https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=m7FAjrRphF4
Welcome everyone to another Voices with Verveki. I’m very happy to be here and I’m welcoming Brooke Sprawl to talk with me. She reached out to me a while ago with a very interesting email. I was, I found it very exciting. She was talking about her work and some of her past and how it overlaps in similarities with some of my work and my past. And so we had a conversation off camera and I found it really exciting. So I said to Brooke, why don’t you come on and let’s do Voices with Verveki because I’m sure lots of people will learn and benefit from hearing what you have to say. So welcome, Brooke. Thank you. So honored to be here. So why don’t you tell us, you know, a little bit about yourself. Where are you coming from? How did you get to where you are? What’s your work now? How do you see it intersecting, interacting with my work, et cetera? Absolutely. So I’m a clinical psychotherapist. I have a neuroscience undergraduate degree, master’s in clinical social work with a mental health specialization from UCLA. And I’ve spent the last 15 years working with anxiety, nervous system regulation, trauma, you know, psychodynamic work with individuals, couples of families. And there’s a natural extension from the kind of shadow work and this kind of nervous system regulation work into the spiritual realm, I think. And it’s just sort of a natural developmental stage from in my experience. And so, you know, like you, I grew up in a conservative Christian home where I had these really genuine encounters with spirituality. And yet there was, it was coupled with this oppressive, you know, culture that really is at odds with authentic spirituality. So it created such this deep conflict within me, because on the one hand, I was encountering something really powerful and real that felt true to my soul. And on the other hand, I was having these experiences where I felt like I had to be in this warlike relationship with myself. And, you know, now as I look back, I can see that, you know, I was taught to disown and dishonor my intuition, that’s the flesh. You know, don’t believe, you know, don’t trust your flesh, trust the word of God. And so I was constantly kind of intellectualizing and trying to, you know, coercively suppress the my inner wisdom, which, you know, now I would say is really the contact point with an, you know, inauthentic spirituality or an authentic connection with source or the world or life or the universe, however you want to say it. And so, you know, it was such a deeply painful experience and it took me a long time to come back to a new kind of spirituality that’s not dogmatic, but that still feels really real and rich and a part of my daily life. And so that feels like a real intersection with your work. And your work has also really facilitated that process for me in that, you know, as I’ve been seeking and, you know, this kind of new way of relating to source, kind of encountering your work and seeing that there is a there there that, you know, that I don’t have to kind of write off my experiences with spirituality. It really gave me some permission and validation to continue exploring the inner process that I’ve been engaged in, I think, for probably my entire life, you know, consciously and unconsciously. So, oh, wow. Yeah, lots of, lots of convergence. A couple questions come to mind. One, do you feel that when you were in that, and this isn’t just a professional question, this is also like, I mean, personal in that I want to, it reflects back on me and my own attempts to understand things. So I’m sort of asking for your help, not just for an answer. Do you think that framework, that conservative Christian framework, do you think it was in any way affording your spirituality or was your spirituality in spite of it? I understand that there was a tension there, but did it also afford the, you know, the birth of a spiritual taste? I think it absolutely did. Right. That’s what’s so, that’s what such a mind fuck about it. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That’s what’s so, that’s how they get you, you know, because there is a real, real thing that’s happening in the church. I mean, you go and you’re just awash with this spiritual presence of community, of worship, of kind of this experience with the divine and with, you know, parts of our consciousness that aren’t ordinarily accessible. Yeah. Yeah. And so then, and that’s also, you know, as I’ve come to sort of see more recently and I’m not by any stretch an expert in these things, but that’s also part of the kind of political indoctrination and radicalization in a way. Yeah, I agree. Which is, which is really, I’d never sort of thought about that component until very recently. Like, oh, wow, this actually, there’s some kind of a purposeful, you know, orchestration of that, that is in service of some somewhat nefarious, you know, ends in my opinion. Yes. That’s a little bit outside the scope of my expertise, so I don’t want to dive too deep there. No, I agree with what you said, but I won’t drag you into that area of discussion. I want to follow up on what you just said about, you know, it’s this double edged sword kind of thing. Did you go through a period where you sort of, I went through a period where I became very atheistic, militant. I wanted to just have nothing to do with any of that. And then it took a lot of work and therapy and, you know, an ecology of practices and, you know, and discussion, some very good discussions with good faith Christians, you know, to ameliorate that and open me back up. Did you go through a similar phase where you sort of locked against the spiritual or did it always stay active for you? I did to some extent. I wouldn’t have probably called myself an atheist. I probably would have called myself agnostic for a long time. Right. But there were a lot of days of nihilism and just like it’s all meaningless, it’s all material, it’s all, you know, and but that, you know, there was some part of me that couldn’t fully rationalize. I don’t know if you’re familiar with GK Chesterton’s work, but just a little tiny bit. You should read Orthodoxy. It’s a really marvelous work and it touches on a lot. But I wish I could sort of capture the sentiment of what he writes, but he kind of says, how could the entire universe be less meaningful than sort of, you know, our daily encounters, you know, in the supermarket, in a way. And so there’s just a way in which it’s like, it doesn’t make any sense that we have this experience, this human experience with beauty, with meaning, with connection, and that somehow the entire universe is completely meaningless and has, you know, amounts to nothing. Like that just, it just doesn’t make sense that the sum of the parts is greater than the entire system. Right. Or the parts rather, not the sums. I knew what you meant. Was there a single experience that sort of opened you back up to the spiritual or was it a more of an incremental progression? So I would say a little bit of both. I would say there were, you know, a series of, there was an incremental progression of becoming more connected spiritually and more trusting. And you know, your work was one of the facilitative steps, you know, or aspects of that journey. You know, I, but there, I’ve had some really powerful altered states of consciousness and not, I’ve never used psychedelics. I just have a mind that sort of naturally finds that kind of state of consciousness through various means, not necessarily even practices. Yes, through practices, but that’s not the only way that I’ve encountered those things. And yeah, I had almost an experience of like how people describe ayahuasca or psychedelics. I think I actually think I was taking a supplement that just did some weird things to my body that I don’t think it was supposed to do. And wow, that was really solidified. Like you hear the studies that people really kind of in the long-term change their entire belief system after having experiences with psychedelics. And in a way that experience, I wouldn’t say changed my belief system because I was already kind of exploring that path and going down that road, but it really solidified a confidence or a trust in the noetic. So it was the experience like an experience of profound oneness or what was a lot of things. It was profound oneness. It was kind of time doing some really interesting things, speeding up, slowing down. It was feeling like I was in touch with like every possibility and every dimension and every experience I could have. It was like I could see the meaning in every material object, like a thing of cellophane. I could see all of the symbolic, you know, meanings of like what this object kind of signifies from almost, I don’t know if platonic is the right idea there, but like in this like really grand existential way, it was like every object had this incredible significance. And it’s like, and it’s that experience that you hear, it feels more real. And it feels you have these experiences where you go, oh, this is the dream. The other one’s the real place. Yes. Yes. Yes. And if you haven’t experienced that, I think it’s really hard to trust or understand that. I think that’s true. Yeah. I had the phrase everything is singing its own name. That’s how I experienced that. Right. Yes. Yeah. That reminds me of a beautiful poem I want to say by Lord Byron. It’s like, you know, it has, gosh, it talks about the kind of selves goes itself, myself, it sings and spells. What I do is me. And for that, I came. It’s just a beautiful, I can’t remember the entire passage, but I’ll send it to you later. Well, you captured its spirit. That’s for sure. So this is going on. And I’m really sort of humbled that my work helped you in this process. And you’re having these, I mean, it sounds like higher states of consciousness that are in there, and they’re calling you to the really real transformative experiences. But then you also sort of indicated that your psychotherapeutic work, especially shadow work, was also drawing you back towards the spiritual. Could you do a little bit more about that branch and then how they came together and how they reinforced each other? Does that make sense as a request? Yes, absolutely. So I believe that, you know, genuine transformation is an iterative process. Yes. Lifelong and ongoing and never ends. Like there’s no bottom. Right. And so it feels like as we heal, you know, our individual kind of personal gravity, our baggage, however you want to frame it, our psychodynamic wounds, we reconnect with our most essential self. And we also heal our intuition and our sense of self trust. And it feels to me as though a real relationship with source requires some degree of connection with our own inner knowing and intuition. It feels like that’s the contact point, as I mentioned earlier. And so the healing of, you know, past trauma, past wounds, feels like it naturally restores the connection with your own inner wisdom. And that parlay’s into this relationship that you develop with life and this ability to discern orchestration in a way because that’s one of the most profound sort of experiences that I have kind of in a non-altered state, just in a daily way of relating spiritually is a feeling that everything is orchestrated. But I also believe that that is very much related to our character and our integrity. And that’s kind of the foundation of the work that I’ve done with Emergence Theory and that framework that I’ve sent to you. It’s like, because there’s a way in which you can’t trust life, if you can’t trust your own character and you can’t trust yourself and you can’t trust yourself to show up and learn and be changed by what you encounter. If your character is not intact, if you’re not open to being changed and transformed and kind of dying and being reborn on a, in some ways, daily basis sometimes. I don’t think that you experience that sense of orchestration and that sense of faith. Does that make sense? It does, but I want to zero in on some of the key terms. So you’ve indicated a trust in the self, but what you termed the essential self. And then you’ve also talked about the really real giving you ability to trust the world and that these two trusts are sort of resonating with each other or reinforcing each other in some way. You’re nodding. So I think I’m on the right track at least. Is that right? Yes. Conversely, if you don’t trust yourself, it’s really hard to trust life. Is the reverse also the case? You can’t trust the world, you also can’t trust yourself? I think so. I mean, I think those things aren’t separate. Ah, right, right, right, right, right. And that’s what you mean by the contact point, the fact that those two aren’t separate. That’s interesting. I don’t know if that’s what I meant, but that might not be untrue. Okay. What I was referring to was, yeah, the intuition is the contact point. And so, yes, I guess that makes sense that the trust in self and trust in life, that the intuition would be the kind of, what’s the word in the nuts in the carpentry, you know? Yeah, yeah, right, right, right. I can’t remember what it’s called, but the little thing that would connect the two pieces. Right, right, the nut for the bolts. So what do you mean by that very pregnant term, trust? Take your time with that too, because I know it’s important. The sense of being held in a way, a sense of knowing that it’s going to be okay, you know, that even the thing you fear the most is actually going to in some way serve your heart. I think that’s a very important thing, that we need to be aware of. That we need to be aware of that we have the highest potential in actualization, that everything in life is, you know, I don’t know, there’s a quote in Life of Pi that said, you know, the whole of life is one big let go. And I think there’s a way in which, you know, the things that we most fear actually strip us of and more essential self. So is there an important dimension of like encouragement? It gives you a kind of courage in the face. I mean, I don’t think of courage as just sort of bravado. It’s the ability to not be, not be, have your vision distorted by fear. Right, I think so. Yeah, I think there’s just faith that there’s hope, there’s encouragement. I mean, it reminds me of the Bible verse, you know, we can trust that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. It’s like when your character is, is kind of, let me define character, character, I think is the meta process we use to encounter the set of experiences we face in life. Right. And so that process, you know, repeats process always repeats, right, if it’s a meta process. So it’s like, if you could actually hone the process in such a way that you know that you’re going to become, be improved by the struggles that you face, then there’s a way in which you can trust whatever happens will benefit you. Does that make sense? It does. But I want to make sure that because I hear an implicit distinction, and I want to explicate it and see that lands for you. You’re not saying that trust is that everything will turn out the way you want it to, or that you won’t make mistakes, or you won’t screw up or any of that sort of magical thinking. What you’re saying is, you got a contact with an inner and outer reality that affords you to be able to realize the good in whatever happens. Is that a better way of putting it? Really well said. Yes. Right. Right. Because that sense of trust and the love of the good, the platonic love of the good, I completely understand that. That’s a difficult one to get to, don’t you think, in our culture? Because we mask it with bravado or certainty or willful assertion. I mean, I grew up, that’s what the word faith meant. It meant all of those things. It meant I just assert this regardless, willful assertion, or I just know I’m absolutely certain because I can’t. Yeah, yeah, there’s all that stuff. Or even the Cartesian quest to trying to get indubitable truths that would be the, you know, inherent foundation of knowledge. And I think all of those have been very mistaken projects in a deep way. So does part of your work, and of course, I don’t want you to violate any confidentialities or anything, but does part of your work involve getting people to recover that kind of entrustment? Yeah, I think that’s essential to every stage of the work. But it just, at first, it doesn’t necessarily, the person isn’t necessarily aware of it as a spiritual process. But I find that as time goes on, the spiritual dimension starts to open up for a lot of people, just naturally. But it always starts with a recovery of the intuition, because it feels like trauma really is, you know, teaching a big part of what is traumatic, and what alienates us from ourselves, and others really is being taught that our sense of things is wrong. We can’t trust our, we can’t trust ourselves, our way of being is wrong. So something essential about intuition to the healing process. Okay, so there’s two more words than I really want to unpack, and because this has been really successful so far with you, I’m really enjoying the momentum that’s building. So you, I get that you said something like it starts out therapeutically, people are wounded, and they’re healing therapy, healing, right? But then it becomes spiritual. So what is that difference? What’s the difference from a therapeutic transformation and a spiritual transformation? Yeah, I would say it’s from a sort of framework perspective, I would call it traditional psychology versus more optimal or spiritual psychology, right? Positive psychology. It’s like, it’s a continuum. And the the continuum of traditional psychotherapy is, you know, you’re, you’re unwell, you know, you’re really, you’re struggling, you’re unhappy, you’re not functioning at even kind of a baseline potential. So you’re, you’re anxious, you’re depressed, you have, you know, trauma symptoms. And then you go from that to just well and okay. And then the positive or optimal psychology or the spiritual component is like, okay, now I’m well, and how and now I’m really developing, you know, I’m mastering my intuitive sense, I’m, I’m really getting a lot of discernment around my inner life. And therefore, I’m more just clear and able to make contact with this kind of spiritual consciousness that’s in the world. I see. So, yeah, so when sort of, I remember Freud, Freud’s famous quote of the job of psychoanalysis was to return people to their state of the normal state of unhappiness. So depressing. And then, you know, and one of the courses I teach as a component on positive psychology, we actually teach a course on positive psychology at U of T. And then the, I think, the way I talk about it is the positive framework and the pathological framework. The pathological framework says basically, we understand the mind by how it breaks down and how we can get it back and working again. And there’s truth to that. There’s genuine truth to that. But the positive framework says, yes, but there are important properties and powers of the mind that are only disclosed when it excels beyond the normal. And you also have to get that pull if you want a more complete understanding, even a more complete self understanding. Does that land for you? Absolutely. And what’s interesting is that, yes, there’s a pathologizing in on the kind of traditional psychotherapy, you know, spectrum, but the healing in that is to depathologize. Yes. Normalize is to say, well, of course, you’re feeling anxious. Here are all the reasons that you’re feeling anxious. You’re not broken. This isn’t an individual problem where you’re sick and you’re wrong. There’s actually a system that has created this, you know, and it’s not you. It’s not intrinsic to you. So we say it’s broken. You feel broken. You’re experiencing brokenness. That’s not a, you know, that’s, that’s a true experience you’re having, but it’s not, it’s ego, dystonic. It’s not ego, syntonic, right? It’s, it’s different from outside of you in a way. And so that’s a huge part in my experience of my own healing is going, oh, wow, here are all the reasons I was feeling alienated for myself. That’s not my fault. That’s not something in me. It’s something that I was really in some ways indoctrinated into. And there’s just, there’s just a program that, and this was one of the helpful aspects of your work for me that continues to be a really rich part of my understanding of myself and the world is really understanding frame. You know, I just think about this all the time. It has completely shifted my view of the world and many different topics. But when you said, you know, the frame is, you don’t see the frame, you see through the frame. And so I’ve just become very aware of how even our culture, you know, culture, for example, is invisible to us. It’s a frame. It’s normal. Like you go to another, you don’t realize what your culture is until you go to another culture and you realize not everyone lives this way. And so I’ve become really aware of American culture. And I guess, you know, I don’t know Canadian cultures well, but I think there’s a lot of overlap, you know, in terms of the just high value of productivity, capitalism, you know, consumerism and how we even, you know, commodify ourselves in a way, like in the dating marketplace, the sexual marketplace, which is just an eight term in itself. You know, sort of another topic, but the frame, you know, really understanding what a frame is, how to reframe, you know, things can be very transformative, I think, in terms of, you know, personal development. One of the concepts I’ve written about is what I call the reflection principle. It’s the idea that everything outside of us, you know, every problem that we see is outside of us is actually just a lesson, something, you know, that’s reflecting something inside of us that can be healed or broken through. So that’s an example of, you know, frame, you know, shift, right? It’s not a problem. It’s not this external thing that we’re a victim to. It’s actually something that is opening up a new inner experience. And that is how my, you know, in my belief system that we become kind of anti-fragile. Are you familiar with that term? Yes, I am. Yeah. So that’s for me as part of the spiritual process. And that’s fundamental to the emergence theory work. It’s like, okay, when these principles are in place, then there’s this anti-fragile self that emerges, you know, where we benefit from stress, from disruption. So there seems to be a huge component of what you mean by spiritual that is this kind of Socratic self-knowledge, not our autobiography of our story, but our understanding of, you know, the machinery of the psyche and what is proper to us and what has been imposed on us. There’s that kind of profound self-knowing that’s going on. And then there’s also the cultivation of this anti-fragility, this deep adaptivity component. So are those essential features in your idea of what spiritual means? Yeah, I think anti-fragility is, you know, a function of death and rebirth. And I think death and rebirth is essentially spiritual, the letting go of the ego, the letting go of the ordinary mind and consciousness. Okay, so that’s an important point too. So there’s a kind of Socratic self-knowing, there’s the building of the anti-fragility, and those are bound up with these processes of ego death and rebirth, which are much more fundamental to, you know, the very structure of the psyche and how it’s unfolding. Is that, am I getting the dimensions right? Yeah, I think so, if I understand it. Well, we’ll get to your framework in a bit, but I still want to ask one more question first, which is another term that you invoke. And it sounds like it touches on those three dimensions. That’s why I asked that question, which is this notion of intuition. And, you know, and this is a notion that’s extremely equivocal in our society and runs all over the place and does all kinds of good work and also all kinds of nasty work. So what do you mean by it? And how does it align with everything else you’ve been talking about? Yeah, that’s a good question, and it’s so hard to define. But it’s almost, there’s a way to think about it by what it’s not, you know. I think that, you know, intuition, the way that I define it is kind of the inner knowing, the bodily wisdom, the part of us that just knows that doesn’t actually make sense to the conscious mind. So, you know, as we spoke about previously, there’s a relationship between the meta cognition and the intuition that both need each other. And some people are way too meta cognitive, they’re too cerebral, rational in a way that alienates them from their bodies and their somatic interoception. And then there’s people who are so intuitive to a point that it’s completely unchecked and they become, you know, they have fubarous and grandiose and they’re God and they know everything. And that’s unhealthy too. So we have this dialectic, right? You know, in the framework we’ve talked about between meta cognition and intuition. And so I guess that’s one part of it. Going back to what I was saying about by what it’s not, I think it’s also really helpful to say, intuition is not impulse, right? Like, an impulse is also a bodily sensation. But there’s a way that we can kind of extricate that and go, okay, wait, an intuition, I’m sorry, an impulse is urgent. There’s anxiety. And that’s where the meta cognitive comes in. It’s like, wait, is this an impulse or is this actually my inner wisdom? And I think you just qualitatively, if you have that awareness to discern those things, I think it’s pretty obvious when you’re being impulsive versus when you’re being wise and grounded in your inner knowing. And I think it’s actually not that hard to discern between your head and your heart or your meta cognitive and your intuitive if you’re just conceptualizing it that way. The way that I see most people engaging with their inner life is they put their, and this is my personal experience too, which is why I’ve been able to suss it out, I guess. It’s like they put their head and their heart, their intuition and their meta cognition on the same plane and they don’t, they just go, oh, I’m conflicted. And there’s these different parts of me, but they don’t actually have a sense of which is which and which actually should be in charge. And according to Ian McGilchrist’s work in the master of and his emissary and my understanding and work in this personal transformation work for over a decade is that actually the meta cognitive is supposed to be secondary to the intuitive. The right brain is supposed to really be in charge. The more intuitive, the less cerebral, the more sensing, knowing. And the meta cognitive is a checks and balance. It’s supposed to be subservient or in service of is a better way to say it. And so in my belief, we have, I think that simply being able to say this one is what my mind is saying and this one is what my intuition is saying and kind of knowing and trusting that within certain boundaries that our intuition is actually the thing that we should be listening to as long as there’s not anything, if your intuition is telling you to jump off a cliff, obviously that’s where your meta cognitive goes, no, which people experience on psychedelics, right? That’s why we need that part of us that can keep us in check when we’re feeling really connected to an intuition that might not be so wise. So is, how does your notion of intuition sit with respect to, you know, what I, I talk about different kinds of knowing and I talk about the non-propositional knowing, the procedural, the perspective, the participatory, and that it has, you know, it has this self-organization dynamic. It shows up in insight and trans-framing. How close is your notion of intuition to that? Interesting. I hadn’t mapped those things onto each other. So participatory is a way that I would think about it. Like there’s a relationship, there’s a dance that we, of intuition, of honing intuition, you know, and because it’s like intuition is forged in the process of testing hypothesis, of we listen to our intuition, we try something out, and then we get the data and we integrate the data. And that’s a very participatory process. Yes. Procedural, is it procedural perspectival? You’d have to sort of remind me of those terms. Well, the procedural is, is your knowing how, your skills, your, your virtuosity in the world. Your perspective is your salience landscaping. How, well, how you’re framing things, right? Basically. Yeah, it sounds like there’s, there are elements of all of those kinds of knowing in my definition of intuition. Sounds like it to me too. That’s why I wanted to ask you that question. That’s very interesting. That’s very powerful. Do, do many people you do work with, are they in some way, and you know, don’t, I’m not asking you to pigeonhole me. I won’t betray any confidentiality. No, no, but I also don’t, yeah, yeah, but I also don’t, I also want to, like, I want to, I want you to, I want you to feel open to answer. So that’s basically what I’m saying. Do you, does the issue of meaning or, or, you know, in the sense of that I talk about it in the meaning crisis come up in your work a lot? I think implicitly it’s, yeah, it’s the thing, you know, even if it’s not, even if it’s not explicit or the client’s not aware. I mean, the, the healing process is meaningful. Yes. There’s it’s a hero’s journey, right? Yeah, this isn’t a side to your question. I’m sorry to interject, but I heard this thing and I don’t know why it just, it just delights me. You know, we know the hero’s journey. We, you know, you confront the thing that terrifies you, the dragon, you know, you, you, you find your way home. It’s a new home is a new place. But there’s this, the idea of the warrior archetype is the, it’s the person who, it’s not just one journey and okay, now we’re done. You know, it’s this continual encounter with what we, what we fear. And so I guess that for me, I guess I, when I think about antifragility, when I think about, you know, transformation, when I think about, you know, really our intuitive knowing and how that helps us navigate the world and integrity and character. It’s like, we have to really, it’s a, it’s a process of, you know, endless encounters with what terrifies us. And that requires us to kind of embody this, this warrior archetype in a way. So I’m getting off topic here. No, no, not really. I think that’s on top. And I’ve had discussions with both Anderson Todd and Rafe Kelly around this and Jordan Peterson’s sort of appropriation of the hero archetype and the warrior. I would love to have some conversations with him about that courage conceptualization. Yeah, because I want to, I want to, I want to say something to you and I want to see how this lands with you. Because I’ve criticized Jordan for having a one-sided appraisal of Greek mythology, because for every hero myth, there’s a hubris myth. Exactly. Where human beings go beyond their finite transcendence and try to become the gods and then they get their wax wings melts as they get too close to the, to the sun. Absolutely. And I was a huge fan of Jordan’s for years. I, in some ways idolized him. And then I really had a fall from grace. And I still think there’s a lot of power in his work. And gosh, I actually, when I was really listening to his work a lot, what I found was that I would retraumatize myself because I would face things at a pace that I wasn’t psychologically prepared to. So I was okay, face the dragon, like, you know, go into the cave and, you know, die and be reborn. I was like, yeah, that’s all true. But like, also you have the intuitive, the intuition piece is like, you have to know when you’re really the difference between being at your, at, I always say this, the difference between going out of your comfort zone and facing your fear and actually going past an inner limit of what you can face. Like it reminds me of a friend of mine who’s very high metacognitive and alienated from his body, ran a marathon without training and then, but was so, so, you know, I’ve got this and I’m mind over matter that he ended up, you know, passing out at mile 11, because he didn’t, and he had to be, he had a seizure and he had to be taken to the, you know, picked up by an ambulance. It’s like when you don’t honor your own limitations, it’s, there’s not, that’s not courage. That’s, that’s hubris, as you say. And so I find that while Jordan’s work is very inspiring in many ways, and I think, I think it’s speaking to one side of the dialectic that my framework talks about, which is the courage limitations dialectic in my framing. And it’s like, if, and that’s really helpful for people when they need that push, but if they don’t actually learn the, you know, counterpart of when to honor your limitations, it can be extremely destructive as well. So I think that’s why I think there are so many frameworks that, or people’s worked or systems of thinking that resonate with people, but they only speak to one side of the truth. And that side of the truth is really powerful and meaningful, but if it’s not in context, it can, I think it can make us sick. If anything, that doesn’t have the whole, you know, both counterparts or the whole dialectic, I think is really dangerous. Yeah. I’m really, I’m really profoundly influenced by, well, the platonic dialectic and the platonic sense of dialectic and drew Highland’s book, Finitude and Transcendence. Plato’s whole philosophy is to try to give us a stereoscopic reminding that we are always finite transcendence. If we just emphasize the finitude, we can fall into despair servitude, right? But if we just emphasize the transcendence, we can fall into hubris, inflation, megalomania. And what we have to do is constantly pursue the way in which the two are always wedded together, mutually acting as checks and balances on each other. Yeah. And it reminds me of Ken Wilber’s work with No Boundaries, where he talks about all these things that we see as opposites or counterparts, but also that there’s no real lines in the world that actually we can, you know, we have these, there’s lines in like a, a visual sense, but there’s not actually any boundaries between things. Everything is actually, we could say they’re separate or we could say they’re touching or they’re connected and they’re not separable in a way. Like the lines are also where things touch as much as where things, so that’s a frame as well. But I kind of got off topic. What was the stereoscopic and the integration? Yeah. So my, I’m not familiar with Plato’s dialectics. So that’s interesting. I was exposed to Hegel, you know, the dialectics. Yeah. Hegel’s dialectic is a truncated version. Okay. Well, for me and my limited knowledge, it’s been so, that’s kind of how I see the character formation processes, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, new thesis, antithesis, synthesis. It’s like that process we were talking about, about gathering data and refining your character and, you know, trusting your intuition. That feels to me like the process that we as individuals, you know, go through as well as, you know, societal movements. Yeah. I like that framework even if it’s limited. Hegel’s brilliant. I mean, there’s a, there’s a dangerous Promethean spirit within Hegel’s philosophy, but Hegel’s brilliant. I don’t deny it. And that dialectical notion and the fact that it’s bound up with logic. For me, I don’t want to get into a deep think about Hegel. The Hegelian dialectic leaves out all of the non-propositional that was in the Platonic dialectic. And very important. Well, the way you can study it is when my new series comes out after Socrates. Shameless plug, shameless plug. And so it’s coming out very soon. After Socrates. It’s the, it’s the whole project of tracing out the whole Socratic tradition of developing this, this virtue called dialectic that leads you into a process of dialogos and what that looks like. Yeah. Oh, this sounds like my, my kind of jam. I think you will, you’ll think you’ll like it, but like we, we won’t get too distracted from that by that, because I want to give you a chance to talk about your framework, which you also shared with me off camera and which I found insightful and thought provoking. And I want, I want to know, do you need to share screen or anything or? Oh, you know, it might be helpful too, I think. So it’s such a visual model. It’s a little bit hard to talk about without actually seeing the model. By the way, which is evidence of the power of perspectival knowing. Oh, let’s see if I can share. You should be able to share screen now. Hold this up. Let’s see. Can you pull it up and then. Where are you? There. I don’t see this share screen. There we go. I think I’ve made my, my window a little bit smaller and then. Coming up now. Coming up now. Yep. There you are. Okay. So this is the overall model over here, but it breaks down into smaller matrices. So we have these different domains of coherence where I break down the principles of each down here, but they kind of intersect and overlap. So coherence is, you know, I define coherence as integrity, balance and wholeness. And there are four domains in which we kind of outline those principles for missional behavioral self and relational. And, and then where those overlap, there’s this kind of these emergent states, these more spiritual, you know, anti-fragile things that, that kind of just naturally arise from the principles of coherence. And then where those overlap and intersect the societal spiritual and collective actualization occurs. So, you know, not to get too deep into the weeds on any of this, but what I’ve tried to do as much as possible. And I think for the most part, other than missional, this, this I’ve achieved this, but it’s, you know, like everything, it’s an iterative process. So I’m constantly changing and tweaking it. Even last night in anticipation of this, I was like, oh no, that’s a better dialectic, this polarity mutuality, you know, so let’s start with self though. So, you know, we’ve talked a lot today about, you know, self, the, these concepts and self coherence, which are metacognition and intuition, that dialectic, and then the courage and limitations. And then where these things overlap and intersect, we see that, you know, where courage and metacognition intersect, we have self awareness, where metacognition and limitations intersect, we have humility, you know, and you can kind of see this, you know, self trust being a part of a function of courage and intuition and then surrender, you know, that kind of honoring our limitations in the intuition piece. And then kind of how those stack our resiliency and empowerment. So then these inner circles, kind of, you know, where the, let’s go back here, where the self and relational intersect, we have the relational emergence, and then those, these two inner circles of resiliency, empowerment, love and trust, become the outer circles for relational emergence. And then we see how those, kind of how those, how those kind of stack and, and what emerges from those principles. But going back to the, you know, this, the coherence piece, you know, the relational dialectics are, well, you know, so we talked about the metacognition, the courage limitations quite a bit. So I don’t think we need to belabor that too much. But I’ve sort of tried to do the same thing with the relational piece. It’s like, openness and boundaries are sort of the relational version in a way of courage and limitations. So, you know, we all know those people who don’t have any boundaries, and they’re so open to a false in a way that doesn’t feel safe. And then we know people who are so bounded, you know, there’s a wall, right. And so, so there’s this dialectic there that we have to feel into with our, you know, intuition and inner knowing and, you know, iteratively learn kind of where those healthy lines are. And then, you know, on the sides, there’s a mutuality and polarity. So there’s a way in which we want this equal investment and equality. But then it’s really boring when you have people, when you know people who are exactly like you, like, in my experience, like the energy just doesn’t, you know, quite, there’s nothing dynamic in it. And so there’s this balance and dialectic between polarity and mutuality. And then we kind of see how these things stack to curiosity, depth, you know, growth, you know, polarity and boundaries growth, right, like when you have a partner, and you have this polarity, and you have these differences, and it kind of forces you to grow beyond what you’re ordinarily capable of. And that’s part of the magic and the, you know, transformational process of partnership. So we, you know, you can kind of see how these things overlap, and then and how they stack down to the emergence, and then, you know, all the way down to the spiritual and societal. So it’s such a, you know, complex model, I don’t feel the need to get into every single detail. But what questions are, you know, do you have, or what would you like me to address? Well, first of all, I just, I want to do a little bit more. So you’ve got self coherence, relational coherence, missional coherence, and behavioral coherence. And then, and then is there a meta coherence of all the coherences? Is that what comes? So I would say that this is the, is there a meta coherence? I guess I would say that the emergence is maybe, I don’t know if I understand your questions, your question. Well, so if you go down to the next thing, each one of these is between, like, you’re not claiming that that metacognition and openness are identical, they have a similar functional place, but they’re not exactly the same process, right? Correct. So these don’t just all merge into each other. When you get sort of, you know, when you get a proper coherence within the self, within relations, within mission, within your mission, and with your behavior, does that give you a broader kind of overall coherence? That’s what this, this with this map. So it’s like, where these stack, we have emergence, and then where they all stack together, the society and the collective actually have this emergent state. So I see. So I’ve termed, I’ve given them different terms. Meta coherence is an interesting one, because I’m again, I’m always playing with the language and seeing what what kind of would resonate the most. So I’m like, Oh, maybe that’s, maybe that’s a new one. I have to change it to the whole theory. Well, the one thing that I mean, the two go together, the thing about meta coherence is it implies there’s a nonlinearity, that it’s not just adding the four coherences together, it moves you into a higher dimensionality of coherence. That’s, I think what you’re trying to point to also with the notion of emergence that you get your the dimensionality of people’s, the scope of their life and their scope for appreciating an appropriate response to their life is going up, but it’s not going up in a simply linear fashion. It’s going up in a nonlinear fashion. Is that is that land? I think that’s right. And I think that it’s, I’ve been sort of playing with a not in any significant to any significant degree, but even like, what is temporal coherence, you know, because, because there’s this idea of, you know, in meditation of being so so present, and I think it’s, it can be a very deracinated presence, where it’s like, you’re just in the moment. Yeah, and I think that’s the culture of at least Western many approaches to Western meditation, or Western bastardization of Eastern meditation, probably exactly what it is. That’s exactly that whole make mindfulness thing I published on this. The reduction, right. Right. It’s like the point of mindfulness is not to make you accepting of being a corporate drone. That is not the point of mindfulness. Right. That is not what it’s about. Right. Yeah. That’s so awesome. Yeah. And well, it’s also not about only being in the present, because because being in the present is being awake to our past and awake to our future. Yes, a true like, like there’s a I think about it like a symphony or like a chord where, yes, or you know, you’re actually experiencing the full dimensionality of time and of the human experience and a vitality. When you’re connected with, you know, past, present and future all when you can hold all those things at once. And I think that is a skill that is a muscle, you know, it’s that has to be built and flexed and it’s practiced, because we’re gripped by the past in ways. Yes. And we’re addicted to the future in some ways. But the kind of maybe optimal state is how do I how am I in right relation to past, present and future to the extent that I can. And there are times when we want to be a little bit more over here or over there. And that’s part of the dance is calibrating and that intuitive knowing of, oh, now is the time. But the overall picture, I think, needs to be balanced to be to have an optimal experience, I suppose. Sati means reminding, which already has a sense of the past and get making you prescient of what’s coming to you from the future. It doesn’t mean just dwelling in the present like a cabbage. Right. So I, I’ve argued with with with my co authors like Leo Ferraro and, and others, because I recently published on this in Rick, the amazing Rick Repetti’s, like, I just love Rick’s work. That’s why I was calling the amazing Rick Repetti. But he edited the Routledge Handbook on the philosophy of meditation. And I was actually arguing about this is why it’s so present to me right now. Right. I think of mindfulness as frame awareness that allows us to get an optimal grip on our temporal experience. That’s also as an optimal grip on our spatial experience, an optimal grip on our social experience, a frame awareness that knows, like, so you’re always your frames are always translucent to you, because you can’t be frameless. But right, you’ll be Oh, is this the right frame? Now? Mindfulness is the skill that allows you to ask that question and answer it well. Is this the right frame? Now? That takes you out of mid mindfulness and all the ways in which it’s been bastardized. That’s so interesting. And that I wonder if, for me, medical, how related my definition of metacognition is to your definition of mindfulness. They sound very similar. Right. Yeah. But but or maybe it’s the dialectic between metacognition and intuition. That is your definition of mindfulness. Could be I’d have to think about that. But there’s an important conversation to be had there. So we’ll have to talk again. But so I love that. Well, you’re going to be on my show in a few weeks when I get Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. So yeah, we that reminds me, I’ve got to get this one out in priority. We will talk about this later about when to release this one so it optimally sets up when I’m on your channel. Well, I mean, part of my work is to sorry, I hope I’m not seeing you all of a sudden, Brooke. Oh, can you see me? Not yet. Let’s see. I just stopped my screen share. Yeah. Can you see me now? I can see you but I still see your screen. Hmm. Let’s see. I tried to stop the share. Can you stop the share for me? You just go to the green box. There we go. There you go. Now you got it. You see me now? I can’t. Now you’re fine. There we go. There we go. Sorry about that. That’s fine. What was what was it going to say before that happened? I’m just trying to recover my momentum. Okay, we were sorry. Yeah, we were talking about mindfulness, metacognition, intuition, this ability to. Yeah, now I know. Now I know. Now I know. Thank you for that. Where does wisdom sit in this framework? It’s one of the emergent properties of I’d have to pull it up again to remember exactly where it sits if you’d like I can. But I think it’s one of the emergent I mean it’s it’s it stems naturally from this integrity, balance, and wholeness, right? Yes. It’s just inevitable. And that’s the idea of emergence. It’s like it’s just the inevitable byproduct. It organically happens. It’s not something that’s forced. It’s just yeah. And this is a really interesting conversation I’d like to have with you is you know I’ve been thinking a lot about you know emergence in the sense of what are the conditions that naturally organically just produce these kinds of states of consciousness, right? Right, right. So part of it and this is why I wanted to move back towards more of a platonic dialectic than a Hegelian because you get emergence when a system is properly complexifying through self-organization. What it is simultaneously in parallel differentiating and integrating so that it could get it’s capable of doing more things in a coordinated manner that does not rip its agencies apart. And so when it’s when and you see the brain doing this in relevance realization. I think relevance realization is actually the closest thing to your notion of intuition by the way. So maybe we’ll come back to that at some point. But right because it’s always doing the toggling for the optimal grip. And right but when a system is complexified so relevance realization is a system where the brain is constantly integrating, assimilating, differentiating, accommodating and it’s constantly complexifying like the way my hand is a complex thing. It’s highly differentiated and highly integrated. That’s why I get dexterity. The right-handedness of the right things on the eightfold path, right understanding. It’s not moral righteousness, it’s right-handedness. It’s that kind of dexterity and capacity for constantly adjusting your grip on things, right. It’s adaptive gripping. And so a system will generate emergence if it is complexifying. You see this in biological system. We all started out as zygotes. Our cells differentiated but then they also self-organized, listen to the word, self-organized into lungs and eye and eye. So the system is constantly differentiating but also increasing its integration at the same time and then that gives you the emergence of new kinds of functions. And that’s how you get qualitative development over and above just quantitative development. Yes, I remember learning about emergent properties back in my neuroscience days at USC and my professor talked about consciousness as an emergent property of neural network and neurochemistry. And for me, it was just like what scientists call emergent properties. It’s just like the magic and the spiritual. I mean, it’s like the stuff that we don’t have language for that is inexplicable. Consciousness is not the thing you would expect to get from complex neural circuitry, right? The qualitative experience of consciousness from my perspective is such a mystery, right? And so emergence is just so fascinating to me from that perspective. But kind of getting back to, for me, what’s really interesting is a practical, what are the conditions that allow us to have these transformative spiritual experiences that create the most meaning and purpose and ultimately impact in our lives? Because there’s a way in which this self, the thing that’s so icky about the New Age movement is it’s so self-indulgent and self-possession. Yes, yes, I agree. And there’s something so incomplete about that. And that’s why my kind of notion of missional coherence is really about like, what does the world need? It’s like a little bit, it’s very similar to icky guy, right? It’s like, what does the world need and how does that intersect with my skills, gifts and passions? Exactly, exactly. And that’s like, for me, that’s the concept of Dharma. It’s like, I’m incomplete if I don’t actually manifest my personal destiny in the world, in service of the world. And the world is incomplete when individuals do not actualize that. So there’s a complementarity between our self-actualization. This is what Scott Barry Kaufman talks about with Maslow’s work. There’s an incomplete self-actualization without the actual impact and service to the world. Right, wow. So many things sparking. Quick thing on Maslow, very few people know because he didn’t publish much about it. He had a stage beyond self-actualization of self-transcendence, which was supposed to be about that. He didn’t rip off, but most of what’s in Maslow basically comes from the Neo-Platonic framework and how it integrates Plato and Aristotle. So just that second thing that I call it, that transjectivity, that’s the core of 4-E cognitive science. The mind isn’t in here and the world out there. They’re looping into and through each other continuously, and that’s how we have to understand the mind. I think that is a really central and important thing. And the best Greek word for translating Dharma is logos. And that’s what’s in dia logos. Dia logos is the sati, the individual and collective shared reciprocal flowing mindfulness so that we can remember the Dharma, we can remember the logos and let it move us again. And that’s not in the Hegelian dialectic. And that’s something I’ve- That is where I think Jordan Peterson gets it really right. When he talks about logos in his debate with Sam Harris, it is like a masterpiece, how he talks about logos, the self-organizing. I haven’t heard him talk about it in a while, but it’s that exact, that spirit of what is both emergent and organizing that you described just beautifully earlier. This is so wonderful. I feel like there’s so many different points to touch. Well, I think maybe what we should do, and I don’t mean to be overly coy, but let’s draw to a close for you and I and on my channel, and then we’ll pick up with that momentum on your channel. Oh, okay. Well, this has been just such a delight, such an honor. I’m really, you’re just a hero of mine and just being invited to your shows is a real, really humbling and a real honor and privilege. So thank you for sharing this time. It’s been wonderful, Brooke. I’m like on fire right now, this conversation. You see what I’m so sad about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we’ll keep the momentum going on the next show. It’s too bad that I’m traveling for a few weeks, so we can’t do it sooner. That’s okay. I’ll watch this again. Maybe you can watch it again. I’ll send you the file and then we can get, I don’t doubt that we’ll be able to get back into this very quickly. I’d like to give my guests the final word. It doesn’t have to be summative or cumulative. It can be whatever you want, but it can be those things if you want it to be, but it can be other than those if you also want it to be. Just anything you want to leave the listeners, the viewers with as your final sort of parting word. Well, my shameless self-plug part wants to say a couple things about my new podcast. Please, please. It’s brand new, so I’m just trying to get the word out. It’s called On Living with Brooke Sprell and really trying to do similar things that just awaken higher consciousness, spiritual awareness, tools for self-transformation, and really how that parlays into transforming society and the world. Really, how do we change our collective agreements about inequity, poverty, these bigger issues? How does that intersect with work? How can we start to really make the individual and the collective one? Because they are one. That’s really my mission and my goal is to really expand my reach and our reach in these conversations of cultivating meaning, cultivating transformation, spiritual consciousness, and then ultimately global transformation and changing systems. Because I used to think that issues like global hunger were logistical issues and not their spiritual issues. I’m so glad that you resonate with that. We have the infrastructure, technology, and resources to feed everyone on the planet and to do anything we need to do to correct, not perfectly for inequity, but to a very significant degree in which nobody needs to be suffering in the ways that they are. We’ve been conditioned and taught to believe that these are logistical problems and they’re insurmountable. That’s part of just perpetuating the systems of power that exist. For me, really adding that piece to the conversation is what gives me the motivation to really expand my platform. I reach my motivation beyond just whatever my own motives are. It’s really about changing the world in some ways. If people resonate with that, our show is brand new. We just have a few episodes, but it’s called On Living with Brooks Prowell. We’ll have John on the show, so that would be amazing. Then from a less self-promotional piece, I think that what I would like to leave people with is that there is a there there. If people are listening, they probably already know that, but that there is a there there and that really learning to trust your intuition, again, with that healthy metacognitive and in the spirit of limitations and courage. But to really know that the voice in your mind is not actually the one that most of the time you should be making your decisions from, I think that has been one of the most healing and transformative lessons in my life. I think that’s a really good place to start for people who are trying to build the foundational skills to develop this kind of consciousness. That’s an excellent word to end on. Thank you so much, Brooke. Great pleasure. Likewise. Thank you, John.