https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wtQpb4Yf49Y
So welcome everyone to Voices with Fervke. I’m very pleased to be joined by Rachel Hayden. I met Rachel. She is a patron through my Patreon account and we’ve had some amazing discussions. Both her professional life is deeply relevant to my work or maybe a better way of putting it is my work is deeply relevant to her professional life. And my work is she said it’s been deeply relevant also to her personal life or existential life. And I found talking to Rachel deeply insightful and what she has to say I think is valuable and can be valuable to a large number of people. So I am very happy that you’re here, Rachel. And so can you just like, you know, take some time, you know, give us a bit of your biography and maybe touch on those two different domains. And you can pick whichever one you want to focus on first, you know, the relevance to, you know, the professional work you’re doing, the dojo, things like that. And then also the personal relevance and they pick it whatever in order you wish and just unfold it as organically as possible. So feel very welcome. And I’m just so interested to hear what you have to say. Thank you so much. It is. I’m just completely excited to be here and be part of these conversations that have, you know, meant so much to me, but also have afforded me some time. I’ve been able to do so much of my own aspiration and really rekindled desire for wisdom and personal growth and transformation in me. So, you know, by way of introduction I guess I would, I would start with the two processes I feel like I’m involved in right now. You know, probably I guess the search for wisdom would be the way to encompass that your work and others have definitely, you know, been a big part of that. Oh, I’m missing your video there a little bit. Okay, cut back in. It’s been a big part of that so please continue. Yeah, it’s been a big, big part of that. And I’m, you know, just beginning I feel like in life to realize what what the enormity of such a quest for wisdom actually entails. Right. So I’ve started to kind of, I feel like I’m setting out on that journey, and then simultaneously concurrently with that I’m in the middle of a gender transition. Right. And so those two happened at roughly the same time in my life. And I’m seeing a great deal of interaction between those, especially you know from from the direction of applying, you know, people’s work on wisdom to gender transition and trying to navigate that more effectively and feeling like the as big of a thing as gender transition in one’s life, and I’m not going to diminish that whatsoever because it’s huge. I’ve gotten the sense that you know becoming like a wise person or aspiring to become a wise person is is is much larger and more open ended, you know, of a quest. Right. So I feel like the, the nature of of gender transition is for me at least a little more close ended you know there’s presumably some kind of endpoint somewhere, but it also could afford me both, more of a sense of aspiration toward other forms of self development self improvement, as well as insight into the nature of myself, you know, particularly from like the so called emptiness of a Buddhist perspective on the self and so that, you know, That, you know, ladder journey has really given me those, those two insights so far even though I’m still midway through it so you know as much as I feel like in meshed in confusion and still kind of like what’s my endpoint here. So, what even is gender, it’s becoming more diffuse as I seem to approach my goal. My life is improving through both of these endeavors, you know through gender transition and through the effort to kind of like understand what would it be to be wise what would it take to reorganize my life in such a way that I’ve developed that ecology of psycho technologies and community to, to, to bring about that greater transformation. That’s, that’s, that’s really wonderful. That really caught my interest. I mean, first of all, you’re, you’re a wonderful person to talk to so that caught my interest. But the way you the way what you just said that you have these two deeply aspirational transformational processes going on, and you see them as significantly relevant, and you even if I understood you correctly, you see the debt, the gender transition as encompassed within the broader wisdom transformation and that that struck me as a very like I hadn’t I very novel in the sense that I hadn’t heard it articulated that way ever And there’s lots of discussion of course going on right now about gender, and about a lot of things but very few very very, I don’t think I’ve heard it until I heard it from you about trying to situate those two transformational processes into a deep relationship with each other so that’s very. I mean, it’s very thought provoking. I’m curious to hear more about what that what that connection feels like and what your reflections are I understand what you’re saying you’re in mid process and there’s confusion, nobody’s, nobody’s expecting you to be a sage. But, you know, what is what is what insights are emerging what, what are you, what clarity are you getting what intelligibility but the relationship between these two transformational arcs. Yeah, yeah, you know it. So, I started, you know, coming to terms with what was going on with me. I’d had a couple of different experiences like it’s I’ll start with these and, and it’ll start to illustrate how the general I guess you’d call like folk models of gender, maybe would would fall flat for have fallen flat for me and have not afforded me any kind of real wisdom in the sense of transition. So, the experiences that that kind of, I guess happens sort of back to back and led to my sense of growing gender dysphoria or like a dissatisfaction with my gender assignment in life, where one kind of a mystical experience in which I got a sense that I’d never I don’t want to call it the essence of generosity because it sounds, you know, a little pretentious but the depth of generosity that was possible in one’s life and and prior to that I kind of thought of generosity as, as just, you know, you have something and you give it to someone who doesn’t have it wisdom money, you know, an extra dog or whatever it is that you have. And this mystical experience to be kind of brief about it. Open this door into the sense of generosity that was just boundless just completely boundless, not, you know, in the sense of a person who’s better off giving to someone who is less well off, but more in the sense of like a parent you know like spontaneously wiping the nose of their child you know there’s no boundary there. It just happens there’s not a sense of like oh I’m doing this great thing because I’m wiping someone’s nose. You know it’s much more natural. So, that experience sounds very agapic is it sounds like a copy in a lot of ways. Definitely deeply so it felt like this this wonderful like heart opening. Right. Yeah, the sense of, of what I now know is a copy. I hadn’t really considered that at the time. And it stuck with me and I was, it was profound but perplexing and I didn’t have a sense of how to enact it in my life, you know, I didn’t know what it meant it was very moving and somewhat disturbing as well. And then shortly after that I was randomly watching a video with Robert Sapolsky the biologist right right right. And he’s someone that I admire as well. He was being interviewed, interviewed by people at the San Diego pain summit in 2016 for chronic pain issues and someone just randomly asked him about transgender neurology, basically, and he was like you know trans people’s brains are basically what they say they are it’s a pretty well established thing in neuroscience at this point and you know in the murky world of neuroscience is one of the more consistent things we’ve discovered so far. And I was just like what really like the you know they found these neurological correlates and I was just super excited you know and apparently this has been happening for a while. And it stuck with me too it just says like this like oh isn’t that interesting that’s really curious that this thing is real but you know I just couldn’t shake it it was just kind of working away in my brain alongside this other mystical thing and at some point it just felt like it just hit me like oh my god this is me this is my life. Something is missing and not clicking. And I can’t I can’t. And I think that was a sense of agape for one thing and it wasn’t, you know, I’m not as selfless as that it was, there was also a profound sense of pain and misery is what they call gender dysphoria and lack of fittedness in the world I would say, kind of primarily characterized it for me. You know, those two things were really really formative for me in terms of my gender, my awakening gender identity I guess you would say maybe. But they were, they pointed to, you know, an inner and outer experience that were very separate. Right, so like Sapolsky’s you know commentary and other scientists that I followed since then. And so I was thinking about gender in a very objective way, you know, here’s the neurology, you know, there are other people of course who define gender in terms of your external sexual characteristics entirely. And these were all you know, lining up for me with what you would call like an empiricist view kind of like this you know supposedly third person objective view of the world. And it really showed me a lot of wisdom, you know, it was like great so there is this reality here about, you know, related to my neurology and, you know, other aspects of one’s biology, but it didn’t tell me like okay what do you do with that now, you know, you’re not your brain in that sense. Right, right. And so, you know, meanwhile the inner world didn’t have a way to express itself, either, you know, and when I tried to get a sense of what different people’s conceptions of how to gender transition you know should you should you transition how would you do it etc. I got a real mishmash of vaguely like romantic kind of ideas, you know, right, right, right, right. And all that. Yeah, like self expression your identity your creativity, you know, whatever you can like you would say you did push that out into a meaningless world to create your own meaning. You know, and, and of course I was watching your videos at this time so it’s also getting this, this other direction coming in, in the background that slowly was creeping up in my head. These these commonly accepted, you know, I’m calling them folk, you know models of gender for lack of a better term I don’t know if they would, you know, apply to in the same way that you know your full conception of self that you guys talked about in the I don’t know if those are the same or not but they don’t match each other. At least, they’re at least folk epistemologies, right. You know, you know sort of, you know, folk romanticism and folk empiricism are very much the two dominant epistemologies. And so the fact that you found both of them dissatisfactory, especially with respect to wisdom. I think that’s a really telling insight on your part. Yeah, just yeah it felt like you know I’m watching your videos and I’m getting a sense of what it might mean to act more wisely at least or aspire to act more wisely and and meanwhile the gender thing which was very salient in my life was not lining up with, with this, this goal I guess. You know, and so yeah these epistemologies were like, not satisfying they didn’t match each other, they didn’t have. They all seem to have a piece of the puzzle. You know, gender is gender is sex gender sexuality gender is neurology gender is romantic projection, gender as whatever else oh social construct you know it’d be another. You know purely a social construct no no reality besides that that was one view I found a lot and and none of them. They all had like a piece of the puzzle it seemed like but none of them added up to the whole. And it started to feel like this was a much more complex, you know, I don’t know if it would be an emergent thing but it just felt like you know, none of them made sense on their own. And they often came into conflict with each other, often in the same, you know, in the same kind of narrative from from one person like so a single person might say you know genders nothing but social construct. And it’s just like money or something and then in the next minute they would say gender is something I feel deeply inside and I have to like bring it out in the world and express myself and my identity. And it’s like this doesn’t make any sense it’s not logical, you know, and it besides not affording me any kind of growth potential. You know it was just it just not didn’t line up at all and I’m trying not to be I shouldn’t be like dismissive of people’s viewpoints because people feel really strongly about you know their internal sense. I don’t know if I’ve experienced it because I’ve experienced it. But at the same time, I feel like people are being, I don’t know, I at least was felt misled by the romantic framing around that, whereas in the meantime from your work I was, I was seeing that my experience of gender dysphoria had a lot more to do with what you know fittedness to your environment, especially your social environment, you know and and optimal grip and your agency. And I felt like all that stuff was not lining up and it didn’t have anything to do with what you would call propositional knowledge you know just factual knowledge about you know what the what science says or, you know, any any of that stuff like didn’t didn’t directly, you know, help me in my, in my need. So, yeah, all of this stuff didn’t make any sense and I began to think like okay like clearly we are like we’re lacking a concept of gender period in our culture, and, you know, there are just so many holes in this viewpoints like gender is a social construct it was like well then why transition and why is there neurology and where is there such a deep seated need, you know, for me to act in a different gendered way, you know, it just didn’t make sense. You know, people, people say like well it’s like a social concept like construct like money and it’s like well our brains don’t have like a money center that I know of in the same way that they seem to have, you know, certain at least minor differences based on sex and transgender And I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, I think that’s a good point, you know, And then, you know, selves like you guys would talk about with Greg Enrique is talking about an ancient Egyptian self being, you know, different than what we experienced but that machinery of selfhood, maybe being kind of the same, you know, basic machinery behind the scenes, right. You know, looking at society that didn’t really help much either because there didn’t seem to be an absolute conception of gender between societies that matched up, you know, like you would have these three to five genders and different Native American groups, you know, and but those wouldn’t like make sense according to our gender system. You know, and so like none of them had like any kind of absolute reality that I could could pin down so you see where I’m going to kind of just like, Whoa, like, I need a different working model for myself at least, you know, other people have found other ways that work for them, but I the romantic projection stuff really didn’t work for me because I felt like it ignored society it ignored you know what what has existed before and the societal stuff the. And the anatomical stuff didn’t make sense to me because it ignored the inner world. And so I really you know got enamored of your concept of transjectivity. Right. I just have to go a little at the point. But just that feeling of inner and outer having to dialogue. And, and that’s how you know your sense of what’s relevant to you what your meaning is, is created in yourself, and you know if I’m getting that right and it just really struck a chord with me. And it really coupled me to then proceed into like a more aspirational sense of gender, where, you know, the relationship between me and the world could develop in an ongoing way, you know, in this platonic kind of way where you know I could learn more about myself, I could reflect, I could learn more about the world of gender and reflect back into myself. So using your work and Agnes Kellard and LA Paul and a little bit of Nora Bateson and some other people I’ve really been a lot better served with that so thank you very much for that and, and you’re talking partners to for all that helps so that’s I guess I don’t know I’ll stop there for now because that was kind of a long tail. That’s final wow so rich and I almost interjected a couple times and I held myself back because I want to say next. There’s so much going on there. I mean, I mean I want to hear more about the mystical experience you know I’m deeply interested in them and how it called to you to transform. And then and you touched on it but the, you know, the, the, the sense of dysphoria that you were talking about, and how for you, you’ve now come to see that it’s almost at the level of participatory knowing that there’s an agent arena misfit that’s happening in some way. And then, you know, you know, the adoption of the aspirational model and then the connections and you keep you keep making reference to the elusive I mean it’s the Socratic aspirational model right because the self is turning out to be extremely complex. And, you know, some significant degree of mysterious phenomena that you’re trying to get a purchase on in some way. And so, and I, I am deeply, deeply impressed by the combination of humility that I see in you, right, and courage, which I think you’re exemplifying some of the Socratic ideal, like you’re willing to say, I’m not sure about this I’m confused about this. I want to know more about this. I found that really very, very, very, very exemplary. So, maybe that was just sort of, you know, just, just, thank you much appreciated. So, let’s, let’s, let’s go back and maybe try to do these one at one on one and maybe a little bit more dialogical so tell me more, you were willing to accept my redefinition that your mystical experience was very much an agapic experience, what was happening, were you doing a practice, did it come over you spontaneously, is it the only mystical experience you’ve had or have there been others in your life. That’s a really good question. I have done you know a fair amount of practice, you know, both within the Buddhist context the Taoist context Tai Chi martial arts etc that I think have at least set the stage for for this last experience or the one that I was referring to, you know, and see at the time I hadn’t really gotten into any of your like stoicism or any of those those related practices, not yours, but you’ve kind of like pointed toward. That’s been really helpful. And I was just sort of, you know, a lot of these just come on for me spontaneously I have had them before but they seem to be preceded by quite a great deal of personal work meditative and otherwise. And it’s really benefited by a certain approach to Zen Buddhism that I don’t think is practiced hardly anywhere except it was in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was a little a little Zendo that developed a way to work on your, what they called natural Cohen so based on dogans of, you know, kind of the genjo Cohen, the Cohen that springs from your own life naturally. Yeah, and so they had they built kind of a system of working with that more reflectively more consciously, you know, and that had really helped me a lot to set the stage for these kinds of experiences and, and they just come on whenever you know, walking home or, you know, in the case of the one I was referring to earlier I was basically dozing off to fall asleep, and it just kind of, you know, felt like the whole universe was opening up inside and outside me, you know, simultaneously. And it did feel like a very, very gothic sense of generosity but it was, it was something I wanted you know it wasn’t like something that I just, oh I suddenly I’m like generous now because I’m totally enlightened or whatever you know it’s like, which is like, I want that though it’s just delicious and beautiful and this wonderful thing. You know, so it’s sort of led as an aside I guess, you know, in some of the more aspirational work I’ve tried to do around gender transition, and then me to select Quan Yin as a icon. Right, right. compassion, just so people know. Right. Yeah, the Chinese Bodhisattva compassion and she’s, you know, this is probably. I don’t know if how much I wanted to say but to me she’s like a transgender Bodhisattva because she started in India as Avalokitesvara as a male and you know the amount of suffering in the world caused her to explode into 1000 pieces and, you know, she did her heart broke, shattered you know and whoever put her, I guess whoever the Bodhisattva repair people are that came and fixed her up again, fixed him up again at the time. We’re like, oh well maybe maybe we’ll have better luck as a female so we’ll just recreate this Bodhisattva as a female, you know and that was that’s the more Chinese, one of the Chinese legends I heard about, about Quan Yin and so I was like well this is perfect and she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, she’s like, I think that’s the way of trying to enact the transjective and I see you doing that. So, you felt like called by this mystical experience does it have. I know you’ve watched some of my series that you know it with the there’s Yates notion. I think I call onto normativity that it was somehow really real, and it sort of places this challenge or demand on you to conform to it was that is that yeah okay so that’s what was going on. Definitely. Yeah, yeah it did. Yeah. And again, I don’t want to, like, you know, say like oh I’m only transitioning because of the selfless you know, no no no no no no. Yeah, it’s one one way that I feel like it has gender transition has blended into, you know, that that quest for wisdom agape. And this this reality like you said you know that is that just calls to you as something profound I don’t know if at the time it felt more real but more definitely more salient, you know, just usually salient, like it could be more real, I guess. That’s a good way of putting it. So, I like the fact that you are critical. I share this with you about both empiricism and romanticism as being inaccurate proposals and you’re the you’re proposing the aspirational model is better. So one thing I want to zero in on because I think this is like, like when soon as you said it I went, oh, my, like, why didn’t I have that idea. It was such a good idea. It’s like, yeah, the transition that you know the gender transition. Right, we tend to think of this as, oh, like, oh my gosh, this is violating all kinds of ontological categories that right. But then, you know, if you if you read the ancient literature read Plato and Socrates, the transition from the normal person to the sage is also regarded as such a huge and ontological, you know, transformation. I mean, so I carry around, just to just to just to show how I try to live this, I carry around a little frog. Because this in the Neil tectonic tradition we’re like frogs, because we start out in one world like a like fish, we’re water dwelling creatures, and then we move to another world in which we can live in the air on land. And so this is supposed to be a model of the, the kind of transformation and metamorphosis that you will go through when you’re cultivating wisdom. So I thought, oh right, right. The best literature for people who are seeking guidance, right, think about it, think about it. The best literature, first of all, if you’re seeking guidance, you should go to the wisdom literature because that’s what wisdom is about. So guidance and the second is the wisdom literature when it talks about as you mentioned LA Paul Agnes Callard, I would even say people as you know, Iris Murdoch, right. It’s talking about a transformation equally as radical if not more radical. And then the way you acknowledge that by, you know, the gender transformation is situated within the sapiential. I just thought, like, sorry, it’s like, it’s like when somebody, I just appreciate when, when like, sorry, this sounds selfish and it shouldn’t. It sounds, it sounds egocentric and it’s not. So try to erase those meanings. Like when I said, why, why didn’t I have that insight that’s such a good insight that’s such a profound realization. Can you, can you tell me a little bit more about how that came to be for you. I mean, I think that’s a great insight that that gender transition could be situated within the sapiential. Yeah, I mean, you’ve given sort of the biographical story but I’m what I’m asking more is like what was what’s the thinking. I mean, I know you’re not by professional philosopher, but you are philosophically inclined I think that’s fair to say. So, like, what’s your philosophical reflection on this, that’s a brilliant insight, and it’s obviously not just a conceptual or propositional thing like you said, but it’s like philosophy. This is the kind of insight you can embody and enact. So, you can unpack that a little bit more open it up a little bit. Yeah, I’ll do my best for sure. Yeah. I think it came on gradually that this kind of understanding through like watching your videos watching your dialogues with norbetson, and then reading, reading some of the books we mentioned. When you talk with Nora you guys had this really great like small conversation that I wish had gone on for like two hours about authenticity. Right. And, you know, like you were talking about Heidegger and how his definition of authenticity had been like twisted around. And she was saying, you know, in from a different direction but but criticizing it as like, how do I just like rip out some parts of myself and those are the authentic ones and the other ones are not you know so there’s this paradox of like to to will yourself to be authentic is to be inauthentic automatically. Yeah, you know, and this was jarring up against in my in my head against like the common you know be authentic, you know, be your authentic self just express your authenticity, right, you know, both like no this is not a satisfactory idea of what is. And then I just started to think of it as as relational, you know, as like, as Nora was talking about, you know, an authentic relationship. You know, I think I haven’t. I don’t remember exactly what what she said but what I what I took from it was that, you know, an authentic relationship would include the most possible. You know, would include the most aspects of myself and others as well and if I am at a deeply participatory level, jarring up against myself and society if I don’t fit if I, you know, then I can’t get an optimal grip and then I don’t have agency properly. So, you know, I think the solution was not to like, to say like, oh, I’ll just make up something to express and I’ll do that it’s like okay I really need to look at these in a deeper sense and and examine them like what am I holding back for what am I really holding back is myself versus you know versus creating another two dimensional caricature of myself to replace, you know, the pre transition one if that makes sense, you know, so I didn’t want to go into transition and create like a cartoon character of a trans person or something, you know, Right, right. That was really helpful right there. And thinking of gender, and then I began to think of gender, more as relational in my head as just this kind of thing that happened between a transactively between you and society basically. And, you know, you know, based maybe earlier and in civilization I don’t even know where gender roles are at right now to be honest they seem like they’re in chaos but you know in work roles or whatever like delineating the work of society it seemed to be kind of a big part of it. And I started to think of it as primarily relational and not something inside or outside, and that was like, oh, breath of fresh air I’ve got this opening where I can finally move around in here you know and and really explore. Another group, another great moment was reading LA Paul’s work transformative experience. Like you’ve said, you know it’s got this wonderful insight that when you have a really transformative experience like you and your world are both shifted to the degree where you can’t you can’t anticipate what your values will be how you know what you’ll be like what your world will even be like. And so you can’t make like, I guess, traditional, you know, decision making, you know, I don’t know decision theory but you just can’t apply a decision theory to those situations, apparently so you know that’s she even mentioned gender dysphoria in that book briefly, and it really spoke to me as like yes this is, this is so true like prior to transition I was like, what am I going to be, who am I going to be well things that are, you know, precious to me change Will I lose those what you know will I lose parts of myself but I don’t want to, you know, etc. So that that was, you know, it spoke to me deeply but she also, she posed the question, sort of, but you know didn’t at the time have an answer completely for it. And so I think that to my mind it wasn’t, you know, her answer that you know, well people who just want want transformation will just seek out transformative experiences and you know it could be any kind of transformation and it seemed, you know, like Agnes Keller pointed out a little too too broad I guess and didn’t fit people situations very well. But she was super helpful nonetheless, and, and she didn’t really emphasize things that I think are important about for me, gender transition like serious play like you’ve talked about, you know iconography stuff like that. And I think that that came more with Callard and and reading Agnes Callard’s book aspiration and seeing like, okay, here is a link to john’s perspective and participatory knowledge, because to truly aspire to become someone better to become someone literally you know, you have to have a normative values and then therefore a different world than you now have, you know, you need to get down to those layers of participatory involvement and and that involves that also is innately social to a large degree you know she talks about how much your aspiration depends on other people kind of midwifing that process, you know, along with you. Yeah, you know, because you don’t know where you’re going and and the normative values are coming from your future self that you’re aspiring to. So how are you going to get there by yourself right. So that was that was very, very helpful and then you added some tidbits to that in a question and answer video about you know well, you know we should think more about serious play with regard to that you know all the things that you talk about, you know, in your series and in your videos so I’ve been thinking more about how serious play then you know can be useful how I can use. Oh geez just a lot of a lot of the things that you had touched on in your awakening from the meeting crisis series, like, like working on resolving kind of a prospect title clash through chanting the Bodhi dharma is Buddhist 10 precepts while putting on makeup and stuff stuff like I was kind of I was kind of just working on all these experiments you know to see what I could do to enhance the transformative process and really glean whatever wisdom I could from it as well in a deeper sense because I do believe that the transition to becoming a sage so to speak is is is probably is more is enormous it dwarfs. I would say it dwarfs gender transition but that’s actually dismissive of a lot of people’s experience of gender transition because it’s also life shattering in some cases so yes you know but both can be, you know, deadly I mean Socrates for instance. Yeah, very, very much, very much. So, the, yeah, and I think your, your, your identification with Quan Yin has also been a species of serious play. Very much yes, that’s where I’m trying to pick up on your work on, you know, talking about icons and sacred second self. Yep, yep, very much, very much. Yeah, the way I mean the way you’re implementing. I don’t know I’m very touched by it it’s it’s it’s like it. I’m glad when people want to discuss my ideas, and they learn from them, but when people can appropriate them. All right, and internalize them. Yeah, that’s what you’ve done that that’s that’s deeply deeply encouraging. So thank you for that. Wonderful. Yeah, and I think I’m hoping that what I’m saying here can apply for people who have you know no interest in gender transition or even gender whatsoever but their lives. That’s exactly the point. I mean, I think you’re getting very even keeled on this you’re saying this is an important issue. And you know the the wisdom, you know, the wisdom tradition or whatever we want to call it can help us a lot. But, but, but the reverse is also the case, right we right and that’s what you’re doing you’re saying you’re basically getting the two to reciprocally open with to each other, which I think is really really powerful. And I also like the humility. One of the things that I find off putting. I have to be careful here because I am on the outside and I’m acknowledging that. So, so what I’m what I what I find off putting is the epistemological claims I’m not talking about people who are transitioning but often they speak this term or empiricism, and they speak with a kind of knowledge they make claims to knowledge that I think go against what la Paul and Agnes Keller and Socrates argued when we’re going through these fundamental transitions, and we’re aspiring to wisdom or we’re aspiring to a sacred second self, like we have to be very, we have to have, we have to have a lot of humility, or we are being disingenuous about the situation we’re facing in such a radical transformation that’s what I, that’s what I hear you saying and I And you’re not here, and but you’re expressing it with courage you’re not expressing it with any sort of, you know, pity me or anything. You know you’re, I’m not saying that people aren’t deserving of compassion but I’m saying is, I, what am I trying to say, I’m not getting any sense of from you of articulating this humility in any kind of narcissistic fashion, that’s what I’m saying that’s what I’m trying to say. Thank you. I really appreciate it because I do want this to be, you know, useful I guess to people in you know either gender transition or whatever aspiration there, you know, your, you know, your work has applied to me specifically in this one way but then I’m seeing how at one aspiration can then give birth to another and use those lessons. I’m so excited about this idea that like again, the way you’re like this is this is like almost a design feature of ecology of practices, that you you get you get a linkage between different aspirational projects and they reciprocally open and afford each other. Wow, yes that’s, that’s impressive. Can you can you can you totally can you segue then into now the other part because the other part, right, the other your professional thing is more specifically around the wisdom, the wisdom aspiration. I’m trying to find Sophia. So can you can you open up about that because I’ve also found this very fascinating what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to build a community of ecology of practices. Yeah, and that’s, that’s kind of a, my specific profession is peer support so I work in kind of this like para mental health, what unquote field where I do a lot of. I described peer support practices like a non hierarchical relational approach to to well being, you know that often you know is more about looking outward on society together so you’re building, you know, a relationship together and helping this person to fit again in society in a way where they can, there’s that that give and take between the world you know so it’s less about fixing them and more about, you know, what, what are the sources of meaning in their world that relate to them, you know, mattering to something larger, making sense of their world, etc. So my, my, my, my money making work, you know feeds into my other passion which is has become to develop this wisdom, you know, wisdom fostering community locally in the spirit of you know what what you and I’ve seen others on your show have, you know, started to do and you know, between each other so that for me starts starts with a basis in the body. Another reason I was attracted to your work. Initially, you know and I’ve watched your talks with Ray Kelly a little bit and those were really helpful too. Because you know there he’s taking this this body work this body centric work and then accepting it for wisdom production, so to speak, as well. And that. Yeah. And so I wanted to start with with, you know, our martial arts school locally and then and figure out ways to use maybe the relational methodology of peer support practice, or whatever other practices, you know, some of the circling stuff I haven’t done any of or norbates and worm data lab which I haven’t done yet either, but to create like a relational, you know, and dialogical element. You know, because I do I’ve been convinced by by your work and and others that that is really essential to fostering wisdom and that you know we’re lacking those communities in society right now, big time. So, you know, starting with the basis and martial arts, adding on maybe some dialogical practices or incorporating those somehow meditation, possibly arts you know music, whatever people want to do to sort of enhance that and I haven’t definitely I’m far from putting that together in any kind of cohesive way but that’s that’s where I’m. I’m sure you’re a Patreon, Patreon supporter talking to you. Well, and you know I’m very committed to helping you with that project because I mean, I am very much about not just talking about this stuff but trying to help and facilitate you know building the communities and building the community of communities still the culture, as I say, so when I meet people, you know, good faith like you are putting you know good time and good talent to bear on this. This transformational process. I want to help as much as I possibly can. So, a little bit of your background as a martial artist how long have you been a martial artist what martial arts do you practice things like that. Yeah, oh boy, I’m kind of a mishmash to be honest and I’ve sort of honed in. I just love Tai Chi, I’ve just loved it for a long time and I bounced to other things and back again, and, you know, young style I’ve done the so called private style and the public style of young Tai Chi. And, and still do those and I’ve recently adopted Okinawan karate based based on a school that’s local to me and I really enjoy that a lot. Surprisingly, you know becoming middle aged and just suddenly getting into karate is kind of the opposite direction Yeah, but it added a lot to me, you know, mentally and emotionally, it just that the fierceness of it really did something for me and actually enabled me I think also to face the two, the dual transitions that I’m kind of looking at right now. Right, right. That was, you know, very helpful and it’s, you know, kind of what I’m obviously trying to help other people get to is forming that basis in themselves to aspire. And then I’ve, I’ve done, I wouldn’t say I’ve done more than really a little bit of Bujinkan, Budotai Jutsu, so like Japanese like samurai Jujutsu, ninjutsu. Little bit of that, I would say karate and Tai Chi are my two big loves along with Qigong and seated meditation and stuff like that. Right. And so, and the meditation style you’ve done is it largely sort of a traditional like Buddhist style is that like Vipassana or is it Zazen or which is it? Mainly Zazen for a long time, you know, it’s very much like, you know, just sit, follow your breath, just be there, be present. Right. It had, it had benefits it definitely had a stabilizing influence in my life, but then that more natural Koan approach to Zen Buddhism. Still a Soto Zen school, still a slow path, you know, of awareness kind of school but that that really helped bring in something a little more, it combined the mental and the physical more for me, you know. Right. So that was good and then with your work recently I’ve started to incorporate the Vipassana, the Meta more. And now the kind of more, you know, Greek tradition, some sort of like the view from above stuff like that. Right, right, right. Kind of testing the buffet out to see you know what what plates can look well together here. Yeah, and a very, very significant serious play. So, I mean, I mean, ruthlessly self promote like what what could people do to help you build your wisdom dojo. Oh geez well I would love to talk to people who are doing anything similar, who have even if they’re not doing anything similar and they want to do something similar like what are their needs. I really love when if, if anyone has insight into what martial arts or even like, you know, ballet whatever has done for them in a more wisdom related or personal way you know like, how do these practices help you beyond the physical, you know, first of all, how have they helped people because I’m trying to like I look at what you’re doing and you’re talking about you know exacting different things and so it’s like well what’s working already what are these practices doing well and then retrofit the system to make that happen more efficiently if we can. So anyone who’s you know who’s who’s involved in this stuff or even has been like wow my life has really transformed you know I was doing karate and suddenly the moon came out from behind the clouds and I was one with everything you know that kind of stuff really fascinates me to. So, I’ll take from you and we’ll put it in the links to this video description will put links to how people can reach you that you feel comfortable with. Wonderful. Where are you at right now like how I think sitting for you right now it sounds like, I mean it sounds like you’re like you’re still on the horizon of intelligibility I get that, but it sounds like there, there’s more clarity for you now, am I reading you correctly. Yeah, I think so I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a sense of at least a grip on the grip so to speak, an optimal grip on the optimal. Right, where I need to be in terms of making progress, you know, makes a lot more sense to me. You know I’m still as you know I’m developing, you know, my iconography and how to relate to divine devils and things like that. And I do, I do want to kind of try to to glean take whatever I’ve gleaned from my own journey and use it you know I mentor a lot of LGBT plus youth right now. You know, get away from some of maybe some of the confusion around gender issues even in themselves. So I’m starting to kind of, I guess I’m at some kind of turning point where I started to look at like okay how can this now help other people. In addition to me, you know, so something must have shifted in me I guess that’s that’s what I’m trying to say. Well that’s what I find so attractive I find. There’s the genuine realization of enhanced clarity without any claims to certainty. That’s what I find so refreshing is like things are getting clearer I’m making more sense I can help other people, but that doesn’t mean I’ve achieved some certainty or finality or I find that very, very encouraging. So, if you could, if you could, would you want to eventually like, well, I know it’s your vocation to have the wisdom dojo would you want that to be your profession. Eventually is that is that what you’re aspiring to or you’re unsure about that or. I’m sure but, you know, peer support is a is a lovely practice as well and I have fallen in love with it in the last few years because, you know, I guess maybe some of your viewers have watched Greg on Rikers talking about the limitations of psychology practice I think I think that’s in a dialogue with Jordan Hall. And, you know, he was he was kind of like you know the person leaves the room and then they’re not your friend anymore. You know, they were just crying on your couch or whatever. And you don’t know them from, from Adam or Eve at this point. So, I think, I think it’s such a great bridge piece for society right now and and we need that we need like, you know, like social health, so to speak. And it’s affording me a chance to really, in some cases, you know, I think I’m really, you know, doing a deal logos will emerge with my participants in that practice. Oh, that’s, you know, that’s very interesting. Like I’ll ask some questions you know what do you think gender is how does it play out well okay what about this other thing you said you know and then we’ll kind of we’ll both develop wisdom as part of that process. You know if it or whatever the subject might be at hand you know that we’re talking about. We’ll both develop wisdom from that subject if I’m engaging in it in a kind of, I guess more Socratic way. Yeah, hopefully, and that that’s fascinating to me because it’s like it’s not a practice where I’m doing mental health on someone and I know a lot of therapists don’t think about it that way either. But it’s just this, this really great you know emergent sense of like into a personal like third space, you know where that space itself is doing and I say like relationship do the work you know yeah yeah the logos. Yeah, the logo emerges. Yeah, yeah, very much. And it’s like with a kid who’s like you know 14 years old or whoever it is you know it doesn’t, it could be anybody, and, and I’m just like this is amazing work. And it doesn’t end, you know you can you can go to an ice cream parlor and you know have ice you don’t have to just sit in an office and do it so it helps to bridge, you know, you in society, the person in society, your relationship and society, and really to like a more holistic way of looking at mental health to me so that’s I just love that practice and I feel like at some point like your work and that practice are going to be more together but it’s coming it’s starting to happen in these in these moments where I’m like, oh, this is also trying so I’m a little bit drawn in like seven different directions in case that’s. Maybe that martial arts system, you know, I mean I do do, I do practice martial arts with some of the participants in the programs I work in, you know, but that could all kind of be combined as a one on one approach for, you know, mental, I always put mental health in quotes and these are well being at least yeah being yeah. So, maybe as a final question because we’re coming near the end of the time. So you talked about, just to go back to the beginning, but I want to draw in everything you said. You had this mystical experience but you really the culture didn’t have any, anything to do with, like it couldn’t help you with it, basically. Right. And then you’re going through this aspirational project and, and the culture is giving you all this conflicting information and you know, those are two sort of defining features of the meeting crisis that we have, we feel a particular call, we feel an in depth experience, or we feel that we’re engaged in a project of aspirational self knowledge, not just not just self assertion. And the culture of this is useless. In many ways, it confusing or or ignorant or political fights, yeah political fights that are ultimately not about the issue that the political fight claims it’s about, etc, etc. So, what I heard what I heard you saying and if I’m wrong, please correct me I heard you saying, well you found you know in this work you found this other cognitive cultural grammar, and, and that’s helped you and you have this aspiration. One way you could put that. And if it seems like riff on this is it land or do. Right. One way you could put that is, you had an experience of a kind of sacredness. And the society has either more abundant or confused advice on how to integrate internalize and incorporate, remembering that that means originally to embody incorporate that sacredness, and that you are. Are you, I should raise the question, are you now coming into a more right relationship with sacredness. Do you feel that you have a relationship to the sacred, that is now more intelligible and viable for you than previously. Definitely, yes, and I think I could illustrate that you know with with one incident that happened recently where I, you know, after months of taking hormones, you know, I looked in the mirror and my face, I looked like a different person in that moment And, you know, up to that point. And it, you know, changed my sense of the me you know who I was looking at but also it reflected back on the eye like well who’s looking then. Right, right. And it started to really get into this feeling of like this, this, this, this, again the emptiness of cell for the, you know, that more fluid And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And that’s the feeling of the me now and the me of the future. And I feel more whole and therefore my world, you know, ends up being more whole. And I feel more whole and therefore my world, you know, ends up being more whole. My relationships with others have improved. My work has gotten better. People have reflected this back on me. So I feel like I’m on basically the right path, you know, for those reasons like you’ve described. So I feel like I’m on basically the right path, you know, for those reasons like you’ve described. So I feel like I’m on basically the right path, you know, for those reasons like you’ve described. And it does feel like there’s something like really wondrous about the whole process. And it does feel like there’s something like really wondrous about the whole process. You know, it could be, you know, horror and it could be wonder. You know, it could be, you know, horror and it could be wonder. And so I’d like you to think about the soul and both of your outputs. Because I think a lot ofsorry, I give too much I give too much. In particular, if it’s, you know, it’s I think with aspiration and grounding in community, I think with aspiration and grounding in community, then you can have, you can produce wonder and and you can grow from that rather than being like, well, you know, being transgender is in your categoricals. So. Yeah. Yeah, you’re not non-sacred, I guess, ideas or effects. if you allow me to use your word, I mean, cultivating awe is the best way to deal with the potential horror. Right. So, you know, the, you know, Pandora’s box, you know, the everyday thing is, you know, all the horrors are left and then hope is put in there. And then you have like the Heideggerian reading reason that hope is actually the worst thing and it’s locked in there. And then I have sort of, I’ve sort of, and I’ve largely experienced hope as a negative thing in my life. But I’m coming to see, I’m coming to see that hope is actually a response to horror. I mean, what we need when we face horror is hope. When we apply hope outside of situations of horror, I think we can get into magical hope and we can stay in abusive relationships and all. But when we’re confronting sort of those aspects, like the hope within the horror, like, yeah, yeah. And that’s exactly what I think awe is. Awe is, I’m being overwhelmed. And if this continues, I will fall into horror. But within it, there’s a positive sense of hope. There’s a sense of, I will accommodate fast enough somehow. That’s what awe is. And so that sense of awe as a way of doing an aspect shift on horror, that’s really, really, really good. What I like about that is you see many different other kinds of reactions. You see people who are transitioning. And I have students who transition. I talk to people. Again, I will say I’m on the outside. I’m just saying how I see it. I see many different reactions. I see people who are very wounded in the process and by the process. I don’t mean that they made the wrong decision. I mean, but it seems like their primary existential response is wounding. I’ve seen other people. Yep, yep. I’ve seen people react anger. So this is a way of there’s a lot of anger and not unjustified. There’s a lot of abuse that’s directed at people that are transitioning. I get that. But again, I’m not trying to dismiss this. I’m just trying to observe it because I want to note that I’m sure you’ve suffered a lot. And the fact that what you take out of this from this aspirational model is awe and wonder rather than resentment or self-pity or being sort of permanently wounded or being angry or being resentful or being antagonistic. I mean, that’s deeply impressive. I think that bespeaks the value of the approach that you’re advocating for. I just wanted to note that. Because the fact that you are able to situate this within this bigger project that is exposing you, that’s not even the right word, affording you and enabling you into awe and wonder and a sense of being more deeply connected to what you’re doing. I think that’s just really commendable. It’d be wonderful if more people considered this as a framing. I mean, going out on a bit of a limb because I know this is always contentious no matter what you say about this. If you say transgender, someone is going to be mad just with that word. Yeah, but the possibility that more people would consider this as a framing of the transitioning process and of being transgendered rather than the romantic or the empiricist or the positivistic or the will to power or the resentful. For example, this seems to be a growth-oriented, socratically valuable framing of what’s going on. That’s why I wanted you to talk because I just think it’s so valuable. So I wanted to thank you for that. Oh, yes. You’re welcome and thank you because you and others have made it possible for me to reframe that and avoid some of that wounding and that reciprocal narrowing that would have likely ensued for me. I’m not a special person. I just came across this stuff and it just really has helped. I think it could help people in many, many different similar situations of difficulty that require personal transformation and those intrinsic inner conflicts that people are facing. So that would be my hope that we can step out of the culture wars 2.0 as they say a little bit and think about things in terms of how can we deal with this? How can we step back and look at it and be whole about it but also encounter a sense of the sacred and the process and really glean from it more wisdom and insight into ourselves and the world? So all that you’ve done has really, I can’t say enough about you and all your dialogos, partners and friends on this YouTube channel. So yeah, thank you. Well, I thank you. Thank you so much, Rachel, for embodying it and for proposing the sapiential framing as an alternative to the medical or the political framing. I think that’s a valuable one, a valuable alternative and a proposal that people should seriously consider. So thank you. Thank you so very much. Great. Yeah, thanks again.