I Contain Multitudes: Debunking the Myth of a Single Purpose

What if your soul isn’t a job title?

In this deeply personal and philosophical episode, Lizzi explores a question that has followed her for years: Why do we feel so compelled to reduce ourselves to a single gift, identity, or purpose?

After attending a retreat where everyone was asked to name their spiritual gift, she found herself struggling to answer. Later, she was told her dharma—her soul’s path—was attunement. While the description resonated deeply, it also sparked a bigger question:

Is that all I am?

From spiritual gifts and intuition to psychology, neuroscience, identity, and human evolution, this episode explores the tension between our desire for certainty and the reality that human beings are far more complex than any label can contain.

Together we’ll explore:

• Why humans naturally seek identities and categories
• How spiritual communities can unintentionally encourage people to shrink themselves into roles
• The hidden ways we become attached to identities like healer, empath, teacher, psychic, or strong one
• Why cultivated wisdom deserves just as much reverence as intuitive knowing
• The science of attunement, perception, and relational intelligence
• The difference between spirituality and spiritual performance
• How trauma can influence our need to feel special, chosen, or certain
• Why understanding the brain doesn’t make life less sacred
• The integration of mind, body, emotions, intuition, experience, and soul
• Walt Whitman’s powerful reminder that we “contain multitudes”

This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned whether their gifts “count” because they learned them rather than received them. For the helpers, healers, therapists, teachers, parents, intuitives, and lifelong students who sometimes wonder if they are spiritual enough.

Maybe your wisdom doesn’t arrive in visions.

Maybe it arrives through listening.

Through surviving.

Through learning.

Through staying present long enough to help another human being come home to themselves.

And maybe that’s sacred too.

Because perhaps the goal was never to become one thing.

Perhaps the goal was simply to become fully alive.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. I am so happy that you're here today. You know, I was remembering this retreat I went to years ago where we were all asked to go around and say what our spiritual gift was. Sounds great, right? But honestly, I remember feeling this like panic on the inside. Because I really didn't know. I genuinely didn't know, you know? Everyone else seemed to have these clear answers like intuition, healing, channeling, visionary work, leadership, wisdom. I sat there trying to figure out what mine even was. I remember eventually landing on releasing. Because that was the one thing I knew for sure I had practiced deeply. Letting go, moving emotion, helping people release pain, releasing identities, releasing attachment, releasing grief. I understood that terrain intimately because my life had demanded that I learn it. I really didn't have a choice. But even after I said it, something about the whole experience stayed with me. It wasn't a terrible experience. I mean, I was pretty activated with it, but not for those reasons. But because I couldn't stop wondering why are we trying to reduce ourselves to one thing, one gift, one role, one spiritual identity? As if the soul is a job title. And then later on, I had this reading done where someone told me that my dharma was attunement. And for anyone unfamiliar with that word, dharma is essentially understood as your soul's path or sacred purpose. In some traditions, it's described as like this deeper truth of why you're here, the way your essence naturally moves through the world when you're aligned with yourself, right? And honestly, attunement fit for me deeply. As soon as I heard it, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I do feel that. Because I've always felt people intensely. I notice energy shifts, energy, emotion, micro expressions, the things underneath the words, the things people are trying not to say, the places where someone leaves themselves while they're talking. Attunement just made sense to me, right? But even then I remember thinking, okay, but is that all I am? You know, is there more? Is that it? You know, is that the only purpose for me? And I think that question opens something much bigger in me philosophically. Because humans have this tendency to categorize everything, right? It's part of our nature. We want to organize things into these nice little boxes, these neat little categories. We label things so that we can understand them. We create identities because identities make reality feel more stable, right? But I'm not so sure that the soul is stable in that way. I don't know. I think consciousness is actually fluid, right? It's layered, it's evolving, it's multifaceted. I don't know. It's everywhere and everything all at once. And I think one of the strangest things we do spiritually is try to make ourselves singular when nature itself is multiplicity. Also, side note, you know, this is more along the lines of my beliefs, you know. I know that that there are people out there that don't believe in souls, and and that is completely okay. All right. This is just this podcast is just about my belief system, okay? And just, you know, thoughts that I've been processing. Hopefully it can help in any capacity, right? You don't have to believe what I believe in order for some of this to help. So I think that one of the strangest things that we do spiritually is to try to make ourselves this singular when nature itself is multiplicity, right? A forest is not one thing. The ocean is not one thing, a human being is not one thing, right? You're not only a healer or a mother or an artist or intuitive or intellectual or wounded or wise, right? You are an ecosystem. And ecosystems are alive because many things are happening at once: decay and growth, death and renewal, roots reaching downward while branches stretch towards the light. Some seasons blooming wildly, other seasons look barren when life quietly reorganizes underneath the surface, right? And I think humans do this too. There are seasons where our intuition becomes louder, seasons where our analytical mind becomes stronger, seasons where survival takes over, seasons where softness comes back, seasons where we are deeply connected to spirituality, and seasons where we can barely feel anything at all. But here's the thing is that none of those seasons define the entirety of who we are. And I think sometimes spiritual culture unintentionally encourages people to collapse themselves into this digestible identity. We try to humanize it, right? But hence the spiritual concept, right? It's it's not necessarily like I don't know, it's not necessarily something that you can put in a box. It doesn't fit like that. The empath, the psychic, the teacher, the awakened one, right? But real humans are contradictory. We are intuitive and analytical, grounded and mystical. We are confident and also terrified. We're wise one season and completely lost in another season, you know? A lot of times, you know, when I'm working with children or with parents, I tell them right off the bat, like, I can say all these things and give you all these directions to go with your children. I can understand them and help you with them. But then if you walked into my house, you'd be like, whoa, I'm taking advice from her, you know, because it's completely different. It when I'm at work, I have, I do have this knowledge and I do know how to apply it with other people, with my own children. It's a little bit of a different story, you know, it's more challenging in a way because I am emotionally invested, right? So it makes it different. Does it mean that I don't know what I'm talking about? No, it doesn't. It just means that it's different because I am a human being and I am complex, right? So, really reducing ourselves to one spiritual gift can sometimes become another form of ego attachment. And I'm not really talking about like this ego in the arrogant sense. I'm talking more about like an identity. Because once we decide this is who I am, we start protecting that identity. And also it leaves no room for expansion. And then suddenly we're no longer relating to life openly, we're performing coherence. We stop allowing ourselves to evolve because evolution threatens the image we built of ourselves. And sometimes people become trapped inside identities that once help them feel safe, like the strong one, the healer, the awakened one, the giver, the spiritual person. And underneath those identities, there can be some exhaustion sometimes, or fear, or grief, or maybe uncertainty that no one feels allowed to be to see, right? Because humans don't just attach to identities, we attach to what those identities protect us from feeling. And I think that it's important to understand compassionately, because certainty feels safe to humans, especially when life has been unpredictable. There's something really, really comforting about believing there are people who simply know, people who are chosen, people who have direct access to truth, people who seem untouched by confusion or doubt, right? It eases the anxiety of uncertainty. And honestly, throughout human history, societies have always elevated certain people into symbolic careers of wisdom, like shamans, prophets, mystics, priests, oracles, mediums, gurus, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting too because I actually took some shaman courses and I don't advertise that. I don't see the point of advertising it. I just gained some wisdom and it's wonderful, you know. But I wouldn't call myself a shaman, right? And it is interesting that I do hear people talk about like shamans like they're some sort of god or something, you know. No, they're not. They're just humans. They're humans with experience, you know. And that can go for a lot of these other ones as well, right? And while I absolutely believe that some people carry profound intuitive gifts, I also think that humans project though onto those figures, right? We hand them our longing for certainty, our longing for meaning, our longing to believe someone somewhere understands the mystery of all of this. Because being human can feel incredibly vulnerable and isolating and unknown, right? Some of the biggest fears out there are the fear of, or is, sorry, that is the fear of things that are unknown, right? There's no map for all of this or no perfect formula and no guaranteed protection from pain or loss or uncertainty. And sometimes we want spirituality to remove the discomfort of being human rather than deepen our relationship with it. But maybe the soul isn't necessarily asking us to become one thing. Maybe it's asking us to become fully alive. And I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I started noticing this belief inside of me that I don't think I fully realized was there. That belief was basically this: that my gifts somehow counted less because I learned them. That if I wasn't receiving visions or hearing messages from spirit or instantly knowing things in some magical, unexplainable way, then maybe what I did wasn't actually spiritual. Maybe it was just psychology, just pattern recognition, just trauma training, just being observant. And I didn't fully realize how much I had put spirituality on a pedestal. Like somehow the most sacred wisdom had to bypass the human system entirely in order to be valid. And I wonder if a lot of people do this. I think that they do. We romanticize the idea of effortless knowing. I mean, we have like heroes, for God's sake, right? Like we put people on pedestals all the time, right? So putting spirituality on a pedestal is nothing new, but you know, this idea of effortless knowing, right? It's it's just so intriguing. So, like a psychic or a medium or the mystic, right? The person who walks into a room and says something incredibly profound that seems to come from nowhere. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe that there are people who experience life in that way, and I am so grateful for them. But I started realizing that I had unconsciously created this hierarchy in my mind where intuitive information that arrived through the body, through experience, through listening, through study, through attunement somehow counted less. And I guess it's kind of heartbreaking because what is what is spirituality if not deeper connection? And why do we assume that the brain is somehow separate from that? Your brain is a part of you, your body is a part of you, your nervous system is a part of you, your soul doesn't exist floating 20 feet above your head while your body just drags it along. At least I don't think so. I mean, I guess we don't know for sure. I might be proved wrong someday when science catches up to all of this. I think we're integrated beings. And I think some of the most profound insight we ever receive comes through embodied connection. I started noticing that when I sit with people, something happens that is hard to fully explain. It's not just intellectual. Yes, I have training. Yes, I understand trauma. Yes, I understand nervous systems and attachment and protector parts and all of these things, right? But there's also something else happening. My body notices things, my intuition notices things, my emotions notice things, my spirit notices things, and I allow it in those moments. Sometimes I can feel the grief underneath someone's anger before they ever say it out loud. Sometimes I can feel when someone is disconnecting from themselves while they're speaking. Sometimes I notice the exact moment someone shifts into shame or fear or survival. And there's actually research behind some of this too. Humans are profoundly relational beings. Our nervous systems constantly read facial expressions, vocal tone, posture, pace, eye movement, breath, energy, emotional incongruence. Much of what we perceive happens beneath conscious awareness. The brain is constantly gathering information and creating meaning from thousands of tiny cues. And honestly, I think that's part of why deeply attuned people sometimes just know things. Not because they're making things up, not because they're necessarily supernatural, but because the human system itself is incredibly intelligent. And and I mean, I'm not I'm not saying that we don't receive messages or anything, you know. I believe in that. You know, I believe that I can receive messages from other beings or whatever, you know. I I just don't know. I don't know all of this yet, you know. But we are wired for connection. We are wired for perception. We are wired to feel each other. And maybe what we call intuition is sometimes the integration of many layers of awareness happening all at once. Right. And I'm gonna name a few, but there's probably a lot more, right? Body, emotion, pattern recognition, energy, memory, experience, presence, and all of the unknowns, all of the things that we don't see, right? My my belief system is basically that I believe anything is possible, you know. I believe anything exists because we've been proven wrong so many times on when we say, oh, well, this absolutely doesn't exist, and then it does exist, you know, to one capacity or another. So who are we to say that something does or doesn't exist, right? So for a long time I minimized these things because I couldn't explain it. Like if I could explain it scientifically, then somehow it became less sacred. But honestly, what if understanding the mechanism doesn't remove the magic? What if it deepens it? Like, think about music for a second. You can understand music theory and still cry when a song hits your soul. You can understand how sunsets happen scientifically and still stand there speechless looking at one. You can understand the nervous system and still experience awe when someone finally feels safe enough to be seen. Understanding does not eliminate sacredness. If anything, something understanding, sometimes understanding expands reverence. Because the more you realize how complex humans are, how resilient, how adaptive, how deeply wired for connection, the more miraculous it all starts to feel. And I think maybe some of us were taught, either directly or indirectly, that spirituality only counts if it looks supernatural, right? If we feel certain things that other people don't feel or sense things that other people don't sense, you know, things like that. But maybe spirit moves through natural things all the time. Maybe spirit moves through eye contact, through safety, through timing, through compassion, through insight, through honesty, through the exact right words, landing at the exact right moment. And all we have to do is allow it and be open to it. Maybe spirit moves through the person who sits quietly beside you during grief instead of trying to fix you. Maybe spirit moves through the teacher who helps a child finally feel understood. Maybe spirit moves through the friend who notices your smile doesn't quite reach your eyes. Maybe intuition is not always loud and cinematic. Maybe sometimes intuition looks like years of learning plus deep attunement, plus embodied presence all working together at once. And honestly, I think I had another fear underneath all of this, too. I think there was a part of me that wanted to feel undeniably special. Like if I had some dramatic spiritual gift, then nobody could question my value. Nobody could dismiss me. Nobody could say, well, anybody could learn that. And that one hit me hard. Because I think a lot of humans secretly carry that ache. We want our worth to feel inherent, undeniable, extraordinary. Especially if we spent years feeling unseen. Especially if we learned somewhere along the line that being ordinary meant being overlooked. But there's something incredibly sacred about cultivated wisdom, about choosing to sit with people, to study humanity, to stay curious, to sharpen discernment, to learn how trauma works, to learn how healing works, to become safer, more grounded, more present. All of that matters. And honestly, cultivated wisdom may actually be one of the most loving things a person can offer the world because it requires humility. It requires admitting you do not know everything. It requires remaining teachable. It requires listening deeply enough to let life change you. And I think there are people who become so obsessed with appearing spiritually elevated that they disconnect from groundedness entirely. They stop discerning, they stop questioning, they stop integrating. All of it together. Not competing with each other, collaborating. And maybe that's actually what wholeness is not becoming purified into one perfected identity, not transcending humanity, not escaping contradiction, but allowing all the parts of ourselves to coexist honestly. The philosopher Walt Whitman wrote, I contain multitudes. And I think that might be one of the most spiritually accurate things ever said about being human. We contain multitudes. Different gifts emerge in different seasons. Different parts of us awaken through different experiences. Sometimes life asks us to be soft, sometimes discerning, sometimes nurturing, sometimes fierce. Sometimes healing looks mystical. Sometimes healing looks incredibly practical. A boundary, a conversation, a regulated nervous system, a good night's sleep, a moment of honesty, a safe relationship, a person finally realizing they deserve to exist without apologizing for it. And maybe maturity is learning not to imprison ourselves inside identities that once helped us feel safe. I don't think I need to separate psychology from spirituality anymore. I think understanding people deeply is spiritual. I think helping someone reconnect with themselves is spiritual. I think witnessing another human honestly and compassionately is spiritual. I think helping someone feel safe enough to exist fully in their own body is spiritual. I think learning how to remain present with pain instead of abandoning ourselves is spiritual. I think becoming more honest is spiritual. And becoming more integrated. It is spiritual. And maybe some part, or sorry, maybe some of the most powerful gifts aren't the ones that make people go, wow, right? Maybe they're the ones that quietly help people come home to themselves. And honestly, I think that that kind of healing changes generations. So if you've ever questioned yourself because your wisdom came through learning, through experience, through observation, through deep feeling, through surviving, studying, listening. I just want you to know something. The fact that you cultivated your gifts does not make them less real. The fact that your humanity is involved does not make your insight less sacred. You do not have to transcend human being human in order to be deeply connected. Maybe the connection was moving through you the entire time. All right, everybody, that's what I have for today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you all. And thank you as always for letting me have a voice. Have a wonderful week. Bye.