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May 4, 2025 17 mins

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Motion sickness provides a powerful metaphor for finding spiritual steadiness in a chaotic world, revealing how cognitive dissonance between stillness and movement creates disorientation in both physical and spiritual realms.

• Personal experience with car sickness when reading comics as a passenger but never when driving
• Scientific explanation: motion sickness occurs when eyes focus on stillness while body experiences movement
• Apple's "vehicle motion cues" feature provides peripheral dots that move with the vehicle, reducing dissonance
• Spiritual parallel: we experience dissonance between focusing on unchanging truths while living in rapidly changing times
• Spiritual "dots" like wisdom, community rhythms, and mentors help us stay oriented without overriding truth
• Psalm 46:10 teaches that stillness is internal awareness of God even during external motion
• Wisdom comes from using spiritual orientation tools without fearing change

Keep your eyes focused on what you know is true, things that are greater than you. Don't move in fear. Use the dots to stay clear in a moving world.


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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
One thing we know right now is that life does not
slow down.
The world does not wait, butsomething that I found recently
that was built right into myiPhone gave me a glimpse of what
it means to stay spirituallysteady even when things are
moving all around me, when theground is all shaking and
turbulent.
So welcome again, y'all, toanother episode of Uncut Gems.

(00:26):
I'm your host, jay Floyd.
I am a life coach, a technologyleader.
I'm a speaker author.
This is going to be a good one,y'all.
Thank you for everybody whotuned in to my most recent ones.
I know I got kind of deep onthe personal side.
A couple of the things that wetalked about recently were my

(00:48):
brother, my brother Julius, hisimpact on my life.
One of the days that my mosttraumatic days dated, I drowned.
We talked about that recently.
It was a couple of episodesdedicated to that, and today I'm
going to ease up on thepersonal stuff.
Y'all may feel like you know,we're just starting to get into

(01:11):
this guy's life.
It's not going to be all aboutmy life, um, but this actually
does start with personal story.
So listen, I, I grew up, um, Iwould get motion sick my entire
life, right, like if anybodywho's read my book the Poet who
Watched the Whole Paradeavailable now on Amazon, by the

(01:34):
way shameless plug.
Anyone who's read that knowsthat my early life we were in
cars a lot, right, we weredriving around, we were a little
bit itinerant, transient, wedidn't always have a place to
stay and when we did, it wasusually there was a lot of back

(01:54):
and forth that needed to be done, running errands, doing things,
not a lot of stability.
So we were in the car a lot andthis is the 80s, so my mother
was always driving, my brotherwas always in the passenger seat
and I was always in thatbackseat.
But there was no seatbeltsright, like.

(02:15):
We didn't have.
It wasn't that time right, itwas no click at a ticket, a
ticket, right.
So it was.
We didn't really use seatbelts.
So one of the things I would dois I would sit in the middle of
the backseat and I would leanall the way forward, talk and
listen to my brother and mymother talk, right, and I was a

(02:37):
big comic book guy so I wouldusually bring comic books into
the car with me because, again,we would.
Sometimes we would be gone theentire day and I would have my
x-men or my new mutants or mypower pack.
Power pack, that's pretty surethat is not one of the most

(02:58):
popular research and comicfranchises.
You not going to see a lot ofthat at Comic-Cons and on the
cinematic universe.
You're not going to see a lotof that.
But I would read a lot of comicbooks.
I was a huge comic book guy.

(03:18):
That was my thing.
I had about 300 at my highestpoint and I would bring them
into the car.
And one of the things that Istarted to notice is, every time
I would try to read the comicbook, I would get sick.
I would get hot, nauseous,dizzy, right.

(03:39):
And my mom would say, hey,that's car sickness, you know.
And she rolled the window downand say, hey, get some fresh air
.
And this went on like nearlyevery time.
Right, I'd have my comic booksthere, I try to read.
Sometimes I would even try tolay down in the back seat and
read my comic books and I wouldget sick again.

(03:59):
You know, we didn't really know, really like what was causing
it.
It's just something thathappens, right?
My mom was just like, hey,you're a person who gets car
sick, so try to roll the windowsdown.
Now, as I went on through life,it would keep happening, right,
and we didn't have a lot ofmoney.

(04:21):
I didn't have a lot of moneyearlier in my early adulthood
and in teen years, so a lot oftimes I was riding in people's
cars and I would, you know, getsick and I'd roll the windows
down.
It's just something I had todeal with.
And as I got older and got moreagency in my life, I started to
recognize the patterns of mylife, right.

(04:42):
So one of the things I startedto realize is when I look at,
when I try to read somethingwhen I'm riding in a car, that's
when I can trigger it.
So one of the things I do iswhen I'm a passenger, I don't
read.
You're not going to see myphone out much, right.
Another thing I noticed itdoesn't happen when I'm driving,

(05:05):
right, right.
So I kind of, over the courseof my 20s and 30s and 40s,
developed into being a personwho almost always is going to
drive.
I'm usually driving.
If I'm going somewhere, it ishighly likely you're going to

(05:26):
see me not as the passenger, thepassenger, and you know.
Just having more awareness in mylife, I started to understand,
man, what is motion sicknessBecause it seems to be tied to
me reading, and goes away whenI'm not reading or goes away

(05:46):
when I'm driving.
So you know me being in thetech world.
Eventually I looked it up,started doing some research on
what is what is motions, what iscar sickness, right, which is
ultimately motion sickness.
And I looked it up and it saidyou know, it's triggered because
of, like, your inner ear andyour balance and equilibrium,

(06:07):
and it's actually caused bydissonance, which is one of my
favorite words, right, whichmeans kind of like the
difference between what yourmind believes and what's true.
Because my eyes are looking ateither a comic book, a page, my

(06:35):
phone or, when I'm driving,focused on the road.
So my eyes, if I'm looking atmy phone or a comic book, my
eyes are reading the words, sothey're going left to right over
the words and they don'trecognize the movement of the

(06:57):
car anymore.
But my body does, right, sothere's dissonance, my brain is
experiencing two differentthings and it's disorienting and
it causes that sickness.
The reason why it doesn'thappen when I don't read is
because my eyes are not lockedin on the book or the phone or

(07:19):
those words that don't look likewhat the car, the motion that
the car is taking.
The reason why it doesn'thappen when I'm driving,
obviously, is because I'mfocused on the road, so I see
exactly the motion that the caris taking, right.
So you know, started to realizethat and that's just, that's
cool, that was just how weproceeded.

(07:40):
And then something interestinghappened about two weeks ago,
scrolling through my phone, andsomething said hey, for anybody
who has experienced motionsickness, apple has already put
together something that fixesthat.
And I'm like, wait a second,what?
And so I scrolled through theapp and it says hey, if you go

(08:02):
to settings, accessibility, andturn on like motion recognition,
then actually, for anybodywho's reading this, who's
listening to this, I want to go,I want to make sure I get it
accurate.
So if you go to settings andinto accessibility, boom.

(08:26):
And into motion, boom.
There is a selection there thatsays show vehicle motion cues
right.
So if you turn this on, thesedots right, there's eight dots,
four down the side, each side ofthe phone.

(08:47):
Those dots appear and thosedots pick up motion of any
vehicle that you're in and theymove according to the motion, so
they're always in sync with thevehicle that you're in.
Now, obviously, what this doesis helps your brain out a little

(09:07):
bit right.
Right, because now if I'mscrolling my phone, I can focus
in on the words, but I can neverlose sight in my periphery.
I can never really lose sightof these eight dots which will
move up down left, rightdiagonal.
They'll move in sync with thevehicle that I'm in.

(09:28):
So it's a constant reminder tomy brain.
It's a constant reminder to mybrain that I'm in, so it's a
constant reminder to my brain.
It's a constant reminder to mybrain that I'm moving.
It takes away the dissonance,right.
It takes it away so I don't getsick.
There's not that confusion inmy brain that triggers nausea,

(09:50):
that triggers sweating, thattriggers dizziness.
That sickness doesn't gettriggered.
And I was like man, I hope thisis going to work.
I set it up and it worked.
Rode in a car as a passenger,it worked.
Even flew in a plane, it workedas a passenger, it worked.

(10:10):
Even flew in a plane, it worked.
And I'm like, wow, this isgreat.
Wish I knew about it earlier,but glad I know now.
This is really good.

(10:42):
And something hit me where itwas like this is what the world
is like.
This is this having these dotsand having that the antidote for
sickness of a split in yourmind, this dis, this cognitive
dissonance.
Having it makes me feel exactlyhow I feel in the world today,
whether it's politics, whetherit's any of these spiritual
battles.
Right, motion sickness again,like I said at the beginning,
motion sickness isdisorientation that's caused by

(11:05):
the dissonance between stillnessand movement, recognizing
stillness and recognizingmovement and knowing which is
which Right.
So if I pick up my phone, let'ssay my phone is the word of God
.
Let's say my phone are thethings that I know are true, the

(11:27):
universal truths that arepromised and have never failed,
the things that are greater thanme.
Let's say I'm looking at that,I'm reading that.
Let's say I got my Bible appopen and I'm reading things that
are universal truths.
That's stillness, that'sstillness.
But here's the problem.
A lot of us are reading that, alot of us are focused in on

(11:50):
that, but we're in a vehiclethat's moving, so there's
dissonance.
Every day, every day, we'rereading our Bibles, we're giving
ourselves positive affirmation,we're working on our spirit,
we're focused in on thatstillness, but our brain knows

(12:10):
you can't lie we are in avehicle that's moving all over
the place at a fast rate ofspeed.
There's all these changes.
There's all these politicalchanges.
There's all these technologychanges.
There's all these economicchanges.
There's so many things.
There's a battle for this,there's a battle for that.
There's this versus that,there's this versus this.

(12:33):
So, even though my eyes arefocused in on what I know is
true, what I know is greaterthan me.
My brain and my body know we'rein a vehicle that's moving and
guess what?
A lot of us are sick, a lot ofus are nauseous, a lot of us are
dizzy.
But I want to tell you, it'salready been fixed.

(12:58):
It's already been fixed.
Apple didn't do it, but therealready is an antidote for this
sickness and it is a lot likeyou can imagine it, a lot like
the antidote, the functionalitythat Apple did supply.
There are dots on our screen.

(13:19):
There are spiritual orientationtools that will move with the
car, that will move with ourvehicle.
On our screen, there arespiritual orientation tools that
will move with the car.
They'll move with our vehicle.
They'll move with our culture,our time, our emotions, our tech
, and they will help usinterpret that movement without
being overwhelmed by it orwithout thinking that.

(13:40):
It's the functionality, becausehere's the key.
It's the functionality.
Because here's the key.
Here's the key, the thing thatmakes the reason why Apple
solution even works, becausethey are literally putting dots
on your screen.
It could mess up all the apps,it could mess up everything that

(14:00):
you're focused on, but guesswhat?
They made them non-functional.
They don't impact anything.
If I'm in an app, I can stillclick a button.
If one of those dots is overthat button, it doesn't have any
function.
That's exactly how ourspiritual dots are.

(14:21):
They're not functional, they'reformational.
They don't change what's true,they don't override the word of
God, they don't overridegreatness, they don't override
the things that are greater thanus, the universal truths, but
they do keep you aware of whereyou are.
They keep you aware, they helpyou to keep focused on the

(14:46):
screen without getting sick.
What are some examples of dots?
If you open your book, you cansee one is Proverbs, proverbs,
wisdom.
There's a lot of wisdom goingon.
Find wise proverbs, find wisepeople.
There are wise people and youhave to use discernment.

(15:08):
There's a lot of wisdom around.
It doesn't mean that you startworshiping people who have that
wisdom, but there's a lot ofwisdom that you can learn from
that.
You can learn from Healthytechnology use.
You know AI is healthy.
Anything is healthy.

(15:28):
A lot of these things arehealthy in moderation and with
correct focus.
And again, these things don'thave functionality to override
what you know is true, but itdoesn't mean they can't help
Right.
Another one rhythms ofcommunity and rest.
Find your community, go deepinto your community, build with

(15:48):
people, meet people and thenpull away, rest, have alone time
.
Mentors, devotionals, coachesthese are dots.
We are a fallen fast.
We get disoriented.
The goal is not to freeze life,but the goal is to stay rooted

(16:35):
while it's moving Right.
Psalm 46.10 says be still andknow that I am God.
Stillness is internal awarenessof God, even in external motion
.
My call to action for you don'tworship the dots, but don't

(17:00):
ignore them either.
They're out there.
Keep your eyes focused on whatyou know is true, things that
are greater than you.
Don't move in fear.
Do not move in fear.
Use the dots to stay clear in amoving world.
I love y'all, I appreciatey'all for tuning in to my show
again and let's keep rocking.
I'll talk to y'all next time,peace.
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