What is Love, after all? - Ep. #17 with Jim Spivey

Welcome to Paz de Mai Podcast, a production of Acorn Oak Studio and music by Benjamin Schleds. My name is Virginie Glaenzer and I'm your host with a million questions. If you're tuning in for the very first time, Pass the Mic is a podcast where we share different perspectives on a specific topic, not only to help us expand our understanding of the world, but also to explore new ways of looking at it. In this special series, we're shifting from our usual unscripted group exploration to a one-on-one interview. We sent 6 questions to our guests, ahead of time and ask them to come prepared to share their answers. Today I am with Jim Spivey, and we're about to talk about one of the most iconic and fascinating ideas in history, an idea so strong it can change our world in crisis: love. Jim Spivey is a partner at Maisie Partners Jim brings his experience as a former business executive, executive coach, and life coach to his sacred work as a modern-day mystic at a small firm focused on holding space for awakening and transformation for both individuals and communities. He's inspired by Jesus, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, and his wife Bami in his surrender of his life And Will to Grace and Love. Welcome, Jim.

Thank you so much, Virginie. I am going to have to learn how to say your name as beautifully as you do.

There is no one way. You pronounce it the way you want.

Well, it just sounded so beautiful and I want to honor you. I feel really privileged to be here. A little nervous, but privileged. This is a really important topic for me. I know it is for you, and I think for the whole world.

Well, I'm happy to have you here, and thank you. So when we look around, we know that we are living in a time none of us ever expected to see outside a dystopian movie or novel. When our habits are disrupted, our jobs are disappearing, our relationships are tested, and our truth all questioned, when everything has gone haywire and nothing makes sense anymore, all we have left is love. So Jim, how do you define love?

So when I saw this first question, my brain kicked in, as is normally the case when I see a question, and it wanted to gather all of its data because I have been a student of love for a long time, often a failed student, and occasionally with glimpses of grace. But as I started to gather my intellectual grasp of things I'd like to say in response to that question, I also started to surrender to friendships and relationships who I know love me. And one of the things they would say, a consistent message, was, Jim, be your bold, humble self. And it's really interesting. Bold humility is an interesting phrase, because the only way I know how to be boldly humble is when I get out of the way of the essence that's trying to speak. So my wife has prayed for me. My business partners at Mazzi, they prayed for me, my friend Sean prayed for me, my friend Mariah. I've had people, and the prayers are all consistent: "Jim, good luck getting out of the way of letting love answer this question." So lately, and I think you're aware of this, Virginie, lately I've been practicing, in fact, during the time of the pandemic, I've been practicing surrendering to poetry. And the way poetry shows up in my life is I get really quiet and I go down underneath my thoughts and feelings. And in the void down there, where it's totally quiet and still, words show up. Because the truth is I have a good vocabulary, but when I use it from my brain, it's usually with self-interest. When I let my heart and the truth use it, then something more powerful occurs, first of all for me. So a poem came to me. I sat quietly with the question and all the questions, and a poem came to me. I'd love to share it if you would allow that. Please do. Okay. So I'm just going to fire away. So I started out by saying, "Love, speak to me, please, about this time with Virginie Glaenzer." And it answered, and it answered like this: "Today you've been asked to speak about me, so first let go of what you think you know. Instead, let me have your heart and your mouth so I can focus them on truth and let it show." through your presence with a subject you give your life to, not as an expert, but more as a student. And start with my love for Virginie as perfect curator of this time, and with her questions, please be prudent. How to define me, she asks. What a beautiful question that mere words could never satisfy. But through your surrender to me here, instead of pontificating is the best way in which you can reply. How to find me comes next as the world trembles and quakes, especially in these very difficult times. Well, look what you've done here to surrender to me inside you, and I even give you the words and rhymes. How has isolation impacted your attitude about me? Thank Virginie Glaenzer. For this stage on which to speak it. It has brought you closer to me instead of your fabrications and fears so that love no longer needs you to seek it. And resting in me where you let me fill you up can then overflow into every human interaction so that with each exchange and every precious moment you experience multiplication instead of subtraction. How do you experience it, Jim? Now that we're getting personal, it's hard as I invite you underneath your shame and pain where I get to show you through wife and children, friends and partners, that to your forest fire, I am the rain. Not only putting inner fires out, but nourishing your roots, inviting the leaves of your tree to dance. And if you're paying attention, you'll feel loved in each breath. There's nowhere I'm not if you give me half the chance. The biggest act of love that I've ever witnessed— what a brilliant invitation to feel me and answer while crying— it was those 3 days at the end of your father's life when I invited you to be with and hold him while dying. The love that he showed and taught so unmistakably me, because you had never seen him so powerfully alive, has fed every breath of yours since then, inspired your tattoo, and delivered you to a life in which you thrive, that's no longer about people, even your totally amazing wife, but about what you now know is me for you. I've also given you two friends, and we call them mozzie partners. To instill this truth in all that together you do. Your wife and your children, your friends and your neighbors, they're all thrilled to know who you are. But for the first time you're clear that when disconnected from me, no relationship will get very far. And how does your work with Mazzi help others? What a beautiful mystery this question attempts to touch. By letting go of your patterns and embracing me together, You free yourselves of needing ego crutch. Yes, Jim, you're not special. This gift is for all. Mazzi simply holds space for awakenings to manifest. I've infused it all with me—your marriage, family, and company—because it's for you what's best. The people who are drawn, who might want to join you, they're not for you or your partners to decide because I'm running this show. Like the ocean in Moana. The work for those I call to it is to relax and enjoy the ride.

That was a beautiful, not only poem, but also you've given me all the answers to the questions.

It was so incredibly touching to me, Virginie, that my way of being before my awakening in the last 5 or 6 years would be to do things my way. And I'd ignore often what another was requesting of me. And I was thinking that I knew what love is, so I'm going to do it my way. And love actually told me to be prudent in responding to your questions. And that touched me deeply, not only because of how much it loves me, but how much it loves you. That just— that was really touching to have that experience. Yeah, so it was like a dance, like we danced through that poem because it touched every one of the questions in a way that I couldn't have answered with my mind.

I know. So, and I'm sure that listeners can go back and re-listen to what you just said because there was a lot to unpack, but I want to focus on a couple of those questions. Very good. That I find triggered some curiosity. So I want to know, how do you personally experience love in your own life on a daily basis?

Great question. As you know, we've talked about this before, right? We use the Enneagram as a way to understand our own personalities better. And within the context of the Enneagram, I'm a Type 2, which is a helper and tends to be very focused on love, relationship, emotions. My entire arsenal of understanding how to experience love in my past before I knew the Enneagram was it would all be through feeling. Like, I would consider love a feeling. If I felt good, it felt like love, okay? If someone was treating me in a way that was pleasant, it felt like love. I would experience it through the lens of my personality, not seeing how bound and limited I was by that lens. Now, with the work we're doing, and my lenses are being expanded— there's 9 different types We all have access to it. And I'm starting to notice love more as a field of consciousness than it is a feeling or an expression. It's this vast consciousness state that is benign in nature, meaning it does no harm. It's filled with a sense of reverence. And that word is really powerful for me. Like, the space, the field of love feels reverent, and it avails itself through revelation, not through explanation. So, for example, when I got myself out of the way and said, "Love, speak to me," okay, it revealed itself to me through my request. This is all new. This is not the way it used to be throughout most of my life. Where I would think I understood quite a bit about love because I'm a loving, kind person. And I would apply those techniques and think that was love. And I was missing out on the fullness of it. And I was missing out on the dark side of my own tendency to love in order to be loved. Didn't even understand the way that was operating. So it's just expanded from checkers to like 3-dimensional chess. You know what I'm saying? And now it feels like a field of consciousness more than a feeling.

It's inspiring to listen to you because it means that things that we've considered as the truth can change, and they can change for the better. And in this time of crisis where people are holding on to their truth, they could actually let go. Those truths because they shouldn't be afraid of what could be. Let's focus on your professional life. Cool, love that. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about, in your job and in the work that you do, how does your work help others find, connect with, or express love?

So The thing that I find unique and inspiring about my participation with David and Paula in this construct called Mazzi Partners is that I move out of my focus on myself. Like, it's not me plus Paula plus David. Okay, like, it's not 3 people taking turns to talk or 3 people taking turns to have ideas. We invest ourselves in building a system. We're part of a system, and that system has a consciousness. And in fact, Mazzi's consciousness as a system is higher than any of our individual consciousness. Mazzi is more intelligent and more loving and more full in its understanding than any one of us. So we invest in our, our own work first, and we have tools to help us do our work, to learn how to surrender our personal agenda to being fed and nourished by a system designed to take good care of us. Okay. Something, by the way, as a businessman, never in my life have I looked at a business as responsible for nurturing me, caring for me, nourishing and feeding me. But we use tools like Life Planning, which is a structured approach to understanding both the subconscious and conscious narrative that we live our lives by. We use tools like the Enneagram to shine a flashlight on the patterns in our brain that, as you know, 95 to 99% of our brain activity is subconsciously recreating the past based on memory. And it's often memories that we're not even aware that we have because it's in the subconscious. So we help expose and shine a light on what we call the 1.0 narrative, which is our patterned way of being based on childhood experiences. We shine a light on the 2.0, which is the highest truth, like who God made us to be. That has always been true, always been true. We just forgot it, okay? And we use the Enneagram to shine a flashlight. We use conversational intelligence, and that is a book and field of study by Judith Glaser in New York that takes the principles of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman's pioneering work, and extends it into relational, you know, how we talk with each other. It's beautiful work, and this is our tool set to do our work every day. Now we invite others in who are seeking their own awakenings and transformation, who would like to walk with us, but they don't get taught by us. Like, we hold space for them. We hold space the way a chrysalis hold space for a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. We know that something's at work. If people find us, there's a resonant energy that is interested in awakening and transformation. If we try to make sound like experts to teach it, it's repellent. If we hold space and invite people on their own journey while staying focused on our work, they are served by the access to that because we practice every day. They get to experience 3 people who practice every day. So it helps to let them see how they can build their own system in their life to do the same. So it's very mysterious. I don't know how to quote unquote market it. I come from a marketing background where I think in very practical ways about how to promote an idea. But our guidance, because guidance is the underlying principle we run our business by, our guidance tells us to focus internally in ourselves and each other and to allow it to attract, allow it to do the work. Uh, that is an ongoing battle inside each one of us to do that. And I trust us. We've been at it for, I don't know, 6 years now, and I feel a love from Mazzi and from David and Paula like I can't even describe it. I've never worked in a place like this.

Can you imagine if most organizations had the foundation of what you've built at Mazzi Partners?

Yeah, it moves us. Like, we We hold that vision that this is something everyone could have. And yet David and I in particular, because we've had a marketing background, David and I have to rein ourselves in because the minute we think everybody could have this, we want to go make that happen. What we believe, and I feel like you do too, as I listen to your communication, we believe that all of this is unfolding. It's not something that needs us to make it happen. We're being invited to allow it to happen with our full participation, and that's the spirit we're bringing to it. Thankfully, we have Paula, who— she's a Type 9 in the Enneagram, which is a peacemaker, and also takes a holistic view of things. So she keeps our points of view balanced, keeps us on an even keel so we don't run off and do what we know how to do in our brains.

Right, right. That's fascinating. Thank you for removing the curtain and letting us behind the scenes. It's, it's a beautiful story, and you can only hope that other people will find you on their path.

That's for sure. It's interesting, we're both on Twitter, and what we notice is that people will find us and then they'll sniff around and interact for about a year, and And then they might be a little more curious where they want to lean in and actually have a conversation. And we're noticing that this dynamic has its own life, and we don't have to try to force anything.

Right, it's very true. Wow, that was wonderful. Thank you for sharing so much. And as you said, it's difficult to put the words in such a new way of working, new way of engaging with the world in a business practice. And I can relate to a lot of things that you say in the way that we at EconoAuc create. So as a way to wrap up this conversation, let's do a little game with 4 questions that were not shared to you. Oh, you're sneaky. Absolutely. So we've got some fill-in-the-blank statements for you to complete. Okay. And you can always say pass if you don't have the answer.

I might— this is just so you know— I might take a few quiet moments. Sure. Because my brain will want to answer quickly, so I'm going to slow myself down to go inside.

Okay, sounds good. So first question is: the color of love is blank because blank.

I don't even have to go inside for that one. It like popped up instantly. The color of love is green because it is life.

Very well. Number 2: I love someone when blank.

I love someone when they love themselves.

Now this one is a bit longer and maybe a little bit goes deep, a little deeper. We think we all know what love is, yet when we dive a little deeper, love is not blank.

Yeah, the answer is quick once again, like it didn't take long. It's not knowable. It's not knowable. That's the beauty of it.

And we'll end on that final statement: love is blank.

Everything. Everything. Wonderful. It's the keys to everything.

It's the key to everything for a door that is not even closed.

Yeah, isn't that the truth? Yeah, that's a perfect, perfect ending.

And people will understand that the way they want.

That's right, that's right. We can't, we can't affect that. Yeah, I came to crack my heart open on the subject that requires it, and you are a wonderful facilitator and curator. And questioner, like, it's a pleasure to be with you.

Well, it was a pleasure too. Thank you, Jim, for sharing your personal view and, and more importantly, how you work, how you bring love into your work and in the world through your work. So thank you very much.