How Do I Trust Myself? (Coaching Session)

What's the ultimate thing that you're running from?

Like some sort of spiral effect. I've seen people I love— Yeah, let's go there. Like spiral into depression or—

Let's go.

Spiral into madness.

Yeah, let's go. There's an abyss in you that you're avoiding, and your fear is that if you go into that—

I won't come out.

You won't come out.

So let's go. Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. Welcome back, everyone. Today's episode is a coaching session between Joe and somebody in our community who just completed the Connection Course and was really ripe and motivated for the work and to explore further. And she reached out to us to offer to do a session on the podcast. And we really, really love it when people are this devoted to their growth and their exploration, and we really want to support it. So without further ado, here is that session.

Wow, you wanted to come in person.

I did, I did. I wanted the in-person feel. Zoom is a huge barrier for me and for dropping in sometimes.

Awesome.

Yeah, I have like a resistance, and my mind's like, all those other things that I didn't want to do before seem so enticing now.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And Romy?

Romy.

Romy is a friend?

Oh, he's my partner.

Partner. All right, nice. How long have you guys been together?

Uh, funny, we thought last year was 3 years and we went to our anniversary dinner looking at photos. There were none. So this year it's 3 years.

All right.

It just feels like longer. COVID is like a time accelerator.

Awesome.

Yeah, nice.

Yeah, uh, Tara and I have been married for over 20 now.

Nice. I've heard good things about her from—

yeah, yeah, she's amazing. Yeah, yeah, cool. So what are we here for? What do you want to work on?

It's funny, I, um, when I scheduled this with Sarah, I had a topic in mind that I had been working on with the coach, and I had listened to View and everything, and now it's not alive for me anymore. So in the last few days, I was trying to figure out another topic, and I started thinking about intuition. And then this morning I was meditating and A few seconds before my meditation ended, I had a thought that popped up intuitively. And I was like, well, I guess we're going with this. But it's not fully formed. All right. So the idea is around emotional fluidity, about how does labeling our emotions affect the ability for them to transform and change? And how does labeling emotions How do we put structure or identity on who we are and how does that affect our transformation and change?

So I'm happy to answer those questions, but I noticed two things that are happening. First, that's a really intellectual question and not personal to you. And then the second thing is I noticed that your emotion, like, 'cause you're here in person, I noticed that there's actually something personal happening as far as like, your emotional body is not having an intellectual conversation with me, but whatever just happened was intellectual. So I'm wondering if you have something else you wanna— work on?

That's good. I feel like I've been trying to find this perfect question for you. No, I don't really know what that is.

What's the thing that's— how about this? What's the thing that if it's shifted in your life would be the most profound positive movement that you could conceive of?

Being able to trust myself again.

Okay, that sounds like something to work on.

Yeah, I've been doing so much parts work, and now I'm like so aware of all these contradictory parts of myself and trying to acknowledge and address them all with compassion. And it's like just a mess in there, right? It's like I see all things as holding truth at once. And there is this like fluidity before, before I was more aware of all of these parts that just allowed me to come to conclusions and like live in a flow state regardless of where that took me.

Yeah.

And now I feel not quite paralyzed, but that there's so many things that I'm aware of that are like, it's more consciously going into my choices that I'm not sure, like I have less confidence in what feels right for me.

So I know what parts work is, but do you wanna describe it a little bit? 'Cause we have people who will be listening to this. So what?

Yeah, sure. So parts work, the way I've been doing it is when you recognize yourself as being comprised of different parts that might be of different ages. For instance, there's like the inner child, which a lot of people talk about, but there's also, for instance, you could have a protector that you've developed in the past as a way to come and make sure you're okay because you've been hurt in the past. You can also have like a maternal part that nourishes you and cheers you on. You could have a paternal part that's a bit more discerning. And all of these parts are living inside of you at all times, making decisions together, usually under the hood. And right now for me, they're less under the hood and I'm speaking to them all more directly.

Yeah.

And decisions are taking much longer and becoming less clear.

Yeah, so what's you?

All of it's me.

But what's essentially you? Like, if I took away the protector, would you still exist?

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Like, there's like an awareness, like an essence that's me.

Yeah. And what does it think about that you're made up of parts? The awareness.

What does it think about that I'm made up of parts?

Yeah, or how does it react? Yeah, not think about, how does it react?

Right now it feels like it's been fun, like meeting those parts.

Yeah.

And it's been like, at the beginning it was like a play, like a dance. And there was almost like a pride in being attuned to these parts, like these voices in my head that are constantly there. And it felt like having more awareness of them would lead to making decisions that felt more in flow. Or at least with more conscious intention.

Yeah.

And now I'm not so sure anymore because I think there's a reason that some things are left to the subconscious to be, uh, you know, decided and filtered without like the conscious knowledge. Like imagine if breathing was something I had to think about all the time while at the same time thinking of my heart beating.

Yeah.

Or, you know, like moisturizing my eyes or, you know. Yeah.

Like, so it seems like The construct, I like parts work, I think it's very useful, I'll use it even sometimes, but there's a construct that says that there's these parts like a protector and an inner child, or what's to make it not like a whole different set of constructs? What happens if it's like the 1-year-old, 2-year-old, 3-year-old, 4-year-old, 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old, or what happens if it's the, you know, the tarot deck, you know, the Fool is talking to the Queen, which is talking to the, Right, you know, like different hierarchy, you know, whatever, what would happen then?

Yeah, totally. And this is the other thing that's been alive for me lately is recognizing many framings as true at the same time. Now it's almost like a multiverse of contradictions.

Right, yeah. Right, okay. So the parts thing has brought up something that's actually bigger, which it sounds like, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like what's happening is that You are starting to see that all your thoughts are both false and true.

Yeah, that there's validity to everything, but also a limitation to everything.

Yeah. So what's the problem with that?

So it brings me back to something I've been dealing with for a while involving trust, which is how can I trust my intuition? How can I recognize intuition from fear or anxiety or projection?

How do you not trust it?

How do I not trust it? Because all these other parts are now speaking up and I'm like, well, which one of those things was true? What's the difference between intuition and a reaction or a projection from the past?

Yeah, how did you just say that?

What do you mean?

You just spoke.

I just spoke.

How did that happen?

Yeah, I guess I've developed a mental model from my experience since like being born into this vessel.

It's happening right now.

It's happening right now.

All these parts exist. None of them are true. All of them have some truth. And here you are talking. How is that work? How is that happening?

I guess it will happen whether I want it to or not.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just is.

Yeah. So how do you not trust your intuition? If you're talking, you're trusting your intuition.

Huh. I guess that's an interesting way to put it. What I'm finding is that I'll have some sort of gut reaction And then another just as equally strong and sudden gut reaction will come and contradict it. And then another one from a different angle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So how is that just not fear?

And that's where I'm left, which is, am I making decisions out of fear or am I making decisions out of coming back into my power or feeling more in flow? You know, like, how do I tell the difference?

Yeah, how do you tell the difference?

I don't know. That was actually my original question. Is how do I tell the difference? And then I'm like, some people say it's how you feel in your body. And I've been doing this reading about it. And some people say if your body is tense, then it's fear and not intuition, unless your intuition is about something scary.

I've got another one. I've got another one for you. If you think you're making a decision, you're in fear.

Mm.

Like, you just made 100 decisions in the last 5 minutes with me. What to say, how to look at me, eye moisturizing, all decisions, right? And they weren't— they didn't feel like decisions. But then there's like these big decisions that come up, or they feel big.

Yeah.

And as soon as you think there's a decision, you're in fear.

Well, how do I get out of that false—

what would make you want to get out of fear?

Okay, where do I go from there?

First, the question: what would make you want to get out of fear?

I think I have this story that if I'm in fear, I'm not in flow, because fear is something that— maybe it's my resistance to fear that actually takes me out of the moment, but I feel less connected, less in the moment. For instance, if I have a thought—

Okay, so how do you explain, like, mountain climbers, BASE jumpers, all those people who induce fear to get into flow? How does that work?

I think because they're not resisting the fear. So maybe what I'm recognizing talking to you right now is the thing that takes me out of flow is fear comes up, I resist the fear, and therefore I dissociate from my current state.

Right. And what makes you want to resist fear?

That's scary.

What makes it scary? I know it's an annoying question, but let's get to the big— like, what is the actual problem with the sensation of fear?

For me, I think it's about attachment to outcomes, that I'm scared I'm not going to have this thing that I now find myself yearning for and being attached to.

Yeah. Okay, so now it's holding everything. You've got all these parts, you're aware of all this stuff, but what's actually happening is that you don't know how to interpret them to get the response that you want.

Exactly, yeah. Okay, yeah. And it's like being in a town hall and there's a lot of people standing up and shouting and I'm at the front being like, "Okay, like I hear you all, now what?" Yeah, so what makes you wanna, again, an annoying question, but what makes you wanna result? Hmm. It feels like—

If I was to say to you, you get to determine all of your results, or you get to determine how you are as a person, which are you going to choose?

Probably how I am. Yeah. Yeah.

So then what makes you care about the results?

Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. I have— this is another thing I have these attachments to outcomes. And I've been wanting to lean more into the want. So if I find myself now, like, scared, and I'm like, oh, what if I don't get XYZ? I'm like, well, what do I want out of this? Right? Leaning into the want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think it's great to be aware of what you want, but that doesn't mean that you're attached to the outcome.

No, I'm still attached to the outcome. And I think maybe I'm trying to use leaning into the want as a way to maybe dissociate from how attached I am to the outcome or to bypass it.

Right.

Yeah.

But it's that without that attachment, it sounds like the fear is gone or it's not resisted, excuse me.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So what's the core, like right down into it, what's the reason that you care about the outcome?

There's usually a—

If you're gonna be who you're gonna be and the outcome's gonna do what it is, what it does, what makes you concerned?

Yeah, I recognize that usually when these fears come up and these attachments come up, there's fear of a loss of something that is a value of mine. And it's—

What do you mean a value?

Like fear of a loss of connection or fear of a loss of authenticity or integrity, something that I have.

But that's all in how you are.

Yeah, exactly.

Like I can be connected if everybody's spitting on me, and I can be disconnected if everybody's loving me.

That's true. That's a good reminder that it doesn't have to be a two-way street. Like, I can feel connected to someone without them being connected to me.

Or my values or my integrity or any of that stuff.

So much easier said than done.

What makes it— yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. What makes that hard? What makes it hard to focus on how you want to be rather than the results?

Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. A few folks in my life have been working with me on just saying the scariest thing that they can think, or ask me what's the scariest thing, and like saying it to me and seeing how it lands.

Yeah.

In order to get past the fear to say, okay, if I felt the fear all the way through, will that go away?

Again, what makes you want to have it go away?

How can one live in a constant state of fear and still—

I don't know. How do you do it?

I don't know. How do you do it?

I mean, you've been doing it. How does it work?

For me, if it's—

If you're resisting the fear, it's a constant state. If you're embracing the fear, then other things happen.

Yeah, it manifests in my life. If you look at fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, I'm a flight. I'm like, oh, I'll go somewhere else. I'll do something else. I'll go and find, for instance, that value of connection of bidirectional connection, which is apparently how I have defined it somewhere else.

Yeah. Also, you do it in your— you do dissociation. Also, the flight also happens in dissociation into the thought structure. That also is happening. And then it sounds like also the flight away from yourself into caretaking others, possibly.

Oh, totally. Yeah.

All of those are—

Yeah, like leaving myself to be in someone else where I can feel a value of service in connection with them.

Yeah. So what's the ultimate thing you're running from? What is it that makes it hard to be— that doesn't make that the thing you're focused on? Another way to ask that question is, what are you actually running from on the deepest level?

It feels like sitting with myself.

You meditate every day.

I do.

So how does that work?

Yeah, I meditate every day and it feels really good to just relax into what is myself, this physical somatic self.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

When you said that, it was the first time your smile went away.

You know, I have my happiness filter that many of us have developed in this society.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was the first time that it actually was like that mask went away was when you were actually thinking about being present in meditation.

Hmm. Yeah, there's— I feel like a sadness bubbling up, or there's like emotion behind the eyes.

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't have story for it.

Is that what you're running from?

The sadness?

Mm-hmm.

It's an interesting question. I feel like 2 years ago or a year ago— What just happened?

What just happened?

I'm intellectualizing. I'm in my head now. Dissociating from it.

I'm not saying anything you're doing is bad. I'm just asking what happened.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

It was there behind the eyes.

Yeah.

And then you— Yeah. Then I asked you an interesting question.

Yeah. I have a really deep well of sadness. And sometimes, often lately, I love it. And I've fallen in love with wailing. It's not even crying. It's wailing.

Oh, it's so good.

And it's not even just sadness. It's anguish. And it's like, hoo. Yeah. Sometimes it gets stuck. Yeah. And maybe like sometimes like now I'm like, oh, well, I'm with Joe in his studio. I can't cry. It's not appropriate. So let's go into something else. Let's distract him by telling him he asked an interesting question.

I don't know any place that's more appropriate, but yeah. Yeah. So when you wail, is it usually by yourself or with someone you really know?

Usually with someone I really know, a close friend or a partner. And there's some permissioning in the relational connection we have. If someone says, like, "I love your sadness," or, "It's okay to be down, it's okay to cry," and I'm like, "Yes!" Right.

That's it.

Here it comes.

So how do you feel that same way towards fear? You know what it's like now, the embrace of the emotional experience and how it transforms your life. What makes fear any different?

I guess I can't remember a time where anyone told me it's okay to be scared.

It's okay to be scared.

It's okay to not know what to do.

It's okay to not know what to do. I'll go even further. It's okay to be completely helpless. Ah. We all are.

Yeah, I was raised by immigrant Chinese parents who came from a really hard life to an equally but different hard life here in the States. And there's this pride around resiliency and being stoic and being strong.

Yeah.

Yeah. I remember the first time I lost my job, I was so scared to tell my parents.

It's happening. You're intellectualizing it a little bit. I know the story is great and the viewers, the listeners are like, oh wait, I want to hear that. Fuck them. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea is that if you allow yourself to feel helpless, you'll be less resilient.

It feels that way. Yeah. Yeah. Lesser is a word that is floating around in my head. Yeah, just lesser in general, right?

So I want to bring some— I know this is a weird time to do it, but what's happened to all the parts? I just noticed spacious, far more spaciousness in you now.

Yeah, it feels more like my breath feels more like when I'm meditating, and it feels There's like a sinking into this moment.

And where are all the parts when you're here?

I don't know. Not sure.

And how about the, um, what you are essentially?

Yeah, it feels more like I'm back in just awareness space.

Yeah. With the emotional experience.

With the emotional experience. And there's a lot of sadness. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like— it's almost like coming out of the closet. I have to admit to everybody I've been scared my whole life.

Yeah.

I have to admit to everybody I've been scared my whole life.

Yeah.

Of so many different things.

Yeah.

It's like finding reasons to be scared, like looking.

Yeah. Yeah. That's how you stay safe in a really hardcore environment like your parents grew up in, looking for what's going to go wrong next.

Yeah, because there's something, right? That's the feeling of like change is the only constant.

Yeah.

And if you're scared, then you, like, assume that some change will be threatening.

Yeah. Yeah. There's actually more efficient ways to go about that, but that's the way that most people find to survive.

Yeah. Why is that? Or what makes that the way that most people adopt?

I don't know for sure, but I think it's a neurological feature that we have where We remember what goes bad more than we remember what's going well. And so you're looking for what's wrong more than you're looking for what's right.

Yeah. Is it like a biological thing where those monkeys that look for what's right probably got eaten by a tiger or something?

Probably. I know neurologically they've proven that we look for what's wrong more.

Makes sense.

So we don't look for the opportunity. So instead of like, "Oh, everything's changing. There's opportunity. Where is it?" It's everything's changing. Oh shit, what's the next thing to come and fuck with me?

Yeah, it's interesting. Like, I wanna, like, now I'm like, am I leaving myself to go into a question or a statement? But I—

Yes.

Yeah.

You just did.

Okay, but I also—

In that question, you did. Before that, you didn't. Okay. The second-guessing yourself was like—

Yeah, see, this is the second-guessing, yeah. 'Cause I am a glass-half-full kind of thought person often. Yeah. But now it's like, oh, what about this opportunity? Oh, is that just like from my ego? Is that from scarcity? Is that from greed? Is that from fear? And I'm like second-guessing my desire for this opportunity to see how that could, I don't know, reflect poorly on who I am.

Who, who?

Yeah, it's like going back to what you said, like what, what would you rather have the ability Who's the authority that you're checking with? I want to say myself and probably those around me. These days, a lot myself.

So then how is it a question? Is that greedy?

Like, it's the question of—

Am I doing this opportunity because I'm greedy? How can that be a question if the authority is you?

It's like checking in with myself. Like, am I motivated by greed? Am I motivated by scarcity? And then the story comes in of, do I want to be someone that is motivated by scarcity? And is being motivated by scarcity, or like, how does that, like, what path does that lead me down? And then there's like these layers of questions that—

All of that is binary. All of that is fear. Yeah. Binary in the fact that it's like, oh, isn't it, isn't it okay to be motivated by scarcity 50% of the time or 20% of the time, 10% of the time, 5% of the time? So that immediately there's binary thinking. It's either I'm that or not that. What if you're all of that?

Yeah, I am all of that.

Yeah. So then how can you second-guess yourself? That's a question. I'm not trying to convince you not to.

Yeah, yeah. I think what happened is I've been hurt a few times in the past for wanting things or going after things.

Yeah.

And now I've put myself like in a box. Like a friend the other day saw me for the first time in a few months and he just said, where's your fire? You've lost your fire. And I recognize I've been like making myself small to feel safe. That who I was before with my wants and my desires and going after them in the world ended in a place where I felt like hurt and perhaps a bit like—

What got hurt?

What got hurt? The way I can explain it now is it felt like there was a reality schism where I thought I was in connection and could trust someone or someone's.

That's how it happened. I want to know what got hurt. I just watched you be coming from your place of essence. It didn't seem like there was any hurt there. So what is it that got hurt?

I'm speaking from this tightness that's somewhere between my chest and my throat right now. I got hurt.

Yeah.

I got hurt.

Yeah.

Whatever that means, I got hurt.

Right. Yeah. And what just happened when you said it? What happened in your system?

It felt like a little bit of a fire kicked up.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's the thing. It's like, and now the second-guessing is like, oh, like, in what environment is my fire safe? Because what if it was my fire that got me hurt? My desires, my drive.

What if it is? What's the problem with that? What's the problem with getting hurt?

That goes back to my fear of fear.

I mean, let's take it a little bit more slowly than that, which is like, you got hurt. You got hurt. We know that it's not the essential you that got hurt, but I like the anger that came with it. So it was like, yeah, you got hurt, fuck them, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's great. But the part of you got hurt, there's this Buddhist saying that says, "Offer yourself up to annihilation so you can find out the part of yourself that can't be annihilated." Like, what's wrong with the hurt? What did it do besides clarify anything?

What did it do besides clarify?

If you weren't avoiding it.

Yeah.

How did it do anything besides clarify who you are?

Yeah, if I weren't avoiding it.

Right.

If you weren't avoiding it.

Yeah. That is what would happen if I weren't avoiding it. I'd be like, okay, great. Like that avenue is closed. Moving on. Now I know which way not to go.

No, if you weren't avoiding it, it hurt.

Say that again.

If you weren't avoiding it, it would hurt. It would just hurt all the way through instead of to about 2 inches in. Yeah, let's see what happens. Like, let the thing hurt. Someone broke your trust, someone couldn't accept you, someone projected their bullshit on you.

It's so hard to not take it personally.

Didn't seem hard at all, Sam Leigh. It seems like taking it personally is much fucking harder. As soon as you took it personally—

Yeah, I did. Yeah. In so many ways.

Yeah. That's the whole thing about hurt. Is it— it clarifies all the parts of you that are taking it personally.

There's a, like, a worry that's coming up that what would it mean to feel this all the way through? What would that mean for the clarity?

Yeah.

What would I lose that's in this, like—

You.

Yeah.

That's what it would lose. The thing that you said got hurt. That's what would be gone. Hmm. Like, let's not pretend otherwise.

Hmm. I'm scared the hurt will turn into anger.

I hope so.

I've recently been told that my anger is scary, and so I haven't been angry for a while.

Ech.

And I thought there was a way around it. I thought I could find the root, the fear behind the anger, and like process it as sadness, because sadness is like safe for women in society. So I've been like, fuck yeah, I'm gonna cry all the fucking time.

Yeah, if you're crying all the time and it's not resolving, it's because there's another emotion there that you're not feeling. There's this kind of a theory that's like, oh, under every— all your anger is sadness or hurt or something like that. Bullshit. It's true and it's not true. It's true in the fact that yes, all, all of the anger is underneath, all the anger is hurt, but it's also true. And underneath all the hurt is anger.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I, I was so hellbent on like proving to my coach I didn't have anger that I found a neuroscience article about this, about how sadness counteracts anger and maybe it can be felt that way. And she just responded with like, what part of yourself needs to prove right now that you're not angry? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. When you suppress your anger, you lose your fire, you lose your determination, you lose your clarity. That's how it works. But you don't have to get angry at people. It's not like you have to, like, start yelling at people. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I'm— I think I'm at a point where I know I've been making myself small and detaching from my fire because I know that when I feel it, I will take action. I'll do things and then things will be different. And that goes back to the, like, change is the only constant, change is scary and threatening. What's the next thing to be scared of? And it's like this box I've made myself is familiar now. Yeah.

So how's that working for you?

Terribly. Terribly.

What makes you keep doing it?

This is like, it's like the, I don't know if this is true for others, but there's this feeling that's like, this is the hurt I know, this one is familiar. And that there's a resistance to change, even if I think it'll be quote unquote better or something, because this is just familiar.

Okay, so resist change.

You can, it's—

No, right now, resist it. Change is happening. There's no doubt your hormonal state has changed. Your heart rate has changed. Your emotional state has changed. So resist it.

There's so much tension in my body trying to even conceptualize resisting it.

Don't conceptualize it.

Do it.

Now start looking around to see which one of these this change that's happening is dangerous. So that's how you're living. Hmm. Okay, now do all of that. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. You're resisting change. You're looking around now. Stick a smile on your face.

Yeah. Yeah, that checks out. That's most days.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So if you feel it all in a moment, that's what it's like. Now just feel the opposite of that. Don't think, just feel. You don't need to be looking for anything. There's no need for focus. Hmm.

There's like a little voice that's like, if you stop running, like, you'll die, or they'll get you, or whatever animal instinct. We have to keep going or else.

Great. What—

what—

why resist that? That's part of the change that's happening right now. So right now there's more pleasure in your system than there was a second ago. How much of whatever is left is just resisting the pleasure? Hmm. So from this space of not resisting the change or all that stuff, what's the fear? What's the ultimate thing that you're running from?

Like some sort of spiral effect. I've seen people I love—

Yeah, let's go there.

—like spiral into depression or spiral into madness.

Yeah, let's go. There's an abyss in you that you're avoiding, and your fear is that if you go into that, I won't come out. You won't come out. So let's go. Can you find it?

Oh yeah, yeah, it's there.

So see what it's like to just step in the middle of it. So I got— I noticed the resistance to change cropping up.

There's like an 'am I doing it right?' feeling. Yeah, that's the resistance.

Yeah. Okay. So this is just being open to the change, just the opposite feeling of that. And into the abyss. You got quiet. You're making it the enemy again. Don't make it the enemy.

It's like all these, all these programs want to run. It's like, oh, this is a program that's worked in the past. No, that's not— That would satisfy what you're asking me, right?

It would never. It doesn't work. And so you're jumping in and finding the experience pleasurable.

I'm not sure I know what I'm looking for anymore then. Like whatever I thought was the abyss was maybe something else.

What do you think it might've been?

Just felt like sadness. Just more.

I don't see you as sad right now.

What do you see me as right now?

Irrelevant. I'm saying it just so that you can check with yourself. So is it really sadness? The abyss is— you jumped in, and without resistance, what was it?

Oh, interesting. I think the sadness was this, like, resistance to it. Yeah.

So what was it when you didn't resist it? What is the thing that you're currently avoiding in this moment by thinking about it instead of being in it?

It's like no thing. There's nothing. Yeah, just—

and what's the experience of your body right now? Is this pleasure? Is this peace? Is this—

yeah, it's just It's just sensation.

What if this is what you're avoiding? What's— what if this is the scary thing?

Peace. Huh.

It was this big scary abyss that was going to eat you alive and dark spiral of But as soon as you went to non-resistance, it was peace. So it makes sense that you were resisting peace.

Hmm. It's funny. It's like the thing I crave. And when I meditate, there's this— everything we crave, we push away. Yeah. There's like a subtle agenda for peace, but knowing that if I orient toward peace, I won't find it because it'll, it'll be a want then.

Right. Everything we crave, we're pushing away at the same time, right?

What makes us push away what we crave?

Craving is the pushing away.

Huh.

Your whole body relaxed when you— when you were like, huh, like you got it.

That's funny. We're funny.

Yes, yes, we are. Yeah, is it my— one of my favorite quotes is, uh, Voltaire. He says, um, comedian— or God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

It does feel like so much of what we do is to try to wake ourselves up to go back to this peace, and we're like trying to push the boundaries to feel all the things until we're maxed out and unable to feel the things anymore. And we just— oh yeah.

So this topic is apparently what we were talking about was how do you trust yourself. Yeah. So from here, how do you trust yourself? How does the question even make sense? Exactly.

It's like, what is there to not Trust.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What is there not to trust? I really love that arc from the intellectual question to the emotional experience to the essence of who we are. And I really want to thank this guest for really going there today, bringing your vulnerability, and for really showing up and asking for this. And lastly, I want to thank all of our guests for listening, and I'm really looking forward to the next one. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.