Tara Howley — From Insight to Wisdom

All right everybody, welcome back 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. I'm Brett Kistler and today I'm here with another special guest, Tara Howley. Tara is a coach with The Art of Accomplishment and she's also a co-founder with Joe Hudson and she's going to be leading a group through the masterclass in this upcoming cohort which starts in like a week or two. Is there anything else you'd like to say about yourself, Tara?

So today I feel like a lover of nature and mountains and skiing. I'm with a couple girlfriends skiing in Colorado for my birthday, so we've been out in the— and it was snowing today. So that's today what I want to say about myself is I love the snow and skiing.

I love it too. It's been a couple years since I've actually gotten back out to the mountains and skied. And I do miss it, especially this past season.

Oh yeah, it hurts the heart. It's been an epic year.

Clearly my priorities were out of whack.

Yeah, let's change that. Yeah, let's ski a lot for work next year.

Yeah, yeah, let's do that.

We're on the slopes with your Art of Apo— Accomplishment Podcast.

Art of Apocalypse, is that what you almost said?

Art of— that would be Art of Skiing podcast. Art of Accomplishing While Skiing. Now there's an idea.

Yeah, yeah. So speaking of ideas and insights and wisdom, uh, what I wanted to talk with you about today is the journey from, from the aha moment of insight to when it becomes a lived, embodied reality that is wisdom in our system. So that just kind of— in this work, we often have these like big insights, we have these epiphanies, and there's, there's a journey from the moment, the moment that you recognize something, the moment that you see it, to your first couple of times testing reality with it, until eventually you're really living it from a deeply embodied place where it's just your subconscious a new reality. And so, uh, yeah, so without any further ado, I'd love to just pick your brain on that, on that journey, uh, which you have been, uh, beautifully there to hold space for, for me and my process over the years.

Yeah, I love that journey. I love my own path through that journey, and I love holding space and watching other people dive in and marinate in the journey and all the twists and turns and unknown things that happen in it and surprise. And I love it.

Yeah. So let's, let's get started with just maybe some, like, to define some of our terms here. Uh, in your view, how would you define insight? What does that mean?

Insight is exactly what you just said, that aha moment. It's that suddenly seeing something from a new perspective or a different contact with truth or reality or a new idea of who you are or a new idea of your— like a shift in the perception about your identity or the world or your beliefs that suddenly leads to that, like, oh, whoa, you know, I thought my anger was bad, but it's just me. It's just me protecting my boundaries. Kind of shift. So changing how we see something or feel about something, or see ourselves in our place in the world.

Okay, so that's, so that's the beginning of what we're describing in this journey. That's the moment of insight. Now, what would you— how would you define wisdom?

I would define wisdom as once that insight has integrated into our whole being, we no longer have to remember it. Oh, what was that insight I had? I want to remember it right now. We don't have to do that. It's in our muscles, it's in our body, it's in our heart, our gut, and our mind, but our whole being, it's integrated. And the word I really love for this, it's coherent. It's not just an idea we have, but it's a deep, deep knowing in our whole being.

So what makes it the insight isn't enough, per se? Like, what makes it that we don't have a flash of recognition and then everything changes immediately? Or does that happen?

Well, you know what, I don't know that I've ever seen it happen immediately, but I would not put it outside of the realm of possibility. I'm guessing somewhere in someone's personal history, they've had an experience of wabam and everything changes forever. That totally may happen. What I see happen more than not is people have wabam and then nothing changes. And Right? They have this idea of like, "Oh, I just keep hiring direct reports who I have to, you know, they can't do it on their own. I have to do everything for them." And they get rid of one direct report, hire another, and it's the same thing over and over again. Or someone has a toxic boss and they're like, "Oh, I'm leaving. This is a toxic work environment." And then they step right into another one. So they've had the insight, but they haven't shifted it because it's not— they haven't worked on all the reasons that first thought was there that led to the insight. They haven't they haven't done the— made the, as we said earlier, the journey from aha moment through the lived reality. Like there's this journey once we have that insight. It's like when you get the map, it doesn't mean you've arrived at your location. You actually have to get in the car and take all the turns around the hills and test drive it. And, um, And play with the insight and get it. Ah, you can't see me, but I'm like rubbing my hands. It's like getting that palpable sense of it down in the body. So I think it doesn't happen automatically because we have to test it. We have to play with it. We have to try it out. We have to grow with it and we have to update our, like if we had computer systems, we have to update all the computer systems so that they're all coherent with that insight.

Yeah, one thing that comes up for me around that is if we were able to get an insight and it changed everything immediately, we'd probably be ping-ponging back and forth between a lot of different insights and it would be really chaotic. So there's got to be sort of a, like, some, some process or gating mechanism by which an insight as an idea or an epiphany or just one way of seeing gets to make it through different layers into your longer-term deeper, more subconscious memory. Otherwise it would be pretty, yeah, like I said, chaos. Yeah.

And I do love the idea of ping-ponging, that image, not the chaotic version, but I think when insight happens and we start to, um, we start to metabolize it, it is a ping-pongy feeling. It moves through our bodies and our organs, our heart, our gut, our intestines even, in our, our whole being in a ping-pong fashion, our muscles.

So yeah, there's like a— I've also heard it called titration. Like you step in, you step back, you, you kind of bounce on either side of the line to figure out where the line is. Yeah. And a variety of contexts, in a variety of moods and states, until you really have a picture of— like a picture and a felt sense of how that insight works across your life.

Yeah, beautifully said.

So how do you, how do you get from insight to wisdom? What is the, what if anything do we need or can we do to facilitate that journey? Once we've had an insight, we're like, wow, this could be, this could be life-changing if I really integrate it. How, how do we best facilitate that process?

So I think one of my favorite things that I love seeing, and you may have seen this in your practice too, someone has the insight and then they have this— and sometimes people will sit on it, but they'll have this urge to like stretch or move their bodies after an insight in a coaching session or in a retreat. And I love it when people actually don't sit on that urge, which is one way we can sabotage ourselves, but when they actually just take that gentle stretch and move the body. And that's, I think, the very beginning of letting the insight sequence through the body, how the body wants to move with it in that moment. So I would say that's the first, and it seems small, but the first, um, the first way the insight starts to metabolize. Yeah, yeah.

I feel like sometimes you'll see that as like a face-cracking yawn or like a little bit of shaking in the body. Yeah.

Yep. Face, yawn, breath. So the breath is another one I love after insights. If people can slow things down to really have the time and space to just be with the insight and breathe it slow, gentle, like 6-6 breath, that letting the belly be soft and a— in on the 6-count inhale, ex on a 6-count exhale, on a 6-count, like just breathing with it. So the breath and the yawning really bring that down. And then also I will almost always encourage my clients to go take a walk after a big session so they can, you know, it's like moving the right side of the body, the left side of the body, right brain, left brain. That helps integrate those aha movements down into the being.

I want to double-click.

Yeah, double-click. I love your double-clicks.

Double-click. Yeah, I want to double-click on the, the part where you said just being with it. Uh, and I think that's a really beautiful and important piece. It's sort of the— maybe the opposite of that is when we have— so often there will be a pattern will come in and be like, okay, now I've seen the insight, what do I have to do about it? And then we make it a to-do list, right?

And that's slowing things down right then in the moment and not trying to Not even trying to understand it or solve it or make sure it gets incorporated, but just being with it and breathing with it gives it the time to actually like sink in, into our being. So I do love that slow— slowness there. Also, other ways to help it incorporate, help it integrate would be movement. I said going off for a walk, but Dancing, like moving the body, walking, dancing, cuddling, um, uh, giggling, you know, shaking, uh, and then moving any emotions. Usually the insight, there's some emotional content behind it, either that grief of having thought opposite of it, or excitement about it, or anger Fear. There's usually some emotion that was holding the old belief in place that needs to get moved as well. So moving that.

Yeah. And sometimes the fear of stepping into a new open space as—

Oh my gosh, yes.

As whatever you are now after this transformation is another one. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. And how I see that fear show up sometimes too is like fear of losing it. They can't feel the excitement necessarily about it. So then, you know, excitement and fear are so closely wired paired together that it will go to fear, "Oh, I'm going to lose this," as opposed to like, "Oh, how much are you actually afraid and how actually excited are you?" Like, and letting the body have that excitement. And the body wants to move when it's excited, right? You see like 2-year-olds and they're like, "Hahaha," and they get all like— how many adults let themselves get that excited when they have these big aha moments? Yeah, some.

And we also have all these different ways that we, yeah, that we either, like, that we might either bring ourselves back into, or try to, I don't think we ever really quite can. Once an insight has really happened, we can go back to the place before it, but it'll never quite be the same. We'll always see a little bit through it. We'll feel a little bit more of whatever backlog of emotion that previous belief system was holding in place, and it'll just be a little bit more uncomfortable. And then the insight, even if we feel like we've lost it, will be that much easier to regain the next time.

Yep, beautifully said.

And, you know, there's that— that can slow the process down. So like, what are— what are some of the ways that you've seen that— that we can get in the way of our insight integrating into a deeper wisdom?

Well, the one— the first one is the one I just said. People will have this insight and then they'll be like, oh no, but I'm afraid I'm going to lose it, so how do I not lose it? How do I hold on to it? And the holding on to it in and of itself in a way sends a message to the body that it isn't going to integrate. So if someone's feeling fear that they will forget it, then gratitude for it is often one of the best counters. Just like moving to like, oh, I'm so grateful that I saw that, will let go of that grip of fear. So that's one way to sabotage. Another way I see people sabotage themselves is by beating themselves up. Like, oh, I saw it, why am I redoing this? And, you know, I'm always—

yeah, it just becomes a new tool for self-abuse.

A new— exactly. And my whole thing is like, how do we create paths of gentleness with ourselves? And gentleness is like— through gentleness, how quickly we can really truly grow. So beating yourself up would be a second way. Um, like, oh, I know this. Defending the knowing is another way I see people sabotaging when when reflected to them or when they see, when someone else says something, they'll go, "I already know this. I know this." But the defense can stop it. You know, that defensive act can stop it from coming down and metabolizing and integrating.

Yeah, that relates to another thing that I think is very similar. Maybe that's where the defense comes from. This might be where we take the insight and then we just integrate it into our identity. But not into our body or into our lives.

Yes, yes. Yeah, we, we make— we use the insight as another way to like cement some sort of identity. Yeah.

Ouch. So you mentioned, you'd mentioned a few moments ago about the emotions holding these, holding the belief systems in place that the insight sees through. And can you speak a little bit more about what emotions have to do with insight and wisdom and the path.

Yes, but hold on, because I just remembered the other thing I was going to say.

Oh, great. Yeah.

On the sabotage front, which is that we can sabotage ourselves from the insight. The insight can come with those delicious feeling, like a high feeling of like that ecstasy feeling, an ah feeling. It can have this aha, it can come with this state, almost like a natural high state. And that state naturally, because we can't hold onto any one state ever, we're not going to stay ecstatically high or depressed or angry or fear, any sort of state forever. So that ecstatic state naturally leaves. And when it leaves, people mistake the ecstatic state leaving for the actual insight leaving.

Yeah, so they conflate the insight with the, with the ecstasis, or the—

yes, with that, with that relief, or whatever the feeling was that went with it. And then that's something else that they beat themselves up for, like, oh, I had it and I lost it, as opposed to, no, it's still there, right? The state is gone, but what of the learning is still there? What's still being metabolized?

Yeah, yeah, I think, uh Another way that that shows up that I've seen is if we're attached to, if we're attached to the sort of like the bliss of the epiphany, and when the bliss goes away, we think the epiphany's gone away, then we're gonna clearly see the evidence for the epiphany having gone away because, uh, there, like you said earlier, it's unlikely that you're— perhaps possible, and it's definitely worth keeping this open, an open mind to this. But when you have the epiphany, it's likely that you're going to run into the same thing somewhere else in your life on a different level, on a deeper level. And so when you do that, it doesn't mean that you actually lost the insight. It just, it might just mean that you're now seeing something on a whole new level that you hadn't seen before, and it's the same shape.

Yeah, and it's deepening, right? It's on another, it's that spiral dynamics. It's coming around to be, um, integrated in a deeper, more felt sense way, in a more coherent more deeply understood way.

Yeah, yeah. So speaking of like the, the felt sense way, and this like getting these, like having these insights really settle into the body, uh, I want to come back to the question about what emotions have to do with the journey from insight to wisdom.

So, you know, I— we love emotions generally, all of them, and I deeply believe that Insights are seeing through an old story or belief or habit, story about self or the world. And those stories are all held in place by an emotion. That emotion's like the glue that holds pieces of our identity in place, any story around identity or the world in place. And the, so the glue has to be, you need a, what do you call the thing that releases glue? You know, those, solvent. And in this case, it's moving the emotions. So if there's grief, having a good cry, even a good cry that you believed that story before the aha moment, or shaking off the fear, letting the body shake and move the fear off. Moving anger.

I want to give some examples for listeners of what would be, just to kind of demonstrate all of this, how, what would be an example insight What would be the belief system that it sees through, and an example of what the kind of emotional glue was that was holding that belief system in place, and then the process of that moving?

So, I'm like, a blub blub blub blub blub. It's a great question. Let me think. Someone might have a story, when people get angry, it means I've done something wrong or I'm bad. Like, that's a common one I see. When other people are angry, quote unquote, at me, it means I've done something wrong or bad. They can have the insight that is, oh, people get angry and they might be angry at me, but it doesn't mean I've done anything wrong or bad, or it doesn't mean I'm bad. They might not be happy with what I've done, but it doesn't mean I'm bad. Or they might have the insight, when people get angry, it might not have anything to do with me, right? They're starting to un- hook any identity of I'm bad or did something wrong from other people's anger. That would be the insight, an aha. But then the emotions that have to move in this case might be their own anger. Like, that's not okay to put that on me. Stop telling me I did something wrong. They might have to move all of their own—

Yeah, the anger of how much of their lives they've spent with, like, believing the story that they were bad or wrong.

Believing that they were bad or wrong anytime anybody got angry.

And that it was imprinted in the first place.

Exactly. You know, a parent or caregiver made them think that or led them to think that or whatever led them to think that. So I would say anger needs to move. Usually, often their fear needs to move as well, because if someone has that relationship with other people's anger, there's a lot of fear of anger. Anger's not safe, so they have to move fear. And that's, you know, just shaking. And then in that case, also grief, you know, grief of believing for however many decades that anytime someone's was angry that they had done something wrong or bad. I had a client who talked about when she was in traffic and a car honked, she'd jump and look around to see what she'd done wrong. And it was, you know, it was like 4 cars back honking at someone else who had nothing to do with her. But she had that ingrained belief that she must have done something wrong if someone honked. So she had to go through the journey moving fear, grief for all the years and all the times she thought that random anger had something to do with her. And her own fear and then her own anger of like, hey, eff off, that's not okay. Like, don't put that on me.

It's like when you describe going through that grief of, you know, all the years where XYZ was happening, I believed ABC, it's as though there's also like so many micro insights in that grieving process because it's you In my experience, when I'm going through a big grief process, there can be a flashing of memories that just come out of nowhere. I had no idea that that had actually— I forgot that that even happened and didn't know that that was driving my subconscious and filtering my reality. And then many of the things don't even actually show up in, in my consciousness at all. They're just happening subconsciously.

Yes.

And so it's almost as though the, the, the process of emotions moving and the insights are kind of the same thing on some level. Like, the insight is the mental version of it, or the seeing, but then the emotional process is just applying that insight to your deeper store of life memories and seeing what settles out from that process.

That's right, or what wants to bubble up and move through emotionally and be re-seen.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you're real— you're who, who you, how you identify is really different at the end of the process.

Yeah. Sometimes it's sort of like a house of cards too. Like, or I'm remembering like playing Dr. Mario or Tetris where sometimes if you hit the right thing, all of a sudden everything will start to collapse and then another thing will collapse. Or Angry Birds, I think looks a lot like that where like you have one insight and if you like really let that insight land all the way in your body, it's just going to be Well, there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that used to seem internally consistent about your reality that is now just ready to collapse too, because if that wasn't true, then this wasn't true, and this wasn't true. Oh, here we go into the abyss.

Yeah, right. And the abyss is what can show up. Yeah, in that case.

Yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. About the abyss?

So my experience of it is that when all the stories fall away, what's left is the abyss. And it has a million different names, but it is— it's the place of no story, right? It's the knowing of, of self beyond the story. Identifying beyond the story. And of course we have these bodies and selves, and so we have stories, but it's having— it's making contact with, um, that, that which is beyond the self. So when we have these insights and they— and, and really the whole house of cards starts to fall. I remember when I had the experience, it felt like a house of cards, like, oh my God, every single story true and not true and a house of cards and all the emotions behind them. And under it all was just like nothingness and spacious nothingness. Hmm.

Which brings me to another question is how— and that might be the answer to this question, but I'm also curious what other answer there is. Like, how do you know when insight has consolidated, integrated, and become wisdom. Or not even to imply that there's an end.

I wanna step back first and say that the house of cards falling, the whole Tetris game, everything falling, the abyss is, I don't think that's the goal. I think that's a byproduct. So if someone's having an insight and then trying to, I'm gonna integrate this, and then starts working to integrate it to get to the abyss or spacious ness, nothingness, I think that's probably going to backfire at some point. I just want to name that so people aren't going, okay, I'm going to really integrate my aha moments into wisdom so that I can get spaciousness.

Yeah, well, that's another thing with that state attachment earlier. It's like if we're conflating the abyss with the integration, with the state—

just a potential byproduct. Yeah.

Yeah.

And then what was the question you asked right before? I wanted to clarify that.

Yeah. So how do you know? How do you know or measure or have— how do you track how insight has become wisdom?

Right. I'd say the easiest way is when you don't have to remember it, right? You have the insight and it's like, I have to remember that. When it— you don't have to remember it because it's just in your being. Like that example I used about the client with anger thinking she was bad or wrong. When people get angry and she's like, oh, what's going on for you? And she has no emotional reaction, no Um, she doesn't, uh, get triggered or tighten up because she's just curious what's happening. Like, that's when that insight has been integrated through the whole— it's coherent and integrated in the body when you don't have to remember it, when you don't have to, um, think about it, when it's just there and natural, and, um, you're not reactive to the same things that you used to be reactive to. I'd say that's one of the easiest ways to know. I also wanna say, I do believe it's asymptotic. I believe that, like you said, we can have these insights, they can integrate through our being, move to wisdom, and then resurface as we develop and as we evolve in different points in our life. So it's an— so wisdom is an asymptotic, ever-changing, like it's not a hard, fast thing that happens and then it's done and never will shift again. Yeah, you know, we're always evolving and learning and growing and deepening.

There's an interesting sort of asymmetry here that I'm seeing where, you know, we get the insight and one of the common responses is to be afraid of losing the insight. But the actual integration of the insight will result in essentially the insight will just fall away. It's like the training wheels, and it's almost like Like, I look forward to the day where I don't have to remember that, like, I get to have my anger or my sadness, or that my wants are important, or that I don't— I'm not responsible for other people's feelings, uh, or that it doesn't make me bad or wrong if someone's judging me. Like, if I'm living in a world where I forget all of that and it's just second nature, then like, that's actually like what I'm looking forward to when an insight comes. Like, great, here's the insight. I can't wait to just like have this no longer even be in my world so much that I want to hold on to it.

Yeah, that is a great attitude, by the way, for the whole process. Oh, I can't wait to get triggered again by someone's anger so I can, you know, see where it hasn't integrated through my system. And I can't wait till someone honks at me on the road and I can see like, oh, what emotion is left or what story is left around this?

Yeah, yeah, it's like being in wonder with the insight and the whatever wisdom is arising from it. Like, oh cool, if I just forget this, what?

What happens?

Where do I get to discover this again?

Yeah, that's right. Like welcoming the process.

Yeah.

Yeah, very cool.

Beautiful. What else would you like to say?

Oh, what else would I like to say? I would say marinate in the journey. Anybody having the aha moment, like, take it and roll with it and marinate it and steep in it and enjoy it and be gentle with yourself. Like, everything we do here year is about self-compassion and having more compassion for ourselves and others. So with that aha moment, once it happens, how can you be gentle and compassionate with yourself and love yourself through the whole process and really enjoy the whole process, even the, you know, crunchy bits. Yeah.

Yeah. Alluding back to something you had said earlier about recognizing the way that the belief system was serving you. I think there's something that can happen when we have an insight and then we're like, ugh, disgust towards whatever previous thought we had. And then we're just doing the thing again where we're pushing some part of our experience into the shadow.

Into the dark, beating up a part of ourselves, right? There was a certain— that those stories came up to protect us. They served us. We wouldn't have had them if they weren't protecting, helping, serving us in some ways. They might not serve us anymore, but they for sure did at some point. So, right, appreciating them, being gentle with them, with that part of ourselves. Yeah. Loving, loving, loving it all.

Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, thank you so much. I love doing, doing this episode with you. I want more.

I adore you, Brett. It's so much fun.

Yay! Yeah. All right, thank you everybody for listening. If you enjoyed this, please share it with somebody that you think would enjoy it just as much or even more. We'll see you next time.

Ciao!