Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
Join seasoned Transformational Coach & longtime activist, Dana Balicki, for a wildride into the jacuzzi-verse to explore the ebbs & flows of living an examined life. Each and every episode invites you to explore the strange magic of humaning together in these wild times.™ With 13 years of coaching expertise, Dana blends irreverent reverence, spiritual insight, decolonial teachings, collective movement-building, high-woo, personal narrative, and grounded growth-oriented practicality for deep, thought-provoking conversations.
Sound editing and design by Rose Blakelock, theme song by Kat Otteson, artwork by Natalee Miller! Extra support by robot cohost Alex & robot producer (and part-time cohost) Janet.
Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
Swipe Right on Your Eternal Self with Professional Mystic Leah Garza
What if we approach dating (and LIFE!) with genuine curiosity rather than the calculated performance and feigned ambivalence? With a commitment to compassionate relating rather than just detached, dehumanizing game-playing?
Join Dana and her dear friend Leah Garza—Akashic Records practitioner/teacher, decolonial scholar, and tender menace in the dating world—to unpack how to practice (naive) rebellion in our relationships and create new, much-needed pathways of connection.
Leah shares how she’s indestructible (and you are, too!), follows resonance over rules, strives for satisfaction over happiness, and tends to ghosting, disappointment, unmet needs, and more.
~ RESOURCES FROM THE JACUZZI-VERSE ~
- Apply for Living Systems! New cohort starts July 13 (https://www.wearelivingsystems.com/livingsystems)
- Find Leah on ig @crystalsofaltamira
- Get info for Dana & Leah’s Fall Equinox retreat in Joshua Tree! (https://bit.ly/leah-dana-retreat)
- Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
- wondervalley! go to bit.ly/wondervalleycry + use discount code CRYBABY
- one of Dana’s favorite poems on risk
- Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.
// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller///
@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭
Hey, crybabies, welcome, welcome, welcome back to Crying in my Jacuzzi. The ebbs and flows of a living and examined life where we live, laugh, love in the Anthropocene. And, as you may know, this season I mean really all the seasons, but this season with a finer tune focus is about rebellion, not as an end point, but as a crucial step, step towards revolution, towards civilizational shift in the inner work world. I call this a getting ready, to get ready phase and it is not to be skipped or hurried through. So we bring in our slow down medicine and we peel the layers back to look at the systems that we have been conditioned into, external and internal, and how we can be subversive, to disorient from these systems, to reorient into new ways of being together and to look at it, sure, at a systems-wide level, but also being curious as to all the ways in which we perform our conditioning. And through that curiosity and, of course, a healthy dose of compassion and courage, we can play with every aspect of our lives as an opportunity to practice this dismantling, to make room for shift, to make room for becoming more of ourselves together and how to love ourselves and each other through all of it and find all the ways in which we are connected, and one of my favorite thinkers, feelers, beings of curiosity and desire is my dear beloved friend, leah Garza. She's a veteran teacher, a practitioner and teacher of the Akashic Records, and also a decolonial scholar.
Speaker 1:I consistently learn so much from and with my friend Leah, and I want you to stay tuned to the end of the episode for two really exciting opportunities to play with Leah, because after listening to this, you're gonna wanna to play with me, and Leah, because double trouble what's more fun than that? And to learn about living systems, cohort four. Trust me, you don't want to miss this. It's the juiciest, cutest, most curious, compassionate, brilliant, courageous community that I've been a part of for so, so long, long. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I'll tell you more later, but let's just go find Leah.
Speaker 1:I think she's just through this portal, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi. Normally it would be like okay, leah, let's talk about decoloniality, let's talk, and I know we will. But I feel like there's a more specific conversation that we get to have today. There's a finer tuned lens of how we relate to each other and even dating and the idea of being out in the world in different ways. I know you've been on a journey. I'm. You're a fucking menace and it's why I love you so much and it's why we're talking right now.
Speaker 1:I think it's why we're friends I know that what you have to share, not just about the work you do in the world, but your own personal story, has got some elements of I don't feel I'm not menacing no no I'm gonna sing in the best way, in a slytherin way, you you're the heir of Slytherin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that maybe menace is just being assertive to getting my needs met. I was just telling my friend that little anecdote of like I think I told you this story already, but like, matching this guy on this app liked me and I wanted to like him back, but I was on the phone so I was distracted, so I deleted him instead. And then I like, oh shit, I didn't mean to do that. And I noticed in his profile that he was in San Francisco. So I went to my friend who lives in San Francisco and is also on the same app and I was like, can you look for this guy? Like just find this guy. I don't know much about him. Here's what his name is, here's what his profile like roughly said. When you find him, super like him and send him a message. That's basically like my friend wanted to match with you. If you're still interested, here's your phone number, and and. And my friend was like are you sure you want to do this? And I was like, yeah, why not? Like I messed up, I missed my chance. Like why not, I'm gonna make up for it. And she was like okay. And I was like what?
Speaker 2:And it wasn't until the guy found me and then, like you know, was messaging me that I realized like that's incredibly aggressive, like that's an incredibly aggressive pursuit. And I didn't think I didn't have any frame of reference because I'm new to dating. So I just felt like no, I messed up, I'm gonna go after what I want to get. Like I don't understand like you just go, you just go get what you want right in the world and and you do it also in dating. But I'm learning as I talk to other people who are also single and dating and using apps like no, that's actually like, that's like not like the etiquette that has arisen around this.
Speaker 2:Like online relationality is that's. You don't do that like. You just like shy away, you just like I don't know, I don't know. So I guess like that's a little. I guess that's like a good example of like how I've become like a menace to me. I'm just taking the same way that I operate in academia or in my work life and just apply it to dating. I don't know, I'm a swift administrator I like getting shit done.
Speaker 1:I wrote down uh, desire savant, even though I know you actually done quite a bit of work around desire, if anyone, who's in your Akashic mentorship or living systems. Yeah, we're not kiddos dating, we're grown ass, fucking humans. There's a difference too, I think, in the maturity. I think a lot about a mature rebel. It's not just resistance for resistance sake, and what does that mean? And you know what I'm hearing here is that desire to like have the experience that you want to have. Well, of course I can, I'm perfect, and that maybe you've learned through other realms, like in academia, super closed system. You know, as a teacher, here you are applying those principles.
Speaker 2:Dating is so fascinating to me as a person that study as a psychologist, a person study psychology I also just was in a relationship for 18 years, so I bypassed the like dawning of the app age. I didn't participate in that. I don't think you did either right, so like when I now, at 44, am coming to it, I'm looking at it as a researcher. These are insane ways of behaving with each other terrible, nothing sweeping over the land. It's barbaric. It's barbaric to like gamify relationship building, but it's also like the inevitable byproduct of the way our culture has evolved in colonialism and mass consumerism and like it makes sense that this is how we now build relationships through this like gamified way, but in doing so we lose the realness of like humanity of the other person involved and it's like that part breaks my heart. And so I think some of the rebellion that I feel it's not intentional, it's like naive rebellion, like I refuse to behave that way, like if somebody ghosts me. I'm going to ask why, because that's an insane way to behave with another person. But I know for a lot of my my girlfriends that are single and a lot of my male friends that are single that are dating. You don't ask those questions. You don't once a line like that has been drawn. The like status quo prescription of how you should behave is that you just be mad and vent to your friends or I don't know.
Speaker 2:There's just like so much culture that has arisen around these apps that I don't want to participate in and I don't want it to wash over me and subvert my big heart. Or like like how much I love people. Or like turn me into a game player. I naively rebel meaning I'm not intentionally rebelling and like I'm gonna, you know, fuck this guy. I'm gonna like message him. I like I want to know why. I want to know how do we resolve this? We don't have to date, but like how do we? Can we like not leave it this way? Do you have unmet needs? Is there a way to meet those needs? Like maybe a friendship is more appropriate, maybe no contact at all is appropriate, but like no one ghosts if it isn't coming from a place of like this is the best idea I have. I don't have better strategies and so I'm interested and that's like the work I'm interested in doing, like in my academic work and in my like work with clients, is like unmet needs work, so I'm not trying to make dating into work.
Speaker 1:But but when your work is inherently ontological or consciously ontological, like it's gonna touch everything, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah and so you can't just like, oh, I'm over here dating in this totally different way. That's completely different than the way I live the rest of my life and I think more and more of us who like work in this way and do the work of interpersonal, psychological, emotional, spiritual work. We're not immune from separation right, because we live inside of it, but we're in some ways less unconscious about it, so things are more integrated. Yeah, and I love this idea of like the naive rebellion, because what I hear from you is how you're using your attention. Here are all the rules spoken and unspoken. I'm also we're the same age. I've been in a relationship now 19 years.
Speaker 1:When my partner, ryan and I met, we were, you know, sexting was like t9, still, you know. So it was just like chugga, chugga, chugga, you know. Like c, yeah, huge yeah, and t ascend. So you dropping into this now as like someone who didn't necessarily get all the indoctrination of all the rules, yeah, like were happening over the past, however, many years of relationshiping and dating, moving in this gamified way and onto these platforms and through this funnel of technology, and so that's why I said you know, dating savant, desire savant.
Speaker 1:You are coming in with this freshness that matters, and anytime I read articles about like dating or I talk to any of my clients and there's so much like calculation based on these old rules, and then that's compounded with their own internalized old rules or rules about what a relationship is, what it should feel like, how people should show up, how amazing they should be right off the bat or what are you know? Red flags, pink flags, whatever the flags and and I'm not saying that those are bad things to have at all, I'm not. I don't want to pathologize any of it, but there is something that you're speaking to about the reclaiming our humanity. There's an a humanness in this.
Speaker 2:So one of the like, the repeating things I see on these profiles of these you know, potential suitors of los angeles you must swipe yas, you cannot swipe nas is. Generally it goes like this I'm totally paraphrasing I'm looking for something casual, a friends with benefits situation would be great. No one night stands, so that's too casual.
Speaker 1:You will let me cling to those lies.
Speaker 2:But if it leads to something more, I'm open. So, and I've like observed this and I think, like there's a conflict and a tension just in our culture alone around being casual, that I've had to come to the realization that I am not a casual person. I experience life very intensely when I have to be casual. Some things are of no importance to me, so then I'm like, yeah, whatever, and that might appear as casual. That's not what I think casual means. But when I have to enter into a situation where I have to appear casual, I can feel the part of myself that I'm pushing down in order to swim in those waters. And the more that I do this stuff, the more dating and like working with clients and getting to know people and being in psychology, the more I really believe that, no matter what someone tells me, no one is casual.
Speaker 2:Everyone has been deeply, deeply hurt at some point in their lives and they learned how to scab that wound physically, emotionally, all the ways. And now our culture has put a high price on being casual. That didn't really affect me, I'm not really hurt, it's fine, it's chill. Oh, you stood me up, you ghosted me, you blocked me, you like unmatched with me on my way to the date. That's cool, man, that's chill. It's not chill and I know that it hurts everyone, but so, like I'm interested in like one, how do we make it okay to be hurt? And two, how do we like arrive at like the courage of dialogue, or like the courage of communication, where we can be like let's talk about can we talk about the hurt? Or like what happened? Or like what do you need?
Speaker 2:Again back to the unmet needs, but like dating happened, or like what do you need? Again back to the unmet needs, but like dating is also like just in and of itself, an arena that is so charged with emotion. Like I have so many friends that when they go onto an app and they're looking at basically an avatar of a human and they're thinking in their minds and I've clients do this too Is this a potential partner for life? And I'm like, bro, that's the opposite of casual. That is so intense you don't even know. Like, does a person put the toilet seat down or not? Like you don't even know. Like are they going to contribute to like the bills? Like you like so. So there's like this conflict of like and this is like the nature of how colonialism governs us is like there's a norm, a normative society that we want to participate and have success in, and then there's the undercommons, where we actually exist and where our hurt lives and where our inner monologue is where we're eating pizza in bed.
Speaker 1:We don't tell anyone and like I really want to like make the undercommons okay as much as I love being here in the desert, it does take a toll on my skin and my hair so dry, so very dry. But luckily there's my buds over at Wonder Valley. What started out as an olive oil company is now an oasis for some of the most restorative skin care and hair care. And whatever happens with the insides when I drink the olive oil that care, my favorite is the Wonder Valley shampoo and conditioner. It has taken me from desert witch tumbleweed hair to my husband calls it pony hair. It's healthy, it's shiny, it's inches longer than it used to be.
Speaker 1:People literally stop me to talk about my hair. So if your skin or hair could use a refresh or whatever you want to do with that bottle of olive oil, you know you can always chug it. People do that. It's a thing. Go to the link in the show notes to get started and use the code CRYBABY all caps for 15% off. Yeah, yeah, like the, I think of it like the Shadowlands, where it's just the things that we feel we have to push down and that we have to hide. And I love what you said about no one is actually casual. You know. Part of what you're saying too is the system, the dating system, the dating paradigm as it's developed. It's like how well can you perform casualness? How well can you perform ambivalence?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I've just sucked one year of your life away. There's the possibility that modern dating is teaching us, is grading us, on how well we can feign ambivalence like lack of care, and what we need is more care, more humanity, not less of it. To me, that's what I'm interested in when I think about rebellion. How do we? How do we do it with more humanity and not and not less, and not just like relying on the photos to represent us or a couple of sentences, or how well we have our initial chat game, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I hear when you're talking is like, even like the notion of rebellion is like there's a subject object split, there's a split between me and the thing I'm rebelling against, there's a divide there, and so like that in and of itself is reproducing like modernist notions of individualism. So and sometimes we don't feel like we have a choice, it doesn't feel right to just abandon my vision for like what a just world looks like and like become like a Trump supporter. That doesn't. I'm not going to capitulate, I'm not going to surrender to when I think, when I believe there's injustice happening, but but I'm also like constantly looking for where is the thing I'm resisting, reproducing the object object split, and one of those ways that we're constantly reproducing it is by being afraid of risk.
Speaker 2:Risk what risk? So like dating is an inherently. I'm using dating not as like not to tell anyone about dating, but like it's the, it's the arena that I'm doing my research in right now. It's like the place where I am like exploring. It could equally be a job market. It could be like, oh, I'm starting a family or I'm moving to a new city, but right now, for me, dating is the thing that's up, and it has such rich examples of how humans show themselves and hide themselves. But like risk comes from not all risk, but a lot of the risk in like you know, we've talked about like like there being no safe spaces, and when we, when we think of safety as like a place where we can prevent harm from happening, there is nowhere on the planet where you can prevent harm from happening, including dating, including what?
Speaker 2:Especially in dating like you, in relationships, relationships are inherently risky. They're inherently risky because there's an external factor of another person and they're going to affect you. And I just think about a lot about like it's easy for me to care for other people when I feel safe with risk, because there's nothing that another person can actually do to destroy me, even if they do their worst, even if they're like toxic, just the worst. I'm indestructible. And so I can go into risky situations and I can actually like fall in love with the devil.
Speaker 2:I can like I don't want to marry that person, or like live in my house and like whatever, empty my savings or whatever, but like I can find, when I see people through this unmet needs land. I'm like, oh, of course you're doing that. That's the way you're meeting your unmet needs. That's the strategy that you've learned from childhood, that you, of course that's how you're doing it. I can find charm there, but, because I know myself, there's like a one, a monogamous charge with dating that, even if you're exploring other lifestyles or whatever, there's still this resistance or rebellion to monogamy, and monogamy is crafted under under colonialism, so like, if it's this, then it's this.
Speaker 2:If I find them charming, then I must love them, and if I love them, I must marry them and be attached to them forever and we can walk around the world loving everything and not being attached to anything if we want. Like to me, it's not risky to fall in love, but I know a lot of people who have been heartbroken find it it incredibly risky, like I have a mom who got divorced in 1986 and then never got another partner.
Speaker 1:There's so much here in terms of risk which I want to come back to. But the idea, too, of everyone has their own relationships to love and care and because they have their own relationships to it, they have their own beliefs about it. Right, they have their own patterns around it and it's usually, you know, it's handed down from all, all angles culture and our ancestry and our family and parallel lives, and there's the idea that people are going in and like it's like they're bringing that, like that shadow lands with them, the undergarments, they're all their stuff. Yes, maybe everywhere is, you know, it has a level of risk, but inside of intimate relationships it's like relationships will stagnate if there's no risk. I'm so bored and all of us have had some experience of that and it can be too risky. It's too scary for me because of what's happened to me before and where there's like a level of connection that is sort of reached and then stagnated.
Speaker 1:And what I'm hearing from you is, you know, using this research field to continuously play inside of humanness and risk and connection and care and love. But like with that, you know, when you say like I'm indestructible, like no one can harm me, really Like, can you talk more about that, cause I know where that comes from. But that is not what a lot of people carry with them. They're moving. At any moment, consciously or unconsciously, they could be taken apart, taken down to the studs, and that's fucking terrifying. And so they can't be in the naive rebellion, they can't be in this experiment that you're talking about with surrendering to humanity, surrendering to care and having that courage to communicate at a level of honesty, even if nothing comes from it other than that one conversation yeah, I'm indestructible really comes from my spiritual practice in the Akashic records or the Akasha and really coming to an understanding which, for people that don't know, is like a new age kind of spiritual it's.
Speaker 2:It's a, it's an old thing, it's a very. The way I've learned it is very, very much through the new age lens, which has a lot of issues with it, but one of the things that I've come to understand is that I and every being is an iteration or or belongs to a greater soul. That and that soul is a dimension of consciousness or whatever you an energy, whatever you want to call it it's. It's an energy of, of agency, and it has no beginning and no end, so it's eternal. So, because I come from this eternal thing, there's something about me now that is eternal.
Speaker 2:Not my human body Clearly, human bodies are not eternal, they die and decompose but something else about me is eternal and so if I, even if it's like just a diluted story that I want to hold about myself, I've brought that now into my psyche and into my awareness so that I know that, like I know that like I can go into like scary situations, I can go into like physically scary situations, like I can cross the street and a car could actually strike me dead, and there's a part of me that will never die, and so, like, what could kill me in a dating app, then Do you have a second to eat my farts.
Speaker 2:There's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing. That doesn't mean that I don't get hurt or disappointed or have all of those emotional responses that we're conditioned to have in response to relationships. Disappointment will not devastate me, and I think, like disappointment is a really big. It can be a huge trauma and we don't because we're so hell bent on being casual. Like what disappointment really is is when you expect reality to be a certain way, and then it's not a new definition of pain and suffering. And it can be as small as I went to the store to buy this thing, but they ran out. I'm disappointed.
Speaker 2:But it could be as big as I thought my dad would be present for my childhood and he was not. Or I thought this person was a part of my life, but my grandpa died when I was a kid and then reality was different. Those are all forms of disappointment. Some are so cataclysmic that they shift our sense of reality, and then we have trauma around it. But we use the word disappointment as if it's casual, like, oh, you're just disappointed. Grow up Like, yeah, life is full of disappointment. I hate that. I hate that. So it isn't to say that like I don't experience disappointment or reality being different than what I thought it was. But like it's not going to kill me, it's not going to kill any of us, but you have to look at the story of yourself that actually believes that.
Speaker 1:And I'm hearing from you all of these little ways in which you're taking the things that are sort of like in the shadow lands, in the under commons, in the unconscious oh yeah, right, I've got to be casual, so I can't really have such a big heart here oh, I have to.
Speaker 1:Something hurt me and so I feel like really just kind of pretend like that didn't hurt me on like even a profoundly deep level, because it reminded me of something about my, my childhood. If all our energy is going into pushing down and trying to perform casualness, normalcy, desirability and this like really small, small little lens that we've been taught, what we're missing out on is the ability to actually be in relationship in a deeper way, which, in dating, is why y'all are there in the first place. We go out to be with other people is to like be seen, to be heard, to be understood, whether we know that that's a desire or not. We're trying to like have those needs met and I guess I'm looking at it like in the way, like this lens, of disrupting the narrative, because that's not what you've learned through recognizing your eternalness. There's, there's something you're unwilling to give up and sacrifice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, as you you're talking, I'm like thinking a lot about how rebellion and resistance are totally different and they can overlap, but they're like very different and like one of the things that gave me the most fear about embarking on dating after being in a relationship for 18 years was like people will find me disgusting because like my whole background with disgust and all that stuff. But, um, if I pretend I'm not disgusting or pretend that I don't have a fear of that and I just perform normal and perform dating, perform normal dating, perform girl dating, whatever that performance is, I'm still resisting it to such a painful degree I'm resisting. That disgust is in the back of my mind like whispering at me.
Speaker 1:What you resist persists. That's Carl Jung.
Speaker 2:Yes, but when I just am like, yeah, I'm fucking disgusting. And then there's the whole narrative of like disgust doesn't really exist, we can at least go down that argument. But that's not the point. The point is that, like now, I'm actually rebelling against disgust because I've accepted that that's what it is and it's not going to like quiet anymore. Yeah, again, dating has been such a crazy projection screen upon which I'm projecting and seeing all the ways that I am a person I don't know, all the ways that I have evolved and the ways that I think of myself, and, yeah, it's wild energetic grounding is the age-old cornerstone of countless spiritual and magical practices.
Speaker 1:For me, grounding has been one of the most important and nourishing practices of my adult life. It's how I tend to my nervous system. It's how I call my attention and my energy back to myself. When it's scattered, when I'm in the swirl, it helps me connect to myself and those around me that I care about, because it helps me practice staying, practice presence, practice tenderness, even when the world around me doesn't seem to have a whole lot of any of those things. It's even more important than I do that we do. It's even more important than I do that we do. So go get your free grounding guided meditation, the link in the show notes, have me in your ear, use it whenever you wish. We could all use some slow down medicine right about now.
Speaker 1:You talked earlier about when you've risked. I mean, since you're in sort of consistent risk, right and like and been and been hurt or been. I know you explained the part about like. No one can really hurt you because you are eternal, but also because you know that you're in the experiment that's going to ping all of the things right like you have. You have your undergarments, you've got your labrea tar pits right, like we all do yeah, we're human.
Speaker 1:That's our human part. For anyone who's listening and being, I'm dating, I'm an eternal being. I want, to like, get on this risk train and be open up and naively rebel in these more honest conversations wherever they go, being unattached to the outcomes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How are you with those moments that do ping your?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the hurty ones.
Speaker 1:The hurty pings.
Speaker 2:Well, the first hurty ping was leaving an 18-year relationship. An 18-year relationship that was fine and could have just kept going. You know, it wasn't like I was. There was no abuse, there was no like event. I mean, there was an event that told me it was time to go, but there wasn't an event that was. There was nothing in the relationship that was really bad. It just was not the right place for me. And so leaving that was like very hurty and but such a pain, such a like no, you got to go. This is it. This is it. It's loud.
Speaker 2:And then I observe in with my students, like in my, my Akashic mentorship. One of the things that we do a lot is invoke this observer perspective, where you're observing yourself and there's something about the distance between observing yourself and being in your physical body, where you can like see a bigger picture, you can take yourself out of the intensity of your emotions, because emotions might limit what options you make available to yourself if, if you're really angry or you're really hurt or whatever, you might not see what other options are available to you, and so like just becoming a constant observer of myself, which is not the same thing as bypassing my body or being out of my body. It's not that at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's. It's like being able to observe, like, oh wow, this is really bad. I was really dissociated and hurt for the first two weeks of this. But you know what I noticed on that 15th day, that I started to come around a little bit more. Or I noticed I, you know, I I moved into my own apartment and I was living. I'm living here for the first time on my own in 44 years. I've never had my own place and I don't like it. And the first couple months I was like I hate to be here. I'd always work at a coffee shop. I just don't like it. It's too quiet, it's too unalive. And then I noticed, like on that seventh month, that I was coming home from a grocery store and I was excited to get home like, oh, that's different. So, like I observe, I use the observer perspective on myself to constantly be looking at how am I evolving through the hurt? That's really key for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will say, like, the first time that a person ghosted me it's happened now twice, I'm gonna say two and a half times, because the third time was like a soft ghost baby ghost or ghost baby or something in between the ghost baby spectrum because, like, if I texted that person right now they'd be gone. But but the first time I had been talking to this person and it was like kind of a long time of talking, like a month or two or something, and to me that feels like too long to proliferate through text, because there's so much you miss in communication when text you need to meet someone face to face. But anyway, we made a date to meet and before we could ever meet he ghosted me and I was so sad, but I knew instantly that this isn't even about me, because he didn't even get to meet me. So like, if I'm looking at this as a researcher, so like, if I'm looking at this as a researcher, he doesn't even have evidence, like real physical evidence, upon which to base his decision to ghost. Therefore, this must be a hundred percent about him. So having that kind of researcher perspective helped me.
Speaker 2:But then I was like well, you're still hurt. Even though you know this is about him, you're still hurt. And so, observing myself, I saw myself as like yeah, because, little girl, you was left behind a bunch of times, so what's up for you right now isn't even about this person, it's that this event touched something very old and deep, that you like some original hurts that you built walls for and you've built coping strategies for and you went, you know, open heart, into this situation and so that's what's hurt right now. And so being able to like clearly parse out okay, it's not the guy, it's clearly not me, oh, this is an old wound, and I know strategies for working with old wounds because that's the work I do, and I know not everyone has those strategies but, like for me, being able to clearly see what part is hurt, what am I conflating? What am I separating? What am I parsing? What am I confusing? Am I confused?
Speaker 2:Can I just sit on this? Do I have to like fix it right away? Can it just hurt for a while? Can I get distracted? Can I dissociate? Can I go do something else? Can I go have a drink? Can I like pretend it's not? Can I bypass it right now? Cause that's a good strategy? Like I just look at all the things that I have available to me and sometimes I can't get to it. Sometimes I'm like well, this is a puzzler. I do feel I do. I am taking this one personally, yeah. Do I am taking this one personally? Yeah, and, and that's okay too. But then the other thing about observing myself that I've noticed is that like I have a really pretty good bounce back window, can't keep a good hold down, so like within about two weeks I'm like that sucks on to the next guy thing, whatever. So for me my bounce back is short. For other people it may not be short, it may be long. It may it may be long. For my mom it's been like 50 years.
Speaker 1:But right just a big orbit. So yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I really appreciate, you know, that observer work. I call it like the warm observer, the compassionate observation, like the two-parter, where you create that little work. I call it like the warm observer, the compassionate observation, like the two-parter, where you create that little bit of space to observe yourself, observe the patterns. And it's great to do that work outside of the trigger, right, because then when you are triggered and it is happening and it is activated yeah, you have a little muscle memory. Oh right, I know how to look at this. Here are my, my strategies that I turn to that are old ones, okay, and having some compassion for when we do that, because we just will sometimes. Or here are the new strategies that I've been working on and, oh right, here's the deeper place that it comes from, here's the voice that says this, here's the part that's holding it into place here and that I feel like part of what you're saying is the benefit of doing deeper inner work.
Speaker 1:When we're going out to be in whether it's relationship, on dating apps or people at work or friends, community you move to a new place, you go to a new job. It's kind of all the same thing. Our inner work, our interpersonal work has a place in the web, has a place in supporting us in being in connection with other people, because when we know ourselves, that also gives us the opportunity to be a little riskier. We understand our own risk tolerance and like we understand that, like, okay, this could hurt, that could happen, or something amazing could happen or something I can't even see from here could happen. But as we have that deeper connection with ourselves and there's a commitment to that, then the like, commitment to engage with other people becomes something that helps us becoming more ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that part about what parts about me and what parts not about me, like, oh, this person did this thing and to understand, oh right, that's not mine, that's theirs. Oh, but what part is mine? Oh, there is some part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not mine.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you, baby, that's not mine, right, and sometimes there will be and sometimes there won't be. So I really I appreciate that a lot. Those are things that I think take time and practice Totally and like we're worth the practice too If you're out there in the world wanting to potentially build something with other people one person, lots of people, whatever we're worth the commitment to like, know ourselves and understand our own sticky pain points and the way that you do it, like in the Akashic work right or in living systems, and I'll put all that info down at the bottom so people can find you.
Speaker 1:But all of that is about relationship. All of that work is about how to be in relationship you know we do it in community and then also about ourselves, and then the seen and unseen. There's a richness to it you letting it be this experiment in living Like you're not how do I feel?
Speaker 1:How do I show up? Oh my God, I did this thing, I did that thing, that person did this thing, that person did that thing. That's how I responded. Oh wow, like I thought I was going to be this way and now I'm this way. And that initial risk I don't think should be undersold at all of like you leaving an 18 year relationship as a jumping off point and you knowing yeah, yeah, right, you knowing that it was time to go, like you were listening and I think there are probably a lot of people out there that feel that push and feel that call and are so scared to leave the like, stability and the known.
Speaker 2:It could be anything too. It could be like leaving a job, moving to a new place, leaving a marriage, changing your relationship with your family, ending a friendship with someone. Like it could be any big change that you thought was just. This is my reality. I have no power here. It's so scary, but I don't have the words to express like how much more important satisfaction is than happiness. Yeah, like being satisfied. I wrote about this in this newsletter I just wrote recently.
Speaker 2:But like and I didn't even think about it until I wrote this newsletter but like satisfaction is so boring, like the concept. It's such a like boring. Like like if you do a survey, it's like you know how satisfied are you and you're measuring it. Or like what's 10 is totally satisfied, zero is not satisfied at all, and it's like satisfied is like what? Like my mom is content with her mashed potatoes at the restaurant. Like, like that's not what satisfaction is it? What? Like my mom is content with her mashed potatoes at the restaurant. Like, like that's not what satisfaction is. It's like satisfaction is actually to me more akin to abundance, if we think of abundance the way Bashar frames it, which is to have exactly what you need when you need it. Like satisfaction is exactly the round peg going into the round hole. Like it's exactly the round peg going into the round hole, like it's exactly the right fit, it's exactly the right thing. And I think, like often we don't reach for that. We reach for the thing that the story in our head tells us we will be happy with, yeah, and then we make ourselves happy around the thing instead of, like, reaching for satisfaction which is like, oh, this is, this is life, customized for me, this is the way I want it. Yeah, when you follow resonance, when you follow just the yes and stay away from the nose, you're taken to a, to a place of satisfaction that you couldn't even dream of, because you don't even know yourself that well. You've been over here aiming for happiness and success the way it's been taught to you quota satisfied, like you might not even know what's resonant.
Speaker 2:I was talking to my friend last night about dating. He's single too, and we were talking about, like how do you approach when you're looking at an app? And he's like I look at someone and I wonder could I be happy with this person? And and he's like I look at someone and I wonder could I be happy with this person and I was like that's insane. I look at a person and I don't even have cognitive language. I'm like is it a yes or no? And that's it Matching with a person or a job, or a phenomenon, or an idea or a project or whatever.
Speaker 2:I really think that for everyone, or whatever there, I really think that for everyone, there is a precognitive offering of like is it resonant, is it a yes or no? And we're so taught to like, ignore that that we have to go into the intellect. Is it valid? Is it going to make sense to do this? Is it worth my time? Is it going to lead to success? What are the outcomes? Is the work input worth the output? Like, we go straight into that and when we do that with relationships and then we miss meeting cool people that are resonant to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean this comes up a lot in my practice with folks where we're talking about vision, specifically inside of relationships, and if the person is in a relationship, we have to suspend the person they're in relationship with and actually and take them out of the equation, because so often they'll think about, like, well, what they want in relationship to that person and what they think that person will give them. Yeah, we move through the world of being like, well, what could the world give me, what might I be able to get? And we like shape our desires around that, and so much of that is like perception and conditioning and fear and old pain and Ooh, I can maybe get a little bit of this, I can maybe get a little bit of that. And so then we're like well, that's what I want, I just want a little bit of that. That's not aliveness, right, that's like existence, which is different.
Speaker 1:It's like that's not that deep satisfaction, and I think you're right. Like so, many of us don't know what that is because we've not been taught to seek it, to know it to feel it because it requires that resonance, requires like a level of, like self-trust Right.
Speaker 1:And if we trust ourselves, then we would know how to trust each other and be like oh, your experience is real too, Just as real as mine. You get into like pluriversality here, where the many worlds I I know how to like ask, listen, trust and act from that deep knowing place.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we would be terrible fucking consumers. We were knowing how to meet our own needs even if we didn't need other things around us, right like we wouldn't be as susceptible to to just like grabbing hungry in these other ways. And that's what I also feel is that subtle subversiveness of like where we're putting our attention. Resonance requires attention. It requires a practice of like subtle attention. Yeah, you have to know how to listen, but it's a practice, you don't have to know it, right?
Speaker 2:off the bat. That's exactly what I wrote in that newsletter about like listening to our own resonance is actually subverting the state's agenda for us. That designs us to be consumers, and like we're not designed to be like engaged in civics. We're not designed to like take the responsibility of, like civic order. We're not citizens here. We're designed to be consumers. That's how we participate in government and culture and society is through consumption, and so, in order for us to be good consumers, we have to be taught that that's what we are from the day that we're born, and everything revolves around a consumption mindset.
Speaker 2:So, like, you have a grade point average. You look at how many friends you have on Instagram, how many likes did you get, how much money do you have? You're constantly quantifying your value here, and so, like resonance is unquantifiable and it's momentary, so it happens in the moment of being presented with something. There is no planning for it. What's resonant to one person may not be resonant to another. It's so like circumstantial, that like it's unpredictable, and it it like satisfaction is like going to Trump consumerism yeah, it's just going to. And so, like satisfaction actually is, while it feels really good, I think it feels better than happiness, whatever that even is, it also is incredibly radical and rebellious too is.
Speaker 1:It also is incredibly radical and rebellious too. Yeah, I think you're. You're right. I mean, I know you are, at least from my heart, you know of. I feel like all of what we've been talking about here, too, is how to not consume each other, how to not just like chew, chew, eat, gobble each other up, chew each other up and like spit each other out, as we're designed to do. Yeah, yeah, right, and like how we're disorienting from that the possibility, because we can do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And like orient towards another way of being with each other A resonant way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the resonant way. Yeah, I love that. I love you. Love that. Yeah, this is so fun. I love you too.
Speaker 1:This is really fun yeah, thank you friend, I really appreciate this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me I love it always All right, you made it here to the end of the episode, so you get a cookie, and the cookie is an invitation to join Living Systems cohort four. Living Systems is an experiment, a project, a party, a ceremony, a defection, a perspective, an ecology of curiosity and belonging. It's a place in community to make new stories about the worlds that we live in and the ones that we want to bring into being. Living Systems is an immersive, year-long program designed to take you on a journey of exploration and transformation beyond the isolation of colonial reality. I have been a part of Living Systems as a guest teacher and a student for all three years that it's been in existence and I have met some of my favorite humans, and more than humans, through this work. So if you've been yearning to commit to collective growth, to transformative learning, to connecting with other deeply curious people and to be a part of undoing the legacy of colonialism and choose to uphold the right to the dignity of life on earth, this is the place. Living Systems is your space. Go to wearelivingsystemscom. I'll put the link in the show notes. You can reach out to me and ask me any questions that you might have on Insta. I'm Dana Blix. You can absolutely. Dm me. You can email me, dana at danablickycom.
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