right? They're just beginning to walk. Are they a good walker or a bad Walker? That that's an irrelevant distinction, we actually probably do do that, right. Like kids begin, oh, they really takes to sports or whatever. But I almost feel like mastery, we need to park the concept of mastery. In this kind of work, because it distracts from
the point? Well, maybe
the two can coexist. I don't know, maybe the two can coexist. That was a clear. Meaning, like, what do we mean? What's the purpose of the use of that world in that very moment? Whether it's, again, to to strengthen power dynamics, or to try and qualify competencies, you know, and then it's very different.
Yeah. Or maybe it's, mastery is the ideal, you know, the unattainable ideal, but nevertheless, possess, you know, musical playing in a musical instrument. Definitely mastery, and there's definitely not mastery, right. And even those who have a level certain level of mastery, they're like, just at the beginning, you know, there's so much more I could become if I only had a whole other lifetime, practicing five hours a day, what is right. But it's an ideal, and it's a goal that one is constantly striving for. And it's very beautiful, because it's very meaningful, this this concept of mastery, but it's the journey that matters, right? Because if, right, because if you are a musician, you can never reach your goal. So you have to become okay with the journey. And I feel like this, that's my experience of personal development, you know, and Shadow Work, I will never achieve mastery in this lifetime. You know, I'm, I'm a geek, I'm geeking out on this stuff, and I and I will not cheat you, right? But it's the journey that matters, because every time I get somewhere, I'm like, man, I could never have imagined, like, How stupid I was two weeks ago was amazing. You know, it's sort of a constant experience. And I could never, I didn't have the organs of perception to see two weeks ago, what I can see now, you know, and it's like that. And so that's not necessarily a vertical or a horizontal. Right. But it's a it's an evolution. And sometimes, I have found, especially in the work of Valentyn, Tom Berg, who is a deeply Christian soul and writer, he has come out of the tradition of the Sophie enik mysteries of the Russian Orthodox Church, came into steiners orbit and his work, and then ended up in the Roman Catholic Catholic church. And so he sort of brings all these different streams into his into his work. And he often has used this very highly, very highly structured meditations in his in his writing, where he talks about the vertical and the horizontal, and I found the way that he used those archetypes really helpful, you know, in in the processes that he was taking me through, so you know, it's kind of like, maybe it just depends, like, sometimes it's useful and sometimes it's really not. Sometimes it's even destructive. So anyway, that's that's kind of this kind of my checkout. Maybe you say, cuz I'm realizing we've been at this for two hours.
So what about you guys? What do you what do you if this is a good point to start? What are you leaving with
I'm leaving with thinking about nature. And you know, that is
sort of the language of nature and wondering about that. And in terms of what we've been talking about.
Very good point. And then me too sorry, Lorraine. Yeah.
Just gonna say I'm leaving with a little bit of a sore back just from sitting but totally worth and an absolute urge to get back to my playing music. Whoo. Yes.
And horses
and horses. Yeah, I got a I need some sugar daddy Do you know if it and also a request if you know of a sugar daddy or mama I'm not too fussed. Great chat. Thank you. Yeah.
I don't have any conclusion. I'm leaving it open. And, and I'm, I feel like I've thrown out to some questions. I'm just struggling this so I'm happy to hear which you made of, you know, what, how it evolved for you? Because it's, it's, it's super hard for me right now this feeling of? How do we? Yeah, there was the horizontal and the vertical and the different worlds and you know, all those dimensions? And I'm trying to, to change my perception or to express what I feel differently. And it's not simple.
Jeff, do you have a checkout thoughts?
Yeah, two, one is the picture of center and periphery that really goes along with horizontal and vertical. This possible to construct exercises around center and periphery, which, which move you into different frames of mind without the baggage of the hierarchical overlay, you could say the other thought is, I find myself wishing that we could, you know had a bigger team here. Because if we did, then we could continually improve really quickly. And because anything that we put out is going to have flaws and gaps, because that's just the nature of versioning. And, and making art. And if we if we had more people, then we could just continually improve and refine as we as we got reflections of the kind that we get on these calls. And we will have the person power to say what we think we should be saying. And realize that everything can be perfect or needs to be perfect. But I think in a when you're putting stuff out there on video or, or anything like that you especially around these more esoteric matters, it's important to get it as right as you can and be as open, you know, non fixed and non dogmatic because misunderstandings just cost a lot of time and energy. So, yeah, so that's what I'm leading with, how do we how to create pictures that are open and inviting, and not constructed in such a way as to cause unnecessary confusion? And if we do that, how do we how do we adjust those pictures so that they're more more accurate to the phenomena and more of what we want to say and more invitation for dialogue. And, you know, I'm just feeling my own shortcomings and like, I see these gaps. I see these things. I'm like, Oh, yeah, the white and gold and the rainbows and this and that, but you have to say something, right? So if you're going to say something, you have to say it. So anyway, I wish we had a team of people who can take this on and do it. Do it. Do it better. That's my closing thought.
Well, my closing thought is we actually did it. We did the to our community pool, which we've been going to for some time. So that's cool. Thank you guys for participating and on making the time. Thanks Laura Leanne for asking the provocative questions. And I think it's really good. Yeah, I think, yeah, center and periphery may well be the answer, because I certainly are thinking, you and I can always be more rigorous in terms of the phenomena. So when I think about my, if I'm, if I'm honest with myself, if I think about my tuning into the higher self, what am I actually doing? I'm just describing this to to a student the other day, we're talking about this, and I was describing it as an experience of the periphery. And I was struggling to explain to her what I meant. And I think that that may well be a maybe a step closer to describing a phenomenon that people may not have experienced and yet, but need to understand conceptually, so that they can then recognize the experience when they have it. And so thinking about it as a vertical may not be the right way to structure, the concept in order for them to enter into the experience more readily. So anyway, that's what came up for me. Anyway, thanks for participating. Yeah. Great to see you. as well. Yeah. Good afternoon. Next week, bye for now. Bye bye.
