“Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through.”
- David Whyte
Our perceptions are conditioned to think in black and white
We are conditioned to split the world in two, perceiving everything as separate rather than unified. Rarely do we realize that is actually a frame—a conditioned perception—and not objective reality.
The tendency to falsely dichotomize the world can interfere with our ability to navigate effectively because we are using “either or” thinking to explore a “both and” world.
In other words, our internal maps are not matched to the territory of reality. Therefore, we become lost.
Most of us are taught to see life in terms of opposites such as mind and heart, surrender and agency, grief and joy. But what we conceptualize as opposites are inevitably inseparable parts of the same whole.
Splitting the world this way has damaging consequences to our psyches and mental health.
Perceiving the world in these binary terms causes us to pit various elements of our experience against one another, creating a warlike relationship between things that are meant to coexist rather than be at odds.
But, what if we didn’t?
Imagine a shift where mind and heart, surrender and agency, grief and joy were all welcome aspects of our experience rather than enemies at war.
This way of being opens up a connection to the rich and beautiful complexity of life. It allows us to learn to dance with life rather than engaging with it solely from the superficial level of mind.
If we want to embody the human experience to our fullest capacities, we cannot split anything from its other.
Ken Wilber says it best in his book, No Boundary:
“The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of constructed boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one’s boundary lines, the more entrenched are one’s battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of constructed boundaries and the opposites they create.”
The antidote to this way of being is to learn to hold the paradoxes and contradictions of life at once, like notes in a chord, learning from the many traditions that embrace opposites as counterparts and thus do not suffer this unnecessary internal warfare.
We can also learn to be in conversation with our seeming opposites and integrate them, rather than falling prey to the mental gymnastics that result from these psychological splits.
Being in deep study of opposites is one way we can increase our sense of vitality, peace, and wholeness. This wholeness is inherently healing and returns us to a sense of home within ourselves.
As we embrace opposites, we learn discernment: when to let go and when to hold on, when to surrender and when to exercise agency—and when to sit at the crossroads and hold the tension between them until the point when the path makes itself clear.
As we refine this dance and welcome home the split off parts of ourselves, we can step into greater acceptance, awareness, and aliveness. This is an essential part of recovering our wholeness.
That is why I’ve been inspired to curate a once-in-a-lifetime experience centered around reconnecting with the rich and beautiful complexity of life.
Reclaiming Soulful Living Retreat
Reclaiming Soulful Living: Cultivating Awe, Beauty, and Present Moment Awareness
On this week’s episode of Waking Up with Brooke Sprowl, Nicole Buzzelli and I dive into the exploration of opposites: grief and joy, emotion and reason, and the process of discernment.
Sproul I’m Brooke Sproul and this is my lovely friend and collaborator Nicole bicelli she is a poet author and energy
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healer a very powerful woman with a long history in the educational system doing
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some very cool work and Nicole and I have really incredible conversations so
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we decided to just get online and see what emerges in the spirit of emergence
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Theory so what have you been pondering lately Nicole I feel like I’m in a fall
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of sorts I know we’re kind of going into fall um yeah I feel like I’m in a season of like
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I’ve got a lot of leaves that are coming off hmm yeah I got lots of things coming
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off studying things is super uncomfortable it’s interesting this morning I was I’m doing I’m finishing my certification and
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Peak Performance and flow Neuroscience training and they were talking today about
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um you know authentic growth being not so much adding anything but actually
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removing um what’s untrue what’s what’s in the
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way and that really squares with you yeah as a therapist because so much of my training is in unconscious uh defense
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mechanism recognition and compassionate defense Interruption and kind of Excavating the authentic soul of the
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person because for me personally I would show up in the world and you know before
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I had done substantial personal work and of course we all still do and I still do show up in this way at times
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um and sure and probably in all the time in ways that I’m not still aware of but to a greater extent and more often I
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would show up in the world in ways in which um I was using defense mechanisms and
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relationships and yeah I feel like then you get negative feedback from others
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and you internalize that as something is wrong with me and it’s like no actually it’s not you that is wrong or that’s
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getting this negative feedback it’s your defenses but you come away with the message that it’s you and then you end
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up doubling down and creating more defense mechanisms yeah because it
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promotes a sense of insecurity and self-distrust and so part of the trick
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is recognizing no it’s not me that’s being rejected hurt you know Etc it’s
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it’s these things that are in the way of me showing the real me yeah and yeah I know that’s exactly what
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it is I feel like it’s a that’s exactly what it is it’s getting enough distance from something to see it
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as something that’s actually separate from you um
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you know I’ve all you know for me it’s like my emotional landscape like I’ll get in
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these emotions insecurity Etc fill in the blank right all these things and I’ll be unconsciously inside
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of it so I’m like becoming that thing right and so then the trick
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the past couple weeks it’s like I keep catching myself I’m like oh shoot I’m in it I’m like in the thing I’m becoming
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the thing and the trick then is to like find some sort of neutrality enough not
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even like a full like I don’t even need to be fully neutral I just need to be neutral enough to get like enough
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distance from it to like see it as something that’s separate from me right like the moment that I feel like it’s
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something I can look at I can observe it is when I stop identify I stop being it
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right I stop becoming it it’s like that distance and there’s so many different ways to frame that experience like in
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cognitive science or Neuroscience we might talk about it as metacognition in like Psychotherapy we talk about it as
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the observing ego um as you know in meditation traditions we talk about it as maybe the higher
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self or you know there’s all these different ways of framing this experience that you’re having of
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stepping outside of yourself being able to disidentify I guess that would be more of the framing yeah
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is you know um not identifying with thought or not identifying with the self is probably a
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more accurate way of um affirming that but yeah it’s so interesting how so many different
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Traditions kind of are pointing to the same things which is different language and yeah um it’s so it’s so important to
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you know and this is actually kind of the latest iteration of emergence theory is
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um you know one of the dialectics that I’m exploring is between metacognition and intuition so it’s like the ability
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to step outside of ourselves and reflect on our behaviors and kind of you know
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harness our cognitive and intellectual capacity to understand ourselves but then not without ignoring not not by
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ignoring the body you know not by ignoring our Sensations like kind of what is the optimal balance between this
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men met a cognitive skill and this bodily kind of awareness
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sensation wisdom and talents that we have and yeah I notice that people tend
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to kind of Veer towards like they have to choose one yeah and like like this
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one’s better this one’s wrapping this one’s better this one’s more spiritual and more grounded and more present it’s like no there’s actually a dynamic
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tension between the two and they’re incomplete without one another they’re counterparts
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yeah no exactly I find it also kind of feeds the other because
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I mean I’ll even kind I’ll put it in this term you know so I’ve been doing
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lots of meditation I’ll catch myself I’ll catch myself in a feeling
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um and then I’ll sit and I’ll meditate with it try to get that distance get that separation
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and lately I’ve been noticing there’s a limit with that I need the body so yesterday I went to
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the beach did some stuff there kind of bounced around today I went on a hike
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I actually feel like I can’t do one fully without integrating the other one
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I can’t just sit in meditation and see something from an awareness I have to
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catch myself being the feeling in the body in the moment I am I have to be able to recognize when I’m in something
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by the sensation of it oh now I’m feeling this I know how to discern what that is now and then I can go back and
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reinforce things in meditation but then I need to go reforce what I’m doing in meditation with what I’m doing
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in the body it ha they have to feed each other it can’t be yeah I’ve been thinking one of the
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others a lot because there’s such an emphasis um right now and a trend in mindfulness and I love mindfulness I
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love meditation and I I use these practices but I notice sometimes in certain mindfulness Traditions there’s
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this like over emphasis on the present almost demonizing any other state and I
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think a really robust experience of the present moment requires us to engage
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with all our past and future in meaningful ways so like you know I have to be in right relationship with my past
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to be able to experience a present moment otherwise I have also cognitive interference and anxiety that’s really
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preventing my ability to be fully present similarly you know having access or you know quite often I mean
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motivationally our goal states are tied to our well-being in the present moment so knowing where we’re aiming having a
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higher purpose you know being aligned with a vision for our lives is a part of an optimal experience of the presence so
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I’ve just been realizing um on our trip in Italy David White use the term deracinated present and I
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thought that was so like that was exactly the thing that I was trying to kind of work out about what it is that
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feels incomplete in some approaches to meditation and I think people would argue that no you’re being present to
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all of that but in practice that’s not exactly what it how it seems to play out
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it seems like it’s like you know there’s a disowning of past and future yeah in a
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way that feels potentially uh compartmentalized or
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um yeah like I think there’s a much richer way of accessing the present by synthesizing the past and future and
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present rather than by simply kind of setting the other two aside even though there’s maybe a time to practice that as
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well but I don’t think it’s like the you know the end-all be-all the way that it’s often taught
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yeah and I actually think I just see it as kind of like these
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lines that we have and whenever I see lines in anything I always I’m like let’s investigate
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why we’re drawing these lines between past present and future
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they probably all exist at a Crossroads somewhere and are not separate and even
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if we can’t maybe always conceptualize it in my
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experience of anything that we’re drawing lines in between is that when you start to investigate it the lines
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are quite blurred it’s never quite that nothing is separate right and all of the
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lines are just where we draw them and you can you can change where you draw them it’s interesting um have you read
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the book no boundaries by Ken Wilbur it’s very much in line with what you’re talking about I wish I had it fresh
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enough in my mind to articulate it properly but essentially like there’s all these different ways that we can
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draw different Lines within and without and when you really kind of look at it you recognize there are no real no
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actual lines um yeah I wish it was fresh enough in my mind to be able to like give specifications get the good thing
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yeah I it’s actually been um I haven’t really thought of it this
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way but I’ve gotten a healing um on my
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relationship with time lately I gotta I got a healing on it once I was able to kind of
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take that line out between my present and my future I was one of I had this
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tendency to always um have this anxiety around making choices
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right and I know that this is not unique to me because I’ve had a lot of conversations with this about people recently but this anxiety around making
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the wrong choice making the right choice if I choose this one what if I’m not going in the direction
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that I’m supposed to be going in or that my higher self wants me to be what if I
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miss the sign what if I go left and my sign is over there in the right you know what if I what if what if
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and um I had this have you seen did you watch Harry Potter I am the only person in the
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world who has neither read nor seen any of like no interest no interest
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yeah I started reading like a little bit of it so I kind of know some things but
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Muggles you don’t need to talk about Muggles they strike again you’re not supposed to
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say Voldemort or something is that the one I can’t I can’t I also can’t discern the difference between the Lord of The
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reigns people that start with a V and the ball it’s like they’re it’s all the same okay they’re all the same people
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they’re all the same people well so there’s this scene and I guess it doesn’t really matter but it was
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it was kind of what I had in my head and this has been in a couple different movies but there’s the scene where Harry
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the main character or the other Brooks out there you have no idea I think I got
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that part and this girl is talking about so there’s Harry and he is waiting
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he’s waiting for someone to save him from the scenario
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that he’s in and you know no spoilers in case Brooke wants to watch it later
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um he’s waiting for someone and he finally somebody shows up on the other
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side of the lake somebody shows up and does the thing that saves him right and later he goes you know the
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future he travels he’s you know time goes on later he gets a Time Turner he goes back
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in time to that moment and he’s sitting where the person who he saw from the
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other side of the lake came to come save him and he’s waiting for that person to show up and they’re not showing up and
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he’s like no I know that they’re going to show up because I already experienced this this moment and I know someone
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shows up but no one shows up and so in the end he goes and he does the thing and he showed
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up for himself it was him you know big reveal with him saving himself and two things I think number one one of the
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big things that I’ve been shedding one of the big leaves that I’ve been shedding is the same quality that I
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have around waiting I’m waiting I’m always waiting for the sign I’m waiting for something to save
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me I’m waiting um and I’ve had so many iterations of this in the past but there’s definitely
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this quality of um you know when I was a kid I used to like hang out under doorways
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because they’re a good vantage point I could like I could see into multiple rooms at
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once and so I would sit there like with my back up against the door frame and I would read or write or just sit and I would just be scanning my environment
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waiting for something to happen waiting for a PIN to drop waiting for
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X Y and Z right and I think there’s a little Nicole there’s
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a part of me that’s still waiting in doorways all the time for things to show up
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um and so that’s one of the things that I’ve been kind of looking at trying to get separate from
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but the other thing was this you know I uh I’m waiting for something to happen
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and I keep getting scared if I get up and go into this room what if something happens in that room that I need to be
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there for if I get in this room but if something happens in that room that I need to get there for and so I’m living my life sitting underneath a doorway
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and I had this thought one day what if I just assume
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that this moment has already happened there’s a place in the universe where the future
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has already happened and I’ve already taken care of it and I’ve already made the right Perfect Choice
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um and then I don’t have to wait for anything to show up because I know whatever it is that I do it’s already
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been done if that makes sense whatever choice I choose is already been made and so it’s this weird like I’m almost using
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predetermination as a way to Aid My Free Will if that makes sense
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as a way to make choices I love this so much because interestingly so you know
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obviously I have emergence Theory and someone sent me a video that some physicists are working on by the name of
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emergence Theory it’s fascinating I’ll share it with you but it talks about how from a temporal perspective everything
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has already happened and that actually there is a way in which we can access and sort of interface with all time
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um energetically spiritually or whatever which is interesting because it’s this like actual it’s not like a new age like
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oh physics it’s like an actual research Collective a physicists who are
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seriously studying these things and um I think that’s fascinating so I’ll have to send that to you please send
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that to me I also need to have them as like my next podcast yes I need to like talk to them but the other piece that
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was interesting to me is one that I’ve sort of kind of
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gradually begun to embody more of an attitude of what you describe which I
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would call Faith really because Faith because I’m I’m now old enough as we
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were talking about earlier I’m now old enough to where there are enough times in my life where I’m like oh that thing
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went so wrong and I’m devastated and then I look back and I see how it was all orchestrated and the more I
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Surrender and accept and allow and trust that everything is a part of a bigger
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plan the more that in a way I don’t know if it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
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or if I just see it more clearly or I just have access to that State of Consciousness but my sense is that what
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you’re talking about is really a version of faith and I think we you know I think
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that we can we access faith in the experience of what it’s like to live
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life and character and integrity because the only way that you can have in my opinion or at least in my personal
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experience I don’t think that you can have faith if your character isn’t refined properly because because you
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can’t trust that you are going to make the correct kind of adjustments and
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iterations that are going to ultimately Reveal Your higher self and needs so if
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you’re going to just bury your head in the sand then you can’t have faith if that’s your character is to run and avoid and look away then there’s no
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orchestration you’re not going to see it that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy right you’re the kind of you know recipient of
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fate and predetermination in this kind of fatalistic way whereas when we step
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into a more open growth mindset you know internal locus of control we begin to
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understand how um each part of our Lives is absolutely
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in service of our higher selves I went to and our unique Destiny on what the
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world is calling forth from us I worked with an energy healer before I met you who like it was a 30 minute reading but
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she um she said something like each moment is your teacher and each and life
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life is offering the lessons and it’s so true in each moment I feel like
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everything we need is right before us but we just have to learn to see it and
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like the lesson is just to again remove those layers well that was the thing I was saying I was going to say earlier
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that I didn’t finish the thought of uh the the metaphor in the program that I’m I’m doing the Peak Performance and flow
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Neuroscience coaching program was the the statue of the David and how the
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attitude was not you know you’re they they go how did you do this and it wasn’t you you add clay and you create
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this it was actually no it was already in there you just had to remove it did I say that already yeah no but I’ve heard
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this before yeah I’ve heard this or thought like you know when you’re when you are when you’re carving anything
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right you have to chip away to find I’ve heard other Carvers wood Carvers talk
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about that too the shape is already in there it’s my job to find it and to create it and yeah it’s a
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instead of chipping away yeah and then back to this point of you know it’s it’s
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already there like you’re already there your destiny your calling your unique experience like it’s already yeah it’s
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already in there and all you’re doing is just you know in each moment how can I what do I need to just let go of and
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surrender and allow for and then and then there’s this this other dialectic that I’ve been exploring you know in
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emergence Theory and in my own personal life around a region agency and surrender right it’s like because you
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know and it’s the Serenity Prayer you know give me the strength to accept what I cannot change the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the
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difference and you know that’s so interesting right because so often our I
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think Redemption salvation Freedom lies in surrender but not always sometimes we’re really required to you know have
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Agency on knowing when is the time to to surrender and when is the time to
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um you know bring forth what feels you know necessary for us goes back to that
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other dialectic around metacognition and bodily intuition and sensation right I’m
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having a moment having a moment it all connects it always all things it does yeah and they all again they serve each
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other right having agency serves when it’s time to surrender and
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surrendering serves your ability to have agency they’re not separate things they
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serve they feed each other and it’s it’s I think what you were saying
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about we have to learn how to see it that’s
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that’s an easier said than done like that is a that is a constant commitment
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right to commit to learning how to see things and to commit to
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lifelong craftsmanship of seeing it’s it’s it’s a craft I I think it’s the
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craft of character and integrity though because it’s really just the craft of being committed to truth and when you
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are when you are living in commitment to truth above all else not outcome not
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what I want to happen but really I am simply going to insofar as I can
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iteratively you know excavate what is true to me in my lived experience and my
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words and how I make choices and my values you know I begin to uncover the
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orchestration so I think the Org the perspective and the perception of orchestration the experience of faith
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and trust is a natural emergent property of that character and yeah the
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commitment to character and integrity yeah I’m finding a lot of
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relief it’s a relief it feels like
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I get to put effort on the altar I think I think a lot of people I think most
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people I know are doing the best they can maybe not all the people I know but I think most of the people I know are
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doing the best they can and sometimes faith is feeling like
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us I get to surrender that even like they’re they’re like there seems to be a
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relief in not having to think so
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not having to spend so much energy being able to take my energy out of what’s the
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right choice what’s the wrong choice feels like relief it feels like washing
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up on the shore like it feels like relief like Faith feels there’s a lot of relief in it yeah I think that’s the
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medicine right now for us culturally that you know in our culture there’s such this masculine you know do uh
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produce effort willpower agency like all of the value system or a majority of the
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value system in our culture is around those things and there isn’t as much balance and wholeness and
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um you know emphasis on the faith the surrender the acceptance the allowance yeah and so I think that’s why there’s
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so much relief when we engage in that because we’re not accustomed to having
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the permission and we finally give ourselves the permission it’s like water yeah it is it’s like water and there’s
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I think what you’re saying is there’s this sense of relief and when you discover the other side of things right
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so if you have only been experiencing life through agency and you discover surrender there’s like oh God thank God
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there’s another side to this thing and right and then the same is true in the other direction and that’s why there’s
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always the yin and the young there’s always the dynamic the dynamic tension which is right in between on the line
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between and the way these things interlock together and hold hands yeah
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yeah and it doesn’t even I’ve been talking a lot about
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um I have a friend and we’ve been talking a lot about [Music] um just coping strategies that we use to
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navigate our um emotional Landscapes growing up and my strategy was I find Freedom in
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emotions I go into the emotion I find all my freedom and play there his strategy is I find Freedom from
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emotions right so I find the distance and we both have gotten to a place in
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our lives where our single nature of our strategies isn’t working and we need more tools for the tool belt and it’s
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there’s a relief I’m like oh thank God I don’t have to always feel things thank God
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you know and he’s like thank God I get to feel things right yeah exactly and
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this is dialecticism right it’s we’re on one extreme and then we go to another and kind of hyper correct and then we
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synthesize the two and then that becomes a new thing and then we go to the in the week yeah that’s the iterative nature of
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it and I think you know it reminds me of there’s this uh episode of Radiolab I think it’s called words I think that’s
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what it’s called and it’s fascinating because uh this Neuroscience researcher
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it starts with this Neuroscience researcher who’s had a left brain hemisphere stroke and what that means is
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that her uh kind of linguistic ability goes away which is where so much of us
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live in our culture I think and so uh she she can’t she can’t access words
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anymore but she can still like perform her surgeries because that right brain is still intact like she can still kind
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of remember things visually but she can’t like she doesn’t know what a kidney is or she doesn’t know what but you know the corpus callosum in the
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brain is or whatever um she can imagine things visually but she can yeah the words but she describes
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the stroke and the state you know thereafter before she relearned language as so freeing and so yeah and so this
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incredible experience and kind of elevates it and then they tell this other story of this person who grew up I
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think in South America you know you know many years ago uh before there was and
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this person didn’t learn sign language they call him ildefonso I don’t know if that’s that must be a suit on them
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um they call him ildefonso and they say he didn’t have uh he he never grew up even with the ability to sign he was
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deaf and mute and he didn’t grow up with people to do the sign or speak or anything and uh this this woman is
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trying to figure out how to teach him language and she can’t figure out they
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show up every day they show up every day they show up every day they show up every day and she can’t figure they and because she’s writing stuff on the board and he can’t understand how it
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corresponds and then she has this breakthrough where she decides to act out the role of the teacher and the
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student so she goes up and she shows a thing and then she sits down she’s like oh okay and she starts pointing and and
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he gets it he like has this moment where he’s like oh there’s a word for the desk like he’s like he’s like
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weeping and he later then describes the
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experience as like the dark time and he’s like I was so alone I was so
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isolated and I remember in at like high school or something this goes back to us being like the elders at like age five
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um I wrote something like language is the metaphysical hands through which our cloistered Minds touch fingers or
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something like that yeah and it’s just interesting right because both are true
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both are true and what I also think about like punditry and like political discourse and like a lot of different
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kind of what feel to me like out of Integrity kind of cultural forces right
28:15
now it’s that they’re speaking to one part of the truth dialectic they’re
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speaking to it without adding the yeah the full the other side it’s not that
28:25
what they’re saying is untrue and that’s why it resonates for a lot of people because it’s true but it’s true in a greater context and without that
28:32
contract context Things become unbalanced and sick I think what you’re
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saying about this um isolated truth or the segmentation of truth right goes
28:46
to speak to people becoming the thing which is
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rather than being able to separate from it because when you’re able to separate you get the you get the aerial view
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right you get the full you get to see the full circle and not when you zoom in
29:03
on a circle what you see is a line so it looks like a segment of something when you zoom out you would see oh it’s a
29:09
circle and I think the lack of ability to distance from our
29:16
feelings um
29:26
yeah well the maybe not even just too
29:31
distance but to find that optimal balance between connection and distance again because you know the moment that
29:38
we we say distance is the answer is like no no like we need that optimal kind of connection distance uh but it’s what the
29:46
medicine is right so I recently looked up um the word the etymology of the word medicine and the prefix Med is Latin and
29:55
it literally means to take appropriate measure which I think is beautiful because
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whatever the specific ailment is you can ask what’s the appropriate measure right
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so and that’s going to change the appropriate measure for a heart that is too closed is different than the
30:13
appropriate measure for a heart that is too open right so when you’re finding yourself in
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too connected and unable the appropriate measure is distance and if you can only
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be distant the appropriate measure is connectivity and the wholeness of that
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is healing when you’re able to embody the wholeness of it but when you’re stuck when you’re in pain it’s because
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you’re stuck somewhere right so find where you’re stuck and then ask what the appropriate measure is to loosen it up
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it’s just a constant calibration recalibration conversation I think with
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these different um you know aspects of our experience as humans well Nicole thank you so much
30:55
okay I’m so so glad we’re able to to connect and really enjoyed our
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conversation I hope we can do it again soon yeah see ya
31:06
[Music]
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Author Bio
Brooke Sprowl is an industry-leading expert and author in psychology, spirituality, and self-transformation. Her insights have featured in dozens of media outlets such as Huffington Post, Business Insider, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Spectrum One News, Mind Body Green, YourTango, and many more.
As the founder and CEO of My LA Therapy, she leads a team of 15 dedicated therapists and wellness professionals. Brooke has been a featured speaker at prominent universities and venues such as UCLA School of Public Affairs, USC, Loyola Marymount University, the Mark Taper Auditorium, and Highways Performance Gallery, to name a few.
With a Master’s degree in Clinical Social Welfare with a Mental Health Specialization from UCLA, a Bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from USC, and certifications in peak performance and flow science from the Flow Research Collective, Brooke has helped hundreds of prominent leaders and CEO’s overcome anxiety, relationship difficulties, and trauma and reclaim a sense of purpose, vitality, and spiritual connection.
With 15 years of experience in personal development and self-transformation as a therapist and coach, she has pioneered dozens of original concepts and frameworks to guide people in overcoming mental health challenges and awakening spiritually.
Brooke is the host of the podcast, Waking Up with Brooke Sprowl. She is passionate about writing, neuroscience, philosophy, integrity, poetry, spirituality, creativity, effective altruism, personal and collective healing, and curating luxury, transformational retreat experiences for high-achievers seeking spiritual connection.
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