The recited poem was An Invitation to Brave Space by Beth Strano which was adapted by Mickey ScottBey Jones. The musical clips were "Eight" and "Nine" by Sleeping at Last.
The recited poem was An Invitation to Brave Space by Beth Strano which was adapted by Mickey ScottBey Jones. The musical clips were "Eight" and "Nine" by Sleeping at Last.
we know the pain out there, we already know, turn on the news. We know that there's drama and trauma out there, but can we create just for a moment, an hour or two some loving kindness where we get to experience that and we can lock it into the body. I know what it's like to be with strangers and feel brave. I know what it's like to say the thing that I think is the wrong thing and folk didn't respond and didn't judge me, didn't kill me.
I got to know Daniel through the Enneagram land and it's interesting we're talking about anger because eights are one of the anger types in the anger triad. And from the Enneagram perspective, the eights tend to express anger openly. Nine's numb it. Once contained, your type structure tends to express it directly. So, what's so interesting is that the last time we were all together, it was kind of a cliffhanger, because somebody asked about anger, and we talked about anger right at the end, and it was a subject I felt like we could have given a lot more time to. So, Daniel, I is the role of anger in providing the energy to kind of get ourselves up and out to create collective change. How has that showed up for you?
I'm thinking of your comment about the nine. So when I first kind of came around the hive I thought it was a nine and I think the anger was there, but I was trying to control it. I was conditioned to as a black man in society I wasn't free to express it. As I started to get into some social justice work here, specifically racial justice work, I couldn't contain it. There was a lot of anger there that I didn't know what to do with. and when I first got into the social justice work around Cincinnati, it was like, yeah, the anger's what you need. Tap into that. What makes you angry? And I started to realize that like, it's not good for me to remain angry. I don't know if I can sustain it and do the work like it can get me going. I don't know if I can sustain it. And if I do, it's gonna be very destructive. I could feel it. I could feel where my mind was going, where my like my inclinations and it was like, I want to destroy stuff like I want to tear stuff down and then I started to think about so what happens if we destroy it all and then we have to rebuild it? How do we do that? Who's going to do that? And so the anger is a catalyst for me. When I feel it, I know I'm alive. I'm in the room. I'm present. Because my coping mechanism is to ignore everything. That's how I, as a person of color who has experienced certain kinds of injustice, I have to ignore it. I have to downplay it. And so, when I feel it now, it's like, okay, there's the tension, that's that choice point. Uh, What are we gonna do? do we give in to the anger? Do we deny it? Do we pretend that it's not there? Or do we have a conversation? I would say now is, is the facts, the emotions, and then the wisdom to make the choice that I want to make. That's what I would say today. I didn't know that back when it was happening, because it was happening in real time. And so, anger's kind of on the move. I'm very comfortable with it. I'm very comfortable when people have it and they show it. That makes sense to me. It's hard for me to trust people who don't have anger, who don't show it, express it, I'm like, I don't know about that.
And I'm thinking the Enneagram too, it's just like, now you're here, you're showed up, you're in the building. But was there a specific turning point where you started to say, this is not good. From the standpoint that if it's expressed in this certain way. I can cause destruction in the field. What, What was it that precipitated
I don't know if it was one thing. I think it was a series of police brutality, actually because police brutality in Lima is what got me into, like, that's what I was awakened to around social justice. Black woman killed by the police. I'm awake now. I'm engaged. Come down to Cincinnati. Sam DeBose was shot and killed by another police officer. And it just kept happening. And I'm like, there's no way I can... Like, I'm angry and this, after a while, I was like, I can't even produce it. I can't even get angry about this anymore. And so it was like, so what do we do?, and then other people were expressing anger. But in terms of myself and then other folks in justice work and specifically people of color, it was just like, we're just tired. And I think that that's where it was like, anger's not enough. I mean, because you can see, right? You can see people were looting and it was a question of do you deface property? It was like, well, someone was killed. So you know, people want to express that, right?
So the anger is in their bodies. That feeling of I got to do something. I got to do something. Yeah. But you've talked a little bit more about this notion of loving kindness and mercy. So if you're thinking about collective change and courageous conversations. How do you bridge from that anger to that space of loving kindness and mercy?
Um, I had a real experience here at the Hive. So, like I said, when Sam DeBose was shot and killed, I was taken back to 2008 in Lima, where I had all this unprocessed anger that came flooding back here in 2016 or something like that. And I was talking with Troy, the former Hive director, and he was doing some work around somatic work with one of the local churches and people in returning citizens. And so those are all kinds of things that matter to me. So he invited me to one of his sessions. And so as an eight, I show up to experience it. My body needs to experience it, right? And I'm there to observe. And next thing I know, I'm singing like a canary. I'm just like talking, telling my business, I'm just like, Whoa, what kind of voodoo magic is this? Because this is weird. It just, it released, it was like, there was yoga, there was mindfulness, there was trauma informed and we were in circle and I had never experienced all of that. And it was like, Whoa, this is powerful. And then we started the courage to connect where we started to bring people into this space to have courageous dialogue around the racial attention and trauma. And then that led to the inner work of racial justice, which, because I was so focused on the external collective and not realizing that I had all this unprocessed internal racial trauma, inferiority, suppression, oppression, that I thought you could do that work without this work. And so, around that time, I was also talking about I'm leaving the plantation of whiteness. I knew that where I was, I was powerless over it. I could not change white supremacy. I could not change how I was responding to it. Because I was an assimilator. If I had to code switch, all the things that I did to cope with white supremacy. I'm like, I'm leaving this plantation. I'm out. And that was my honest response. I was being honest with myself for the first time. This is not okay with me. Not the world. Like if white supremacy is okay with some or not. It didn't matter. I had to get honest with myself. This is not okay with me and so then it's like, but I don't know how to live outside of white supremacy, even as a black body individual. I don't know how, I don't know my place. And so, I say that it took faith, hope, and love to leave the plantation. And I thought that freedom would be like just the greatest thing. And it was like, no, that journey is, it's not right. It's costly. It's unsettling, it's messy. Because everything I thought I knew, I could no longer hold on to. And the world that I was wanting to create and who I wanted to be, I had no model for it. And that gets to why I think change, transformation, should happen in relationship and in community. Because otherwise you can get lost in the wilderness trying to figure it out. Because I think you do need others to reflect. What it is that they see in you what you see in them and we're struggling honestly about what's really there and then the openness to like, I think there could be another way.
What's so moving to me about this, Daniel I mean amongst so many things is this notion that it has to be done in community. I mean we're from such an individualistic culture, you know therapy happens in private everything's private. It's just me. I gotta do this myself. And it's actually been through groups like, I did Courage to Connect with Daniel and Troy. We started right before George Floyd was murdered. And to see myself with someone else, that group change, that collective work, is so different from the individual work. And it's scary. It's scary. I sat there. I remember being in the group. And there were black people in the group, white people in the group, and I felt frozen. I didn't know what to say, what to do. And the space that you held was just sturdy. It was really, really sturdy and I didn't feel like, if I say something now I'm gonna mess up. And that there was actually space for that and I'm wondering what enabled you to do that? I mean, that was such a dramatic time and I'm thinking about your notion again, the loving kindness and mercy and what enabled you to do that? at that time?
I remember a day when I was sharing something and Troy just stopped the groove. He was like, okay, everyone, I want you to check in. How does that hit your body? And it just blew me away because I never imagined that anything that I was saying when I was talking my truth could actually impact someone physically. Like I feel that I do, but I didn't know that anyone else did because it was just my reality. And that's when I realized that One, I could trust the space and we were intent on creating brave space and I'm like, I need this because I don't know how to show up in the world bravely and we were doing it wasn't perfect. It was just our intention, our desire. So we started to do it and then as we did it, I realized that this is what I believe practicing loving kindness is. So there's a scripture that talks about, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God. And we were doing that and I'm like I want more spaces like this where people frozen, fearful, angry, we can practice loving kindness mostly together and start to put that out into the world.
Well, you're saying something that so many facilitators know is that we're learning along the way to, and I am from the generation of the sage on the stage model where you're supposed to know everything. You're supposed to get up there and know everything and it has been the hive and experiences like we had encouraged to connect is that we're walking each other home where we're walking this with each other. So there's a conversation that I have so much energy around and I think you and I've touched on it a little bit. And that is that right now, So many people are either cutting each other off or finding ways to just to not have conversations. It's like people are saying it's too much. Can't do it. It's just too much. And the way we're communicating is through text and email. And, maybe some sort of asynchronous communication like Voxer or Marco Polo or something like that. And we're not with each other in embodied. What do you have to say about these times? It's a really big question. Yeah. But what do you have to say about these times, Daniel, around this way? We're not having the courageous conversations, even in our most close interpersonal relationships.
The first thought was. If I ask you, how do you feel about conflict, what do you notice in your body? Think about a person or a situation, a relationship that you care about, professional, personal, intimate, and think about a conflict there, what shows up. And I think that our personal, our authentic orientation to conflict we have to contend with that. Like you got to start there.
One of those conditioned tendencies that live in the body.
You have to start there, because for me if I can't blow it up, I'm going to avoid it, I'll isolate, I'll run away and if I can't run away, then I'll confront or whatever. And so,
So when you say that I'll run away and then I'll confront, can you say a little bit more about that? I confront.
Yeah, so. I was in fifth grade. No, first grade. No, I was five years old in kindergarten. That's, that's, so two fifth graders went into a bar. So, um, I'm going to school for the first time. I'm riding the bus. I'm so excited. I'm the youngest of four. And so I'm going to the big kids floor, my brother's like four years older than me, so the kindergartners are on the bottom and then his grade, they're at the highest. So I'm walking in with him, he's going upstairs, I go upstairs. One of his buddies kind of bullies me and tries to scare me, right? And tells me, that I didn't belong there. And so I don't know what came out of me. I pushed him into the locker and immediately ran all the way down to the bottom floor to my kindergarten class. I got in trouble with my teacher because I was running in the halls and I remember thinking just recently, I'm like, but she didn't know I was running for my life and that's what life has felt like for me is that I would much rather avoid the conflict, but if I can't, that fight is there. It's there. And I've done a lot to not fight. I was conditioned to not fight, not to intimidate. Don't maybe. Then feel afraid. So that's where the running because I don't know what else to do because I'm going to confront it
Yeah, and then you have the Christian overlay and the teachers get distorted. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
It doesn't get to the real.
It doesn't get to what's real.
You know, this is problematic or I'm problematic or there's something here that I'm not okay with. And I don't know if we have the muscles or the practices or even that we've created the conditions where that's okay to do that in community.
And so much of what we're doing here is this is what I feel like so often here. Is that you said something that's so important is it's about practice. Yes we are learning this. I mean, every time we get together, we're learning it. And I think there's this ideal culturally that it's got to be perfect. We got to shine it up back there before we show up. And I love this notion of practice, not perfection, just practice it and get it good enough, get good enough connection. And then I learned something from that and then I can go and feel in my body and. So talk about the heart. Can you talk a little about this? We've talked about, you know, your body. Can you talk a little bit about the heart? Mm
hmm. What do you want to know about the heart? So I had to spend a year on focusing on my heart, but it just was not, I could not hear it. I had ignored the heart for so long. It was like an inconvenience. I knew anger, fear. Sadness, maybe a little bit of happiness, but that was just rare. And so the heart is a beautiful thing, living from there, but I I'll say this. I don't know how people who are heart types. I don't know how they get through a day when I gave myself to the heart Like, there was so much pain. As an A, I feel it. I just want to get away from it because I want to, I want to fight. And so when I gave into the heart, it was like, Oh my God. It was really depressing and had I not had relationships around to kind of just check in, I would have died in that state. Like, I don't know if mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, but I felt like, like, I can't get out. The heart was just so heavy but I I did make it out and I do appreciate heart types and the heart. But like my heart it's not like stable. It wants to feel good. So it's going to jump to whatever feels good. It doesn't want to sit in that. Mine doesn't want to sit there
Well, I want to say just because we teach the Enneagram here too, so we're having a little intersection, which is a little bit how we're going to be working over the next couple of years. It's hard types don't always feel their hearts either, it's not exclusive. I think we all have a heart. And I will say for my experience of AIDS and what you're describing , you know, we have the racial overlay and Christian overlay. There's so many other things that shape us, not just our Enneagram type or family of origin. And you feel things, my experience of AIDS is we feel things so strongly in the body that it feels like overwhelm. And so not opening to the heart's like kind of a good idea for a while, it's a protective adaptation. And what you're speaking to is the vulnerability of this work and the importance of supportive community to try to go it alone. Like you said, it was like the community that helped you through these times to try to go it alone. It's not a good idea. Thank you. It's sometimes your protective adaptation of armoring the heart is a good thing So if you're creating a courageous conversation and i'm coming to a class of yours or something like that what am I going to see?
One. This is going to be rooted in bracelets That is the intention the intention is to live into that. And over the last couple years, Rick and Walt has changed. I do feel like I've created a space within. Like, truly within. When the fear shows up, it has a place. I'm not avoiding it. When anger shows up, it has a place. I'm not trying to project it. When Shane shows up, I invite him to the team. And before, none of those could happen in any place. And so hopefully when you're coming to the class, you know that you can show up in your authentic self and that we're going to co create. Whatever it is that we're going to do, we're creating that together in real time, and we'll never be able to recreate that. So the invitation is to show up, show up in your fullness, show up however you need to show up, and we can talk about , the agenda, but that's the invitation is to show up in your true and authentic self and we hold space for one another and move at the speed of trust and love.
Well, I will say that as somebody who took your class, that was the experience. It was the sense that you could show up. It wasn't like you were the grand guru showing us how to do it. You were in us together, but it felt like brave space. There was a sturdy enough container to show up and that's what it feels like with your type structures, but it just feels sturdy when you show up and the heart is open and there's something to you and I were just talking about too with the somatic piece. And for those of you who are hearing this for the first time, Soma is the living organism, it's the body, but it's alive. It's not just a mechanistic thing. It's alive. And we work a lot here at the hive with somatic awareness, but there's something important to know. People will say the body doesn't lie. And that's true the body doesn't lie about your personal experience, but Dale and I were talking that some people are conditioned to walk down the street and their body will tell them based on cultural conditioning to be afraid of so there's another piece called somatic opening that I can be aware that that's my conditioned tendencies that live in my body and I can open to something different. So when I can open and maybe 10 percent open and I almost feel like that's what you do with your heart. It's like 10 percent opening. I'm going to give this a try. Okay. It's safe here. There's a support group, right? Or there's a support mirroring and then somatic practice. This isn't like one and done. No. This is such a core piece of this hype work is practice,
Because change is constant, we don't have to do anything. Change is happening. The weather will be different when we go home. It'll be different in the morning. It just is, but can change be transformative? And that's where I the practice and what we practice and how we practice matters because then we can transform change into something that is beneficial, which I would call co creating. We co create the world. And to me, that's in living color, that's in real time. We have a game plan, but life gets lifey. It just doesn't matter the plan and then you have to adapt, you have to pivot and so let's practice that in a loving kindness and mercy. Because we're going to go out there and we're going to experience, like, we know the pain out there, we already know, turn on the news. We know that there's drama and trauma out there, but can we create just for a moment, an hour or two some loving kindness where we get to experience that and we can lock it into the body. I know what it's like to be with strangers and feel brave. I know what it's like to say the thing that I think is the wrong thing and folk didn't respond and didn't judge me, didn't kill me. We have to practice that because otherwise it's just an intellectual and I spent the bulk of my earlier life here. I could read about it. I could study it. I could research it. But I damn sure was not going to test my body with it because the fear kept me in check. So. Yeah, I think we have to practice it.
So it's almost like a lot of times we think of practice, and practice can feel so individualistic. What you're really speaking to is relational practice. Yes. Like you can't stay home on this safe iPhone texting your people, right? That's right. That's right. And then, like, the your practice is so radically relational.
And we have to push against the coronavirus effect, which said socially distant. We should have been physically distant, but never socially distant. We've been reprogrammed. So it takes a little more effort to push against that. To work through that limiting story. Because that's a limiting story at this point. And we feel very comfortable just disconnecting. I do. I felt awkward trying to re engage in social settings after we were separated for so long. So I think we have to be radically relational.
What's showing up for you right now. What has your attention right now? What are you observing? Not necessarily in what's being said, but what are you feeling? What does your body see?
Going to do a little grounding. So welcome everyone and if you can just get as comfortable as you can. Take a moment and think about the day that you've had. Maybe consider how you thought the day would go. Maybe you woke up this morning full of intention and had plans and goals. And maybe it went that way. How did that feel to you? How does it feel now? Perhaps you had no intention and you just got up and got going and you encountered what you encountered. What did you notice now? Maybe think about a conversation that you had that is sticking with you even now, or an encounter that you had that has your attention. If you feel comfortable, I'm going to invite you to close your eyes or at least lower your gaze so you're not distracted. Just notice your breathing. Your breath has been with you your entire life, and especially today, through all the interactions and encounters. That beautiful breath, and I want to draw your attention inward, into your heart, your lovely heart. I want to invite you to just notice if it's open, or if it's closed, or if it's just kind of indifferent right now, and breathe into your heart space, and you exhale, invite yourself to just open just a little, as much as is comfortable for you, and I invite you to breathe in again to your heart space, exhale and open just a little bit more, a little more, deep inhale. Please just notice your heart right now. I invite you for the conversation to have your heart as open as possible. Just noticing when it moves, whether it closes or opens more wherever your energy or intentions are what I invite you to. It's in your head to bring it to your heart and into your body and notice that you're really grounded. You're rooted on the ground. Your feet are firm. We are stable and we're going to co create this, this moment together. I want to invite you into Brave Space. This is a poem, poem that was written by Beth Strano and adapted here by Mickey Scott Bay Jones. In the work that I do, I often put that out there because that is the intention, as a Enneagram 8, brave space is very important to me and showing up in the world. And so here is an invitation to brave space. Just notice whatever word or phrase hits you tonight. Together we will create brave space because there is no such thing as a safe space. We exist in the real world. We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds. In this space, we seek to turn down the volume of the outside world. We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere. We call each other to more truth and love. We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow. We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know. We will not be perfect. This space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be, but it will be our brave space together, and we will work on it side by side. Whenever you're ready, you can open your eyes and join the conversation. I
I think a collective as a process, I think it's individuals who are clear about their self interest. So everyone in the room has a self interest. You put your self interest in the middle of the floor on the table. We're very clear what you want and from that we identify our collective shared interests, shared values. To me, that becomes the collective. It is not a collective just to put a bunch of people together. To me, it has to have a sense of agency. There has to be a sense of your self interest is at the table and you get to negotiate your self interest with the group. That process is what creates a collective for me.
When we were imagining this conversation series, we were really particular that we didn't wanna talk about individual change but instead in the larger world, there is change coming at us at a rate that's never come at us before. So there's that piece, but then there's also this desire for folks here at the hive, for people who are listening to the podcast to be agents of change. And so when we were imagining the collective, I think we had a much simpler understanding, which is essentially like as a we, how do we process the change that's coming at us and be agents of change in the world now. I love, like The first step is becoming the collective and being honest about what our self-interests are to being co-creators and negotiators, I think that that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. I'm going to ask you the question again. So what is the one story that's getting in the way of the collective claiming their birthright?
What has come up for me is the quote by rabbi Hill. If I'm not for myself, who will be? I'm only for myself. What am I? And if not now, when? And, and I think the story that we're telling ourselves is either the story of self, story of us, or story of now. So, injustice work now is not the time to overturn injustice. Give it time. So it's never the right time. We're too fragmented. We don't have enough resources to make change. So, I'm just me. I can't do it because I'm black. I'm a female. I'm gay. I'm straight. Whatever. I'm wealthy. I'm poor. So I think that the lie shows up. And I think that that is what's holding us back. The lie. My individual personal lie. Our collective lie. And then I think ultimately our fear of actually doing something now, so maybe this story is fear, but I think there's a limiting story that shows up in the room, and we buy into it, we go for it.
Here's a question from Shonda. With oppressive systems like capitalism and white supremacy informing how many of us are taught to see ourselves and others. How do you suggest folks identify their self interest?
Now I'm thinking of Howard Thurman and his question of what do you want to really, because the oppressive systems are there and they'll be there and they were here before we got here. So that's a constant. We're going to always contend with oppression regardless of who's in power. The question of what do I want really and sitting with that and answering that authentically, it seems like a simple question, but for me, it totally rocked my world because I built a professional life that was from here and I'm thinking this is what I want. I'm on this particular path and I'll work till I retire. And it was like, that's not what I really want. That's what I'm doing. That's what I'm performing, but it's not what I really want. And I think that that question of what do you want? For me, it hits five areas I call these aspires. I check in every day with my aspires. It's what do I want spiritually? How's my connection to the divine? What do I want physically? How is my physical health, wellness? Am I sleeping? Am I hydrating? Just simple stuff. What do I want intellectually? Mentally? How's my mental health? What do I want relationally? What do I want emotionally? And what do I want financially? And I need to be aware of that at least every morning. Cause I'll forget when I wake up, I'll forget those things and I can get caught up in what you want and now I'm going along with you, I can get caught up, I could be anywhere, but if I stay rooted in my true, like what I want in those areas, then I think I'm prepared to engage in any conversation. And negotiate for my self interest and we can define what it is that we want, but I think a lot of inner work.
Yeah. So, so you're defining these domains where do you answer the question from the, like, how do you get to the answer to those, to get to questioning those different domains?
Yeah. Yeah. So, when I said earlier, I think there's the emotional truth. So I have to feel those things and then there's the factual truth. I got to look at, what am I actually observing? What am I seeing? And then I bring them together for a wise decision. So it's the intellectual mind, the dialectic, right? The emotional truth, intellectual truth, and then the wise truth. And I have to be in dialogue with those things. And that may seem like a lot for people, but for me, the way that I live, where I am, I have to check in with my heart. Running through, I gotta check in with my body, what's showing up, and I gotta check in with my thoughts, what's causing, I have to do that. And it takes me a while to get there. So when I'm in real time, this is why I would avoid a lot of social situations, because I can't do it quickly. I'm not practiced at this yet. And I'll get caught up and, now I'm performing over here and performing there, so, I do think it's a time away. I think at the time you've got to retreat and this is hard for Nate, right? Because something happens, we want to go but you've got to retreat for a while, not forever, get it together, get very clear about your self interest and then re engage. And I don't think that you should compromise on your core, whatever you identify as your core, you shouldn't compromise that
And doesn't it feel like too, I mean, cause you're an aid and Shonda, if that was Shonda's question, Shonda's the two on the Enneagram, which that's a 21, 000 question is what do I want? What do I need? But what strikes me too is these condition tendencies we internalize. We have these condition tendencies that we, that we take in. And we've got to tease those babies out, like, what is that out there of what someone tells me who I am, which, you know, if it's a relationship, and you're telling me who I am, that might be some helpful things to know. So bust my self deception. But, what Shonda was asking about, with capitalism, white supremacy, those are some serious, and I'm getting older, I'm 64 now, and I'm noticing that I've got internalized ageism, I'm noticing it, it's in here, And that piece has to really get teased out too with some, and I think you're spot on that time alone is so important, like really intentional time alone.
And not judging it. This is the other piece for me is like, okay, I'm a racist. I'm a racist. I'm an American racist. I have a particular brand may be different from yours, but I'm a racist. The moment I was able to own that. And not try to, no, not me, not me, not, and it's like, no, I'm American. So all that is in me. Now I got to find the particular brand and type that I have be very clear about it. So then as I'm engaging with people, I know you may not know that I'm a racist, but I need to know that I'm a racist so that I can interact with you in a way that's going to be beneficial to the collective, but if I'm judging it and feeling guilty or feeling bad, then that's the energy I'm putting into the room.
Or projecting it onto you, you know, you're the reason I'm not acknowledging you're that you're judging me. Cause I'm older. Look at you. Yeah, I can see. Yeah. But it's my own internalized. It's my, it's I'm projecting it onto you. We have to really bust our projections because when you internalize stuff, you see it all out there and the courage to know that, Oh my God, noticing my own ages.
I think the recovery community is the best place where you start to get it. I think that's where they've got it right. You name it, you name the thing that you are powerless over, you name the thing that you are, and there's no shame or guilt. It's like, yep, and this is our starting point. And we begin to develop the practices and the traditions and the principles and the ways that we will, not even just overcome it, but, make sense of life and do life in a different way.
It's hard to put the question into words, because it's on the edge of what you're talking about, but take capitalism. You're asking yourself, what do I want financially? And you start envisioning whatever, I don't know, one of those million dollar mansions is the building, how do you get past Or how do you get underneath that to say, how have I been conditioned to think success in this world is money or I should trust these corporations because that's how I'm going to be successful. You know, I can ask the questions, but I'm blind to a bunch of stuff.
I don't think it's alone, there is the asking the question here, but I think it's also having the bravery to offer it up in community because just getting it out, I remember the first time I was in C2C and I'm like, I'm a racist. Saying that in the room, I'm like, this could potentially, be really bad, right? Because white folk are in the room. They're like, well, if Daniel's a racist and it's like, I can't control anything. I don't get to control how you experience it. I had to name it in order for me to start to move beyond it. So instead of trying to fight the fact that we're all capitalists. We are so it's, it's being able to name that drop it and watch how people can hold space for that. You said it was sturdy. That's it. I think there's a lot to just say, let's just put it out there. No one needs to respond. They don't even need to challenge you. If you want a 3 million mansion, that's what you want. That's your self interest. It's good to know that you need to know that what anyone else does with that. That's, that's none of your business.
It could because it could go the other way where if we're shooting for an ideal, I'm going to be a good non capital, right? We start to other that that when we start to just split it into us, them, blame, shame, all of that kind of thing. One of the things that I like to have somebody with. when I'm working with coaching, leaders or something like that, when people say, I want to grow my company, one of the things I'll say is why, I've seen a lot of people grow their company and it creates a host of problems to sell it. And then they sell it and they're miserable. I mean, I've seen it so often. So sometimes it's almost looking at like, what are the patterns? Say of capitalism, because capitalism was born out of, in some sense, oppression, where people were forced to, under the king to be with a collective. I had to always be with the, to do what the collective said, I'm an individual, I'm going to make something for myself. And when we know that every system is emerging out of something else then it starts to get kind of locked in. And I think from when we look at capitalism, I think we have to talk about, are there aspects of it that we appreciate? Are there aspects of capitalism that I don't want anymore? And I don't want to just like flow along with it. We have to get real clear on what that means to us and what are the patterns of it and ask people. And that's what happens in a sturdy space. You could share your experience of it because I'm here to tell you. When working with immigrants sometimes they will say, Hey, this is better. So I think we have to not reduce it to this one thing that's what can get us in trouble as a collective.
I also think there's something there, like if you're checking in with yourself on a daily basis, you're giving it to the collective and saying here's my self interest. That doesn't mean that your self interest is static. You engage in the collective, you continue to check in with yourself, you continue to get feedback, whatever that looks like, well, it's going to evolve. It's going to emerge. It's going to continue to shift. So it's not a once in for all, maybe you want a 3 million mansion today, but in a year of cultivating these spaces where you practice mercy in social settings maybe it's different than, you know,
to be honest with ourselves. Like that part of us that, yeah, kind of, that kind of, it's kind of cool. Right? And just be honest then and then slow and what really matters to me. And I, I agree it evolves. It's not static. Every system emerged out of something else. Sometimes there's a correction.
I think I have a couple different questions. One has to do with socialization, but you both mentioned that with the Enneagram labeling yourself incorrectly and that a lot of people go through that process where they're labeling as a peacemaker or a helper. And then I've actually read that sixes are over represented in our current population, basically based on trauma that that there's just more people that identify with that fear center. So I'm wondering about misidentification with the Enneagram and how did you misidentify yourself? And then I am a mental person. I'm all up in my head. And so I know how to describe what it is to live from that space. I'm curious how someone who is a heart centered person how would they describe their experience? Because I don't know how to define what the heart is. I know how everybody would define it differently. We were talking about that in our group, but so misidentification of the Enneagram. And then how maybe if you're a hard person, what does that feel like? That's different than a head person.
so I want both of us to answer that because I think you're, you're asking a number of questions. One is that just like with anything, it takes us a while to get there, right? And you said something really important around social conditioning that Daniel spoke into social conditioning. I told Daniel, I've got to go home and process what he has just shared about his eightness and how being a black man really impacted how that showed up, which I've heard from, particularly women who identify as AIDS. I have my own sense around this thing around sixes. I think it's a theory, we haven't counted. We don't know this for sure. What I'll say is this. Is that there's tends to be generationally And people always said that the united states was a very three ish culture. It's a high performer culture, right? This would be the back to our capitalism question. It's kind of your classic you work hard Individual shoot for the top that kind of thing you saw that more in boomers and gen x I was talking with a friend who has wrote a book on the enneagram and they said that They see their generation, millennial, Gen Z is more of a six ish generation because of the conditions, right? 9 11, I mean, all of these conditions that created a lot more fear in the field, So I think that we can have these internalized, these energies of the types inside our own bodies, the other thing, raise your hand if you were taught to pay attention to the body center of intelligence. I talked about this last week. You weren't. So we don't have any kind of conditioning around paying attention to the body center. We were taught in the mental triad. That's how education for the most part, with the exception of schools, perhaps like Waldorf or Montessori are taught through the mental center, the intellectual center. So we all are really, we're all on our heads. And Western civilization was built on the rational head center. So it's this notion of the heart and we talked about this last week and that's not as much our subject today, but the notion of the heart is there's the heart types. It's not that they're always in their heart. They're tuning into the room from that center, that emotional center to get a sense of the room in order to get a connection. But what I'm interested in based on your question of this miss typing thing that happens. I'm just really curious, Daniel talking about, because when I first heard about you. Tori told me about you said that you were a nine and then I met you and I wasn't so sure because energetically you didn't feel mergey like the nines do. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, so I wasn't familiar with the Enneagram until I came around the Hyde and folks who were like talking about these numbers. I had no interest in knowing about a number. It didn't really matter to me. And so I think I took one of the free tests and it said I was a nine and everyone went with that. And so I'm like, okay, I'm a nine, but I remember there were songs for each number and I remember wanting to be the eight, like, I'm hearing this song and I'm like, yes, I want to be an eight when I was hearing the description about it. And I was like, man, I wish I was an eight, but I'm a nine and I'm like, damn it. I can't even fight. Like nines didn't seem like they wanted to fight. I was trying to live into it. But the thing about the nine in the song was, I think there's a line where he says, I've been less than half myself for more than half my life or something like that. And I'm like, I feel that. I feel like I've been living with one hand tied behind my back. I wasn't really allowed to show up. I got in a lot of trouble in school. Being direct and expressive considered hyperactive. I was busy. I was always being punished. And so when I was growing up, you can get paddled still at school. So I was getting paddled. So there was a lot of like, this isn't cool. Whatever I am is not okay. And so that happened very early on. And so I don't know why nine, but I could do that really well. I think growing up early on, I was very much in my body and then I gravitated to sports That was the appropriate way to express all that energy I had. And so that was my teacher and then when I went off to college and encountered golf, I realized that I couldn't muscle my way through everything. There was something else. And so I went and leaned in very heavily into the head space. And was very good at it, just like I was in sports and then that wasn't enough. There was still something for me that was missing. And I hear about the hearts and I'm trying to listen to this stuff. And I just decided I would give it a year and see. And I think that's when, getting in touch with my heart, even though it was really kind of awkward allowed me to kind of rest in like, I really was an eight all along and I've been trying to figure out how to survive.
There's a book called Enneagram of Black Liberation and she really addresses some of , this conditioned pieces. When you walked into my office for a typing interview, I didn't sense 9, right? At 8, I sometimes feel guilty for typing. Ever charging them for their typing interview. Things are obvious. They walk in. And, you know, but it was different because, you know, a corporate aide will just walk in my office and then sit in the waiting room sometimes and just kind of walks on in and takes up the whole chair. But you as a black man knew not to do that. That's conditioning. But when he came in energetically, it's big, I felt big energy filling the room, even in the silence. How I feel about my son in law, he's a quieter person, but I feel as his energy, the eights and the energetic is called excess. And so the typically AIDS children do get in trouble because it's a lot of access and they find ways to channel it off and through sports, but not all art and creativity, music, whatever, but it's trying to change. It's a big, it's a lot of energy there's so many layers, so we talked about this last week and I can't overemphasize this is that we are shaped. Your whole entire sharing today, Daniel, is so much about your shaping that every single one of us is shaped. So it's not always tight. We're always interacting. The world is shaping us, and then we're reshaping the world. And I think that's what we're doing here. The world shapes us, and then we're just little by little reshaping it when we go back out there. Say
So, this is Jennifer. I have a question around, since you work a lot in organizing space how cultural conditioning kind of shows up and I'm asking that question out of an experience of trying to find belonging in a black lives matter movement, showing up to a free Palestine protest, feeling like I'm white. Let me stand in the back. I'll hold my sign and I'm here. But I don't deserve to be in the front or even in the middle, and I notice when I'm in those spaces how that's showing up for me. It doesn't feel necessarily wrong, but it feels uncomfortable. So I'm interested if you could talk a little bit about that. And as a follow up, where do we energetically need to get to in an organizing space? And what's the work goes in to get there and maybe confronting some of that conditioning as part of it.
So, I don't think that's bad. I think that that's the it, the, the discomfort but cultural piece. It's shown up in different ways. Sometimes it's showing up with the people who are funding the movement. Like, I don't think that you can talk about these movements as just being grassroots. They're funded by power, and that makes it complicated. It's not pure. So if you're looking for something that's authentic and pure that you can just jump in and negotiate your self interest and all that, I don't know if that exists currently. And so culturally, it shows up in there's still white supremacy there. There are people who have the money and want certain things done. And so the people of color are mobilized for that. It's not really organizing. There's more mobilization happening than actual organizing and seeing people in power that people are coming to the table negotiating their self interest and doing the work around that. So I don't know if we're necessarily organizing people, but we're definitely getting people mobilized for power. But in terms of people being brought into the movement, whatever the movement is and figuring out what their space is, I do think that, it starts with your why, why are you there? aNd I think it is going through the process of negotiating your self interest with the self interest of the group. And we just don't create space for that. In the movements we don't do it. We just kinda, someone's pissed off, we need to do this thing, let's organize a march and we do a march and then that's just it. We're not organizing, we're not building power. I don't see us really building power right now. I see us reacting to things, and I think it's hard to do anything other than, like when Troy came down to one of the marches and we had been talking about putting his body in place and they were asking all the white people to move to the front of the line because they knew that the police wouldn't do anything to white bodies and so I, I think that tactically, that we could do things where you can figure out your place, but in terms of Authentically, like what is the role of men, males in a female movement or what's the role of white folk in a BIPOC movement? I don't think that we're doing that work. I don't think we're doing the relational work to get there.
What is the work to get there?
I think it's coming in truly with your self interest and negotiating from that position. And not waiting for a flashpoint, but we're sitting at the table building the relationships when we don't need to go into a fight and seeing what's really in the room. We don't do that. We posture, we have the victim Olympics, we pit minority groups against other minority groups. And so what's the issue? Because it's typically, it feels like progressives are the ones kind of setting the agenda. So if it's immigrants this year and it's Asians next year and it's blacks next year and it's poor white. So, again, it feels like the people who are marginalized are being used in the movement to get the money to get the attention to do whatever power wants to do in the first place. It doesn't feel like it's coming up from from the people. So it feels funky to me.
I'm talking to my son-in-Law. This is what he says. It's about power. Yes. It's about power. Who's got the power? And are you being used for the power, right? Yes. 'cause it's progressive doesn't mean that we don't have power, power at all.
Right? Right.
It's about power's getting played here. Increasingly suspicious of like the cause of whatever is alive in the field. That's where everybody's energy goes. It's so interesting to talk to people who are doing the work on the ground and it's not in the paper. It's not a big deal. And that's what I think it is, it's not the cause of the month or the cause of the year. It is just plugging away. It's finding something that's in your heart and staying with it and plugging away. And it's just little by little.
So I have an invitation for you, Daniel. I've heard you give benedictions before. I wonder if there's anything coming up for you around that in terms of what we've been talking about tonight.
Wow I'm kind of locked in on Phil right now. That's the that's the thing. And in his description of I'm really comfortable in the head. And I think that that is so true for so many of us that where we have found safety, not bravery, but where we have found safety, whether it's in our heads or our hearts or about the invitation to leave that place. And to go to a place that you've never seen, the faith, the hope, and the love required for yourself and for those who you encounter on the way, think it's essential what it is that's stirring in all of our hearts and our minds and our bodies. That I can't move from my head or my body to my heart without you. I won't do it. I can't. And so if I want to be the change, if I want to see the change, then I'm going to have to open up as an eight and be vulnerable to the gift that you are with all of your scars and all of your wounds and all the messiness. And invite you to lead me from my safe place to a place I've never been. I want to encourage all of us to tap into whatever faith, hope, or love that we have and not let that go. Because I think what it is that we're into, what we're up to, is going to require that and we can't give up on that.