April 24, 2025 • 44 mins
Tracking Wisdom
Episode 22
The Role of Adversity in Personal Growth: A Deep Dive
Recorded - 02/03/25
DESCRIPTION
The podcast delves into the profound insights gained from a recent seminar attended by the hosts, wherein the renowned motivational speaker Tony Robbins expounded on the intrinsic value of challenges as catalysts for personal growth. In this discussion, we reflect on the often misguided perception of difficulties as negative entities to be avoided at all costs. Instead, Robbins posits that it is precisely through confronting and overcoming these obstacles that individuals are able to expand their capabilities and evolve into their best selves. Our dialogue further explores how the avoidance of discomfort may inhibit personal development and the importance of embracing one’s struggles as an avenue for transformative experiences. As we share our personal reflections, we grapple with the tension between our perceived privileges and the universal necessity of grappling with adversity, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that even those who have not faced overt struggles can still possess latent challenges that warrant exploration.
In addition to the overarching theme of challenge and growth, we also engage in a candid examination of our individual insecurities regarding our capacity to inspire others. I express my aspirations to serve as a beacon of hope and guidance for those navigating their own tumultuous paths, while simultaneously wrestling with feelings of inadequacy due to my comparatively untroubled life. This leads us to the realization that authentic connection with others often stems from shared experiences of suffering, which can instill a sense of relatability and empathy. The conversation then meanders through various personal anecdotes and philosophical musings about the nature of suffering and the human condition, highlighting how our respective journeys have shaped our understanding of the complexities of emotional pain and resilience.
As we navigate these rich themes, we also touch upon the concept of legacy trauma and its implications for our lives and our roles as potential guides for others. The recognition that we may harbor unacknowledged burdens from our familial histories prompts a deeper inquiry into our emotional landscapes. We ponder whether our innate desires to assist others in overcoming obstacles stem from our own unrecognized struggles. This exploration of hidden traumas invites a broader discussion on the importance of self-awareness and the necessity of confronting our pasts in order to foster authentic healing and connection with those we seek to serve. Ultimately, this episode serves as an invitation for listeners to reflect on their own experiences, consider the complexities of their personal narratives, and embrace the challenges that lie ahead as integral components of their journeys towards growth and fulfillment.
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the importance of challenges in personal growth and development, asserting that overcoming difficulties can lead to significant transformations in one's life.
- Listeners are reminded that the experiences shared in the podcast are intended solely for informational and entertainment purposes, and should not be construed as professional advice.
- It is noted that many individuals feel unqualified to assist others due to their perceived lack of significant personal challenges, despite having valuable insights to offer.
- The discussion highlights the concept of legacy trauma, suggesting that unresolved ancestral issues may influence current behaviors and emotional responses, warranting further exploration.
- The speakers reflect on their journeys and the struggle to connect with others through shared experiences of suffering, emphasizing the value of authentic connection in...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Views, interpretations andopinions expressed are not advice
nor official positionspresented on behalf of any organization
or institution. They are forinformational and entertainment purposes
only. Now join Ryan and Peterfor another episode of the Tracking
Wisdom Podcast.
So I had mentioned to you thatmy wife and I had joined the Tony
(00:29):
Robbins seminar. Highlyrecommended. And I recognize something.
This is a recurring thing andwe've talked about it before, but
since we're looking to talk, Ican bring it up again. So he was.
He was talking about problems,challenges, difficulties in people's
lives and how we have a. Ourreaction is to minimize challenges
(00:53):
and observe them or perceivethem as negative things, as things
to get rid of. And he wastalking about how important it is
for those challenges to comeup for growth. Like, you really can't
grow without being stretchedand without. Without kind of pushing
(01:14):
those limits outside yourcomfort zone. And when I was, I mean,
he was sharing much of hispast and experiences, which was very
difficult growing up, and haskind of led him to where he is now.
And in many ways, what he doesis something I aspire to do or be
(01:35):
for people, that. That kind ofsource of inspiration and problem
solving and helping people tobe the greatest versions of themselves.
And I find difficult for me tofind my pathway into that realm much
because I feel like I don'thave the problems that so many people
(01:56):
have, which I know, boohoo.But at the same time, I have this,
like, strong drive andinternal pull towards that kind of
work, but I don't know how toget there. You know, it kind of goes
back to our discussion aboutour colleague who's like, promoting
and telling you things, butthey don't actually do that. Right.
(02:17):
Like, to connect with peoplein that way is important. Frequently
or often having that sense ofaccomplishment. This, I went through
this. I can relate. This ishow I was able to overcome it. And
so can you, versus somebodywho's like, I've heard of these things
(02:38):
and I've never reallyexperienced them, and this is how
I've never experienced them.
So. So I very much identifywith that kind of historically because
I've always felt like I've hadquite a privileged life. Now part
(03:01):
of that is minimizing.
Sure.
So I'm going to throwsomething out there in the spirit
of our trusting relationship.Sure. And it's, It's. It's a little
bit tongue in cheek, but alsolike, not. And it's like, well, so
(03:22):
my thought, this. And thisjust came to me is how much we talk
about the sun being behind theclouds and the gold being covered
and obscured. And you knowthat people have this inner wisdom
that, that most of the timethey just can't hear it because there's
so much noise. Because life isso distracting or because conditioning,
(03:44):
you know, is so distracting.And you know the challenges that
they have. And so it occurs tome, hypothetically, it's like, well,
maybe you have freakingchallenges that they're just obscured
by your fundamental well beingbecause you have such a. But they're
obscured, so they're there foryou to find. And this goes to what
(04:04):
you said, you said a couple oftimes about you're not dealing with
conditioning. And I think forvery good reason, because it's not
in your face. Why go lookingfor trouble? Right, Right. And I
think a lot of us who go intoshadow work go into shadow work,
(04:25):
you know, because, I mean,why. It's not because like, oh, I
want to, I want to have anawakening experience. So I'm going
to go in shadow where it'slike I'm freaking out. I don't know
what my freaking problem is.Somebody help me. And then somebody
guides you, you know, in. Intoshadow work, which is what we've
been talking about a littlebit off mic. So it occurs to me,
(04:47):
which is not something thathas I've ever heard of. So, you know,
that's, that's another likementor question. Did I ever talk
to you about the Finderscourse, mentors office hours?
Maybe not.
So anyway, on Wednesdays,mentors from the finders course do
(05:11):
have office hours. And I mightgo and ask this question. Friend
of mine just ask you for afriend of mine asking for a friend.
And I mean, I want to be clearthat obviously I've encountered things
that are challenging. What Iobserve is that the things that I've
(05:33):
encountered that arechallenging and the way I observe
the vast majority of peoplethat I've experienced, how they react
to them is not how I react tothem. And therefore I get a different
experience. The problem that Isee or the, the challenge in being
(05:54):
that inspirational person isthat I didn't have to overcome it.
Like, as far as I canremember, this is how I interacted
with these things. So how.
Oh, I see.
You know, how do you be that?How do you present as a person who,
who overcame the challenges?And so can you if it's like, you
(06:18):
know, well, that' point.
Okay, okay.
And.
Oh, it's interesting though,because it's interesting the difference
between our perceptions ofthat, I think, because I was good.
Because when you started this,I was like, oh yeah, I know, I feel
the same way. And now Irealize, oh, we're talking about
different things, so I'llfollow up with a different thing.
(06:40):
So. So yeah, so if you're, ifyour goal is. Is specifically to.
Or your intention is veryspecific to helping people overcome
obstacles where you haven'thad experience in overcoming obstacles,
(07:03):
that's a challenge. But why isthat, why is that a specific goal?
I mean, because.
Yeah, it's just something thatI have felt a draw to and it's not
like I want to be the, you know.
Right.
It's a very, I mean we'vetalked about it previously that I
observe suffering and I wantto be a source of. I feel like I
(07:26):
have some amount of awarenessand understanding of how this can
be resolved or minimized and Iwant to help people. But maybe obviously
that specific archetype orexactly, you know, identity is it
for me. But something in thatrealm. How, how do I find that niche?
(07:50):
Exactly. Because you're you.You have a lot of available examples
or models that don't match.
Right.
Your circumstance.
Right.
So you know, you're not gonnabe a Tony Robbins because you didn't
have.
Right.
The kind of over the kind ofexperience of overcoming challenge.
You're going to be a differentkind of helper. Which kind of goes
(08:15):
to the story. A couple ofstories I was going to tell. So one
was, and it's very much alongthese in the same vein of, you know,
in being a mindfulnessmeditation teacher. Certainly in
my experience in coming into aprogram and you know, kind of, excuse
(08:35):
me, getting on a path tobecoming a teacher early on, I absolutely
had the same sentiment orfeeling of yeah, how can I relate
to difficulty or how can Ihelp people overcome difficulty when
I've had a very easy life. Andof course, you know, when you go
(08:58):
into a program with a thousandpeople, there are going to be a lot
of people who had it a lotharder than you did. You know, especially
if you're already selfidentifying as. Yeah, I'm privileged.
There's going to be a lot ofpeople who had it worse than you.
And so of course, you know, Iheard some stories and so the. But
the funny thing to. Kind offunny to me at the end of. So we
(09:21):
just had the closing ceremonyand we heard from some program alumni
and they were. They're prettydifferent backgrounds and demographics
of the kind of teaching that.So one talked about. She teaches
children meditation to itsound like school age kids or even
(09:44):
preschool. And another teacheslawyers. So she's a lawyer Who. And
she. She's an active lawyerand a law professor and a consultant
and teaches mindfulness. Andthen another has a nature reserve
or some kind of. I'll just saynature reserve. And you know, as
(10:09):
she puts it, speaks for thetrees and the butterflies and the
bees and like, all this stuff.And then the fourth is in Washington
D.C. and is an activist. Andhis, his work is to speak truth to
power and, and walk thecorridors of, you know, the government
and teach mindfulness in thatsphere. So really different stuff.
(10:36):
Right. And then one of themtold the story about how they had
a stroke. He said, so just tokeep on. It's like, honestly, like,
the reason I value thepractice is because I know it was
a year ago. I mean, soundfairly recent. Like I had a stroke
and it's not that it wasn'tterrifying, but I was actually able
(10:59):
to be present with theexperience of having a stroke because
of the practices. And it'slike he's telling the story, like,
and, you know, recovery fromthe stroke and all this. The next
person speaks up and they'reall. They'd all like, already introduce
themselves and stuff and.Well, that's really interesting because
I have an unraptured,unruptured aneurysm in my head and
(11:22):
I have another unraptured. Andshe was like, like, I have a 1cm
unraptured aneurysm in my headand a 2cm unraptured aneurysism in
my neck. And so every time Iget vertical, I consider it a blessing.
And because M's like, oh myGod. Like. And then the next person
(11:44):
said, well, I didn't mentionit before, but, but I was unable
to walk for four years aftermy, after giving birth to this. And
it's like. And it was justlike, it was, it was a little hilarious
because it sounded like thiscompetition of like, you know, challenges,
(12:05):
as you're saying. But it was,it was kind of shocking. It's like,
oh my God, I can't believeyou're. That's what you're going
through, you know, So I. Whatwas my point? Well, I, I just, I
was going to tell that. Thatwas a story I was just thinking of
telling. And then it. Oddly,you introduced this idea of, of having
challenges and it seemed tomatch a bit. So what did you. You
(12:27):
said, Tony said it's veryimportant to have those challenges,
to experience development.Right. Yeah, to. And just to just
to introduce a couple ofmetaphors with that. Like, as you're
growing, you have to haveweight bearing stress.
Yes.
For your bones to developproperly and as you age, you have
(12:49):
to challenge your bones withweight bearing stress in order to
maintain your bone integrity.And, you know, a butterfly needs
to struggle against thechrysalis to survive.
Right.
So there's a story of someone,you know, finding a hatching butterfly,
butterfly emerging from thechrysalis and they help it and they
(13:13):
remove the chrysalis and thebutterfly dies because it's not biologically
viable for to have thechrysalis removed. So just, you know,
just to say that Tony's pointobviously is well supported by biology.
A number of examples frombiology. So what I was talking about
(13:34):
before was how. All right, soI told Ryan off mic about basically
getting into touch with somelegacy trauma and not realizing that
having a parent who wentthrough war experience actually gave
me legacy trauma. And when I,when I went into it and confronted
(13:58):
it directly and deeply, Irealized I'm not going to do it now.
But when I was telling thisstory to Ryan, I was like starting
to break down, just recountingthe experience of having this realization
and insight and experiencingcontacting for the first time what
(14:19):
that experience was for myparent. It did not happen to me,
but my parent was a warsurvivor. And unexpectedly, I mean,
to me, it's very, verydifficult to imagine that I would
actually directly carry thattrauma, but I found that I did. And
(14:39):
I really was describing thisas 80% of what, I guess why I am
maybe critical or angry.There's some problematic aspect of
my personality where I couldsee, okay, some of it's due to my
direct experience, but 80% ofit was due to what internal family
(15:04):
systems calls a legacy burden.And it was really, really strange
to have that experience ofdiscovering that I was actually experiencing
this generational trauma,because in theory it sounds like,
oh, okay, you know, it makessense. But to actually experience
(15:25):
it and go through theemotional breakdown of directly confronting
it and reconnecting with itfor the purpose of healing was very,
very weird. And I guess mypoint is that I think it's probably
common. I can say it is commonfor those of us who are called to
(15:50):
help helping profession orhelping paths, we feel unqualified.
Like, how can I do this? Idon't have the kind of suffering
of the people that I think I'mgoing to be helping. Right. And I
think it's like, yeah, that'sjust because you don't know. I mean,
I'm going to postulate orhypothesize. It's not the right word,
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but that, you know, the reasonthat we have this calling is, whether
we know it or not, we havethat suffering. And maybe part of
the work on the path tobecoming a helper is finding. Looking
for that, you know, soundskind of weird. You know, it kind
of sounds like, oh, I have togo find some trauma, you know, but
(16:35):
it's not that. It's not, oh, Ihave to find some trauma because
I want to be good at this.It's. It's more that you want to
be good at. Why do you. My.What I'm. What I'm suggesting, what
I'm proposing is that thereason that we want to be good at
it is because we carry thistrauma and we don't know it. Right.
Like, that's the karma, that'sthe cause for this calling that we
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feel like, oh, we actually,Our suffering, we just don't know
it. Like, to our naked eye, weseem to be privileged in terms of,
like, I had an easy life. Inever had any, you know, poverty
or physical insecurity or, youknow, dangerous environments and
things like that. But, youknow, maybe. Maybe there's some in
(17:18):
your background. And then the.The point I was making to Ryan before
was that if I didn't make apoint of contacting this. This legacy
burden, I would never haveknown that it was there. And that
everyone we meet, even if theyseem to be from very favorable circumstances
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and even if they come from,you know, family legacies of ease,
that's where it's most likelythat they're unaware of ancestral
trauma. You know, and. And I.I guess the other thing is, and this
is, trauma can also takedifferent forms, like perpetrators
are also traumatized. But Ithink in terms of. I don't know,
(18:07):
I don't want to state this toostrongly. I guess I just want to
say there's a possibility ofbeing called to helping work. And
maybe we should actually tryto really do some deep work and understand
what specific burdens wecarry, because they may not be visible.
And. And it's not a contest. Imean, the thing is that connecting
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with suffering, how we relateto suffering is. Is the gift. That
is how you help people withstruggles. It's. How do you relate
to the suffering? It's not thestruggle. Right, right. It's the
suffering of the struggle. Andso I guess what the point is, even
if you don't have struggle,you have suffering. And even if you
(18:53):
don't have visible suffering,you probably have invisible suffering.
And my proposal is that if wehave a calling, then that's probably
A marker for invisiblesuffering. So this would be interesting.
This just came on the fly inthis conversation. So it's like,
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oh, we'll see if Ryan getsinto therapy and uncovers some legacy
burden that. Well, was.
Yeah, I mean, I think youtouched on at least one of the intuitive
responses I had to thatquestion. Like when I was thinking
about it in, in the seminar,my initial reaction was, well, you
(19:39):
had to have come overcomesomething like basically saying,
saying to myself, if you thinkback and really kind of reflect on,
you will probably be able tofind the thing or multiple things
that you overcame and it'sjust not in the conscious awareness
at the moment. And then thesecond response, which is basically
(20:03):
the complete polar opposite,is what we had talked about before
and we were talking aboutearlier as far as the non doing.
And when I talked a coupleweeks ago about saying, I just need
to be in my light or, youknow, being. Being who I am and not
trying to be somebody I'm notis enough. That is the path. Or,
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you know, that that could bethe path. Is the path. And you know,
this new thing with fictionwriting and stuff could also be a
pathway of, of helping tocommunicate my philosophies and understanding
in the existential questionsand kind of addressing those things
(20:49):
in a safe way. Right. And in away that doesn't have to rely on
my own personal anecdotes, butthat you can bring the inquisition,
the process of inquiry to anaudience in a fictional way using
fictional but relatableexperiences and, and kind of allow
(21:12):
that process to unfold for thereader. May also be part of my path.
Yeah, I mean, I mean the otherthing is, you know, awakening teachers
and non dual teachers don'tgenerally deal with suffering very
much. And like, that's not thecontent of their teaching. And so
maybe that's just not thecontent that.
(21:34):
Yeah.
Of your work. Maybe it is, asyou say, you know, another valuable
gift or lesson or teaching isjust being. And you know, your ability
to model that is just adifferent gift. I mean, yeah, you
know, your gift is what it isand I'm grateful for it. I could
(21:58):
go find another gift. I don'tlike this one.
I'm going to re. Gift this.No. And of course I am very grateful
for the gift whining. I knowit's a good problem to have to have
(22:18):
the issue of I have a gift Iwant to share. And I'm struggling
to fully understand how bestto share that gift.
But okay, let me think aboutthis because I definitely have this
impulse with you to pursuethis. And I don't think it's just.
(22:39):
What's the word? I don't thinkit's egocentrism. I don't think it's
like, well, this is myexperience, so you know, it's gotta
be the same for you. Butthere's, there's something about,
I mean, the fact is you dokeep on bringing it up and it's like,
yeah, conditioning. That islike your relationship to conditioning
(23:00):
or you know, kind of as youdescribe it, your non. Relationship
to conditioning. And it'slike, okay, you know, me thinks he
does pretend. No, I mean, somaybe, I mean there's, there's, look,
there's two possibilities.Maybe there are three possibilities,
but at least there's apossibility that. Okay, you just
(23:22):
don't have conditioning.
Yeah, I don't think.
You know, and then there's thepossibility of you have a hell of
a lot more conditioning thanyou think you do because you just
have no reason to confront itbecause you have such ready access
to fundamental well being. AndI don't know what the third possible
wanted would be. Would be. Iguess you have something in the middle.
(23:43):
Something in the middle. Butyeah, so there, there are some thoughts
I. This is like a can ofworms. I don't want to open right
this moment. But there's somedirections I've thought of going
with you in differentconversations that I'll just kind
of like leave that teaserthere. Yeah, I'm curious about it
(24:07):
though. I mean we're bothcurious about it.
Which is interesting because Imean even when we talked earlier
off mic and you were talkingabout self criticism.
Oh yeah.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
And like that's a fairly, Ithink, common marker of or experience
of conditioning.
Yeah.
And I really don't have muchif at all of that. And that doesn't
(24:32):
mean that there's noconditioning. But my point is that
why is that.
But, but you, but, but when Isaid we. But do you criticize others
and then you laugh because youdo criticize others.
But not myself.
Right, but that, but noteverybody has to have every kind
of conditioning.
Oh, I know that.
Right. So I mean, so you justdon't have self. Like all of your
(24:54):
negativity is turned outwardor whatever. I don't know, it's everybody
else's fault. But I meanthat's just, that is a way of being.
There are people who don'texperience any sense of depression,
anger turned inward. They justare convinced that it's everybody
else's problem. And yeah, I soI don't think it's. I think it's
(25:17):
interesting, but I don't thinkit's necessarily hugely significant
that you don't have selfcriticism. Right. I mean, there's
lots of things that you.There's things that I don't have.
Right, right.
I mean, I don't have bodyimage. Like, I don't have a great
body, but I don't have a bodyimage problem. Like, that's, like,
that's fine. I don't care, youknow, But. But I mean, like, that's
(25:42):
fair. My mentor has body imageproblems. It's like, how the hell
do you have a body imageproblem? Like, you know. Yeah, it's
people. People are what theyare. Like, it's. It's very, very
strange, though, how. How wedo have what we have. Right. And
(26:03):
I guess also the other thingis everybody else's conditioning
is strange. Like, I cansympathize with it. Yeah, Right.
But it's like, how can you notsee how wrong these things are? Like,
how can it not bother you? Howcan you not want to be fixing something?
You know, that's. That's my.It's like, how is it possible? I
(26:23):
mean, Jesus, it's just likeconstantly walking up to a sink.
How is this. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, myexternal critic has probably gone
through iterations, and it'sdefinitely been. I mean, obviously
(26:45):
we're both familiar with thetime 10 years ago where I was in
a much different placementally at work. Right. And there's
clearly frustration. I thinkthere was criticism. I know there
was criticism, but I also feellike that criticism was legitimate.
Yeah.
You know, I had legitimategripes that I felt like weren't being
(27:05):
addressed. And I think that myinteraction with that emotion now
is much more mature. But Idon't know that. I don't know how
much of it was actual progressfrom me versus culturally.
The problem started to go away.
No, it's so happen. So what?No, it always. So that was not my.
(27:32):
I wouldn't call that mybaseline interaction with that kind
of thing. And in part, therewere cultural elements of where we
were that started to drivethat kind of behavior. And internally,
I always kind of felt like itwasn't the right response, but it
(27:54):
seemed to be the response thatwas rewarded by action. And so it
wasn't ever addressed until itwas by two very close friends of
mine. And then I was able tosnap out of that because I always
had this underlying sense thatthis wasn't the way to go about it.
But nobody was Correcting meon it.
(28:14):
So here's a question. Did youexperience that as suffering? Because
it seemed to me that you weresuffering. That's what appeared.
That's how it looked to me.
Yeah. I mean, it probably.It's gonna sound like a stupid answer,
(28:38):
I would say. Not in the waythat I imagine suffering is for people,
but it was probably as muchsuffering as I suffer. That's a stupid
answer.
No, I'm just saying that because.
Frustration. Frustration.Because I felt like it was very obvious
(29:02):
and that I was hearing onething and seeing another, and. And
that has always been a sourceof frustration for me, because what
I hear is, I want this, butI'm doing everything counterproductive
to doing that, and that isjust something that rubs me the wrong
(29:26):
way.
Yeah. And I really identifywith that, and I really also identify
with the other side of it.This is weird. So I'm just thinking
about. So here I am. Here I amgraduating from, you know, my mindfulness
meditation teachercertification program officially.
(29:51):
And. And so I'm, you know, inmy office for, like, three or four
hours, right? And then I comeout and I, like, basically, I hear.
I hear my kid being rude to mywife, and I scream at her. I like,
(30:11):
tear into her, like, you gotto stop. You got to look at your
behavior and stuff. Like,cognitive dissonance much. And so
I'm thinking, God, from herperspective, how frustrating must
(30:31):
that be? Right? Jesus.Literally. Literally screaming at
her that she had to change herbehavior, literally, after just graduating.
Oh, my God. But, I mean. Butthis is the reality of the human
(30:53):
condition. This is one of thethings that I learned. It's like,
that's not abnormal.
Right.
Which is a weird thing. Andit's not making an excuse. I mean,
look, it was really wrong toyell at her. I. I really regret.
And thank God I was able toapologize, and she was fine with
(31:13):
it, which I'm not sure how Ifeel with that. It's like, okay,
is that a sign of deepertrauma, or is it just generosity?
So. Which I think, honestly,is both. I. One thing that concerns
me is that I. I really want towork with her to surface these things
and have actual conversationsabout how traumatic it is to have
(31:36):
someone. Exactly. That, youknow, graduating program and also
screaming at you. And, like.And I mean, to the point. I mean,
this also goes to the wholelegacy burden thing, because it's
only in the past month thatI've become aware of my legacy burden.
(31:58):
And so obviously, I haven'tbeen in not being aware of it. I
couldn't have been completelysuccessful in stopping it, you know.
And, and so this has been abig stressor for me this weekend
because I continued to workwith internal family systems therapy
book. And I'm learning aboutthe impact on developing kids developing
(32:22):
internal family systems, theirsystem in the environment of a dysfunctional
family system. I'm like, ohshoot. And then I'm like, meanwhile
I'm like enacting it at thesame time I'm reading about it. It's
crazy. Crazy. So that's,that's a major stressor is. And,
and so, and so the challenge.Oh yeah, a challenge. We were talking
(32:45):
about challenges. A challengeis, you know, to understand this
and be responsible for itwithout being guilty about it. And,
and I, I understand that it'snot my fault in terms of. This is
the way friggin people work.Like we have wounds and we pass them
(33:07):
on and then if we're lucky, weget to understand them and heal them
and hopefully help otherpeople heal them. That's, you know.
But the healing part I wouldsay unfortunately is more the exception.
Right.
The rule is the, is the whole.All the rest of it. And so the challenge
(33:29):
is like taking on theresponsibility and not attaching
the guilt to it. Anything else?
What does that look like? Sowhat I hear, what I heard there is
kind of like what Iexperience. So you're saying like
the challenge is to get towhere I am, but that there's more
(33:51):
I need to do and I want toknow what that looks like. Like I
don't attach the guilt to itand I can take responsibility for
it. But then what's the nextstep up?
I. I got a little lost. Sowhat do you.
What, so we're back to talkingabout me.
I was about to bring it backthere anyway.
But so acknowledging thatthere's some underlying conditioning.
(34:17):
Right. To address. And whenyou're talking about you and your
conditioning and your, yourhistorical trauma, what. What is
it called?
Legacy.
Legacy trauma. That the keystep is to accept the responsibility
for the activity but notattach guilt to it.
Right.
Not. Not turning inward judgment.
Right, Right.
But I feel like that's where Iam with my conditioning. Like whatever
(34:42):
conditioning I'm dealing with,it's not. I can accept the responsibility
for it and I'm not turning itinternally. So what's the next step
to dealing with conditioning?Because I expect that that's probably
not the end of how you dealwith conditioning. Right?
Yeah. So I'm not sure. So fromwhere I am right now, I'm thinking
(35:06):
I'm not thinking ofconditioning as conditioned behavior.
I'm thinking of conditioningas, you know, the psychic burdens
that are causing theconditioned behavior. And so I think,
because it's what I'm doing,what I would say is you have to come
into contact with the burdensthat are causing the conditioned
(35:27):
behavior. What are the originsof the conditioning? What are the
origins of the conditioning?That's the question. So to your point.
Right. So you observed thisconditioning expressing itself in
angry behavior, but youhaven't been able to articulate.
(35:49):
Yeah. Exactly. What it isbecause as, as I think you're. Well,
maybe you didn't point it out,but obviously, as you know, not everyone
would be as angry in the same circumstance.
Right. Yep.
And so why was it triggeringto you? That's, that's the question.
And that's interesting. It'sinteresting that you bring that up
(36:12):
because I didn't rememberthat. And this is what I was going
to say before was, ah, God, Iforgot about that, man. If you had
told me then that you werelike in fundamental being, I would
have been like, yeah, like,what are you talking about? Of course,
neither one of us knewanything on our radar about this
(36:34):
stuff, but yeah, interesting.But what's the. So the big question
is, are you seriously trytelling me that one time in ten years
you had. You got triggered.
No, but the trigger is thesame. This is. So I was doing the
trigger journal originally, right?
(36:55):
Oh yeah, yeah.
And I only. What I think I putlike less than a handful of triggers
down because it wasn't thefrequency. It was like the same thing.
Right. The same kind of trigger.
Right, right.
And what I would say, whateverthat trigger is, is pointing back
to whatever it is that I can't see.
(37:17):
Right.
That you're talking.
Right.
That's the root cause,whatever it is that causes me to.
Because the, the, thephysiological and the emotional reaction
is the same. It's afrustration. There's a frustration
about something that I see.Somebody wants something that's.
That their actions aren'taligning with. And that is frustrating
(37:40):
to me. But why? I don't know.
So, so this has the sameflavor to me as the multi thread
model and some people havingmany threads and some people having
only one thread or to, youknow, he says hypothetically or I
don't know, maybe he knowspeople who have only one thread.
(38:00):
But it's uncommon. Right. AndI think about what kind of triggers
and conditioning do I have?And they're pretty different, right.
So I have. Outwardly, I have alot of outwardly directed anger.
And I have a lot of inwardlydirected guilt and criticism as well.
(38:20):
You know, it's not just one.And I probably have other stuff too,
but those are the obvious onesfor me. And so you're saying, oh,
you just have this one type oftrigger. I'm like, it seems that
way. So maybe that is. Maybe.But I mean, maybe that's the difference
(38:40):
is that just like with themulti thread model, if, if you didn't
have the multi thread model,having a single thread experience
wouldn't really make a lot ofsense like in most traditions or
rather, if your thread weren'teither emptiness or oneness or I
(39:02):
guess maybe psyche, then you'dbe completely lost. Right, right.
And so maybe in terms of, youknow, the way we come into contact
with conditioning in the ideasand teaching that we, we work with,
the fact that you have onlyone specific, you know, I mean, maybe
it's so weird and so hard todeal with because most people have
(39:26):
multiple and you have only oneand that just doesn't. It's not a
common model. And so it's veryhard to wrap your head around or
to identify or work with.Right. So it's interesting that maybe
Pierce's model can opens a little.
Yeah.
Insight on that.
But yeah, it's weird, but Ithink that you definitely are touching
(39:51):
on something as far as kind oflike my quality geek, the root cause
kind of thing. Right. Thatunderlying. There's something underlying
that's driving what Ioutwardly observe.
But I think more than that,what's interesting is that not only
is there something underlying,but there's something some like major
masking. It's something that'ssignificantly obscuring it more than
(40:14):
typically. Right. Because, youknow, like, oh, you need to do some
shadow work. It's like, oh,you know, it doesn't. Doesn't work
because, yeah, I don't evenknow how exactly. So that kind of
points towards an area that Iwant to explore more, which we mentioned
earlier. I mean, we talkedabout internal family systems, I
(40:35):
think multiple times becauseit's one of my major models that
I work with. But now I've beengetting more into it and so maybe
that's something that we couldlook at together because reading
the textbook, he says, youknow, now as you learn internal family
systems, you should practiceit with your friends and family.
(40:56):
And I'm like, really? Youreally want me to practice internal
family systems with my family?I don't know. That doesn't sound
like it's going to go well.But yeah, maybe it's something we
could play with or we. Youcould read the book. Personally,
I found the book reallyinteresting. I mean, I think it's,
it's, it's just well written.The introduction is a very interesting
(41:20):
historical sequence of how itwas developed and, and touches on
things like the rise ofsystems thinking in the 70s, which
I was not really aware of.Anybody points it out that, you know,
before that people were verymechanistic or thought ideas, thought
(41:42):
leaders were very mechanisticaround how they looked at problems.
And there would be like, itwas reductionist approaches like,
oh, if we take this apart intoits parts, then we can understand
exactly how it works.
Right.
You know, the watchmaker kindof attitude. We'll just take part,
just lay out all the parts andI'll tell you exactly what's going
(42:02):
on. And in the 70s, andsystems theory, or thinking, whatever
it was, the rise of ecologyas, as a science and the understanding
of interdependence in, in ascientific way.
Right.
You know, not in the Buddhisttraditional way. And so. Yeah, so
I found a very interestingstory. And then, you know, as you
(42:25):
get into the practices,there's. I just think they're really
interesting. The case studiesaren't. I mean, you see this in self
help books a lot where likethere's some theory and there's some
examples or case studies orwhatnot. And in the past I find these
kinds of things really dry andreally hard to read. And this one
(42:49):
I just really like, but alsomight be because I've been working
in that modality for a while,so it's as more like, oh, now I get
to see how this whole thingactually works. And now I, you know,
like, oh, this is what they'retalking about where I've been kind
of like doing exerciseswithout really knowing why they work,
you know, or how they were discovered.
Yeah.
So I don't know whether youwould find it as easy to read as
(43:13):
I am, but I'm finding itreally, really kind of engrossing.
So it's a possibility.Obviously there's a number of possibilities
for how we might explore it.So we can just put that in the, in
the hopper.
Yeah.
Something to do.
Be interesting to get at this thing.
Yeah. I mean, okay. Yes.Specifically if you wanted to do
(43:36):
the work. I actually want tolearn too. Guide the work. And that's.
Yeah. So, yeah, I'd love it.Yeah. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure
what time frame is right.Actually, I want, I would want to
talk to my mentor. It's like,okay, how do I, how do I go? But
good news for you is I do havea bad tour.
(43:57):
That's true.
Because that's the otherthing. Oh, no, that was part of the
teaching. So I did a miniworkshop on, on one, on one teaching.
And one of the things was, soif you're going to work with people
one on one, you want to makesure you have a mentor. So if you
run into stuff you can't dealwith, you, you know who to talk to.
(44:18):
And I do.
So anyway, sounds good. Allright. Till next time.
All right. Very good. Thanks alot. Thank you for listening to the
Tracking Wisdom podcast. Joinus next time as we continue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube and
(44:41):
visit www.eth-studio.com formore information and content.
Views, interpretations andopinions expressed are not advice
nor official positionspresented on behalf of any organization
or institution. They are forinformational and entertainment purposes
only. Now join Ryan and Peterfor another episode of the Tracking
Wisdom Podcast.
So I had mentioned to you thatmy wife and I had joined the Tony
(00:29):
Robbins seminar. Highlyrecommended. And I recognize something.
This is a recurring thing andwe've talked about it before, but
since we're looking to talk, Ican bring it up again. So he was.
He was talking about problems,challenges, difficulties in people's
lives and how we have a. Ourreaction is to minimize challenges
(00:53):
and observe them or perceivethem as negative things, as things
to get rid of. And he wastalking about how important it is
for those challenges to comeup for growth. Like, you really can't
grow without being stretchedand without. Without kind of pushing
(01:14):
those limits outside yourcomfort zone. And when I was, I mean,
he was sharing much of hispast and experiences, which was very
difficult growing up, and haskind of led him to where he is now.
And in many ways, what he doesis something I aspire to do or be
(01:35):
for people, that. That kind ofsource of inspiration and problem
solving and helping people tobe the greatest versions of themselves.
And I find difficult for me tofind my pathway into that realm much
because I feel like I don'thave the problems that so many people
(01:56):
have, which I know, boohoo.But at the same time, I have this,
like, strong drive andinternal pull towards that kind of
work, but I don't know how toget there. You know, it kind of goes
back to our discussion aboutour colleague who's like, promoting
and telling you things, butthey don't actually do that. Right.
(02:17):
Like, to connect with peoplein that way is important. Frequently
or often having that sense ofaccomplishment. This, I went through
this. I can relate. This ishow I was able to overcome it. And
so can you, versus somebodywho's like, I've heard of these things
(02:38):
and I've never reallyexperienced them, and this is how
I've never experienced them.
So. So I very much identifywith that kind of historically because
I've always felt like I've hadquite a privileged life. Now part
(03:01):
of that is minimizing.
Sure.
So I'm going to throwsomething out there in the spirit
of our trusting relationship.Sure. And it's, It's. It's a little
bit tongue in cheek, but alsolike, not. And it's like, well, so
(03:22):
my thought, this. And thisjust came to me is how much we talk
about the sun being behind theclouds and the gold being covered
and obscured. And you knowthat people have this inner wisdom
that, that most of the timethey just can't hear it because there's
so much noise. Because life isso distracting or because conditioning,
(03:44):
you know, is so distracting.And you know the challenges that
they have. And so it occurs tome, hypothetically, it's like, well,
maybe you have freakingchallenges that they're just obscured
by your fundamental well beingbecause you have such a. But they're
obscured, so they're there foryou to find. And this goes to what
(04:04):
you said, you said a couple oftimes about you're not dealing with
conditioning. And I think forvery good reason, because it's not
in your face. Why go lookingfor trouble? Right, Right. And I
think a lot of us who go intoshadow work go into shadow work,
(04:25):
you know, because, I mean,why. It's not because like, oh, I
want to, I want to have anawakening experience. So I'm going
to go in shadow where it'slike I'm freaking out. I don't know
what my freaking problem is.Somebody help me. And then somebody
guides you, you know, in. Intoshadow work, which is what we've
been talking about a littlebit off mic. So it occurs to me,
(04:47):
which is not something thathas I've ever heard of. So, you know,
that's, that's another likementor question. Did I ever talk
to you about the Finderscourse, mentors office hours?
Maybe not.
So anyway, on Wednesdays,mentors from the finders course do
(05:11):
have office hours. And I mightgo and ask this question. Friend
of mine just ask you for afriend of mine asking for a friend.
And I mean, I want to be clearthat obviously I've encountered things
that are challenging. What Iobserve is that the things that I've
(05:33):
encountered that arechallenging and the way I observe
the vast majority of peoplethat I've experienced, how they react
to them is not how I react tothem. And therefore I get a different
experience. The problem that Isee or the, the challenge in being
(05:54):
that inspirational person isthat I didn't have to overcome it.
Like, as far as I canremember, this is how I interacted
with these things. So how.
Oh, I see.
You know, how do you be that?How do you present as a person who,
who overcame the challenges?And so can you if it's like, you
(06:18):
know, well, that' point.
Okay, okay.
And.
Oh, it's interesting though,because it's interesting the difference
between our perceptions ofthat, I think, because I was good.
Because when you started this,I was like, oh yeah, I know, I feel
the same way. And now Irealize, oh, we're talking about
different things, so I'llfollow up with a different thing.
(06:40):
So. So yeah, so if you're, ifyour goal is. Is specifically to.
Or your intention is veryspecific to helping people overcome
obstacles where you haven'thad experience in overcoming obstacles,
(07:03):
that's a challenge. But why isthat, why is that a specific goal?
I mean, because.
Yeah, it's just something thatI have felt a draw to and it's not
like I want to be the, you know.
Right.
It's a very, I mean we'vetalked about it previously that I
observe suffering and I wantto be a source of. I feel like I
(07:26):
have some amount of awarenessand understanding of how this can
be resolved or minimized and Iwant to help people. But maybe obviously
that specific archetype orexactly, you know, identity is it
for me. But something in thatrealm. How, how do I find that niche?
(07:50):
Exactly. Because you're you.You have a lot of available examples
or models that don't match.
Right.
Your circumstance.
Right.
So you know, you're not gonnabe a Tony Robbins because you didn't
have.
Right.
The kind of over the kind ofexperience of overcoming challenge.
You're going to be a differentkind of helper. Which kind of goes
(08:15):
to the story. A couple ofstories I was going to tell. So one
was, and it's very much alongthese in the same vein of, you know,
in being a mindfulnessmeditation teacher. Certainly in
my experience in coming into aprogram and you know, kind of, excuse
(08:35):
me, getting on a path tobecoming a teacher early on, I absolutely
had the same sentiment orfeeling of yeah, how can I relate
to difficulty or how can Ihelp people overcome difficulty when
I've had a very easy life. Andof course, you know, when you go
(08:58):
into a program with a thousandpeople, there are going to be a lot
of people who had it a lotharder than you did. You know, especially
if you're already selfidentifying as. Yeah, I'm privileged.
There's going to be a lot ofpeople who had it worse than you.
And so of course, you know, Iheard some stories and so the. But
the funny thing to. Kind offunny to me at the end of. So we
(09:21):
just had the closing ceremonyand we heard from some program alumni
and they were. They're prettydifferent backgrounds and demographics
of the kind of teaching that.So one talked about. She teaches
children meditation to itsound like school age kids or even
(09:44):
preschool. And another teacheslawyers. So she's a lawyer Who. And
she. She's an active lawyerand a law professor and a consultant
and teaches mindfulness. Andthen another has a nature reserve
or some kind of. I'll just saynature reserve. And you know, as
(10:09):
she puts it, speaks for thetrees and the butterflies and the
bees and like, all this stuff.And then the fourth is in Washington
D.C. and is an activist. Andhis, his work is to speak truth to
power and, and walk thecorridors of, you know, the government
and teach mindfulness in thatsphere. So really different stuff.
(10:36):
Right. And then one of themtold the story about how they had
a stroke. He said, so just tokeep on. It's like, honestly, like,
the reason I value thepractice is because I know it was
a year ago. I mean, soundfairly recent. Like I had a stroke
and it's not that it wasn'tterrifying, but I was actually able
(10:59):
to be present with theexperience of having a stroke because
of the practices. And it'slike he's telling the story, like,
and, you know, recovery fromthe stroke and all this. The next
person speaks up and they'reall. They'd all like, already introduce
themselves and stuff and.Well, that's really interesting because
I have an unraptured,unruptured aneurysm in my head and
(11:22):
I have another unraptured. Andshe was like, like, I have a 1cm
unraptured aneurysm in my headand a 2cm unraptured aneurysism in
my neck. And so every time Iget vertical, I consider it a blessing.
And because M's like, oh myGod. Like. And then the next person
(11:44):
said, well, I didn't mentionit before, but, but I was unable
to walk for four years aftermy, after giving birth to this. And
it's like. And it was justlike, it was, it was a little hilarious
because it sounded like thiscompetition of like, you know, challenges,
(12:05):
as you're saying. But it was,it was kind of shocking. It's like,
oh my God, I can't believeyou're. That's what you're going
through, you know, So I. Whatwas my point? Well, I, I just, I
was going to tell that. Thatwas a story I was just thinking of
telling. And then it. Oddly,you introduced this idea of, of having
challenges and it seemed tomatch a bit. So what did you. You
(12:27):
said, Tony said it's veryimportant to have those challenges,
to experience development.Right. Yeah, to. And just to just
to introduce a couple ofmetaphors with that. Like, as you're
growing, you have to haveweight bearing stress.
Yes.
For your bones to developproperly and as you age, you have
(12:49):
to challenge your bones withweight bearing stress in order to
maintain your bone integrity.And, you know, a butterfly needs
to struggle against thechrysalis to survive.
Right.
So there's a story of someone,you know, finding a hatching butterfly,
butterfly emerging from thechrysalis and they help it and they
(13:13):
remove the chrysalis and thebutterfly dies because it's not biologically
viable for to have thechrysalis removed. So just, you know,
just to say that Tony's pointobviously is well supported by biology.
A number of examples frombiology. So what I was talking about
(13:34):
before was how. All right, soI told Ryan off mic about basically
getting into touch with somelegacy trauma and not realizing that
having a parent who wentthrough war experience actually gave
me legacy trauma. And when I,when I went into it and confronted
(13:58):
it directly and deeply, Irealized I'm not going to do it now.
But when I was telling thisstory to Ryan, I was like starting
to break down, just recountingthe experience of having this realization
and insight and experiencingcontacting for the first time what
(14:19):
that experience was for myparent. It did not happen to me,
but my parent was a warsurvivor. And unexpectedly, I mean,
to me, it's very, verydifficult to imagine that I would
actually directly carry thattrauma, but I found that I did. And
(14:39):
I really was describing thisas 80% of what, I guess why I am
maybe critical or angry.There's some problematic aspect of
my personality where I couldsee, okay, some of it's due to my
direct experience, but 80% ofit was due to what internal family
(15:04):
systems calls a legacy burden.And it was really, really strange
to have that experience ofdiscovering that I was actually experiencing
this generational trauma,because in theory it sounds like,
oh, okay, you know, it makessense. But to actually experience
(15:25):
it and go through theemotional breakdown of directly confronting
it and reconnecting with itfor the purpose of healing was very,
very weird. And I guess mypoint is that I think it's probably
common. I can say it is commonfor those of us who are called to
(15:50):
help helping profession orhelping paths, we feel unqualified.
Like, how can I do this? Idon't have the kind of suffering
of the people that I think I'mgoing to be helping. Right. And I
think it's like, yeah, that'sjust because you don't know. I mean,
I'm going to postulate orhypothesize. It's not the right word,
(16:12):
but that, you know, the reasonthat we have this calling is, whether
we know it or not, we havethat suffering. And maybe part of
the work on the path tobecoming a helper is finding. Looking
for that, you know, soundskind of weird. You know, it kind
of sounds like, oh, I have togo find some trauma, you know, but
(16:35):
it's not that. It's not, oh, Ihave to find some trauma because
I want to be good at this.It's. It's more that you want to
be good at. Why do you. My.What I'm. What I'm suggesting, what
I'm proposing is that thereason that we want to be good at
it is because we carry thistrauma and we don't know it. Right.
Like, that's the karma, that'sthe cause for this calling that we
(16:58):
feel like, oh, we actually,Our suffering, we just don't know
it. Like, to our naked eye, weseem to be privileged in terms of,
like, I had an easy life. Inever had any, you know, poverty
or physical insecurity or, youknow, dangerous environments and
things like that. But, youknow, maybe. Maybe there's some in
(17:18):
your background. And then the.The point I was making to Ryan before
was that if I didn't make apoint of contacting this. This legacy
burden, I would never haveknown that it was there. And that
everyone we meet, even if theyseem to be from very favorable circumstances
(17:42):
and even if they come from,you know, family legacies of ease,
that's where it's most likelythat they're unaware of ancestral
trauma. You know, and. And I.I guess the other thing is, and this
is, trauma can also takedifferent forms, like perpetrators
are also traumatized. But Ithink in terms of. I don't know,
(18:07):
I don't want to state this toostrongly. I guess I just want to
say there's a possibility ofbeing called to helping work. And
maybe we should actually tryto really do some deep work and understand
what specific burdens wecarry, because they may not be visible.
And. And it's not a contest. Imean, the thing is that connecting
(18:32):
with suffering, how we relateto suffering is. Is the gift. That
is how you help people withstruggles. It's. How do you relate
to the suffering? It's not thestruggle. Right, right. It's the
suffering of the struggle. Andso I guess what the point is, even
if you don't have struggle,you have suffering. And even if you
(18:53):
don't have visible suffering,you probably have invisible suffering.
And my proposal is that if wehave a calling, then that's probably
A marker for invisiblesuffering. So this would be interesting.
This just came on the fly inthis conversation. So it's like,
(19:13):
oh, we'll see if Ryan getsinto therapy and uncovers some legacy
burden that. Well, was.
Yeah, I mean, I think youtouched on at least one of the intuitive
responses I had to thatquestion. Like when I was thinking
about it in, in the seminar,my initial reaction was, well, you
(19:39):
had to have come overcomesomething like basically saying,
saying to myself, if you thinkback and really kind of reflect on,
you will probably be able tofind the thing or multiple things
that you overcame and it'sjust not in the conscious awareness
at the moment. And then thesecond response, which is basically
(20:03):
the complete polar opposite,is what we had talked about before
and we were talking aboutearlier as far as the non doing.
And when I talked a coupleweeks ago about saying, I just need
to be in my light or, youknow, being. Being who I am and not
trying to be somebody I'm notis enough. That is the path. Or,
(20:27):
you know, that that could bethe path. Is the path. And you know,
this new thing with fictionwriting and stuff could also be a
pathway of, of helping tocommunicate my philosophies and understanding
in the existential questionsand kind of addressing those things
(20:49):
in a safe way. Right. And in away that doesn't have to rely on
my own personal anecdotes, butthat you can bring the inquisition,
the process of inquiry to anaudience in a fictional way using
fictional but relatableexperiences and, and kind of allow
(21:12):
that process to unfold for thereader. May also be part of my path.
Yeah, I mean, I mean the otherthing is, you know, awakening teachers
and non dual teachers don'tgenerally deal with suffering very
much. And like, that's not thecontent of their teaching. And so
maybe that's just not thecontent that.
(21:34):
Yeah.
Of your work. Maybe it is, asyou say, you know, another valuable
gift or lesson or teaching isjust being. And you know, your ability
to model that is just adifferent gift. I mean, yeah, you
know, your gift is what it isand I'm grateful for it. I could
(21:58):
go find another gift. I don'tlike this one.
I'm going to re. Gift this.No. And of course I am very grateful
for the gift whining. I knowit's a good problem to have to have
(22:18):
the issue of I have a gift Iwant to share. And I'm struggling
to fully understand how bestto share that gift.
But okay, let me think aboutthis because I definitely have this
impulse with you to pursuethis. And I don't think it's just.
(22:39):
What's the word? I don't thinkit's egocentrism. I don't think it's
like, well, this is myexperience, so you know, it's gotta
be the same for you. Butthere's, there's something about,
I mean, the fact is you dokeep on bringing it up and it's like,
yeah, conditioning. That islike your relationship to conditioning
(23:00):
or you know, kind of as youdescribe it, your non. Relationship
to conditioning. And it'slike, okay, you know, me thinks he
does pretend. No, I mean, somaybe, I mean there's, there's, look,
there's two possibilities.Maybe there are three possibilities,
but at least there's apossibility that. Okay, you just
(23:22):
don't have conditioning.
Yeah, I don't think.
You know, and then there's thepossibility of you have a hell of
a lot more conditioning thanyou think you do because you just
have no reason to confront itbecause you have such ready access
to fundamental well being. AndI don't know what the third possible
wanted would be. Would be. Iguess you have something in the middle.
(23:43):
Something in the middle. Butyeah, so there, there are some thoughts
I. This is like a can ofworms. I don't want to open right
this moment. But there's somedirections I've thought of going
with you in differentconversations that I'll just kind
of like leave that teaserthere. Yeah, I'm curious about it
(24:07):
though. I mean we're bothcurious about it.
Which is interesting because Imean even when we talked earlier
off mic and you were talkingabout self criticism.
Oh yeah.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
And like that's a fairly, Ithink, common marker of or experience
of conditioning.
Yeah.
And I really don't have muchif at all of that. And that doesn't
(24:32):
mean that there's noconditioning. But my point is that
why is that.
But, but you, but, but when Isaid we. But do you criticize others
and then you laugh because youdo criticize others.
But not myself.
Right, but that, but noteverybody has to have every kind
of conditioning.
Oh, I know that.
Right. So I mean, so you justdon't have self. Like all of your
(24:54):
negativity is turned outwardor whatever. I don't know, it's everybody
else's fault. But I meanthat's just, that is a way of being.
There are people who don'texperience any sense of depression,
anger turned inward. They justare convinced that it's everybody
else's problem. And yeah, I soI don't think it's. I think it's
(25:17):
interesting, but I don't thinkit's necessarily hugely significant
that you don't have selfcriticism. Right. I mean, there's
lots of things that you.There's things that I don't have.
Right, right.
I mean, I don't have bodyimage. Like, I don't have a great
body, but I don't have a bodyimage problem. Like, that's, like,
that's fine. I don't care, youknow, But. But I mean, like, that's
(25:42):
fair. My mentor has body imageproblems. It's like, how the hell
do you have a body imageproblem? Like, you know. Yeah, it's
people. People are what theyare. Like, it's. It's very, very
strange, though, how. How wedo have what we have. Right. And
(26:03):
I guess also the other thingis everybody else's conditioning
is strange. Like, I cansympathize with it. Yeah, Right.
But it's like, how can you notsee how wrong these things are? Like,
how can it not bother you? Howcan you not want to be fixing something?
You know, that's. That's my.It's like, how is it possible? I
(26:23):
mean, Jesus, it's just likeconstantly walking up to a sink.
How is this. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, myexternal critic has probably gone
through iterations, and it'sdefinitely been. I mean, obviously
(26:45):
we're both familiar with thetime 10 years ago where I was in
a much different placementally at work. Right. And there's
clearly frustration. I thinkthere was criticism. I know there
was criticism, but I also feellike that criticism was legitimate.
Yeah.
You know, I had legitimategripes that I felt like weren't being
(27:05):
addressed. And I think that myinteraction with that emotion now
is much more mature. But Idon't know that. I don't know how
much of it was actual progressfrom me versus culturally.
The problem started to go away.
No, it's so happen. So what?No, it always. So that was not my.
(27:32):
I wouldn't call that mybaseline interaction with that kind
of thing. And in part, therewere cultural elements of where we
were that started to drivethat kind of behavior. And internally,
I always kind of felt like itwasn't the right response, but it
(27:54):
seemed to be the response thatwas rewarded by action. And so it
wasn't ever addressed until itwas by two very close friends of
mine. And then I was able tosnap out of that because I always
had this underlying sense thatthis wasn't the way to go about it.
But nobody was Correcting meon it.
(28:14):
So here's a question. Did youexperience that as suffering? Because
it seemed to me that you weresuffering. That's what appeared.
That's how it looked to me.
Yeah. I mean, it probably.It's gonna sound like a stupid answer,
(28:38):
I would say. Not in the waythat I imagine suffering is for people,
but it was probably as muchsuffering as I suffer. That's a stupid
answer.
No, I'm just saying that because.
Frustration. Frustration.Because I felt like it was very obvious
(29:02):
and that I was hearing onething and seeing another, and. And
that has always been a sourceof frustration for me, because what
I hear is, I want this, butI'm doing everything counterproductive
to doing that, and that isjust something that rubs me the wrong
(29:26):
way.
Yeah. And I really identifywith that, and I really also identify
with the other side of it.This is weird. So I'm just thinking
about. So here I am. Here I amgraduating from, you know, my mindfulness
meditation teachercertification program officially.
(29:51):
And. And so I'm, you know, inmy office for, like, three or four
hours, right? And then I comeout and I, like, basically, I hear.
I hear my kid being rude to mywife, and I scream at her. I like,
(30:11):
tear into her, like, you gotto stop. You got to look at your
behavior and stuff. Like,cognitive dissonance much. And so
I'm thinking, God, from herperspective, how frustrating must
(30:31):
that be? Right? Jesus.Literally. Literally screaming at
her that she had to change herbehavior, literally, after just graduating.
Oh, my God. But, I mean. Butthis is the reality of the human
(30:53):
condition. This is one of thethings that I learned. It's like,
that's not abnormal.
Right.
Which is a weird thing. Andit's not making an excuse. I mean,
look, it was really wrong toyell at her. I. I really regret.
And thank God I was able toapologize, and she was fine with
(31:13):
it, which I'm not sure how Ifeel with that. It's like, okay,
is that a sign of deepertrauma, or is it just generosity?
So. Which I think, honestly,is both. I. One thing that concerns
me is that I. I really want towork with her to surface these things
and have actual conversationsabout how traumatic it is to have
(31:36):
someone. Exactly. That, youknow, graduating program and also
screaming at you. And, like.And I mean, to the point. I mean,
this also goes to the wholelegacy burden thing, because it's
only in the past month thatI've become aware of my legacy burden.
(31:58):
And so obviously, I haven'tbeen in not being aware of it. I
couldn't have been completelysuccessful in stopping it, you know.
And, and so this has been abig stressor for me this weekend
because I continued to workwith internal family systems therapy
book. And I'm learning aboutthe impact on developing kids developing
(32:22):
internal family systems, theirsystem in the environment of a dysfunctional
family system. I'm like, ohshoot. And then I'm like, meanwhile
I'm like enacting it at thesame time I'm reading about it. It's
crazy. Crazy. So that's,that's a major stressor is. And,
and so, and so the challenge.Oh yeah, a challenge. We were talking
(32:45):
about challenges. A challengeis, you know, to understand this
and be responsible for itwithout being guilty about it. And,
and I, I understand that it'snot my fault in terms of. This is
the way friggin people work.Like we have wounds and we pass them
(33:07):
on and then if we're lucky, weget to understand them and heal them
and hopefully help otherpeople heal them. That's, you know.
But the healing part I wouldsay unfortunately is more the exception.
Right.
The rule is the, is the whole.All the rest of it. And so the challenge
(33:29):
is like taking on theresponsibility and not attaching
the guilt to it. Anything else?
What does that look like? Sowhat I hear, what I heard there is
kind of like what Iexperience. So you're saying like
the challenge is to get towhere I am, but that there's more
(33:51):
I need to do and I want toknow what that looks like. Like I
don't attach the guilt to itand I can take responsibility for
it. But then what's the nextstep up?
I. I got a little lost. Sowhat do you.
What, so we're back to talkingabout me.
I was about to bring it backthere anyway.
But so acknowledging thatthere's some underlying conditioning.
(34:17):
Right. To address. And whenyou're talking about you and your
conditioning and your, yourhistorical trauma, what. What is
it called?
Legacy.
Legacy trauma. That the keystep is to accept the responsibility
for the activity but notattach guilt to it.
Right.
Not. Not turning inward judgment.
Right, Right.
But I feel like that's where Iam with my conditioning. Like whatever
(34:42):
conditioning I'm dealing with,it's not. I can accept the responsibility
for it and I'm not turning itinternally. So what's the next step
to dealing with conditioning?Because I expect that that's probably
not the end of how you dealwith conditioning. Right?
Yeah. So I'm not sure. So fromwhere I am right now, I'm thinking
(35:06):
I'm not thinking ofconditioning as conditioned behavior.
I'm thinking of conditioningas, you know, the psychic burdens
that are causing theconditioned behavior. And so I think,
because it's what I'm doing,what I would say is you have to come
into contact with the burdensthat are causing the conditioned
(35:27):
behavior. What are the originsof the conditioning? What are the
origins of the conditioning?That's the question. So to your point.
Right. So you observed thisconditioning expressing itself in
angry behavior, but youhaven't been able to articulate.
(35:49):
Yeah. Exactly. What it isbecause as, as I think you're. Well,
maybe you didn't point it out,but obviously, as you know, not everyone
would be as angry in the same circumstance.
Right. Yep.
And so why was it triggeringto you? That's, that's the question.
And that's interesting. It'sinteresting that you bring that up
(36:12):
because I didn't rememberthat. And this is what I was going
to say before was, ah, God, Iforgot about that, man. If you had
told me then that you werelike in fundamental being, I would
have been like, yeah, like,what are you talking about? Of course,
neither one of us knewanything on our radar about this
(36:34):
stuff, but yeah, interesting.But what's the. So the big question
is, are you seriously trytelling me that one time in ten years
you had. You got triggered.
No, but the trigger is thesame. This is. So I was doing the
trigger journal originally, right?
(36:55):
Oh yeah, yeah.
And I only. What I think I putlike less than a handful of triggers
down because it wasn't thefrequency. It was like the same thing.
Right. The same kind of trigger.
Right, right.
And what I would say, whateverthat trigger is, is pointing back
to whatever it is that I can't see.
(37:17):
Right.
That you're talking.
Right.
That's the root cause,whatever it is that causes me to.
Because the, the, thephysiological and the emotional reaction
is the same. It's afrustration. There's a frustration
about something that I see.Somebody wants something that's.
That their actions aren'taligning with. And that is frustrating
(37:40):
to me. But why? I don't know.
So, so this has the sameflavor to me as the multi thread
model and some people havingmany threads and some people having
only one thread or to, youknow, he says hypothetically or I
don't know, maybe he knowspeople who have only one thread.
(38:00):
But it's uncommon. Right. AndI think about what kind of triggers
and conditioning do I have?And they're pretty different, right.
So I have. Outwardly, I have alot of outwardly directed anger.
And I have a lot of inwardlydirected guilt and criticism as well.
(38:20):
You know, it's not just one.And I probably have other stuff too,
but those are the obvious onesfor me. And so you're saying, oh,
you just have this one type oftrigger. I'm like, it seems that
way. So maybe that is. Maybe.But I mean, maybe that's the difference
(38:40):
is that just like with themulti thread model, if, if you didn't
have the multi thread model,having a single thread experience
wouldn't really make a lot ofsense like in most traditions or
rather, if your thread weren'teither emptiness or oneness or I
(39:02):
guess maybe psyche, then you'dbe completely lost. Right, right.
And so maybe in terms of, youknow, the way we come into contact
with conditioning in the ideasand teaching that we, we work with,
the fact that you have onlyone specific, you know, I mean, maybe
it's so weird and so hard todeal with because most people have
(39:26):
multiple and you have only oneand that just doesn't. It's not a
common model. And so it's veryhard to wrap your head around or
to identify or work with.Right. So it's interesting that maybe
Pierce's model can opens a little.
Yeah.
Insight on that.
But yeah, it's weird, but Ithink that you definitely are touching
(39:51):
on something as far as kind oflike my quality geek, the root cause
kind of thing. Right. Thatunderlying. There's something underlying
that's driving what Ioutwardly observe.
But I think more than that,what's interesting is that not only
is there something underlying,but there's something some like major
masking. It's something that'ssignificantly obscuring it more than
(40:14):
typically. Right. Because, youknow, like, oh, you need to do some
shadow work. It's like, oh,you know, it doesn't. Doesn't work
because, yeah, I don't evenknow how exactly. So that kind of
points towards an area that Iwant to explore more, which we mentioned
earlier. I mean, we talkedabout internal family systems, I
(40:35):
think multiple times becauseit's one of my major models that
I work with. But now I've beengetting more into it and so maybe
that's something that we couldlook at together because reading
the textbook, he says, youknow, now as you learn internal family
systems, you should practiceit with your friends and family.
(40:56):
And I'm like, really? Youreally want me to practice internal
family systems with my family?I don't know. That doesn't sound
like it's going to go well.But yeah, maybe it's something we
could play with or we. Youcould read the book. Personally,
I found the book reallyinteresting. I mean, I think it's,
it's, it's just well written.The introduction is a very interesting
(41:20):
historical sequence of how itwas developed and, and touches on
things like the rise ofsystems thinking in the 70s, which
I was not really aware of.Anybody points it out that, you know,
before that people were verymechanistic or thought ideas, thought
(41:42):
leaders were very mechanisticaround how they looked at problems.
And there would be like, itwas reductionist approaches like,
oh, if we take this apart intoits parts, then we can understand
exactly how it works.
Right.
You know, the watchmaker kindof attitude. We'll just take part,
just lay out all the parts andI'll tell you exactly what's going
(42:02):
on. And in the 70s, andsystems theory, or thinking, whatever
it was, the rise of ecologyas, as a science and the understanding
of interdependence in, in ascientific way.
Right.
You know, not in the Buddhisttraditional way. And so. Yeah, so
I found a very interestingstory. And then, you know, as you
(42:25):
get into the practices,there's. I just think they're really
interesting. The case studiesaren't. I mean, you see this in self
help books a lot where likethere's some theory and there's some
examples or case studies orwhatnot. And in the past I find these
kinds of things really dry andreally hard to read. And this one
(42:49):
I just really like, but alsomight be because I've been working
in that modality for a while,so it's as more like, oh, now I get
to see how this whole thingactually works. And now I, you know,
like, oh, this is what they'retalking about where I've been kind
of like doing exerciseswithout really knowing why they work,
you know, or how they were discovered.
Yeah.
So I don't know whether youwould find it as easy to read as
(43:13):
I am, but I'm finding itreally, really kind of engrossing.
So it's a possibility.Obviously there's a number of possibilities
for how we might explore it.So we can just put that in the, in
the hopper.
Yeah.
Something to do.
Be interesting to get at this thing.
Yeah. I mean, okay. Yes.Specifically if you wanted to do
(43:36):
the work. I actually want tolearn too. Guide the work. And that's.
Yeah. So, yeah, I'd love it.Yeah. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure
what time frame is right.Actually, I want, I would want to
talk to my mentor. It's like,okay, how do I, how do I go? But
good news for you is I do havea bad tour.
(43:57):
That's true.
Because that's the otherthing. Oh, no, that was part of the
teaching. So I did a miniworkshop on, on one, on one teaching.
And one of the things was, soif you're going to work with people
one on one, you want to makesure you have a mentor. So if you
run into stuff you can't dealwith, you, you know who to talk to.
(44:18):
And I do.
So anyway, sounds good. Allright. Till next time.
All right. Very good. Thanks alot. Thank you for listening to the
Tracking Wisdom podcast. Joinus next time as we continue the discussion.
Don't forget to follow us onFacebook, Instagram and YouTube and
(44:41):
visit www.eth-studio.com formore information and content.
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