Flowing with Life: Embracing Energy and Mistakes

In this episode, Nate and Ashley explore the concept of being in the flow of life, emphasizing the importance of surrendering to the energy around us. They discuss personal experiences with mistakes and the emotional responses that arise, highlighting the opportunity for growth and self-acceptance. The conversation shifts towards the cultural emphasis on productivity and the need to embrace curiosity instead. They conclude by discussing how discomfort can serve as a catalyst for transformation, encouraging listeners to trust the process and allow life to unfold naturally.
*In keeping with the theme of the show, our intro music was mistakenly left out on this ep...we're going to flow with it this week :)

Chapters

00:00 The Invitation of Surrender

02:57 Navigating Control and Resistance

06:11 The Grief of Letting Go

08:56 Surrender as a Pathway to Joy

12:11 The Flow of Life and Surrender

15:08 Surrendering to Greater Intelligence

18:03 Embracing Difficult Emotions

20:48 Surrender and Self-Acceptance

24:01 Practicing Surrender in Daily Life

26:46 The Connection Between Surrender and Creativity

30:13 Transformative Power of Surrender

33:06 Consciousness and Presence in Surrender

36:05 The Role of Faith in Surrender

39:14 The Journey of Surrender

41:49 Final Thoughts on Surrender

Find out more about Ashley here:  https://www.mountainmeditationgroup.com/
Find out more about Nate here: https://www.naterathmann.com/

Transcript

Nate (00:02.188)
Welcome everyone to Spiritual Unraveling with Ashley and Nate and this week we are going to be talking about the energetics of flow and being in the flow of life and following the energy and really not fighting it. So this is going to pick up a little bit on our last episode with surrender but I think there's going to be a different flavor in this week's episode. We're going to be

talking a little bit more about writing the wave of energy in situations and how we can

Nate (00:43.469)
take stock of what's happening and kind of use all of our spiritual knowing and intuition and tools and in a real grounded way make different choices than maybe our younger or egoic self would make. And this is all brought about by some fun conversations that we were having before the episode started. Again, this is kind of what we do. We do a warmup to get

ready for the show and I was telling Ashley about how I miss booked a flight for my wife to go to a funeral and it was a really big mistake in my mind. felt really, it really big and yeah, it was really hard for me and I was telling Ashley that the work that I'm doing right now is really letting go of perfectionism.

And so I found it so deeply ironic that I never make those kind of mistakes, right? And then I get this pretty big mistake that I had to sit with and own. And I had a lot of like, you know, shame talk and really harsh stuff coming up almost immediately in my mind. And I was in a place of awareness enough that I could say, wait a minute, this is an opportunity.

to just own that you made a mistake and that human beings make mistakes all the time and fix it if you can and if you can't let the situation just unfold and it's gonna be okay. And just that little reframe in the moment when I'm at the airport waiting to repick my wife up because she found out at the counter where she was trying to get her boarding pass. So it was embarrassing for her, it's embarrassing for me.

Nice, nice and heightened situation to really get this point taken home for me. But it was okay because I was willing to in that moment do a little a switch. So I just consciously tuned in and said, I can feel my old patterning come up and I don't want to go into that and I don't want to be in the flow of that energy. That's just going to lead me down a path I already know. It's very well-worn.

Nate (03:09.051)
I wanna see where this goes. And so I just, I wrote it and I wrote the feelings and you know, the story kind of went on, it worked its way out. Things, we figured things out, but it was really fun and different and scary to sit with that energy in a different way and let it unfold and say, if I choose to react to this differently and I choose to...

let my emotions flow through me in a different way, what's the outcome going to be? And it was really beautiful because there was a lot of beautiful kind of messages from the universe that were acknowledging that it was actually working out for everyone's best interest. And there was all these different synchronistic things that showed up along the way to kind of confirm that. And it let me have really strong evidence that, okay, indeed this

like style of handling a situation can work incredibly well and definitely a lot better than my normal beat myself up sort of way of handling it. That's my initial story. Ash, what's going on? How are you living in the flow of energy and what opportunities or adventures are showing up for you?

Ashley (04:29.013)
Well, I'll share in a minute, but I just wanted to highlight the opportunity for healing in that situation, in that moment when you had this awareness or this consciousness of how you would normally process it and probably try to fix it so that you could...

you know, maybe fix the part of you that made a mistake or was not perfect or disappointed people. And instead like allowing all of the emotions and everything just allowed you to be somebody who makes mistakes. You're human, you're allowed to make mistakes. These are these opportunities for wholeness and freedom because if we're not bound,

by perfectionism, if we're not bound by I can't ever make a mistake, then we can see this bigger picture, which is, the energy just wasn't flowing in that way. So maybe even it is for everybody's highest good that you made this quote unquote mistake. And so we can't really access that greater, higher perspective.

until we get out of our own conditioning, our own little prison we had put ourselves in that we have to be perfect. So it's a really good example of how to just work with it. And in this situation, maybe it wasn't so high stakes. And so it allowed you to really drop into the feeling and everything. But I also just love that, in having these conversations and keeping these principles alive in our lives and practicing them,

This is what they're for. This is what it's all for is to give ourselves these opportunities in these moments to disrupt our old way of being and create new ways of doing. So yeah, and I have been feeling in the last couple of weeks this kind of intuition around letting things flow, letting things move that need to move.

Ashley (06:42.601)
letting go of what maybe some patterns that I've been holding onto for a long time that I've been that have been surfacing just letting them move out on their own and and seeing where the energy is going. So this I've been in the last couple of months I've shared with you, Nate, that I've been really getting into

health and part of that has been having a daily exercise routine and it's just amazing the gifts from that, know, just moving your body. I mean, there's just so much good feeling you get from it. And in the last week, I've just been really laid out with this deep, deep fatigue. And I know I can't, I can't keep that daily thing has, has died for this past week.

And so there's disappointment and sort of resistance to that, resistance to feeling that depth of fatigue. And I've been aware of that. Like I don't need to have resistance. know, energy is always changing. know, we're expanding, we're contracting. And this is my body telling me to relax. This is my body telling me to slow down.

And so I've been trying to let go of that resistance and just go with the energy, go, this is the time for me to rest. And of course I also love rest, rest is great and we all need it. But I think, I suspect that there's a lot of energy that's shifting in my being and you need rest for that. You really need.

Nate (08:30.577)
Yeah.

Ashley (08:31.369)
No, there's a time to really let things integrate and move. So just using my intuition to accept what is, to accept what's happening, it just changes your whole relationship to it.

Nate (08:47.445)
Yeah, we both have an interesting theme in the stories here where there's the kind of the psychological or conditioned mind that wants to push through something. For you, was wanting to stay with the exercise regime. And obviously there's benefits to that. For me, it was wanting to fix the flight error, which, you know, in my mind would have reconciled the problem.

But then looking at the reality of what is the energy showing you and how much would you be like bucking the current? How much would you be really going into the headwind, so to speak, if you were to be doing that? And for you, illness or fatigue shows up in this way that really says the energy is saying slow down. The energy is saying recuperate, reenergize, resource yourself, not.

push the energy out, not expend energy, which is what happens when we exercise, which can feel great, but you need a surplus of energy to do exercise, at least in most situations. And it was funny because in mine, when I was trying to fix the flight situation for my wife, I could make it work, but as I was telling you before we got on, it was gonna cost like...

almost the same price as the ticket to get her onto the next flight. And then she was gonna be getting in like after midnight or something and it was crazy. we were, and then I'm coaching my son's soccer team and I would have to have canceled the practice for everybody to get her there. And we looked at each other and we were like, so there's this funny thing. It's like the kind of egoic you should, cultural.

of like, well, if you can make it happen, make it happen. I that's very American, right? That's very Western, like, get it done. And I could feel it. And I love that part. Like, that lives so strongly inside of me. That's a big part of my identity. But we were looking at each other as we're looking at these realities and we're saying, do we want to do this? This is going to be really disruptive. And the signals...

Nate (11:04.149)
the subtle energy signals, and they weren't even that subtle, just this energetic signals from the universe were just stop signs everywhere like, no, no, if you do this, it's gonna be incredibly disruptive. And it's just, it's funny because this is, I'm bringing this other aspect of it up to just reinforce that yes, we have to use our tools, we have all of these things, we have this knowing, and we...

you know, the energy of the universe is in constant communication with us, but it is also still life and it's also messy. And in the moment you, you still have these like really conflictual feelings, but all of that stuff with a few breaths and a few like just slow everything down, you can, you can assess it in a way where you're trying to be what you and I talk about quite a bit, like living a spirit led life. Okay.

Here's the really two choices. I can push through something or I can sit back and I can be in flow and I can take the energy and the signals that the universe is giving me and go with the flow. it's also just these examples are nice because it illustrates going with the flow can somehow indicate that things are gonna be like easy or smooth and it's

It's not that they're not easy or smooth, but the decision to is testing you or pushing you against your comfort zones. And then once you're in it, it's easy and smooth. you surrender to it, it's not bad at all. But that decision point, I feel like that there's something in there where like that's the crux where you're like, and it's so funny because you're like, am I gonna go with the flow? And you realize you're the resistant point. You're like the resistor.

in the electrical connection. You're like, I'm slowing it down. I'm stopping the energy right here. I'm assessing. I going path A or am I going path B? Which way am I going to channel this energy? One way has a lot, you know, it's got a lot of resistance already built into it and one way doesn't, but I have to consciously choose to release that and let it flow that way. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Ashley (13:20.831)
Yeah, yeah, it made me think about, yesterday I had this epiphany, of course, you know, probably have thought about it a million times or heard it a million times, but you know, it just came in in kind of a cool way. I was thinking that, you know, so much of our culture is driven by some sense of productivity. or at least for me, like I grew up in a culture that really

really focused on productivity. And I had a lot of pride in my own work ethic and my own ability to be productive, maybe the quickness of my mind, my, thought I had a quick mind and, know, but just my ability to like make things happen and work hard and do, do. And I just had this thought yesterday, that might not be the point at all. In fact, I don't think it's the point at all of

what we as humans are here to do in this human experiment. I think we have created this idea of productivity. So I had, when you were just talking, I had this thought about like jumping trains. Like if you're on the productivity train or the perfectionism train, you really believe it. You really believe it. And your effort and your motivation and your energy is going to...

be as productive or as perfect or whatever is driving you, you can and there's an innocence to that because you believe it, right? And when you start to like question that, who am I? What am I doing here? You ask these existential questions, you can start to see through that perfectionism. You can start to see through that productivity, but to jump trains to really get on, okay, I'm just gonna follow the flow of energy.

And that means I'm not gonna be productive for a week at all. And so it's really, really takes a lot of trust to jump trains like that and to get into the flow. Once you're in the flow, like you said, it actually feels so much better. It feels supportive. feels like synchronicities show up. There's a lot of...

Nate (15:20.216)
Right?

Ashley (15:43.903)
benefits once you're there, but to have that that trust that ability to to switch gears. I think that's what we're talking about. I think that's the edge of the podcast, which is, you know, to live a spirit led life. You have to be you have to be willing to to jump ship or that's a different metaphor, but, know, switch gears and and start to really trust.

Nate (16:06.029)
Yeah.

Ashley (16:11.903)
the flow of life and see that it's working in your favor.

Nate (16:16.62)
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna expand a little bit on your train, because I love that. And I think to just illustrate the power of it, the other, the aspect of it that's difficult is that there's constant reinforcement by everyone else who's on that train. And it is the biggest train in the station. It is the one who is driving everything. And you know, you really,

you can be at the highest level of that train and you can have pretty good success in our culture. I we see them. Those are the hustlers. Those are the grinders. And those people can carve out pretty, you know, quote unquote good lives from the outside. We don't know what their mental or emotional life is like, but they can have what kind of like what we see of as the trappings of outward success. But you can also see people who choose the flow side of life who also do

quite well and live a very good life. But that train, that success grinder train, I'm valuable if I'm productive, is so scary because everybody is on it in some way and invested if they're kind of in the mainstream culture space. And I think part of the scariness is just really not.

being a follower and saying, don't, this doesn't work. And so that, I think again, that's part of that pivot point we're talking about living a spirit led life is just saying, I need to switch trains and there's gonna be some awkwardness because some people are gonna be like, this is the train. This is the only train we got. This is the best one. Clearly look at these people. We have people that show us the way, the way to kind of material.

success, but it's not necessarily the way to live as you were talking about a full and engaged, present, happy, beautiful, spontaneous life, which is, you know, I think what we're going for. And I'll also say that I think just at a broader level, I hold this viewpoint that post pandemic and post shut in, I think there are more and more people

Nate (18:42.264)
who realized that that train wasn't the train. To keep using this analogy, this train, we're doing lots of train analogies here. But you know, I think that pause where people were forced to go inward and you had to kind of follow the universal energy of the planet, which was go inward, reflect, shed what doesn't work. Like that's how we're gonna get through this. You know, we all got forced to go inside.

And I think a lot of people could see in those quiet moments, like, what am I doing? I'm grinding this out and my quality of life isn't where I want it to be. And I think we as a society are, and I'm gonna move into my spiritual woo woo-ness a little more here. I think we're moving a lot from the solar plexus to the heart chakra. I think that's what's happening on the planet is that we're.

Literally moving from the 3D, from the third chakra, which is action, ego, identity, up into the heart, into this place of flow, which is just like, is the universe showing you? Step into that energy, touch base with your heart, and see what feels more or less resistant. it's, you could do this as an experiment and just see how life works for a week or so.

It's fascinating. mean, Flow is a really beautiful place to be where you just, and you also, life is a lot more surprising and enjoyable. You have to be willing to live with that amount of kind of uncertainty and trust, but there's something very liberating about it as well because you don't have to be so fastidious about all of your life choices. You know, you really get to.

Let it go a little bit. And it's not like we're talking about, you and I are advocating people completely throw up their hands and like, don't engage in life. You know, this is a dance. This is a blend. We're talking about maybe going from like 50 or 80 % really strong drive to just down to 50 and let the other 50 be slow. See what that's like, you know? I don't know. What do you think of that? Yeah.

Ashley (21:03.105)
I love this. Well, I love it. I love it. This is where I feel like we're going to nerd out. But let's break it down. Like, how would somebody jump trains? Like, how would somebody do an experiment? Let's break it down. An experiment in getting into the flow of life. What would you recommend? What do you think?

Nate (21:10.064)
Mm-hmm.

Nate (21:25.808)
I think the signal point to switch tracks is these moments you and I both experience, these moments of discomfort. That's the access point. It's a portal of transformation. You get presented with something that's big enough that you are activated. And the challenging part is that you need to move into like a second or third level thought where you say, okay, pause, I'm activated.

I'm sitting for a moment. What is this activation about? Why am I activated? It's almost always because of a underlining belief, and it's usually not a surface level belief. It's actually a belief much deeper than that. You don't even have to figure that out, but you just have to figure out, I need to stop and assess. I'm being triggered right now. And then in that moment, I think the invitation is to just

actually do the thing that you wouldn't normally do. Now don't do the polar opposite because that's not necessarily what we're talking about. It's just, okay, how would I normally react, assess the situation, you know, I'm very logical. I love doing this, you know, like how do I fix this? Like with the flights, I'm like I got home, I immediately started looking up new flights. That's the logical way. Then it presented me information that was very clear this is gonna provide a lot of resistance.

And then I sat with it and I said, what would the non-nate, non-logical way be in this decision? It would be own the mistake, let it go, and trust that the whole thing is happening for a reason and that this trip wasn't meant to be. And my wife was on, she was the one who didn't wanna go after she found out she was gonna be getting in after midnight. So it's like, I think the way that we do it is that we...

we use that troubling moment as the point of reflection and then pivoting and just say, okay, I'm gonna do this differently right here and make a decision that feels kind of scary but also in alignment. And I don't know if I have a whole lot more than that but I think that gets you onto a different path that is less the old path.

Ashley (23:42.113)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley (23:52.607)
I love that, I love the idea of using these moments where we're triggered or uncomfortable or we get caught up in resistance to what's happening as the opportunity. So you can practice in general allowing in your meditation or acceptance or surrender, you can be practicing that in your daily practices.

But these are these moments, these are opportunities and even if you mess it up, you're going to get more opportunities. They're always flowing in. So I love seeing that as the portal because everybody can relate to that. We're all experiencing those moments all the time. For me, there's also this like you jumped right to what would you do differently? And I'm like, there's so much in between.

there for me, which is around like feeling feelings. And I think you mentioned this when you were first telling the story that you, part of this was having to feel the feelings of messing up, the feelings of shame. You you, you visited that. Those feelings are usually, our, our egos are responding to those feelings. Like we have to get rid of them. We have to fix them. Like those, that's when the alarm bells come off and I mean, go on and

And so it's like letting yourself just feel your feelings. If you can give yourself a little time just to be in it. Usually there's so much information in there and in those feelings that can help you even know what to do differently. So there's an allowing of the emotions. I think that's the thing that I

would do differently is not just react to the discomfort by trying to get rid of it or fix it, but it would be to instead allow it to just be there. And in the allowing, there ends up, I end up getting a lot of information about maybe that bigger perspective, that higher perspective. It just, or insight or...

Ashley (26:17.461)
the other options that I might do differently. But there is kind of bringing in that sense of allowing that I think is such a key to disrupting your default mode.

Nate (26:33.874)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, think what you're, we're both talking about this in the same way, but what you're picking out in that situation is that there is a powerful, there was, the way that I was talking about it, was leaving a little bit on the table, which is what's in there? What's in those feelings, right?

because there is a lot of information in all of those moments of discomfort, because they're really illuminating false belief systems. I believe that most of the negative energy that we have in our body or that we feel as like negative emotion is disconnection from source. So when we have a moment like that, where we are...

like for me when I was feeling shame or embarrassment or any of those feelings, those are interesting moments because they're highlighting a belief system I have, which if I don't examine it, I don't necessarily pull into awareness. And the belief system is I'm not valuable unless I don't ever make mistakes and I provide and I'm always kind of doing things perfectly in fixing, which is a belief system that I've been slowly dismantling.

over a long period of time. But then also, the other piece to that is that those feelings, that shame, discomfort, the I'm not gonna be lovable, all of those kind of feelings are also indications that I am, that my soul, my source is like, yeah, that's what you're feeling and those feelings are basically rubbish. Like they're not at all lined up with who you truly are.

that is societal baggage, that's conditioning baggage, that's all of that stuff and it's completely rubbish and you know it's rubbish because it comes up and what does it make you feel like? It makes you feel like trash. You're like, God, I'm sitting, you know, you just know when you sit in a shame stew. It's like the worst, you're just like, my gosh, get me out of this. And I think that that discomfort,

Nate (28:56.322)
which is our sole signal that this thought patterning, this way you're believing about yourself is so wrong that we are not gonna, we're not gonna entertain it at all. We're gonna give you strong feedback. This is BS. This is not how we think of you. But for the human, the human in the being, sitting in the shame stew, what do we wanna do? We are just like, get me out of this stew pot. This is the grossest, yuckiest feeling I've had.

And so we just pull ourselves out as quickly as we can and we're using techniques and patterns that we've built up over a lifetime and that society is getting us, which is like, know, numb it with alcohol, go eat something sweet, placate and fix. All of these things is like, what's my quickest way to ease? But the funny thing is that the quickest way, the actual quickest way to ease

is complete self-love and acceptance and to just say, you know, you made a mistake, who freaking cares? And there's no reason to feel shame, embarrassment, any of these other things. It comes up and the feelings you then get to move through, but your soul is just like, mm-mm, that's not it. You're a fractal of God, you're a part of the divine, we don't make mistakes. This stuff is all part of the divine.

plan or maybe the Divine Comedy depending on what day of week.

Ashley (30:23.221)
Yeah, love that you're introducing the accessing the divine because divine energy is so neutral in that, yeah, there's nothing you could ever do that would not make you a fractal of God. Like you're just a fractal of God. But I also wanted to just insert that, yes, those thoughts are rubbish. Those feelings are rubbish, but they're also there.

because it's what your ego came up with to protect you. And there's also, I think, a piece around staying with, when you stay long enough with that shame, and shame is the worst. I'm so glad shame is what it is. Fear is awful, anger is pretty bad, but shame just feels like the absolute worst and must be avoided at all costs. It's like so awful.

Nate (31:18.614)
Mm-hmm.

Ashley (31:20.065)
But when you can really let it be there, there's something really beautiful about how your little person created shame to protect you. And when you really get into the specifics of that, when you really get into honoring that, it's actually remarkable to see. And you can't ever see

shame the same way again. You can't really see these conditioned aspects of yourself the same way again once you have this honoring of that sense of protection, right? And then, you know, for you going back to the train metaphor, when you jump ship, you're not bringing that shame with you. There's no shame on that. When you get into the flow, there isn't

shame. mean, you might decide, okay, I'll bring a backpack of shame, but it's a backpack of shame. You're not operating from shame when you're in that trust of divine flow. And that's this process of like ego dissolution or a spirit led life is really seeing those operating systems for

exactly what they are, how they got constructed, what was the purpose, and deciding you don't need them anymore. You don't need that protection. You have this other source. You're deciding to trust a different source. You're deciding to trust a different flow. And that's really hard for people. That is just really, really, really hard for people. We haven't been steeped, I don't think, long enough quite yet.

for that trust to take hold in a massive way. We're so disconnected from the earth. That's an amazing source. We're disconnected from each other, also an incredible source. And we're disconnected from what we can't see or feel with our senses. We're disconnected from this felt sense, from our intuition. So working on reconnecting to the earth, to each other.

Ashley (33:44.129)
to your own divine guidance, your own inner voice, your soul, helps with that trust that when you, you know, to really let the energy move through you, see that it's moving for you, is, it takes a lot of trust at that point. So there's a lot of those practices, these moments are.

amazing opportunities, but there's also all this practicing you can do connecting to the earth, connecting to each other, practicing allowing, practicing accepting. This is where meditation comes in and all our devotional practices come in.

Nate (34:21.117)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Nate (34:27.313)
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And since we're using this example, my flight example, and when putting myself out there with all this, I will also say, because you brought up a really good point about sitting with and acknowledging the feelings. And I did in the midst of this, I did just take 10 minutes and I went by myself when I was kind of really feeling it and I

did what I talked about doing in the Surrender podcast. did mirror work and tapping. And I just, I started tapping and I was looking at myself in the mirror and I said, even though I'm feeling incredible shame and embarrassment, and there's a part of me that just like hates myself, I am choosing now to deeply and completely love, honor and accept myself. And then as you're going through the tapping points, the first couple of series, you just say,

You acknowledge the power that shame has. like, shame, you you tap your face. You're saying, shame feels awful. I feel awful. I can't believe how embarrassed I'm feeling. All of this stuff. as I'm talking about these things as portals of transformation, I don't want to undermine or lessen the, there is incredible discomfort here and there is an amount of ownership. just, it's there.

It's in the room with you and you don't have to use the tapping. You can do any kind of technique, but I recommend something. could be stepping outside, could be earthing, it could be journaling, which would be fantastic, but some way of, as you were pointing out, the power of acknowledging those feelings, separating yourself a little bit from them so that you can work with the energy in a different way.

Because when it stays so close to you, you're basically reactive and it's almost like it's tethered to you. So you try to take steps away, forward or back, and if you haven't externalized those feelings, you haven't taken them out and owned them and said, I'm feeling this, you're here. And you can kind of almost think like I can hold it and look at it. It's just like, shameful Nate, like sad Nate.

Nate (36:45.87)
What's this, if I don't do something like that and then do some sort of a reflective or integration process around that, then it just stays so close to you that can't actually get away from it. It's like it shadows you the whole way. then I think that's when it can feel really disheartening, right? Like, these, it almost, feels like these feelings, feels like your feelings are filling you. It feels like you are your feelings. it's, that's, this is, you know, I mean.

Ashley (36:56.737)
It's such a good time.

Nate (37:14.329)
You know you're a therapist. This is a huge amount of work that people are doing just even on a psychological level. How do we separate just a little bit here and really examine these narratives that we have?

Ashley (37:27.339)
Yeah, I love that. It made me think of this question that I've been using lately, similar to what you're saying. This question that really pops me out of any situation that I'm in, helps me start reflecting on it differently, which is how is this situation serving me? What is happening here that's for me, for my growth? And recently I've been...

really unpacking some really hard old stuff, old patterning, old beliefs, core beliefs. And every single time I hit the emotions, every single time I hit the difficulty in it, it's just come, that question comes in. And I end up thinking, this is what I've been asking for. This is freedom, right? Freedom is being able to,

get to what's been operating unconsciously, and making it conscious and then having choice. I have a choice. I can go the old way or I can go the new way. But without unpacking that stuff, without these opportunities, like your example is perfect, without an opportunity to see that you can make mistakes, first of all, you don't get the opportunity then to...

include making mistakes as part of your humanity, which it always has been and always will be part of your humanity, you So just asking the question, how is this situation, what's in this situation that's here for me really gets me out of the small kind of rumination of how can I get rid of this or how can I fix this experience?

Nate (39:18.487)
Yeah, it really moves you into acceptance and flow because you're basically, you're not judging something as good or bad, you're just saying there's something in here for me. It would not be, it literally would not be showing up in this way, in this manner, in my body, in my life, unless there was something in here for me. And it becomes a very, I think in these situations they can become

a little bit of a trick or a technique to just remind yourself to be a little more playful. Like, okay, what is it? What's the secret? What's the secret message? Where's my decoder ring? I'm gonna look for it. It's in here somewhere. It also changes your orientation to quote unquote problems or quote unquote issues. And instead of problematizing situations, you become curious.

and playful and you're like, okay, what is it? What's the thing? What am I gleaning from this? And it is very hopeful too. it brings in, know, amidst all of the stuff we've been talking about, which can kind of feel heavy or scary. Again, when we talk about those pivot points of am I doing, am I going on the old path? Am I going on the new path? This kind of thing that you're talking about can allow you to inject it with some optimism, with some

vitality with some real interest and curiosity. And I think that's super valuable because then you reset your energy in a different way and you also begin to look forward to doing things differently and examining things differently. And that also leads to you living more in the flow and following energy a little bit more because that's not.

what culture is teaching us, right? That's not the grinder way doesn't say, you know, maybe they say diagnose like how did you mess that up and don't do it again. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about like looking in the mess of me like, well, why do think it's a mess up? You know?

Ashley (41:31.469)
Right, right, right, exactly. Yeah, I love that, you know, before when you were talking about moving from the solar plexus to the heart, what you just said is a really good way of thinking about it, moving from the problem solving to curiosity. That's the shift. Because problem solving assumes there's a problem. And it doesn't leave any...

room for curiosity and curiosity is so open, you know, and as you sit with your feelings and you allow the discomfort, you might not get any answers right away, but I just want to say from personal experience, it's worth staying. It's worth staying with discomfort. Eventually something shifts.

whether you get the insight or not, I am super like excited about insight and I'm interested in all that. But honestly, it doesn't even matter if you get any insight. It will shift if you let it be there. If you let your discomfort be, you don't move into problem solving, you stay with your present moment experience, it will shift. There's just no, that's like almost a guarantee. Even if it takes a while.

The timing of it isn't in your control, but there's just something about that process that allows transformation and you don't really have to do anything except stay.

Nate (43:09.317)
Yeah, I hear you. What it's making me think about when you say problem solving, as you said, the very important piece of that is that immediately presupposes a problem and it also moves you directly into a binary situation or this or that thing. And what curiosity does, if we move into the heart space and we broaden this out to the metaphysical,

Binary is very reactionary. It's this way or this way, know, it's dichotomous. It's not really great. It's not integrated. It's not accepting that we are all, there is no separation, that we are all whole, we are all one, we are just different aspects of consciousness. When you move into curiosity, the field opens up completely. actually, like curiosity is a boundless space of infinite potential. And problem solving is

binary. It's like, you know, this thing happened and then there's these different sets of answers or conclusions that we can come from them. But they have a limit to a certain degree and curiosity just moves you up into this completely different realm of what is the energy you want to show me? What's really happening here? And it allows you to just, I think another piece we haven't brought in, and I know we're getting towards the end here, but I will just say

The other thing that we're talking about here that we haven't mentioned is imagination. There's a way that we're moving into how do I reimagine myself handling situations? How do I reimagine myself in the world? How do I move out of, you know, as we're talking about an old way of reacting into a new way? Well, that takes creativity. That takes trust in the process. That's like, you know, that's the blank canvas. That's like, well, what's gonna come next? I don't know.

But I'm curious. I know this. This is paint by numbers over here. That's the old way. But this new way, it's full of creativity, it's full of potential, it's full of all of these different things. And it is definitely gonna be the path of flow. It's not gonna be the path of resistance. So that's kind of a really cool aspect to that too.

Ashley (45:33.397)
Yeah, and we all know what it feels like when we're in the flow. We all know what it feels like when we're in the flow, when we're letting life happen. We're not always conscious of what are the circumstances? What's the landscape? How did I get here? What's happening? know, sometimes it just feels random, but you can consciously get yourself in the flow. You can consciously allow life force energy to move through you and listen and pay attention.

And then your life just changes. It's unbelievable how life changes and frees you up a little bit more. It's worth it. It's worth the leap. It's worth the train leap. I think we're pretty sure on that because we're making a podcast about it. Yeah.

Nate (46:13.369)
Absolutely.

Nate (46:22.436)
Yeah, that's basically the theme. Get off this train. Get on the other train. Get on the Seoul train.

Ashley (46:29.518)
to help us all trade.

Ashley (46:34.409)
Right.

Nate (46:36.068)
Do feel like we covered that enough?

Ashley (46:38.687)
Yeah, I think we did it.

Nate (46:40.228)
Yeah, okay everyone. So hopefully this is gonna inspire you to, as we were talking about, just choose something low stakes and choose to look at it differently. Just take one situation in your life. You don't have to do anything grand or big. Just do one thing and be like, I'm gonna let this thing play out in a flow way. And I'm gonna let energy guide the way and just see what happens.

I think you'll all be pleasantly surprised. Cool. All right. See you next week.

Ashley (47:14.241)
See you next week.