The Everyday Mystic

The ROI of Relatefulness: How to Build Trust with Your Team w/ Jordan Myska Allen

• Corissa Saint Laurent • Episode 124

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To most leaders, vulnerability in the workplace sounds like a liability…a quick way to lose your authority or your job. But Jordan Myska Allen, CEO of The Relateful Company and Uptrust, argues that honest relating is the ultimate competitive advantage.

In this episode, Jordan joins Corissa to dismantle the self-help industry and replace it with "inter-self help." He explains why meditating on a cushion is easy, but maintaining that Zen while your boss demands impossible deadlines is the real spiritual practice. Jordan shares his journey from being the "weird guy" at parties staring into people’s eyes to building a tech platform designed to fix the internet’s polarization problem.

Corissa and Jordan explore the concept of relational intelligence. They discuss the delicate art of being honest about workplace constraints (like why you can't just "ask for a raise" when layoffs are looming) and how to navigate the grief of outgrowing relationships as you evolve.

In this episode, we cover:

  • The Workplace Depth Myth: Why demanding deep authenticity in a competitive job might be setting you up for failure, and how to find the honest middle.
  • Relatefulness 101: Moving beyond solo meditation to find God in the awkward, messy, beautiful interactions with other humans.
  • The Weird Guy Phase: Jordan’s confession about his early days of over-relating (asking strangers about their trauma at parties) and how he found balance.
  • Uptrust: A sneak peek at Jordan's new platform that incentivizes trust and nuance over rage-bait and polarization.
  • The Grief of Growth: Why evolving spiritually often means losing the people who can no longer meet you there, and how to love them from a distance.

Notable Quotes:

  • "It's hard to be really open and authentic... when jobs are on the line and money's on the line." — Jordan Myska Allen
  • "I don't know that there's anything to help, and I don't know what a self even really is." — Jordan Myska Allen
  • "The true mysticism... is full engagement with full love emptiness." — Jordan Myska Allen

Resources & Links:

Connect with Corissa:

If this conversation awoke or inspired something in you, please consider leaving us a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review to help us reach more people.

Thanks for tuning in!

Jordan Myska Allen:

The first thing is we acknowledge that they may never have that level of depth in their workplace. It could be that their workplace just is competitive. That's a big deal. And it's hard to be really open and authentic and like, let me share my heart and be vulnerable when jobs are on the line and money's on the line and you have to hit performance targets. Let's be honest about the context that we're in. Now, how much room do we have to expand, to play, now that we know the boundaries?

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Welcome to the Everyday Mystic, where we explore the intersection between human ambition and spiritual truth, helping you master the flow in life and in business. I'm your host, Carissa St. Lawrence. Today I'm sitting down with Jordan Miska Allen, the CEO of Uptrust and the Relateful Company. We discuss the challenges of relating on a deeper level in the workplace and what leaders can do to foster an environment of relatefulness. Maybe you've had something similar come up in your business or life and are starting to question how you're approaching it all or even feeling something more existential. Our guest has definitely been there, and so have I. If you're at the top of your game but feel drained, distressed, or even a little bit lost, I want to invite you to look at my strategic intuition advisory. It's a private partnership where we operationalize your intuition so you can lead your business to glory without losing yourself. You can read more about it at carissaintlaurent.com/slash advisory. The link is in the show notes. Now let's dive in. Hey Jordan, it's so good to have you here on The Everyday Mystic. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Thanks for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Oh, I am so excited to talk with you about relatedness, relational well-being, our connection to ourselves as spiritual beings, and then how it helps to enhance our relationships with other people, our communication. And then how does that shape our own well-being? How do we then become more well through that relatedness? So let's start there. What's the meaning behind relatefulness?

Jordan Myska Allen:

As we were talking, the thing that's coming to me, especially with the everyday mystic, I know you and maybe a lot of your listeners have this experience of suddenly there's something very simple and something very beautiful of this kind of everyday mysticism. There's a moment of transcendence or beauty or peace or stillness or emptiness. We often practice, like we're sitting on a cushion or we're doing uh mantras or something to kind of ground this transcendent experience into any any and every moment. And I I definitely have done that. I've meditated for almost 20 years. What happened to me when I found this kind of relational thing was like, I can do that, and it doesn't have to be a solo thing. I can do that with other people, and I can do it with other people even if they're not doing it. So the act of you know, you nodding and me saying this and doing a podcast and all that can itself be the expression of God in every moment. And so that's really where relatefulness is is our way of pointing to that. And and there's a kind of verve or like vibrant quality of holy moly, the simplest conversation can be a kind of total transformation of consciousness, of being. Um, and it's just simple everyday conversation.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

And the simple everyday everything, the breathing, you were mentioning practices, sitting on the mat or the cushion and getting into these types of practices, which so many of us who go on a spiritual journey take on certain practices because they do, as you said, help to ground us or connect us or feel like it's connecting us, even though we're already connected. But they give us an anchor point or they give us a direction to look or lean. And through those practices, we become practiced in it to where it becomes every day. So being a meditator for 20 years, have you experienced walking, living meditation where it's no longer just on the cushion? I hear that when you talk about relatefulness as well, that you're bringing the spiritual into every moment, or that the spiritual is every moment.

Jordan Myska Allen:

That's right. Yeah. So everyone's job in life is very different. But a lot of us, unless we are kind of in a monastery, well, even if you're in a monastery, often you're you're doing a lot of relational things. You're cooking and interacting with the abbot or whatever. This practice of being present. What if I do that in every single conversation? Then normally, like the emotional things and the shadows and the curriculum or karma we're working out is what knocks us out of our meditative, peaceful, everyday, mystical experience. But what if we instead allow that to bring us into it? And so the the hard things of life and the bringing up, um, treating my wife like she's my boss and rebelling against her. What if that can be the thing that that's what's waking me up? Practically, this it starts very, very simply where I'm like just noticing what's here right now with you. And I can do the classic kind of body scan and put it into words, or I can do a classic emotion scan. So with my body, I'm like, yeah, I can feel like this this tension in my back, and I'm leaning forward, and I'm like, oh, do I need to lean forward? Emotionally, I'm peaceful, and then there's some sort of self-doubt. Like, am I coming in too hard and fast or something? I can notice my thoughts, I can notice where my awareness is. And then all of those things I can apply to you and to our relating as well. And so suddenly I'm I'm present to this lossum or this bloom of so much happening right here and right now that we can start to explore. What's it like for you to hear this?

Corissa Saint Laurent:

It's beautiful for me to hear this, and it's a it's being able to hear that reflection of self because as you're present with me, it allows me to be more present with you. And so we resonate in that presence with one another. And I think that's why people who have spiritual practices or really go deep into self-awareness, become everyday mystics, whatever you want to call it, tend to be people that other people want to be around because they invoke a sense of presence, peace, love, even qualities that we might be seeking outside of ourselves. We get to experience it in the other. And then it gets to light up in us too. And I love that you came to this through a private practice of being in stillness or being with yourself, but didn't necessarily keep it there. And that for me is this very subtle difference between being an everyday mystic and just being a mystic, let's say, because a lot of spiritual or mystical people can practice, connect, or be at one with God, but they're also kind of enshrined in their ego as well. It's all just kept for themselves. And not that they don't exude a different energy and that that doesn't come forth, but there's not maybe the same intention as what you're talking about to utilize those very private practices in communal life to make it relational presence practices can fall into the same traps.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Like I've a lot of people will reify their sense of self, their ego. Because now like I'm learning to notice more and more of me, and I can kind of go in an infinite me cycle. Like, here's what's happening for me, and I'm gonna take more responsibility for my experience. And so ironically, I'm coming into a relationship with you to get to become more me. And and that's fine. Sometimes that's a healthy part of someone's journey. It can obviously go too far, it can get very narcissistic and self-referential. In fact, like I relatefulness is often in the self-help kind of movement, but I want to call it inter-self help or something like that. I want to bust out of those frames because I don't know that there's anything to help, and I don't know what a self even really is.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Well, that brings up oneness. Because if we're in self in separation or duality, we are out of the experience of oneness. But once we are in acceptance or pure experience of oneness, then there is no you and me. There's no us and them, there's no separation between us. And yet there is still in our human forms, there is that we get to calibrate with each other and resonate with one another. And also, as you mentioned earlier, maybe show each other those things in the mirror that we aren't ready to see ourselves, like the wife being the boss and why am I treating her this way scenario. And we get to be that for one another. What a beautiful invitation.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah. Of course, so many mystics who throughout history have had different language for this. The classic kind of ancient Greek version of talking about this. I like to think of it as just a hand. My fingers are both distinct and part of the same hand. Or wrinkles on the fabric of being. There's one fabric, and the wrinkles are distinct. Another metaphor that I really liked the other day that I hadn't heard before is like most everyone's heard one ocean, many waves, but it really emphasizes the one. And and it uh I hadn't heard this before, but it's like one ocean many harbors. The harbor is super distinct, like San Francisco harbor or bay or whatever is like really different from the Gulf of Mexico, and they're the same. It's the same water, the same stuff. And I really like this, and this is really the kind of oneness the relationality points to is that like you don't lose your distinctness when you transcend this kind of limited self-definition. You're and in fact, you often become more distinct. And that's what I've found through the practice of being present in relationship, is I'm really fucking weird. The other day I was I was at my favorite local coffee shop, and somebody thought I said something, and they're like, Oh, I thought you said I have a prize. I don't know what I said. I I thought you said I have a prize for you. And I was like, I didn't, but here, let me find a prize. And I just reached into my bag and gave them. I think maybe that's why I don't have my headphones. I gave them my headphones or some like totally random thing, and it's that's right.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

You were a pure channel for something that they needed.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, exactly. And it was hilarious, and I couldn't believe they accepted. It was great and funny and like weird, and like I'm like both totally distinct and weird and idiosyncratic in that, and I'm like totally non-existent there because like this was just a flowing movement of activity happening in this particular location in relationship with these two baristas.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, I love that so much. And and that points to going back to just talking about ego for a moment, because I've I believe ego is that point of separation for us all, that we end up getting really over-identified with that. And so when you talk about being weird and understanding that that's a quality of yours and leaning into it, loving it, expressing it, being it, that's one thing. But then there's those who really over-identify with, let's say, a quality like weirdness, and that becomes who they are versus that's just something they've accepted about themselves, and it's just a part of the whole. And that I see as an overactive ego, that there's something that they're needing this, they need that identity, and that could be the identity of weirdo, the identity of mystic, the identity of CEO, or the identity of anything, becoming the hallmark of who someone is rather than who we really are, and just allowing all the other things to, as you beautifully said, just flow through and allow it to happen.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, I mean, very, very well said. It the ego is just the things that we pick to include in the thing that we're willing to identify with. And so part of the spiritual journey is being able to say more and more is me. That's me too. That's me too. That's me too. Actually, I think this is what Freud said as well. Originally, he said, where it was, their I become, where it was, their their ego becomes. And so you can think of it as like transcending the self, but you can also, I think, just as rightfully call it, map it, think of it as expanding the sense of self to include more and more and more of what I'm willing to be seen as. And this is where the relational practice can be super, super helpful because A, I'm going to be confronted with stuff that I say, this is not me. And when I say this is not me, that's when I'm like, hold on. It definitely is me. It's occurring in my awareness. So there's that moment of separation. I'm I'm enacting separation right there in that decision to say there's in the kind of phenomenology of being right now, there's there, I'm gonna decide that there's a not me and a me. And I'm gonna say that's over there on that side of the boundary, and this is over here on this side of the boundary. So then I can reclaim that. But the second thing is to test have I really reclaimed it, or have I just kind of mentally said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got, I've got violence in me, I've got sexuality, I've got like all these things. Am I willing to be seen by others in my community as that? And that's when I know I really have no attachment to that identity of like not selfish or powerful, whatever it is I'm not willing to own. It's like, okay, I'm gonna show up this way.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

In the actual relational practices that you teach and that you share in your trainings and programs, would you have people stepping into those aspects of self that they are disidentifying with, or we might call them shadow, and show up in mock, or I guess they're not really mock, they're real situations, real conversations, real relations, and and bring that forth, kind of augment it so that they can work through it. I'd love to hear more about that.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Our particular work, we almost never augment things. I think it can be super useful. So I want to acknowledge that for people to be like, okay, let's go find anger and let's go do it, or something like that. But we don't, and we don't for a bunch of reasons. Some of it's practical. I want to train people how to be present in in their everyday relationships. Like with my wife, we've got a two-year-old and a four-year-old. And I don't want to train myself to, when I find a little sliver of anger, be like, now I'm gonna do the workshop exercise where I lean into my anger. I want to train myself to be like, I've got a sliver of anger in me now, in relationship to everything that's happening, including parenting, including her availability, including my availability and how much I need sleep and all of that. What is the healthiest, most honest, loving way to be with reality as it is right here, right now? And sometimes that's gonna be lean in. Sometimes that's gonna be, hey, can we have a conversation later? And sometimes that's gonna be me being like, you know what? Now's not the time and the place. And I find that when I've seen people that have trained augmenting their emotions in workshop settings over and over again, they're either really good at doing it in workshop settings and often not that good outside of that, or they only have that mode and they they don't actually know how to turn that mode off. And so you kind of give up your attachment to the the like fancy robes and you get the attachment to the monk's robes. And it's kind of funny. That's like you've given up your attachment to being normal, and now you're attached to being a badass workshop person that's always willing to go deep.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, there's such an interesting playground for us to explore all of that in ourselves, with each other. I love the work that you're doing because it seems very honest. That's the word that's just coming through for me. Just very authentic is kind of there on the edges of this, but not that. Like, yes, authentic, but there's an honesty about this. Maybe that word is closer to truth, which is then why it's coming up, but it feels much more honest than it does authentic.

Jordan Myska Allen:

I really appreciate you saying that. It feels wonderful, and it's it's cool because in in the sense I'm like, oh yeah, I feel like you see something or you're recognizing that is how I hold it, and it kind of increases my trust in you.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

You're beautifully expressing and sharing exactly what you teach people to do. I felt seen by you, understood by you, by you sharing how you're experiencing me.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, exactly.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

To get to a place to talk with people like this, to relate to people like this, in let's say the workplace. You and I met through a great friend of ours. So even though we don't know each other well, there is already a connection because of our friend. But let's say we're work colleagues, we don't know each other in the same kind of squishy way or loving way. We work together. We go into an office, we maybe don't even work in the same department, but we're on a project together. How do you work with teams of people like that to be able to have that depth of conversation and allow it to feel real and honest rather than workshop-y?

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, I mean, this is where the honest v authentic distinction is super helpful that you made. The first thing is we acknowledge that they may never have that level of depth in their workplace. It could be that their workplace just is competitive. Even when it's not, it's super supportive. Only one person gets the promotion, and that's $30,000 a year. That's a big deal. And it's hard to be really open and authentic and like, let me share my heart and be vulnerable when jobs are on the line and money's on the line, and you have to hit performance targets and things like that. And so the first it's like, hey guys, don't push past what feels right. Let's be real, let's be honest about the context that we're in. Now, if we're honest about it, how much room do we have to expand, to play? Now that we know the boundaries, probably we're going to be better at getting our work done if we can communicate better. Probably we're going to get be better at getting our work done if we can both say, I'm having a hard day, I need some a hand here, and be able to set that aside and get work done. Coming in at the like the actual nuanced level of what's really available right here. Let me give like two more examples that may be helpful for the listener. I know a woman who is overworked. She's basically covering two jobs in her, she's in a very traditional corporation, and they're they were gonna hire a new candidate, and they that candidate fell through. And so she's just been working these two jobs for four or five months, and it doesn't seem like it's gonna end. And she's kind of scared to ask for a raise or ask to put off those responsibilities because of her own personal stuff around that. In this situation, it's easy to be like, come on, you need to be more aggressive. Women are historically measurably less disagreeable in the workplace. This means that they get paid less and all sorts of things that we we want to encourage her to be willing to ask for more. And we have to work with I don't know what her workplace is like. I've never been there. She's tuned into something. Yes, some of it is fear, but some of it's reality. Knows that okay, they just laid off some people. So maybe there isn't a raise on the table. We want to be like, hey, there's some way that you're not claiming and showing up authentically or honestly with your boss and saying, Look, I'm at my limit and I can't do both of these jobs. And she should say, The result is I'm doing both poorly, and I want to excel at one of them. And so I need to drop one of them. And she can't just go in there guns blazing because there's a reality that we're not in touch with that she is that we have to say yes to and include. So yeah, I think naively people are like, just go in, guns blazing. And it's like, no. And other people are like, yeah, make sense, that sucks, and don't do anything. We're trying to thread that needle of yeah, show up more, be more honest, and stay in deeper relationship with what's available.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I also sense, because I've worked in corporate environments too, that turning the lens on what you're trying to get out of the situation to what is your boss or boss's boss most in need of? What are they trying to get? And being in service to that, it is also a fine line, right? Of being in service, you have to work with people who are also service-oriented because they can be taken advantage of in those situations if you're always of service, but your boss is not a servant leader as well. But I think even just operating in that way through how can I be of service to this project, this program, this department, your goals, my boss, this company, in the best way possible, and then be able to leverage that into oh, I will do this, this, and this to be in service of that. And now I would like this in return. And having that level of conversation even can be difficult, even when we've got tools and things to do. So in these situations where one person's doing the work, but the other people aren't doing the work, how do you move through that? And does it matter? Does it matter? You mentioned earlier that through your own practices, it doesn't matter that other people aren't in those practices. So would you say the same thing for relational conversations and just relations in general that doesn't matter? They don't need to be going through the work. If you are, that's gonna make a difference.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, with the caveat that of course there's a joy, there's an amazing and incredible feeling of joy, and and there's certain kinds of speeds you can run when you're with other people who share similar language and have certain practices. It's fun. But it's also extremely limiting. Like my my kids are two and four, and they're not relational experts. So if I if I need other people to be as evolved as I consider myself to be, which is definitely up for question, then I'm always lonely with my kids. I mean, that's that's a bummer. Or what about my old friends that don't care at all? Like I have to only hang out with people that think about spirituality the same way I do. I've made a very, very small bucket that the mystical or or God or or presence or aliveness gets to live in, and I've excluded the vast majority of life. And what about the trees and what about the animals and all that? They're not meeting me at at the relational level of opening their hearts and so yeah, so for sure, my practice is how can I come into remembrance of the kind of holiness that is here always? And maybe one way that comes about is alignment. There's a kind of quality of like loving what is it like when whenever there's tension, I'm not in alignment with something. So with this woman, this friend that I'm talking about, maybe she's I'm too scared to take the risk to ask for more. And so I'm just gonna suffer until we get a new person. If she can come into alignment with that instead of living in the in-between, she'll be very peaceful. She knows, yeah, I'm gonna work too hard, two jobs, and I shouldn't be. It's a little unfair, but I'd rather do that and have the money and have the safety than take a big risk. And the this like this alignment, this loving what is, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Suffering comes from thinking there's something wrong.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

That's so true. Have you done Byron Cady's work?

Jordan Myska Allen:

I actually haven't much, but I have some dear friends that are have been deeply, deeply inspired by her.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I didn't go deep into the work. I just read the book many, many years ago, and it struck me as very potent and beautiful. That is it's acceptance, it's being loving and therefore loving what is. It's just being in a pure state of I don't need anything from anybody because I am in this oneness state, or I am connected to all that is. I'm sure when people go deeper into the work, there's more to it. But for me, it was very profound in the relationships that I had with other people.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Because I had a lot of expectation around what they should do or how they should act, or what my standards were that weren't being met. And you're exactly right. I was creating my own suffering because I was caught up in the fact that this person wasn't me. Instead of just being more me and being more me in a more self-aware state, in a more aligned state, as you said, in a more loving state. And as we do those things, whether it's Byron Katie's work, your work, any spiritual work we do in the world, you brought up that beautiful word remembrance. It is truly this settling into remembering that we are that divine spark, that we are divinity itself, and we get to be that and get to be that with each other. And how cool to have this experience in that knowing and in that remembrance.

Jordan Myska Allen:

I can feel my heart, and there's a kind of sadness in me talking about this. There is a kind of price to pay when I don't need anyone else to be different. I come to grief. I'm I'm not just grieving all of the expectations that you're naming that I I have of other people. I'm also grieving I may not spend very much time with them. If I'm truly just in love with what is, and I'm like, oh yeah, this person is not able to communicate in the way that I love to communicate, then we may not be a match, and I have to let that go. Or yeah, I need to find the distance that I can love from. And that that's what a boundary is for me, is that place of where can I still love?

Corissa Saint Laurent:

That's a beautiful way to put it, the the distance that you can still love from. I was just back in my home state a few weeks ago and saw old friends, family members, a lot of which are not necessarily relating in the same way that I am these days with certain things. We can relate in ways that are nostalgic and known. The exploration maybe is not as present with some of those people. But what I noticed was something that you said that through my own sacred walk and living this life and understanding and being in that state, there was still so much joy in my conversations and in my relations with them. It wasn't like, eh, they don't get it, or meh, I'm not gonna bother with this conversation because it's gonna be somehow beneath my whatever. That I got to catch up with were 10 minutes and there was a lot of love and joy in that 10 minutes. Is there anything beyond that scope? No, but to have that moment in time and being in that presence was a really beautiful experience. Something that I got to experience outside of theoretically knowing or wanting this, but in real time, okay, I'm on the ground with these experiences, and I get to sort of test it all out. And it felt really good.

Jordan Myska Allen:

I'm curious if you found this in that kind of reunion. I find that I get very deep slices of people. So my ex-girlfriend from high school, her sister just died, and so I went to the funeral and I hadn't talked to her in a few years, and she just opened up in her in her pain of her loss. And I got a very deep cut of her. We yeah, probably had 10 minutes of connection. Yeah. And I may not talk to her again for another couple of years. Yeah, it's it's joyful, and I but I want to point to like the complexity of it. Like, yeah, in the grief is also love, in the joy is often also something like pain or or someone sharing their losses because they feel safe to open around you or uh any number of things. Like the there's a loneliness often.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

And I'm also hearing from yours story, and I experienced it myself in that limitation of time, if we want to call it a limitation, 10 minutes doesn't sound like a lot. There's also that and that expansive knowing that happens in that moment, and that's all operational. This is all just through a different operating system. We now can take in a vast amount of information in this split-second amount of time.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

When opened up in being this pure channel, I call it, being a channel of the divine. We get to have that kind of experience that may seem short and flippant, maybe to an outsider, but to you and that person, it was probably very profound for her to have that 10 minutes with you.

Jordan Myska Allen:

And and profound for me. Yeah. So beautiful about it. Part of the thing that I'm I love to train in myself and in others is like if we had 10 minutes and I didn't get to go as deep as I wanted, or five minutes, or 30 minutes, it doesn't matter. Then what I get to feel is that longing for more with that person. And that's what's real, and that's what's here. I get to be fully alive in my humanness. Presence or the everyday mysticism means the mysticism of longing for more depth with somebody that I feel the connection is too superficial. That's beautiful. That's like that's the cloud of unknowing right there, where I'm in my longing for God that I'll never get to meet.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

When you came into this knowing, and it I'm sure it was an unfolding experience of coming into this knowing, did it at first help you relate better to other people? Or did you have that period of where you felt like the oh weirdo black sheep, you know, crazy cuckoo one? And did it damage some of those relationships in the past?

Jordan Myska Allen:

I didn't damage any relationships, but I definitely was cuckoo for a long time. And I don't remember exactly what it was, but my sister hosted some event and it maybe it was a fundraiser for something. And I was just going up to people and like just going for the throat as soon as possible. You know, what you know, like, hi, I'm I'm Jordan. Like, what's your what's the hardest thing you've ever gone through? You know, or some shit like that. Like it was just like way too much. And you know, I'm lucky that my sister was is honest, and she's like, Yeah, uh, can you not do that? Even as I got more attuned and more available to the moment and and what is appropriate for any given relationship, I get to experience the me from like six months ago or something because I'm teaching people, and so they're often like just right behind. And so then I'd throw a party, and all of my community would be doing that with everyone. I'd be like mixing friends from different realms, and they're like, You're relateful people are kind of weird. I don't know. Like they just come up to me and stare into my eyes and don't say anything about that.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Is relatefulness in the rear view for you at the moment? Not the practice of but the company?

Jordan Myska Allen:

Is actually one of the things we're talking about regarding ego reminded me of Valerie Daniel, who's like the managing director of the relateful company now. She'll often say, There's nothing common to man that's foreign to me. That's the kind of ego expansion. There's nothing that's someone else can experience that's outside of me and my experience. There's a searing self-honesty and willingness to face our shadows and be like, yeah, sometimes I experience self-hatred, sometimes I experience all sorts of things. All of the unholy, unmystical, unspiritual things, like every day probably, that arises in me. And the question is not to get rid of it or not get rid of it, it's to fully love and embrace it as it is. So anyway, yes, the the reliefful company, it's awesome, it's super supportive of me. I'm so, so lucky. I get to be a part of it. We we do relateful camp, we do all sorts of things where I get to come in and really enjoy like the fruits of this 10, 15 years of global community blossoming more and more. And my day-to-day, I'm running Uptrust, which is this social media re-imagined. Eventually, not even social media, something much better. Where imagine instead of having to be polarizing and outrageous to get attention online, if you were incentivized to be friendly, empathetic, trustable, we basically created a system where that's how it is. And now we're like, cool, let's let's scale that up.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Where are you in the process of the scaling or the getting this out? Is it in beta? Can people check it out?

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, thank you for asking. It's in beta. And if people go to uptrusting.com, they can get on the wait list. And we we run events every couple weeks, and so they'll probably won't be on the wait list for more than a couple weeks. Yeah, there's a lot happening, the site's still a mess in some ways, as we're really focusing on the algorithms and the incentives. But it's really, really neat. There's incredible conversations going on there. From the everyday mystic side of things, you recently had a conversation talking about the do and the woo and kind of mixing these. And in a lot of ways, it's kind of about that. So we have this relational awareness, and we can do it in a personal growth context. We can do it in workshops, we can do it with strangers. Can we do it when we're talking about politics? Can we do it talking about Charlie Kirk and the implications of all that? Can we do it when we're trying to sort out policy and environmental regulation and all sorts of things? And so we're starting with these kind of almost impossible conversations that seem to never go well. And therefore, like the collective sense making is all behind closed doors and either in dinner parties or WhatsApp groups where everybody thinks the same way, basically. Otherwise, you're not safe to bring it out. We're creating an environment where you actually can have that conversation, we can learn from each other and have these generative disagreements and actually have a much better collective sense of these tricky, seemingly impossible conversations. And then from there we can expand to whatever arguments about sports and the bachelor and to eventually not even arguments, but just being online can feel really good. And you can, you're like, I have uh some spare resources I want to loan to my friends, and it's easy for them to find them. Or I'm traveling and I want to go find people that play Ultimate Frisbee or whatever. There's how to find your community or your people, or or there's this kind of promise of what the internet and social media could be or was at some point that it just veered from a long, long time ago, where now most people get online and it even when they're you're addicted and you're on Instagram, it's sweet, and yet you get off with the saccharine feeling of like I just wasted my time and I I wish I wouldn't have been on so much. Or there's just that feeling of did I didn't what what did that do for me and what did I do for others? And is society actually better or not? We're like, man, we can do this better. We can offer you a place of meaning and belonging where you get to both receive and contribute.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Deepen the relationships, deepen relational well-being, it sounds like exactly that.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

It's beautiful.

Jordan Myska Allen:

And and I think by default, AI makes it worse. We're gonna end up on this path without uptrust, which luckily we're not on that path. We have uptrust, would be one where every person ends up with their little cadre of eight or ten personalized AI personalities that treat them exactly the way they want to be treated. Right. And that's that's not living. That's what's so amazing about the relateful practice and what we end up getting to do on Uptrust is we're like, let's go gently, let's titrate it, let's do it at the way that's appropriate, but let's confront our discomfort and and actually be present with it and to it. That's where the real growth and transformation happens, and that's where aliveness is, right? I'm in Texas, so uh all of our buildings are crazy air conditioned and cold. You step out into the sun and it's like confronting, it's alarming, it's like uh you're hugged with this intensity of heat, but it's alive. You know, people pay to go to a sauna to feel that.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

I used to walk around Texas going, free sauna. This is just a free sauna.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Yeah, so I think a lot of the game in some way, the process of being an everyday mystic is staying right on that edge of being undone, of death in a certain sense. The thing and the person that I think I am or was, or all my sense of knowing, I need to go beyond that into the unknown and in and be reborn. And yet, if I go too far and too fast into too much discomfort, I close down. And then the ego or the self reifies even further. And some people call that wounding or trauma or whatever, fight, flight, freeze. But there's there's just that that healthy sweet spot of right on the edge of challenge and support. What am I available to? In what ways can I be undone? But not too much.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yeah, or in the way that is the most appropriate for that person and the time and place that it's happening. And we all have different speeds or different tolerances to that kind of intensity, right? Like a getting a tattoo for one person can feel like they're being shot at over and over again for other people, and they can kind of go into a zen state and take it. And it's like, yeah, it was painful, but it was okay. We all have our own tolerances, our own experience. So that too seems like something that's built into of trust, is that your experience gets to be welcomed in, but also challenged, it sounds like.

Jordan Myska Allen:

That's exactly it. We're just trying to make a better experience for the average person, but it ends up being, in a way, a developmental internet. Because you're like, okay, you can kind of get a sense of who you trust on any different, and even in one person, who and what you trust on any given topic. And therefore, the trust is purely subjective. It's relative to you. So if I really trust my favorite politician, that will be reflected in my scores in my network. But right now, if I trust only Trump, let's say, and he's my favorite politician, I'm gonna get the craziest, most over-the-line extremist, woke, leftist stuff in my feed, and it's gonna reify this sense of those people are crazy and my people are right. And so on of trust, instead, we can identify for any given divide, it's purely subjective. Who are the most trustable and most reasonable according to you and your network from the other side or any given other side? And you get gently exposed just enough to those views. So if I love Trump or if I love Kamala, I'm gonna find the person, not that's like super crazy, blah, blah, blah, but I'm gonna find the person that's like, look, yeah, I don't like some of the kind of implications for feminism of Trump's first term, but I really appreciated his economic policies, or that he didn't invade any foreign countries, or something like that. There's gonna be some reasonable, nuanced perspective that's honoring, and that's what you're gonna see.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

It's so different to the inflammatory and sensationalized aspect of the internet as a whole, certainly news media and the way that's always been, but also becoming more and more alike. So it sounds amazing. I'm so happy that you're behind this and that it's coming out into the world and everyone can get a taste. So people can click on the link that's in the show notes to connect to that, connect to you. Are there any final words that you want to leave with people today before we sign off?

Jordan Myska Allen:

One of the things I'm standing for is this like I can feel the emptiness and the oneness and the love. There's just so much love. And it and when I'm in this state, the nature of being is love and things are made out of love. And there's a deep equanimity there. And then some people I think get stuck in that and they think they're supposed to be that. But when I'm in that state, equanimity means I'm fully free to inhabit and live and have opinions and care and stand for stuff and say, I don't like that and I want this, and to show up, like we said, like weird and be a person and have an ego. I'm not my ego, but I have it. And I inhabit it and I use it for making the world a better place. And maybe it's just a dream, but I like having happy dreams. That's that's really what uptrust is about, and that's part of what but my dharma, my kind of like duty, my spiritual duty in the world has been is to continuously point to inhabitants. The true mysticism, non-duality, God is full engagement with full love emptiness.

Corissa Saint Laurent:

Yes. Thank you for fully engaging with this conversation and with me and with our audience. I know they're going to want more and want to hear more from you. So go and check out all the things that Jordan's into and doing and how you can get connected to his work through all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much, my friend, for joining us.

Jordan Myska Allen:

Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure and an honor.