Why character is destiny
“Every obstacle is an invitation into greater liberation. “
- Brooke Sprowl
What is your character?
Character refinement is the meta-process we use to approach the set of experiences we face in life, determining nearly every aspect of how we interpret and respond to what happens to us.
As we allow our character to be refined by what we learn, we gradually begin to forge a path that empowers us to experience and shape our lives in increasingly powerful ways.
This allows us to become the architects of our own lives.
Think of character like an internal map we are using to navigate the world. If the map is accurate, we can navigate easily and effectively. If the map is distorted, we will be led astray.
Honing our character is like constantly upgrading our internal maps based on what we encounter in the world. If we’re unwilling to update our inner maps, we will find ourselves lost, confused, and disempowered, going around in circles without gaining any ground.
Reawaken your soul and your sense of awe.
Character vs integrity
If we use our experiences to continually update our maps and refine our understandings, we will feel a sense of increasing self-efficacy, joy, and exuberance as we venture into new and exciting landscapes and gain mastery over the terrain.
That’s why, in a very real way, character is destiny.
By refining our character, we not only begin to self-select new experiences that completely change the course of our lives, but we also begin to create radically new ways of experiencing what we encounter.
These new ways of experiencing ourselves, others, and our circumstances are at heart of self-transcendence and authentic spirituality. And they follow naturally from character and integrity.
Character and integrity are sides of the same coin. The degree to which we are living in integrity is an extension of our commitment to honing our character, and when we are committed to the iterative and ongoing process of character refinement, integrity follows naturally.
Integrity means we are living in alignment with our deepest values, highest possibilities, and unique expression. It means we are walking in a way that reflects the deepest truths within us, both light and dark, and constantly expanding ourselves and our worldview in that process.
This allows us to transcend our ordinary limitations and ways of being.
That is why, in a very real way, integrity is awakening: The embodiment of our integrity creates the conditions in which awakening naturally and inevitably arises.
As we bring every area of our lives into deep integrity, balance, and wholeness, unexpected states of consciousness begin to emerge.
Everything shifts.
Where we previously perceived problems, we see lessons, creating a state of ongoing self-transformation and growth. We begin to live in greater flow. And we experience ordinary life as precious and sacred.
I call this phenomenon “coherence.”
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Coherence theory
Coherence is the latent spiritual, creative, and transformative energy that naturally awakens in the process of living in integrity with our deepest values, highest purpose, and unique gifts.
And that’s the basis of my psychospiritual model, Coherence Theory.
When I began to identify the principles of coherence, it was completely life-changing. After a lifetime of seeking the newest psychological techniques and spiritual practices I thought would “save me,” I began to see that these practices, while powerful, did not produce deep and sustaining transformation without being grounded in a set of principles.
It wasn’t until I began to live in accordance with these principles that I could experience a shift in my consciousness that infused my everyday experience in the deep and lasting way I had always longed for.
And now I’m finally ready to share this breakthrough model with others.
That’s why my incredible collaborator Jamaica and I are leading a transformational retreat together in Costa Rica this year: we want to invite others to learn the principles that open up new ways of experiencing ourselves, our relationships, and the world––that last.
And we want to invite you to join us.
Effective therapy can change your life.
At My LA Therapy, our mission is to help you become more empowered, awake, and alive.
Trust is #1
Through our Reclaiming Soulful Living retreat in Tulum, Mexico we will work toward cultivating awe, beauty, and present moment awareness. Living soulfully is a practice of softening in the face of the inevitable harshness of life, allowing our grief to heal us, our pain to teach us, and our creativity to nourish us and transmute our heartache into something beautiful, transforming us in the process.
This requires the preservation of our own vulnerability by cultivating awe, creating beauty, and practicing present moment awareness while recognizing the holy in our daily lives, our interconnectedness with all things, and the god within us, others, and the living world.
This stunning retreat is located in a gorgeous natural reserve biosphere where the lush jungle meets the white sand coastline, where we’ll be floating in mangroves, waving hello to manatees, and swimming in the turquoise waters of cenotes (underwater caves).
If you feel called to awaken your sense of awe, presence, and connection with your soul, please learn more our transformational experience.
Reclaiming Soulful Living Retreat
Reclaiming Soulful Living:
Cultivating Awe, Beauty, and Present Moment Awareness
Tulum, Mexico - April 10-15
LEARN MORE It’s been a life-long quest for me to discover an authentic, meaningful, and non-dogmatic approach to spirituality, and Coherence Theory is the culmination of over two decades of spiritual exploration and 15 years of clinical experience and cross-disciplinary study, practice, and training.
I’m so excited to finally have the opportunity to share this methodology in a deep, powerful, and immersive way that will allow others to embody meaningful and lasting changes.
I hope you’ll join us for this one-in-a-lifetime experience at one of the most beautiful resorts in Nosara, Costa Rica.
It’s going to be life-changing.
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therapy and my truest north and today we have my lovely co-facilitator
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and uh burgeoning friend jamaica stevens here joining us i am so
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just grateful for our collaboration and really excited to see what emerges in
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this conversation would you uh would you go ahead and introduce yourself
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thank you so much brooke it’s an honor to be here yeah i’m janika stevens um
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i’m co-founder and ceo for open future coalition
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but i’ve also been a long time event producer convener a facilitator i’ve
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been trained in the way of council so i’ve done a lot of work around
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communities and council and sort of social governance and circular
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leadership and just bringing people together in thoughtful ways
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that’s my passion is is creating containers for true transformation and
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also i’m a storyteller i’m an author of a book called re-inhabiting the village
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co-creating our future which is simply a platform to bring together stories about
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how we revillage ourselves
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how we function in this sort of modern context with the intact ethics of
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village and a lot of my work has spanned how do we design and then live within
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regenerative cultures and how do we sort of apply that across
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communities of purpose practice and place but also our own individual
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journeys and then how does that individual you know to interpersonal to
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communal coherence impact how we show up in the world and the work we do is part
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of a collective so a lot of my work right now
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in the last few years has been stemmed on living systems
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and how we integrate the patterns and processes of the living world around us
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to heal
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our relationship with the earth and then from that place of integration again how
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do we look to systems and community change and personal change uh from a
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more integrated healed place with the living world
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yeah this is where work has such wonderful kind of synergy and
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synchronicity is that you know we’re both looking at individual to collective
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transformation um and we both have experience in some ways on both sides
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but you have just such rich expertise on the kind of collective change
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transformation part and i have you know very deep knowledge and training on the
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individual component and but we’ve both been kind of trying to
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look at and map out this problem and and make the connection from individual to
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societal and collective uh but coming at it from different ends in a way um
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and so i’m just so excited to continue our
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uh exploration and another thing i wanted to share is i don’t think you
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know this but another area of synchronicity is that i am also a
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storyteller um i am really into the mop and
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um and so i actually one of the things i was wondering if we would want to do on
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our retreat is have some kind of a storytelling
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um you know bonfire or or some kind of uh tribal council i wanted to hear more
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about what it what do you mean by circular leadership tell us about that
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yeah you know um i have a background chained in the way of counsel
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and uh both as you know a facilitator of that space but also a student of that
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space this
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approach to sort of creating circle the pattern of circling and
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communal relationships and kind of activating the
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genius of each present member it’s for me a part of
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that bridging what we each are here to bring what what what each of our
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capacities are and almost like what each of our gift is that like if we don’t
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bring that thing to a circle or to the world or to a project or to community
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then that thing goes missing because i inherently believe we each are imbued
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with a with a gift to bring and so i love that with the way of counsel and
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sort of creating circular leadership that we’re providing the opportunity to
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create a container to invite participation and bringing that gift and
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like bringing each part of the puzzle together
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in any particular container circle community you know onwards but i
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appreciate that what it is is allowing the circularity of moving the energy and
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the kind of concentrations of power between
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the space and instead of it sort of being like the way we have hierarchical
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power and leadership and the way you know charismatic leader syndrome that
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actually allows and invites each person to keep adjusting to the
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interrelationality of the circle itself to know like people like me and probably
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like you that like i’m a natural-born leader my work then is to know how to
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like sit back and refine and invite and allow space and then people who are like
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maybe in a circle who bringing their gift takes a minute or it takes
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cultivation how they then have to like almost step in and like breathe into and
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when you create circular leadership in containers like that true council
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the energy just starts to move and you you went to it and understand like okay
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i have something to bring okay now step back oh it’s i think you have some okay
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right bring that in and it becomes this living relationship that’s just
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accessing each other’s gifts and genius and then from there whether it’s just to
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do that because it’s a wonderful beautiful practice of relationship
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building or setting a project or initiative or purpose at the center
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now you have the best of everybody’s presence and gift
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activated in a circle to all contribute to like the thing at the center like the
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reason that that is the thing that becomes
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why we’re all here together in the first place and that’s such a perfect way of
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speaking about emergence which is you know so much the foundation of our
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conversations and the model that we’re using um you know to to frame our
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retreat as a as a road map um this idea that when the conditions are set in
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integrity in coherence and balance and fullness that these kind of emergent
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magical states arise organically and naturally and i think you did a
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beautiful job describing how that happens in that particular container but
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i don’t think it’s unique to that container i think it spans across
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different areas of our lives is kind of understanding what are the
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conditions that create transformation naturally and with ease without effort
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that just when we set these conditions and this container appropriately the
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emergence just occurs it’s not effortful in the way
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that you know we often think about needing to sort of force things to
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happen um they’re the natural outcome what’s so
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juicy about that brooke is that that is a direct sort of
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modeling of integrating ourselves as part of a living system like the the
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patterns the universal principles of emergence and self-organizing as an
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example that it’s all about container and context and that each species and an
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ecosystem has its container in its context it’s sort of imbued with you
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know i’m a tree i’m a microarrizal function i’m a moss you know i’m a i’m
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the water uh but when then brought all together and each one playing its part
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and understanding the context of what its gift is uh no nobody’s wrangling the
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the living world to try to get everybody to like do anything it’s this natural
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arising of the most natural imbued purpose of that particular living being
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that then when brought together is what creates the symphony of this incredible
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world we live in the ecosystem the flourishing the dynamism of these like
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living systems and so it’s it’s so beautiful that it’s just such a natural
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shift to go oh we’re actually already a part of that
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and if we look around us or even look at our own body and how our body
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orchestrates multiple cells and how you know organs and how it all works
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together what’s our part to play as that cell or
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that part of an ecosystem and how do i work with you
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uh to complement you and you complement me and we’re in this mutual reciprocity
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of bringing our gift and it’s so beautiful how that’s such an easy shift
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actually to oh that’s how the living world works and whatever dominance of
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power and like governing and like all these power structures we’re all trying
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to you know many of us are trying to dismantle and like create more justice
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and more synergy and loving kindness and cooperation it’s almost like such an
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easel shift when you’re aligning with the way the world works to
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just say look yeah let’s cooperate you have a gift i have a gift like share
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versus compete let’s i want to see what you have to bring i want to hear your
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voice and flourish with you because then we’re both going to flourish together so
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i love bringing that into human context and how we can create that together
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yeah something i’m really grappling with myself is
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kind of and been grappling with for a while around these hierarchical systems
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that i i’ve just internalized so deeply that this is the way we do things and my
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experience has been that when i try to do things from that framework of
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thinking i have to do it it’s so much more effortful it’s so much more
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stressful it’s so much less effective people aren’t as energized like it’s bad
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business even if you’re just talking about incentives from some kind of like
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greedy you know like uh
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perspective it’s actually bad business to be operating in these oppressive
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structures and so it’s something i’m really having to kind of reckon with in
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my own you know individual life and organization is how do i create more
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empowerment culture because not everyone and like how do like what kinds of
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containers and structures do we create and that’s why i’m actually really
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excited to be working with you because i know that the work that you do is really
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centered around this and it’s something that i’m struggling with and needing
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some guidance on so i’m probably going to have to hire you as a consultant
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as well you know
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authenticity to anyone listening you know i think we’re all learning i think
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every single one of us has to do this sort of decolonizing of our own
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experience and our own patterns and and our and uncovering our own biases
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because we’re embedded in a system that’s been perpetuated for so long how
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can you not be it’s almost like just distincting ourselves from like the
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water we swim in and the actual like fish that we are a creature we are and i
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really respect that each one of us has to do that work individually before we
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can even start tackling it collectively and i know something between you and i
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is like we’re all learning i constantly am being
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confronted with the places where i still like oh there that is again that pattern
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of hustle or uh you know needing to control things or
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feeling responsible for certain things or like whatever those things are we are
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working with what i respect is the authenticity and humility to go every
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single one of us has this work to do but i do feel and i
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do feel like we’re stronger when we do it together when we’re allies in that
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work when we’re compassionate but also fierce mirrors to those blind spots to
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help us keep dismantling and re-aligning and reorienting to a more
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like life-affirming cooperative just way of
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not only viewing the world which has to come first but then operating and
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aligning with that view of a world that is like recognizing these patterns that
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we’re all entrenched in you know yeah and i think it’s
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i’m in it with you thank you thank you
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yeah and i think it’s it’s a mirror of the individual version of it is
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you know we all have our versions of internalized oppression within our
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households like we have you know and i think people talk about
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abuse as binary you were abused or you weren’t abused abuse is a spectrum like
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we all behave in ways and are the recipients of abusive forms of
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communication forms that are coercive and um and meant to be you know shaming
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or harm or in some ways controlling um criticism coercion control those are
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kind of like the three c’s for me of abuse and so we’re all sort of
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we have these normative ways of relating that are abusive like in our culture
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criticism is normal control is normal coercion is normal and so
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we don’t see it when it’s mapped onto the larger systems because it’s
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normalized even in our own households in so many ways and so i think again this
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is where i just love speaking with you because i have so much to learn about
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the sort of collective social change piece and i really care about that stuff
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and as i dismantle my own kind of internal oppression i begin to
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have this i’m beginning to have this awakening around wait i’ve cared about
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social change my entire life i have this deep heart and soul for wanting to help
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and change the world and help people who are disenfranchised but i have been
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programmed to believe that it’s not possible and i’ve been programmed to
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believe that um i can’t do anything like i can’t i
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can’t do anything no one can do anything and this is just the way it is and
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actually it’s supposed to be this way because and there’s all this you know
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there’s all this propaganda around you know framing this as though it’s the
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natural order like you know hierarchies and dominance and competition it’s like
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no there’s a whole other way to frame it if we wanted to but i think that people
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with an interest in preserving the systems
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you know want to frame it in in that former way
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so that we can keep the collective agreements that preserve power
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right and this is all new to me so i feel actually a little remiss speaking
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about it because it’s it’s it’s a relatively new thing so so i’m not sure
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that i can fully kind of articulate what i’m
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trying to express but i think i think it’s like
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important conversations to be had right i think that again it’d be hubris to be
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like oh i know this path i think it’s authentic
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to say this is my journey with it this is our journey with it and then you and
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i as space holders and facilitators to create a container
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that’s loving and clear and held but that
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allows for the safety to explore where our own internal constructs and
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biases and and training and you know both personal our familial story our you
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know immediate culture and then our larger collective it is about
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sort of dismantling and understanding and seeing and exploring and asking and
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naming before we can even change or do it’s almost like you can’t do from the
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same mindset you know as many versions of that quote you can look at but you
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can’t change or make shift or do from the same mindset that created the same
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issues you have to first unravel dismantle you know and change the
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mindset and then approach okay now how would i start applying this foreign body
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and i know that’s such a big part of the work you do and what was so attractive
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between you and i about the work we saw we could do together i will just say
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this one piece because it’s so relevant for anybody who hasn’t um
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read the web of meaning by jeremy lent has been blowing my mind as a geek about
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living systems and the nature of the relationship of nature to us um but he
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does such a gorgeous job of really showing how
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like uh you know the cartesian mindset and these thought leaders and these
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influencers and you know you know
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people with agenda at very specific times in history
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actively promoted the narrative of binary and actively promoted the
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separation of the human from the spirit and actually promoted the separation of
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human from nature and it’s like you can’t even
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begin to notice this until i think we do enough understanding of where this was
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systematically placed in the first place but recognize that it is a uh
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an overlay of what and this is my main point of
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what the most the framework mechanical alignment that we already were born
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right into yeah the most natural thing is the integration of our animate selfie
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animate mystical intelligent part of us that’s still very much intact but is
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almost like subverted suppressed and forgotten but it’s not like you don’t
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have that we have that but we strong armed and cultivated the more rational
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goal-oriented linguistic control power aspect okay fine so we’ve done the heavy
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lifting on that for too long it’s almost like it’s reached the apex where clearly
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it’s in balance but there’s this not only sort of conceptual
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out there somewhere in culture shifting it’s a personal journey to reintegrate
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these parts of self and strengthen and bolster
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getting in touch with that animate intelligent intuitive
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like part of a living world self that when we strengthen and spend time
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cultivating and practicing and being in a relationship with now starts to come
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in to help guide and inform our transformation with this more sort of
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dominator paradigm or more you know logistical linear paradigm
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that we’re all sort of realizing has to get dismantled so i’ll just leave it at
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that and see if we have to say about that brick but
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oh there’s actually an evolution happening we haven’t stopped evolving as
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the human species the next evolution is integration of all of this complexity
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and everything we’ve you know that’s a beautiful part about humanity but has
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been too dominated and not in balance so great let’s
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strengthen and bring back into balance these parts of self and wow what kind of
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human do we become
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reintegrated as part of the world with all of this innovation and technology
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you know all the things we love about being really smart species you know i’m
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putting air quotes around that yeah well it lit me up to hear you speak about all
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that because a lot of my personal kind of
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awakening around so many of these things and my reconnection to my own
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spirituality because i’ll share that i i was raised very
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