The Whole Shebang
The Whole Shebang Podcast is a space to explore our collective awakening, often through the lens of unifying the Divine Feminine and Masculine in order to experience our most whole lives.
Each week Jennifer connects with various teachers, authors, friends, heart centered leaders and creators on topics such as coming home to ‘Self,’ consciousness, sacred sexuality, manifestation, abundance, inner alchemy and personal growth.
These conversations are aimed at supporting people in connecting to their own inner knowing, power, and divinity, to enlighten their lived experience, and move people towards their fullest potential. The Whole Shebang Podcast is here to create an energetic space and channel where people are invited to re-member who we are as individuals, and as a collective.
It's with all the love, and so much joy that we invite you to to buckle up buttercups, because we’re diving in! - xx
The Whole Shebang
Changing Your Mind: Why It's So Hard and Why Empathy Matters| Jen Briggs
In a world that feels increasingly divided, where empathy and true understanding seems in short supply, I'm inviting you into a raw conversation about what it really takes to question your beliefs, and why it’s so difficult to change even in the face of new information.
For twenty years, I've held onto a story I was afraid to tell – one about belief, group think, manipulation, and the process of being open to seeing another perspective, ultimately leading to me changing my mind in big ways. In today's episode, I'm finally sharing it, because I believe it matters now more than ever.
If you've ever found yourself questioning your belief or stance on a topic, feeling trapped between your intuition and what others expect of you, or struggling to understand those who think differently than you do – this episode is for you. As we navigate the intense political division and binary thinking on just about every topic, I believe our ability to rethink, unlearn, and truly understand each other isn't just helpful – it's crucial for our collective future.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 The Weight of Change: An Introduction
06:13 Jen's Personal Story
11:48 The Complexity of Faith in Authority
18:07 Navigating the Aftermath of Leaving
24:13 The Dangers of Groupthink and Polarization
30:05 The Importance of Agile Minds
35:48 Finding Common Ground in Humanity
42:04 The Call for Empathy and Understanding
48:00 Trusting Intuition Amidst Fear and Division
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For me to sit and insult somebody's intelligence or say that they're an idiot for believing what they believe, or to judge, to sit and judge and say well, I can't believe how you could believe that when we throw that judgment at people, it is impacting self, it is impacting society and it is ridiculous for us to think that it's going to help progress us. It's not going to help them, see your point of view, or vice versa. We've got to tear down this sense of right, wrong, binary thinking, judgment, lack of empathy, lack of understanding. There's a spectrum of perspectives. Understand people are afraid. That reaction against other people is coming out of fear. If we want to actually look for solutions where we can move forward in a healthy way. Consider the other human. Why do they think the way they do? How could I try to put myself in their shoes? Where did they grow up? How did they grow up? What's at stake for them if they change their mind?
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Whole Shebang.
Speaker 1:I'm Jen Briggs, your host.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you what you're in for here. Many of us have been running at breakneck speed, functioning mostly in our heads, and we've suffered from disconnection, burnout and lost passions. I believe it's because we functioned in part and not in whole. So we're exploring a new path embracing intuition, creativity, playfulness and connection in all of life. It's vibrant, powerful and magnetic. So come on with me and buckle up buttercups we're diving in.
Speaker 1:This episode has been Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right guys, let me try this again. Ooh, yay, yay, yay, all right guys, let me try this again. This episode has been sort of brewing and simmering in me for two to three weeks now. It's been one of those where I wake up at night with a thought, with a quote, with an idea, with a story, with an experience that I've had, and I'll wake up, and before I can, I almost can't even open my eyes, or I choose not to open my eyes, because I'm in this sort of lucid state of pulling ideas together or channeling, maybe, or wanting to be a channel for something to come through. And so I've been sort of compiling notes on my notes app via voice memo, so that I can just kind of stay in that state of letting things come to me. And, um, I wouldn't say that I don't want to record this episode or put it out there, but I just, oh, I just feel it.
Speaker 2:It feels a little weighty to me.
Speaker 1:So thank you for joining today and, if you can tell, I'm just feeling the energy of it in my body, right, and so I'm just going to take a moment, say a little, I guess blessing or prayer or grounding for those of you that are listening to this right now. Universe source light. I am open right now to speaking whatever it is that consciousness wants to bring through this morning, and to those that are listening, thank you for who they are and their willingness to show up for this conversation. May they be imbued with light and truth and an agile mind today and an empathetic heart and an intuitive body. Okay, may it be so.
Speaker 1:So what are we talking about today? We're talking about the ability to change our minds and why it's so hard, why I think it's really hard to decide to change our mind and to tell people that we're changing our mind about any particular thing. And what I'm going to start with sharing is a personal story of mine, probably one of the biggest points in my life when I changed my mind, and how hard it was, and it's taken me 20 years to share this story in this way. I have maybe a handful of people that are close to me that know this part of my journey and, to be honest, over the last handful of years, it didn't feel like something I was avoiding sharing. It just didn't feel relevant. It didn't feel relevant to what was happening in my life, or even relevant to this podcast. But today it feels really relevant and what I'm going to ask you to do as I share this story is to do your best to put yourself in my shoes. What I really want to talk about today is not just this story. What I want to drive home is the importance of us each having empathy and understanding for people, for the experiences that they go through, rather, for how they get to the beliefs that they arrive at, for how they find themselves in situations, relationships, communities, belief systems, structures, communities, belief systems, structures, because it's really easy to be on the outside and look in and go.
Speaker 1:How could you think that? How could you believe that? I don't understand how you might, and then fill in the blank. How are you still with that person? And behind? That is a judgment, right, it's a judgment and a lack of understanding and a lack of empathy. That is a judgment, right, it's a judgment, and a lack of understanding and a lack of empathy, and we are not going to get anywhere as a society if we're focused on pointing fingers and blaming rather than having just a shred of empathy and understanding and willingness to look at a situation through another perspective.
Speaker 1:It does not mean we need to agree with everything, and part of what's fueling this is obviously what's happening politically right now, and I will be the first to say and some people are just going to hate to hear this that I have been maybe what I would describe as relatively apolitical, and what I mean by that is not that I don't care at all about politics, because we have government, we have laws, we have things that have created the society that we live in, that have created a sense of safety. But I am not loyal to a party, I am not loyal to a person. I am loyal to truth and I'm loyal to love and I'm loyal to uncovering what that is and when we dig our heels in on a particular set of beliefs or religion, and I understand why. I understand what I think I understand and I'm seeking to understand more why we do that. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. I'm going to share a couple of my experiences and my stories. That I hope might help you understand another perspective. So what's the story? Jen Big setup I know you might've heard. If you've listened to the podcast you might've heard just like tiny bits and pieces of this, but I'm going to go a little bit more in depth today.
Speaker 1:So when I was in college, I went to a private Christian college and there was a pastor who was planting a new church who came onto the campus. He and his wife were from New York, so these gregarious, confident, outgoing African-American black couple from upstate New York and came into our mostly white campus and had a vision, had this beautiful vision of having what I would consider one of the first at least at the time, that's how I saw it and especially up north. I don't know, maybe, actually, maybe that's not true. I have this idea that in Atlanta there's more like interracial churches or other cities that are further down south, but that also doesn't seem quite right, I'm not sure. Anyways, he comes in with a vision about us having, like, a truly diverse church, and when you look at churches throughout the nation, it is one of the most still segregated places in the probably world, and so this vision was beautiful, right. It was that we would build this beautiful community, that we would seek to understand one another, that we would live life together in a really powerful way, like a village style what a lot of us are craving. And so we launched a church plant.
Speaker 1:I was a part of that, along with my then-husband. I got married very young, 20 years old, and many other college students. It started out in this pastor's living room and we helped watch their kids. We stayed up late and played games with them, we laughed, we learned about each other, about cultures, about different things, and we spent a lot of time together. It was really healing. It was really healing for me at the time coming out of you know a lot of moving around and things like that. And so when we stepped in this church, it provided this beautiful sense of newness and vision and hope for future, along with the religious, spiritual side of it that felt like there was healing and hope and vision and excitement and life flowing through us and light flowing through us and all of this great stuff. Right, so you might be able to sort of start to see where I'm going.
Speaker 1:So we're in this and, and eventually the pastor ended up. You know he sat me and my then we hadn't gone on a date yet he sat me and my the person I ended up marrying down and said hey, god showed me a vision that you two are to be married together and we thought that he, we thought that that was probably accurate. He was this sort of what he called himself as the man of God and slowly, over time, that position of power that he was in, the visions that he had, or the things that he spoke or the way he interpreted scripture, all started out as small and very like wow, yeah, that is right. We all saw the way that it felt really accurate and spiritually alive and all of these things. But then slowly, slowly, slowly, over time, it started to change into bigger and bigger things like I think you should probably marry this person. So essentially it was a marriage that was pretty set up and we obviously agreed to it and we had, I would say, a healthy marriage, for we were married almost 16 years, and that's sort of beside the point, but a little bit of a peek into the dynamics that were happening there.
Speaker 1:So then there was somebody in the church that was involved with the finances. He ended up getting investigated by the FBI for what was happening with the money. And again, this is 20 years ago. I don't remember all of the details, but that was a really big deal. He wasn't paying the bills of the church, but the money was all gone. We didn't know where it was going. We were, in the meantime, working two jobs and being launched this church. That's a little bit of event, also beside the point.
Speaker 1:And then he started saying specific things to me, praying over me about the quote, unquote, jezebel spirit that was on me, which, if you don't know scripture, is a woman that was supposedly like a seductress in the scripture, and he started telling me that I looked like the woman that his father had an affair with. And he started pulling me into the back room after church services. It was in a dental building at the time, so the doors were like these heavy, you know fire, like really heavy doors with no windows on them. So he would sit there with me and tell me these things and I was in denial about the fact that he was hitting on me and I was 18 at the time, then 19, and hadn't ever had a serious boyfriend. So he was taking advantage of right. This is kind of classic taking advantage of somebody that has hope in the vision, that is beautifully naive, that trusts in the spiritual position or this authoritative position that this person was in.
Speaker 1:Nothing physical had happened at that point, but I just remember feeling in my body anxious, and I in my mind was like something doesn't feel quite right. But my logic was not caught up with my body, because my logic was like he's a good guy, we're doing life together. He knows my now husband. Like that's not what's happening. But my body was telling he's a good guy, we're doing life together. He knows my now husband. Like that's not what's happening. But my body was telling me that's what was happening. Like. So I kept ignoring it, kept ignoring it, kept ignoring it.
Speaker 1:And then one night he asked. He said he needed help at the church with something. And so it was 930, like in the middle of winter, I remember it was very dark and cold, and so I pull into the church parking lot and there is not a single car there except mine and his, and my body is immediately like oh my God, what could he possibly need help with? Right now? This feels really weird, but if I make it weird, it'll be more weird, and I must be crazy. I'm weird for thinking this is weird. So I go in anyways, and it's just him standing kind of in the entryway of the building. He starts chit-chatting with me about nothing in particular and then he says that you know, if I'm going to be a greeter in the church, that he needs to teach me how to properly hug people. So he comes over and puts his arms down, so my arms have nowhere to go but up and around his neck. And yeah God, I'm telling this story on a podcast.
Speaker 1:I didn't honestly even know at the time what was happening, except that, looking back, he had like a full. Can I say this on the podcast? He was aroused, I'll say that Um and kind of stepped back just enough so that he could kind of look me in the eyes, and I stepped away and I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I asked him if he needed anything else. I didn't accuse him of anything and I left. So nothing else had happened. So but in my mind I was like, still, is that what that was? Was he, was he trying something on me? I still was thinking I was crazy. So I, um, I was telling the people closest to me at the time and they didn't believe me. They believed him because he had vision, he had hope, he was so smart, he was a man of God, he knew how to read scripture, all of the things right. So I must have misinterpreted it.
Speaker 1:And part of the reason, by the way, that I've never told this story is because I didn't want to be quote unquote that woman and I know that, with all the Me Too stuff, that there's been backlash on that and I haven't even shared this story, while it could have been a lot worse. There was a person in a position of authority and a power, and particularly spiritual authority, that abused that power, that was doing his best to manipulate it and manipulate me, and, um, but I didn't want to be that woman. I didn't want to be quote unquote the woman that was complaining about being sexually harassed, and I didn't want to be. I didn't want my name to be in the news and be associated with him and that church. I didn't want my future. I thought my future would be labeled as that woman.
Speaker 1:So I just, I just never said anything publicly, but I did call his wife because I was trying to convince the people that were still in the church that I cared most about, that I was telling the truth. So I said I'll confront him in front of everybody, I will sit down with him and his wife. I called her and she didn't believe me and she said well, did he actually kiss you? And I said no and she said, well, you must have been exaggerating it. And then I told one of the women on the worship team at the time what had happened and she also didn't believe me, which I don't.
Speaker 1:Blame these people for not believing, and this is part of where I want to go today. These people for not believing, and this is part of where I want to go today. When you're on the other side of that, you have a lot to protect and you have a lot to be afraid of. And so I'm not upset that people didn't believe me. I get that they were afraid and protecting what they were protecting. So I went to her and told her that, and so, essentially, I left by myself. I left the church because I knew in my body, regardless of if I could prove it, if I could explain it, I tried to get a professor from the college to sit down with all of us. They ended up having a meeting without me there and people still didn't believe what was happening, which is fine, and there are some pretty big words that I have hesitated to use until the last. You know, this happened 20 years ago now, but it hasn't been until the last few years that I've been willing to use some strong words like cult and brainwash.
Speaker 1:When you're in a scenario like that, that happens slowly over time. It's no different than being in an abusive relationship. And if you guys, the movie that is all the rage right now, that everybody's talking about things that are happening on set, is, it ends with us. And it's no different than having a relationship that starts out with hope and vision and hope, sweetness, like goodness. And one thing happens. There are 99 things, there are 100 things, there are 1,000 good things that happen, and then one thing happens and you go what just happened? That couldn't have just happened. Here are the 999 good things. This one thing doesn't outweigh that right.
Speaker 1:And so you're in a situation where your mind is. You get really confused because it logically doesn't make sense, but your body knows, which is part of why I'm so insistent on us understanding how to fine tune our intuition, how to listen to it, because that doesn't lie. Our mind just tells stories and loops. It's not able to tap into the full instinct that is in our body. It was one of my last episodes.
Speaker 1:Nadia Moonla said brainwash sounds like such a big word, but really what it is is when people convince you to believe their logic or that logic over what your body is telling you, it is overriding. It's saying no, let's believe this logic over the truth of your intuition. And that's what happens in these situations and that's why we can call it gaslighting, we can call it all these things Again. I've been hesitant to even tell this story because of all these big words that have become so buzzy and heavy right now, but that's what happened. So I left the church. It took some time for other people to leave and start seeing it, and one of the women reached out to me sadly just a year or two ago and said that sort of the fears that I had of where it would have gone with me if I would stay happened to her after decades of being there and it's a mess. It's a real mess there right now.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I wanted to talk about in this is when I left, I had one family member that was a soft place to land. They were the one that was speaking truth into my life, but not in a judgmental way, not in a way that was like you're an idiot. How could you believe him, how could you be there, how could you stay? I don't understand. How could you think that they understood, they had empathy and understanding for how it got to that point, because they actually saw it at the beginning, when it was good. And so when a person is starting to wake up, to changing their mind or waking up to new information, to seeing like oh gosh, this isn't what I thought it was. If we're focused again on just pointing the fingers at them, or when they come to us and say at them, or when they come to us and say you know what? This isn't what I thought it was going to be, and we say, fuck right, I told you. So it's about time you come to the light that feels so awful to the person that is changing their mind.
Speaker 1:You know when I ended up sort of unraveling my faith and my evangelical beliefs, I was in a healthy church at the time, I was working in the church and I probably some of the people from the church are listening. I have nothing negative to say about that church or the people in it, but when I was unraveling my faith in that, in that belief, there was a lot at stake for me. And when we're looking at situations right now, whether it's politically or it's people that you see in a toxic relationship or in a job that is sucking the life out of them, it doesn't have to be these months of these huge issues, but whether it was this, what I will call a cult now and part of the reason I call it a cult is because when people left, the pastor and the leadership in the church started to completely destroy the people's character that had left, so that you would distrust them, so that only the people on the inside were the people that you could trust. So you started like, while I was still in the church and other people were leaving, they were being completely defamed by the leadership in the church and it was. I would distrust what they had to tell me and I would trust the leadership first. So the nature of cult thinking or very strong group think is that you start to isolate yourself from what everybody else is thinking and, to be really blatantly honest.
Speaker 1:I think that we're all at risk for that right now to some degree in our society. I know I'm using strong words, but if we don't have an agile mind, if we're not open to hearing any new information or new opinions, who's to say that we're not in this thinking? That is saying everybody else on the other side of this issue is wrong, and I am right. What I hope that we can see is that there isn't an other side of some of these issues. Some of them there are, and I will say from my experience that I just shared with you there are people that are purposely vindictive and manipulative on all ends of all spectrums of every scenario, and I believe that those people should be held responsible and accountable. If people want to do that, I think we all play a part in that level of accountability. I'm really not speaking to those fringe edge, purposely vindictive people. I'm talking about this group in the middle right now, and I'm not just talking politically, but I am.
Speaker 1:That's what's been top of mind and heart for me lately, because what I'm seeing on social media is so much hate. It's just spitting hate and lack of empathy and lack of understanding on all quote unquote sides. But we probably have a group, a large group of people that's waking up with all kinds of different perspectives on all sides of all kinds of scenarios. That is going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't think this is what it's going to be, but because of this binary dynamic that we've created that is so completely polarized, it's going to be near impossible for us to find a common ground to communicate, even when we don't agree on every single point, if we can't have empathy or understanding for the other perspective or how people got where they are or why they believe what they believe. And it's easy right now, if you're listening to this, to think about those people, to say, yeah, you're right, it is hard for me to understand those people. You are also those people. I am those people. I am someone that somebody else has a hard time understanding. We are all in that together, and so if we can just pause and go, okay, somebody else has a hard time understanding my perspective. I'm having a hard time understanding their perspective. It seems so basic, but we've created such a polarized dynamic in social media and note that we're being fed ads.
Speaker 1:You guys, we know this, we know that, we know this, but I don't know that. We really know this, every single one of us, myself including. There are companies out there like, if Volkswagen is selling a car they know based on the little inventories that we take. So if I take an inventory that's like what's your favorite cartoon character, which cartoon character would you be? Or which animal, what's your spirit animal? These little things that we take or the things that we read online all of that is data that they're taking in. They know Jen's more emotive. I'm a more of an empath, so Volkswagen will feed me an ad that is more empathic in nature. It might be a family getting in and out of a car. It might be safety, so that your loved ones won't get hurt in an accident. But there might be somebody else that is really data-driven, and so Volkswagen is going to give them the data and the stats on the reliability and the safety of the car. So we are being fed ads all the time, not only ads based on our political preferences and our views and our values, but also specific to how we're wired.
Speaker 1:And so if we think that we're not in some state of illusion, we were mistaken. We all have the ability. We all have the ability to fall into a situation where we wake up and go how did I get here? And, to pull the thread through all of these conversations or the stories that I've shared with you today, I can now, in my almost 43 years of life, look back and say, oh, I never thought I'd be in that scenario. I never thought I'd be in that one. What about that one? And I'm guessing if you've lived enough life, you've had some similar experiences.
Speaker 1:And it's easy to be on the outside and judge and say, well, I would never do that, or I would never find myself thinking that way, or I would never be closed-minded. And I know like I lean a little bit more liberal, politically speaking, sort of. And there's a big like well, we're more open-minded, are we? What does it mean to have an open mind? And I want to almost just throw some of these terms out, because they've gotten so overused and abused and just like they've lost meaning. I think sometimes these words lose meaning. So what does it mean to have an agile mind versus an open mind? Open mind, like I get it from the Christian side of things?
Speaker 1:When I was an evangelical Christian, I was like no, my mind is purposely not open to changing my religious beliefs. Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. I am not open, and so I felt this inner resistance to people that were like, well, you should just have an open mind. My next thought and my bodily, primal fear was that if I opened my mind up to what somebody else was trying to convince me of, that I would go to hell, because that's what I was being told and I believed it and I grew up my whole life thinking that. So for me to have an open mind, to be open to every single possibility, meant that I could lose everything, and effectively I did All my relationships, all my friendships, my community, my job. They didn't push me out, but I had to shed all of those things and eventually they would have kind of nudged me out. And I have friends still that are evangelical Christians that are saying, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't Christian, how we're showing up right now and they're getting nudged out of their churches.
Speaker 1:So understand that if you're coming at somebody telling them to just have an open mind, it's not that easy and there's a lot at stake for all of us to just have an open mind. That being said, we need to have open minds. We need to have open minds, and these conversations aren't just binary Even just this topic about what it means to have an open mind. The point is that nothing is as simple as just do and don't. That having empathy and understanding for someone on why it might be hard to think differently is important. And the other thing, I don't know, I'm kind of all over the place. I hope that some of this is landing with some of you.
Speaker 1:I'm not following my three-page outline here, but one of the other things that I wanted to make sure to mention was that this isn't about being right and wrong. Again, that comes back to this, this or that thinking, this binary way of thinking what if there was a third option? What if it wasn't this or that, but that there's a third option in life when it comes to perspectives on things? And or what if it's not about saying, well, I was wrong, this is right, I? We're always evolving. Society is evolving, nature is evolving. Things are changing. Look at the way technology is changing. Look at the way our medical industry has changed, from hundreds of years ago, what they thought about people and the kinds of studies they wouldn't do, and then eventually starting to open up bodies to learn more about actually what's happening in our body. Think about how much has evolved If we wouldn't have had agile minds and if we would have felt like, well, that's right and this is wrong, or that's wrong and this is right, we wouldn't have moved forward as a society.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times when we're looking at people going, well, you're right, or I'm right and you're wrong, it's not about being right and wrong. It's about saying, whoa, something new has shown up here, there's new information here, there's new data, here I'm changing my mind, and that, to me, for what it's worth, feels a lot less scary and I think it probably feels easier for people. Well, let's just talk about relationships, like if you're in a romantic partnership or a friendship and somebody you're just really trying to hammer home a point to somebody and it's about and you want them to come to you and say I was wrong and you were right. Does it have to be about you being right and them being wrong? What if it was just like yeah, now that I've learned more information, I've changed my mind on that, and then can your response be instead of like it's about damn time. Just, I don't know. I don't know how you feel. But for me when somebody says I told you so, it's like yuck. It doesn't make me want to come back to you again and have a more open conversation. And also and this is just me, this is just maybe my preference but if I change my mind on something and somebody says, oh good for you, I'm so glad that you're able to do that and change your mind, that also feels icky. Can we just have like an adult conversation and go, yeah, cool, okay, it doesn't have to be this huge blow up of a thing, wherefore we are creatures that evolve and have agile minds and we get more information and we can look at each other's perspectives and we can find a place of common ground in our humanity.
Speaker 1:To think that what I do doesn't affect you and what you do doesn't affect me is complete BS. We are interconnected. There are studies now that show that plants are connected to humans, that a plant starts to perk up before the human gets home. They've changed this. They've been like okay, now, instead of getting home at four every day, come home at 1 pm, let's see if the plant perks up knowing you're going to show up. And it does. There's some connection. That is scientific and, I believe, collective consciousness. That's just my belief that has all beings connected. My dog does that. I have a daughter that is in college. She has no regularity in when she comes home but oddly enough, my dog will sit and whimper by the door before she walks in and she has no idea there's a connection there. That is absolutely wild.
Speaker 1:So for me to sit and insult somebody's intelligence or say that they're an idiot for believing what they believe, or to judge, to judge, to sit and judge and say, well, I can't believe how you could believe that when we throw that judgment at people, it is impacting self, it is impacting society and it is ridiculous for us to think that it's going to help make progress. It's not going to progress us, it's not going to help them see your point of view, or vice versa. We've got to tear down this sense of right, wrong, binary thinking, judgment, lack of empathy, lack of understanding. It's scary. It's scary right now with politics for people on both sides I think I'm going to say both sides, but there are many perspectives, there's a spectrum of perspectives. It's not just binary, even in that. So I understand people are afraid and they're reacting out of fear. That reaction against other people is coming out of fear.
Speaker 1:If we want to actually look for solutions where we can move forward in a healthy way, we have to breathe and I'm speaking to myself and pause and consider the other human. How, why do they think the way they do? How could I try to put myself in their shoes? Where did they grow up? How did they grow up? What's place to land when they change their mind if what's at stake for them is their entire community because all their friends are staunch fill-in-the-blanks, whatever it is, and they change their mind and then they get cast out or get ridiculed or get made fun of and don't want to hang out with those people anymore. You think they're going to come running to you if you're just standing there in utter judgment of them. And I'm feeling this like fire in me, and I've had myself.
Speaker 1:I've found myself in conversations with people where I'm not perfect on this, but I will honestly say that I am really trying to understand other perspectives. I'm really trying to respect the humanness, even when I disagree, and I also do. I'm going to throw in this caveat, and I also do. I'm going to throw in this caveat. I believe that there are times when people are blatantly being malicious or blatantly lying or blatantly hurting people with their power, that it is appropriate for that to be called to account in the appropriate ways. Call to account in the appropriate ways. I'm not saying that we should just shut our mouths and be quiet and walk around only with love in our hearts. Love is truth, truth is love, so don't get me wrong in that. Again, I'm speaking to the humanity in us all, to the ability to have empathy for people that are waking up and finding themselves in scenarios or communities or ways of thinking where they might feel a little trapped and afraid, and afraid to admit that they need to change their mind.
Speaker 1:When I was in that church the first church that I was in, with the culty stuff happening when somebody came after that pastor, I felt myself get defensive. At first I was defensive about him before anything weird was happening, because I only knew him to be a charismatic, healthy, caring guy. So I was at first defensive of him. But then, when people continued to come after him and I started to see little red flags or experience things in my body that I just knew was off when they were coming after him, the loop that was in my mind was like well, what do you think of me? Because I'm trusting him, I'm choosing to stay here. So if you're coming after him, you're also coming after my character, my ability to discern, my ability to make a decision and a choice. So I'm not actually just defending him in that moment, I'm defending my ego, I'm defending me, I'm defending my pride. And so if somebody were to keep coming at me with resistance, I have two options I can dig my heels in deeper and prove that you're wrong and I'm right, or I can surrender in that moment and say oh my God, yeah, I'm seeing these red flags and you're right.
Speaker 1:But my assumption is that that person that is coming at me and coming at that leader isn't going to have grace with me in that moment. They're not going to wrap their arms around me and say I'm sorry you went through this, or you're so brave to change your mind, or I'm proud of you. In the moment, there's so much fear that you're just going to be judged, and it's that shame and a fear of being judged that's kept me from telling this story for 20 years. It's ridiculous. So let's just check ourselves, check where your heart is. Can we, can we have love and empathy for people, even when we don't agree? Can we understand that we're all human, that there's a lot at stake for all of us?
Speaker 1:And I believe what's underneath, what this is underneath, is a huge transformation that our society is undergoing, that our world is undergoing right now. I could be wrong and this is my current belief and I'm open to change, but I believe that a lot of people are waking up to a higher level of consciousness and part of that is a deconstructing that's happening. There's a lot being dismantled, I think, or about to be within ourselves, within our society, and it's scary and it's hard, and I believe that nature is an example of breakdown, being what precedes new, what precedes the rebirth. That's a little elusive, because I'm not going to go into all of the things that I think could be breaking down or like. I'm also not going to say that everything happens for a reason. We have a part to play. We have a part to play today. This is my part to play there.
Speaker 1:All of you are individually wired to play a unique role in your community, in your relationships, in your world. We are all uniquely wired. Leave you today with a quote by Adam Grant. He says that intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more the ability to rethink and unlearn. Can we have the agile mind that, on top of that, and maybe of more importance, of a thread that I want to weave through in our intuitive bodies, to tune in?
Speaker 1:Because if you wake up tomorrow and something feels off, regardless of where your loyalty has been lying, if our loyalty lies with a person, a set of beliefs, a political party, whatever it might be, and not to the continual, to truth and I'm saying like truth with a capital T, and in my mind right now I have just sort of this evangelical Christian loop playing that says that there is only one truth, and I understand what people mean when they say that. But even right now, if we say, well, the truth is that Jesus is love, Agreed, okay, what is love? What is love? How do we fight for love? How does love show up? How does love show up right now? Is this example just you can name one in your mind is this example of what we're seeing right now? Truth in love? There are things that I'm seeing that don't resonate as truth in love.
Speaker 1:But logically, people can take something and twist words or scriptures or ideologies, and so thinking is one thing, knowing is another thing, and we need to be in tune with our intuitive bodies right now so that if something is off and it's confusing logically which is where all fear is born out of is our logical minds that are trying to make sense. We need to be able to come back to our body that will speak truth to us and at least navigate through both of those things. I can think of so many times when people have said I just knew, I just had this feeling, but I ignored the feeling. We need to be able to not ignore those feelings and be courageous enough to stand up and say I'm changing my mind. I don't have an agenda with this today, by the way, you guys, I really don't have a political agenda with this.
Speaker 1:What I'm wanting to address is the level of vitriol that I'm seeing on social media and the level of fear, which is understandable, and the level of blaming and just like spitting on people. That is not helping the cause. I understand that it's coming from fear, but it's not helping people unite and moving forward in a healthy way, but it's not helping people unite and moving forward in a healthy way. We all have a story that brought us to where we are today, and I think having empathy for that is especially critical right now. And love I mean it is February, after all, guys it's the one month where we love each other. Right, I love you. I might not have met you, I don't know you, but I have love for you. Have a banging day, thank you.
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