Being Different Together

#29 - Intentionality, Part 14: Where Does Wisdom Come From?

• Nyssa Hanger • Episode 29

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0:00 | 54:20

What if wisdom isn’t invented or owned, but discovered—ladled up from a shared “primordial soup” of stories, experiences, and ancestral knowing? 

Kelly and Nyssa riff on a listener’s question, tracing the roots of Uncle Murray’s intentionality sayings through 12‑step recovery rooms, counseling traditions at USF, spiritual practice, and the collective unconscious. 

Along the way, they weave in Jungian archetypes, Buddhism, religion vs. spirituality, childbirth and death, gardening, and the everyday “kitchen table” moments that season raw insight into lived, embodied wisdom. 

If you’ve ever wondered where wisdom really comes from, how sayings like “If nothing changes, nothing changes” take root in a life, or how mystery itself keeps us reflecting and growing, this conversational deep dive into intentionality, recovery, and meaning‑making is for you.

Main Topics Covered:

  • How a listener’s simple question—“Where does wisdom come from?”—turns into a deep dive on intentionality and recovery
  • The surprising 12‑step roots behind many of Uncle Murray’s most beloved sayings
  • Whether we invent wisdom or discover it from a collective “primordial soup” of human experience
  • How stories about spaghetti night, disco songs, and family nicknames quietly shape our beliefs
  • What 12‑step programs, religion, and Jungian psychology all reveal about rituals, myths, and meaning
  • Why our “human VR headset” (body + brain) might be the key to understanding wisdom, trauma, and growth
  • The strange way birth, death, and grief pull us into archetypal territory while life insists we still make dinner
  • How plants, mycelium, and Florida’s swampy ecosystem point to a wider, non‑human intelligence
  • Why some trauma survivors heal more from ethical communities and role models than from talking about the past
  • The essential role of mystery—why not knowing keeps us reflecting, creating, and seeking wiser ways to live



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Stay in Touch:

Nyssa Hanger: www.nyssahanger.com | IG: @nyssahanger

Kelly Brady: www.kellybrady.me | IG: @drkellybrady

SPEAKER_04

Welcome to Being Different Together, the podcast for people who want to make the world a better place, but no they can't do it alone.

SPEAKER_02

I'm Dr. Kelly Brady, acupuncturist, psychotherapist, and certified dialogue therapist.

SPEAKER_04

And I'm Nissa Hanger, massage therapist, aromatherapist, coach, and real dialogue specialist.

SPEAKER_02

Together we'll explore how conversations can improve relationships, make work more joyful, and spark healing for ourselves and our communities.

SPEAKER_04

And listen, we don't shy away from the hard conversations. In fact, we welcome them. This isn't about being right.

SPEAKER_02

It's about being different together.

SPEAKER_04

Welcome back, everyone, to episode number 29. Twenty-nine. Of being different.

SPEAKER_02

Together.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, episode number 29.

SPEAKER_02

And um Yep, here we are on the journey together. Trudging the road to happy destiny.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, hopefully, hopefully to find a pleasant path.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

I'd say the path's been been pretty pleasant. Yeah. Yeah. We decided that even though we we have run through all the intentionality sayings in our long-lasting intentionality series that has at this point been half of the episodes we've published so far. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's just been so good. I mean, I feel like we I think we stumbled on it. I think just kind of we just stumbled on it. Well you should do this.

SPEAKER_04

I remember well I we we had a list of possible topics, and on that list it was why worry call Murray. And we thought we would tell the story of Murray and the t-shirts from his retirement party that say Why worry call Murray. Why worry call Murray? And then that turned into going through each and every one of his intentionality sayings. Yeah. Um, which if you are just tuning in, definitely look back to episode number sixteen where we started. Um but this is gonna be part fourteen, the wrap-up of intentionality.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, and it leads me to to this. Did we invent it that we were gonna do that episode, that series, or did we discover it?

SPEAKER_04

Um I'm trying to think of how I mean I I think by the time we recorded the first episode, we started going through the sayings. Yeah. And then once we s then it was like, all right, well, let's just go through these sayings. Yeah. I don't know, I don't know if like when we I think by the time we pressed record on that first episode, episode 16, part one. I think by then we had decided to go through the We had committed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. We had committed to this.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, but it was sort of a uh we weren't we weren't thinking about this for a long time. We just kind of did it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, we discovered it, like it bubbled up, right? It bubbled up. Like I think through the natural process of that was my experience with it, through the natural process of our creative endeavor together, which it's which most of that is just like a conversation. We sit down, we create a conversation with one another, and then we're talking about things and thinking about things and researching things in between and you know, kind of um, I don't know what, cooking, marinating on the on the pod the week before we do it and talking about it and taking morning. You know, we took our morning walk this morning with the popcorn. The pop meister.

SPEAKER_03

That's what we call our dog. Pop goes the weasel. Yeah, the good little pop-tart. Yeah. The pop tart. Uh-huh. Popy chulo. Oh, paparazzi. Paparazzi.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, if you have an animal, it it must have more than one name. Right? Have we never said that one before? I don't think we have.

SPEAKER_02

It's so funny because he is kind of like the paparazzi. I mean, he follows all the other n all the other dogs in the neighborhood and wants to make friends. I guess the paparazzi doesn't want to make friends.

SPEAKER_04

No. No, he's kind of the opposite.

SPEAKER_03

But he he definitely is tracking.

SPEAKER_04

He's a fan.

SPEAKER_03

He's definitely.

SPEAKER_02

He's like, oh, you're a dog?

SPEAKER_03

I'm a dog. I'm a dog too. I'm a dog too. Let's be friends. Hi. You're a dog. I'm a dog too. Hi. He's so cute.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So we talk about the pod all the time, right? I mean, not all the time, but it comes up. We're thinking about it. And I guess this idea of discovery sort of like leads me into what? Oh no. What? Are we not recording?

SPEAKER_04

No, no, no, no. It's not one of those. I'm so sorry. I just interrupted you. It's okay. I interrupt you all the time. It's like sometimes I I don't know if it is my dad that I hear in my head when the it's like the things that I know he would say in the conversation. Yeah. But I just I have to say, there was this time when I was in high school where somehow me and my friends started to do we called it spaghetti night. And it was like I feel like one year we had spaghetti on, it was the fifth of the month. I think it started on my birthday. We had spaghetti dinner. And then the next month my friend's birthday was also on the fifth of November. Yeah. And we had spaghetti night. We had this sort of tradition.

SPEAKER_02

I just want spaghetti now.

SPEAKER_04

And my friends would come over and we would have it at my house. Like my dad would make spaghetti. So I remember, and I mean memory being what it was, was it spaghetti night or not? I don't know. But I just remember being at the kitchen table with my high school friends, my mom and my dad, and my dad out of seemingly nowhere, um, making a observation that I guess he had been thinking about for a while, where he said, Did you know that discovery starts with disco? And we're like, What? Discovery starts with discovery. He wrote a song about how discovery starts with disco. He like wrote a disco song called Discovery Starts with Disco. And so there you said the word discovery. I'd have to go back to the transcripts and look at what were you even going to say there? That's why we apologize. It's totally okay. I I love that kind of thing. And I just wanted to say, well, did you know that Discovery starts with Disco? And he particularly liked it because in the middle of the word discovery was OV, and that was his initials that he went by for his name. So it also had OV in it. So it's like anything with an O and a V that got his attention. That's why he was so full of love, you know. Oh, because the OV. That's sweet. I mean, he was called Overy as a uh a kid. Kids teach them I call them Ovary, you know.

SPEAKER_01

I mean kids can just be so awful.

SPEAKER_04

But anyway, so you said you talked about discovery, and I just really needed to point out my dad really needed me to point out that I just want to make sure you know it discards with disco.

SPEAKER_02

You know, like I'm I'm just imagining if I would have said something like that around the dinner table, you know, what might what my what particularly like what my dot my daughter would have been like, mom.

SPEAKER_04

And here I am talking about it, you know, three decades later. Four three two dec How man?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I yeah. So I I th going on three. You got a text message this morning or at some point from a uh listener, a loyal listener who sent in a text that basically said that their observation was that there was a lot in the wisdom. I guess I had said at something, like nothing changes, nothing changes.

SPEAKER_04

Nothing changes, everything changes, which is one of Murray's sayings. So in the Is that one of Murray's sayings? Yeah, I remember us discussing it. Nothing changed everything changes.

SPEAKER_02

Everything works, nothing works.

SPEAKER_04

That's what it is.

SPEAKER_02

Everything works, nothing works, I think is the saying.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, and then you turned it into everything changes.

SPEAKER_00

No, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

SPEAKER_04

Is what you said? Is what I said.

SPEAKER_00

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

SPEAKER_04

Wow, I completely misremember that entire thing.

SPEAKER_02

It's totally okay. Wow. I memory is so crazy. It is. And it's good to I I I I just am wrong so much with what I remember.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and I I I think I'm also wrong a lot of the times that I'm convinced that I'm right. Yeah. I mean, like right now you might be. Hey, maybe I'm right those times I'm convinced I'm right. Oh, okay, yeah. So we we got a message in from one of our regular listeners asking, you know, kind of about like I mean, I I took it as sort of amusing on, wait a second, like where does where do these sayings, not not just the intentionality sayings, but like where do I I I would boil it down to where does wisdom come from? Yes. Where does wisdom come from? And I exactly and my initial response was well, many of the sayings from Murray came from 12-step rooms. Like we know that that he got at least some of them from there.

SPEAKER_02

Well, can I can I give an can I offer a little historical context for that? Sure. So the counseling program that Murray Lansman and a few of his colleagues set up at USF, they called it the Rehabilitation Counseling Program. Yes. And it was a three-prong program that trained counselors in working with people who had physical disabilities, people who had psychiatric illness, or people who had addictive disorders.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

And what was going on in the culture at that time, and continues to go on, is that there was a really enormous influence of the twelve-step um the twelve-step programs. That the influence of the twelve-step programs really got into a lot of modern psychology.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And I think it got into a lot of pop psychology, and it continues to. Sure. It's been a huge sociocultural phenomenon.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, you know, I think it's a really actually a very uniquely American, I'm gonna call it a religion, and now people all over the internet are like, Kelly Braceful shit. She says it's a religion. It clearly says it's a spiritual program, not a religious program.

SPEAKER_04

But well, as a major in religion, major and religious studies. When you look at certain definitions of religion, like the study of religion and popular culture in particular, I do think that there are people that study yeah, twelve-step twelve-step recovery as as religion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, because it has certain ceremonies.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that there are there are myths, there are rituals, you know, there it has a higher religion.

SPEAKER_02

It doesn't necessarily have a story around creation.

SPEAKER_04

Isn't that one of the things about making what makes a religion you would my memory, mm-hmm being what it is, of religion is that um yeah, that there is one of the one of the foundational things is that there is a belief in a higher power um that gives you either the power to change circumstances or the power to accept circumstances. Um that there are um certain myths and rituals uh associated with communicating with that higher power. Um, that there is a community. God, and there's one other part of it that I that I is missing from my definition right now, so I'll have to go and look that up at some point. What is that other part? Because I feel like there were four parts. Um yeah, it's not coming to me. But yeah, that I but then also this community. So there are there are places that 12-step does fit the definition of religion. Now, if it actually does it actually function as religion for those people, is uh you know, up for those people, but from the outside, an an exterior observer could see a lot of correlation between those 12-step rooms and how we have come to define religion based on you know, the the definition of religion evolved over time because at first in the the Western study of it, it was very much based on Christianity. Uh-huh. You know, like like a god, but then Buddhism, how are you gonna put Buddhism in there? So they had to sort of change things up a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Um I think there are people who practice the twelve-step program religiously. Might be fair to say that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, I'm not I'm not sure exactly, but I I uh regardless regardless, sure. I'm just to back to it, back back to the history. Yeah, I think that this is why Murray um was so influenced by that. Because there were there was also a a professor in my program, in the program that I went through, and his name was Fred Dickman. He was uh a a wonderful, he was a recovering alcoholic, and he announced that publicly, so I'm not uh violating his anonymity by saying that. And um he uh was really very influential in the addiction medicine field here in Tampa and he he ran the EAP program for uh Anheuser Busch, which back when Busch Gardens actually had you know, Busch Gardens is here in Tampa, right?

SPEAKER_04

Like employee assistant program.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yeah, he ran the employee assistance program for Anheuser Busch, and that was a and that was really funny in a way because he was you know, he was very well known for for working with recovering alcoholics.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, literally the coll in Tampa, the college and the Busch facility and Busch Gardens, which is affiliated with the beer. Right. Um, they're all within a I don't know Stone's throw of one another.

SPEAKER_02

Totally. Yeah, like it you could be at the top of one of the roller coasters on Busch Gardens and look over and see USF. Totally from there.

SPEAKER_04

I used to sit in the library, third floor where religious studies was and look at the roller coasters.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. A hundred percent. And I, you know, uh there used to be a brewery there. Uh-huh. Um that has since closed, but that whole part of town just used to smell like brewery, you know, smell like yeasty, whatever, hoppy bush beer.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, so Marie got some of this stuff from 12 Stout.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes, and that program, the program that I went through was was really influenced by that because at that point the 12-step program was the gold standard for treating people who had substance use disorders. That has evolved since then. Yeah. Um and it still remains a really large force in the treatment of substance use disorders. And I think that there are people who would say it's still the best.

SPEAKER_05

Sure.

SPEAKER_02

Um you know, I don't want to get into that scientific discussion at the moment, but my point, my point is there are some really beautiful things that that came out of that program that then came from Uncle that that came, you know, through Uncle Murray and resonated with me because at that point in my life I was pretty embroiled. Uh I love the word embroiled. Embroiled. It's the wrong word. I was involved. I was involved. No, you are embroidered. But you were talking about, you know, sort of like the wisdom that comes from, say, like Marie Forlio, the wisdom that comes from Robin Sharma, the wisdom that comes from Buddhism, the wisdom that comes from Christianity.

SPEAKER_04

You've got the 12-step wisdom, but it's like where did 12-step, where did the influencers in 12-step get the wisdom from? Right. And, you know, my I sort of go back to, well, uh as far as I can tell, it you know, we're all pulling things up. Where does creativity come from? I mean, it comes from this collective unconscious, uh-huh, which all the the sages from all time are tapping into, again, as far as I'm concerned. Not that I've really known, but that's just sort of how I I think about it. So it's like it we're all pulling it up from the same primordial consciousness soup. I always think of it as a soup, too. It's amazing that you said that, because I was thinking that in my mind. And then it's a soup. I feel like okay, I'm just like spitballing here, but it's like we pull it up, it's like we get the ladle, we're like, hmm, what am I gonna find this time? Right. Pull it up, mmm, taste it. That's it, that's a tasty. And then we share it, but when we share it, it kind of ends up going back in there, and then it merges with other things, and so you get this sort of perennial wisdom or perennial philosophy that comes back again and again in all these different forms, like Joseph Campbell found all of those correlations or um similarities between different creation myths. And you know, I kind of go there with it, but then I think there also is an element of once we turned into literate cultures and were able to write things down, then it wasn't just this, these things that were spoken orally that these stories were told and retold and reworked and blah, blah, blah. But then we have accurate records. So, you know, we can be like Benjamin Franklin did say blah blah blah, because we have this document, you know what I mean? Like we can trace, which it even just tracing quotes back to where they come from sometimes is very difficult, as many people that have written books have shared. And they have a quote and they don't know who to attribute it to. Right. They know somebody said it somewhere. Right. So I think that there's that element too. So it's like sometimes wisdom is sort of this this culmination of the history of human um ponderings and musings about life.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, or was it down in the soup all along? I think also human beings have the virtual reality headset that allows them to experience this shared reality.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, you mean because like we're in bodies and we sense. We're in bodies and we sense things.

SPEAKER_02

So if you think, well, reality is reality, but we have a human take. We have a we have our human virtual headset on, right? We have a human headset on when we're experiencing reality, and then assumably when we pass away, our bodies die. We no longer are in that headset, we just are in reality at that point, whatever that is gonna be like.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and so yeah, I think that maybe humans, because of that headset that we wear, because of our unique capacities as humans. I think particularly there's I was I was listening to you, I was kind of I really enjoyed what you said, first of all. I was like in a reverie around the idea about uh human beings and our capacity to reflect. Yeah. Our capacity to reflect, and then you know, within that uh uh you know how we evolved telling stories. It's like we have these narrative minds that tell stories. Totally. And that's one of the that's one of our that's one of the things that keeps us going, I think, is that we're a human trait, unique human trait. Yeah, like we have this capacity to be able to say, Oh, well, I'm walking through the forest and I hear a s a twig snap. And the last time I heard that it was because there was a leopard over there. Sure, yeah. You know what I mean? And um and so then and so then maybe after we've got the cardinal sure, it's just a cardinal, or you know, it's our mother coming up on us as something totally non-threatening. I mean but or threatening. Depending on is she holding a shoe? She got her tongue cluth. Yeah, that capacity for us to reflect and then for us to also for us to want to understand. I mean, like right now we're sitting with Jack the cat at the kitchen table. Jackie's being so good. He's just he's just he's such a character, this whole guy. But it's like, does Jack want to understand being a cat? Is he trying to figure it out? Or is he just living it?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I mean, d I a lot of animals don't strike me as trying to figure it out. I mean they they they just right now, right now he he's taking a nap. Yeah, he's just chilling. Which he does most of the the day. And then is eating and meowing. And then glaring at Poppy.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, playing with Poppy. He's li he's living his life. You know, he's experiencing reality. He certainly seems to exhibit some emotions, some primary emotions, you know. Um But I I I mean, do you under do you see where I'm going with this?

SPEAKER_04

It's like there's something there's a unique human quality to want to reflect, to want to wonder about life and what it is to be human and so what if what if wisdom is part of reality and humans are able to translate it and discover it.

SPEAKER_02

Like in other words, if it's in the collective, it's been there since before humans were humans, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, like we've Theoretically, yeah. I mean I'm just tradeboarding it. You see where I'm going with it? I'm just kinda like thinking I'm really just thinking about it out loud with you. I hadn't really given this a a lot of thought until I'm talking about it. But I you know, I think it's it's like well, we have these specific capacities and it and it's almost like our capacities to reflect then built on themselves. And um allowed us to become more reflective, more contemplative. Like I think about the at least give us the opportunity whether we do it or not. Like where Yeah, right. Well, like where do the religious I mean when you think about maybe the sages. Uh-huh. They're contemplatives by and large, right? They spent a lot of time in contemplation. Yes. I would agree with that. Um at least the ones I'm thinking of. And observation.

SPEAKER_04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

And natural observation. Like I think about Marie Forleo and her saying everything is figure outable. Yeah. It's a great saying. Yeah. But it's like, how did she f discover that? From her mom. What oh her mom.

SPEAKER_04

No, there's a whole story.

SPEAKER_02

Oh.

SPEAKER_04

She has a whole story. And if you're not familiar with the name Marie Forlio, just Google. Yeah. Um, she has a book, she has lots of you could probably find multiple videos where she tells the story. But basically, yeah, her mom would like she's coming home from school one day. Mom was basically like, I can do anything a man can do. Like, we can figure this out.

SPEAKER_01

Anything you can do, I can do better. I mean, that's a little bit like that.

SPEAKER_04

No, you can. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can. So she's coming home from school. She sees her mom on the roof. She's like, Mom, what are you doing up there on the roof? She's like, Oh, we had a leak. And she's like, You don't know how to do the roof. She's like, I'm just gonna figure it out. Everything is figure outable. And then it was like all of these stories where she had this little radio, this little tropicana radio, and she would always be using it every day, doing her chores, blah, blah, blah. She loved this little damn thing, you know, that she like saved. The mounted? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This little Tropicana radio. And uh with the little orange and the straw coming out of it.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, you mean like it was an orange? Yeah. It was like it's like you saved your receipt if you're listening from the Florida. Tropicana is an orange juice company.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So she got the little radio from the orange juice company. I didn't understand what you meant at first either. I was like, what in the heck is a Tropicana radio story?

SPEAKER_03

How do I not know what it is? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So it's like it's just one of those things that you get when you send in the the the box tops. Right. You send it in so many box tops, you get your free radio. So she loves her little radio. And then and she could always tell where her mom was because she would hear the little tinny sound of the radio somewhere. Then she came home from school once and there was no radio sound, and her mom was at the kitchen table and the radio was all torn apart. And she's like, Oh my god, what happened? And she was like, Well, my radio stopped working, so I'm gonna try to fix it. You know, listen, Marie, everything in life is figure outable. Yeah. Now where her mom got it from, right, who knows? Who knows? That's not part of that story. And um, but that has been an idea that I would say is is at the very foundation of all of the work that she does. And I mean, she's really influenced me to realize that things are figure outable, like for example, figuring out how to do a podcast. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

We are here right now because you're you figured out how to work that thing. Which I always call the pod bean. Is that is that what it is? It's not.

SPEAKER_03

It's a it's a pod track.

SPEAKER_02

Pod track.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's a pod track.

SPEAKER_02

Why do I call it bean? I don't know. No, no, I know why, because there is a thing called Podbean.

SPEAKER_04

There is a thing called Podbean.

SPEAKER_02

And I think it's like a pod uh like a server or something. Yeah. Kind of like the one that we use. We use one, but it's not that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, I mean, I I think that there is that that wisdom that comes through. There's so the wisdom that's in the primordial soup. Now the thing that the wiz the wisdom that's in the primordial soup of the unconscious, it's not formed. It's not, it doesn't have context. And in and and I think because of that, it doesn't totally have meaning. It's only once we ladle out that stuff, we pull it out and we give it a context and a story and a narrative, which could be our own story, our own narrative, or like I told you this story about the the Trabicana radio, the orange radio, and everything being figure outable, that it really kind of starts to have meaning. And then we live it and it has meaning. So I think that wisdom is like that stuff that comes out of that soup, it gets some sort of narrative, maybe it's a mythical narrative, but then it gets lived. And so it's like we have the hist inside of wisdom. Wisdom are like these little containers, these seats that contain all of this thought DNA of millennia. Okay, all the people that came before us that also held that wisdom that distilled it down and distilled it down, and then it then it comes into my life. Like that's what I'm thinking about, these sayings from from Murray. Like, then those sayings with whatever their histories are come into my life and my heart and my consciousness, and then they start to have meanings also that apply to my own life, and then I'm bringing the meanings for my own life. Like, how many times either of us through this series have we talked about a saying, and then this is how this affected how I looked at this part of my life, or this is how this changed my perspective, or this reminds me of this time in my life. So wisdom, I feel like is the culmination of my life, my experiences, my thoughts, my reflections, as well as the history of all the people that came before me. Man, and then if I continue to perpetuate that and share it and put it out in the world, then it then it goes on. It's like spreading the seeds, you know, the dandelion goes off into the wind and goes who knows where. And sometimes it'll go somewhere where it ain't gonna do anything, and then sometimes it goes somewhere where it grows on somebody's gutter. And then it goes somewhere where it goes into a field, it makes one flower, and a couple years later that field is covered in daffodils.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. Yeah, I like daffodils. That's so beautiful in this and uh poetic.

SPEAKER_04

And and where did that whole thing come from? Like I've thought about some of those, but but I I I don't know where that came from.

SPEAKER_02

Well, this is the thing about creativity and alchemy, I think, yeah, is that um and and there is an alchemy like in our conversation. Agreed. And this is something that also happens in talk therapy that's very difficult to explain to people unless they've had really good talk therapy. Well, what I would think of is really good, which is that there's this raw material that gets brought in, and then there are two people and they process it through their nervous systems. And two people using their nervous systems or their souls or their self, whatever word you want to put on it. Yeah. Like it takes the material and then it's like what has been reflected on within internally, then gets put out and gets gets ripped and then it gets bounced back and forth interpersonally. Totally. And that also changes it. Yeah. Because it's like my per personal. So Jung had this idea that your unconscious was kind of like in layers, right? That there was your personal unconscious, and that was what was your when you were talking about you scoop it out and you give it meaning. Like that's your own. That's like that's like the little bit of all of this collective soup that gets poured into a sack, like if you imagine it like that. The soup gets poured into a sack, a little teeny sack, yeah, and then that sack grows and it's mommy and it gets born. Okay. And so there it is. And everything that's inside the sack that's inside of you gets seasoned by your life.

SPEAKER_04

See that is a gr seasoned is a great word because it has multiple meanings.

SPEAKER_02

So again, I'm just being creative with you here now, too. So the seasoning gets put in. Yeah. So you get in your in your childhood, you get some sweetness, you get some sour, you get some bitter, you get some salty, you get some spicy. I mean, it it all you know, it all gets put in there. Yeah. And and and then the way that I have imagined it in my own mind is that it's it's like myself is connected to this sort of collective unconscious, this collective self, and this is where I'm connected to everybody else. So, you know, Jung said we have this personal unconscious, and then there's the collective. Yeah. Tik Nan described it too when he talked about karma. He said you have your own personal karma, which are the seeds that you bring with you lifetime after lifetime. That's what's in your soup, by the way, according to Buddhism. But then there's this idea that you also have the karma or the collective of where you live. So it's like we're very influenced by the neighborhood that we live in. True. The people who are on our block. True. Right? We're also influenced by the fact that we live in Tampa. Yeah. We're influenced by the fact that we live in Florida. Right. You know, like just the geography of where you live matters in terms of your psyche and how you approach life. It it it does.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So we live in a peninsula that's surrounded by water. I mean, we live in a very swampy environment. We do. And there's a lot about Florida that's swampy.

SPEAKER_04

There is.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and lovely. But it's also kind of dangerous and murky in certain ways. Um Florida's a really interesting place. So it's like there's that layer of the unconscious, and then you go even deeper than that. So people like to use this word like deeper, like you're going down. I don't really know. Are you going down? Where are we? Why are we always going deeper? Why are we always going down? But that seems to be like archetypal that we go up and we go down psychologically.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

You know? Well, we we maybe it's about going into the whole thing about hierarchical thinking.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, it might just be colonialism, right? I mean, that's it might be colonialism, it might have influences of colonialism and racism, and like things are in the dark and things are in the light, and things are underneath and things are above.

SPEAKER_04

But I think that there is something inherent within the higher level thinking. I just I just did it in that statement, the higher level thing. Like, why do I even think that the prefrontal cortex is higher? I mean, it is higher in the brain, yeah. Um, if we were to orient ourselves to gravitational forces, you know? Like um, but I do think that there there is something about the way our brains evolved that necessitated maybe um just uh the hierarchical concepts of the world. Sure. Which is a whole other thing I could go into at some point.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I mean it's like if you have ever been in the presence with someone who has a profound brain injury where their their frontal cortexes are no longer really working.

SPEAKER_04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

Or, you know, where they had a developmental issue when they were in the womb where they didn't really develop. Right. So that person could could maybe could ambulate, maybe not, maybe they could walk, maybe they couldn't, but they could breathe in and out, they could eat, they could probably have primary emotions.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

So they're going to exist at that level. But would their filter work? But can they read? Uh-huh. Can they speak? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04

Can they have a conversation that is maybe socially what we would consider socially appropriate?

SPEAKER_02

Right. Or could they sit at a table and have this kind of conversation? Now the person might be able to be at the table, experiencing the table. Like they would Yes, they would have like this. But they're operating, I guess the neurologic idea is they're operating primarily more so from the midbrain and the and the brainstem than they are from those frontal cortexes. Yes. So anyway, this whole up-down thing. But when you get really, really deep when you go into the underworld, is is actually and so the archetypal way of thinking about that, like in the Greek culture, is that they talked about the underworld. Totally. And that's the world of the shade. It's the shade of yourself. Right. Right? Which is uh it's such an interesting idea. Yeah, first of all.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um anyway, just it's like the deeper you go down, the the images get more symbolic, they get more diffuse. But Young Young was convinced that even there it wasn't chaotic. He was convinced that that that that unconscious had an order to it, and the order was the archetypal patterns. That those exist independent of culture, and then the culture fills them in.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That those primary archetypes like mother, father, god, goddess, life, death, mawage. Mawage. You know, like coupling.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Lover, magician, physician. And then and then they get a little more complex as society moves on. Shaman might be better than magician, medicine man or woman.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_02

Um that those that those archetypal then um uh motifs are cross-culture and they transcend time also. And his idea was that when you dream at night, that's where you go.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because you don't have the same filter when you're sleeping. Right. Your VR headset changes during sleep.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And it also changes, I believe, during intense periods of concentration, reflection, or meditation. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05

Right?

SPEAKER_02

Or through the use of psychedelics or through having a near-death experience. Even maybe through flow state, you know, athletes will have extreme states of flow and then from that they're able to they just will come off the field and say something incredibly wise.

SPEAKER_04

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or even like these threshold experiences in life, I guess you were saying like death and childbirth. You know, grief, like those moments where it's it it it is a mo it is a it is in the context of technically your daily life. I've been thinking about this as we have a family member that just gave birth to twins. And thinking about like I mean, you know, we were in a whole text uh text um thread, like, okay, are they here yet? Blah blah blah, getting the kind of play-by-play. And so I was really kind of putting myself there, and it's like, wow. But like she also had to eat dinner that night.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

You know what I mean? Like right. And like there's also like the first poop after you have a kid, and which I can't remember that. But you know what I mean? Like, you still I found that like when my dad died, it was like, all right, well, so what are what are we having for dinner?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_04

It's so weird. It's so weird. Um it's it's like I have have to I got um uh wait, um oh, I guess I brush my teeth now. Like you just go on and link you just yeah, totally it's very strange. So that's sort of a weird sidebar, I think, with where you were going. But I I think I just kind of wanted to point out that this this weird thing that happens in our human lives where we have these archetypal experiences and yet there's still all of those basic needs as a human that we need to honor. Oh, yeah. And it's bizarre.

SPEAKER_02

Um It is bizarre. I mean, one of the things that what you said it makes me think about is how when I've gone through those kind of archetypal events, it's like it um, yeah, because it's like the consciousness opens, it opens the door. Yeah. Like when I've been in the presence of someone who's dying or who has just died. Um, whether I'm close to that person, like really close to that person or not. There's something about that. I mean, I worked with a midwife, you know, in the beginning of my career, and I was there when a lot of babies were born. Yeah. What an amazing energy to be around. Yeah, totally. And it's it's it's beautiful, but it's also terrifying. Right. I mean, you know, it's because it's so raw and powerful, right, and and really a power greater than myself, right? Like I remember giving birth to my daughter, there was this moment where I realized that my body was pushing. Like something that happens when women have an epidural is they can't feel the contractions, so they don't know to push. They have to be told to push. Right. I'm here to tell you, you don't have to be told to push when you don't have an epidural. Right. Your body pushes that baby out.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Your body starts to your your whole abdomen just contracts. I remember the feeling of my tailbone and my pelvis opening when she dropped down to when her head got ready to crown. I mean, I remember all of that, like my body opening. It it Anissa, I wasn't doing it. Uh-huh. I did not push her out.

SPEAKER_04

Well, okay, okay, okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So that was a power that came through me. I'll never forget it.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I almost I want to connect it back to this thing of wisdom. So, so here's that I I think, and I'm not a I'm not a, you know, uh I don't know all the things about the anatomy of the brain, but I'm making an assumption here that that urge to push that your body was pushing was part of that midbrain base, you know, the base stem of the brain. But it makes me think, oh, well, that's the wisdom of evolution. That that is another, you know, it it may not be the waxing poetic of the wisdom of the forebrain or the the prefrontal cortex, but I think that depending on how we define wisdom, it's like your your body then hooked into the wisdom of all of the human women that came before you that also pushed out babies, and then all of the primate ancestors, and then all of the like all the male of nature.

SPEAKER_02

You don't have to tell a dog that's giving birth, you don't have to say push. Totally. The babies the puppies just come out. You know, unless they're they're Frenchies. In which case they're having cesarean sections.

SPEAKER_04

But they were not created by evolution, um, they were created by the hands of humans. Thankfully so. But but you know what I mean? It's like that then there's that that wisdom of I don't know. Yeah, it's like the animal body. That's how I would call it. The wisdom of the animal body. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know that that has a that has a place too, but it just comes through.

SPEAKER_02

I think that the other wisdom just comes through too, but I think some people are just better at translating it than others. It needs language, you know, maybe that makes a difference. Well, it's like maybe if enough people observe life independently and with care, um then they start arriving at similar conditions because they're observing the same thing. So it's like science, right? I mean, we're we're it's observation. Yeah. That's one of the things I love so much about Buddhism personally. I said, you know, peop people were like, you know, Buddha, you know, he's like, No, don't worship me. If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill him.

unknown

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

You know, be very careful about who you take as your teacher. And by the way, you know, here's just what I observed. That's all he said. This is what I this is what happened to me. You know, and he was like, This is what happened to me. Well, I mean, according to the history, we d we don't know because he had his experience and then it took 500 years for anybody to write it down. Yeah, and that's a lot of time for how stories change. It's a lot of time for observation and analysis, really, and for it to get filtered like through a lot of other people's eyes.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and how much meditation is is uh is about watching and seeing what happens.

SPEAKER_02

It is. Yeah. I think that kind of like what you're talking about in terms of evolution is really interesting because I think that it's like experience does it select for wisdom in a certain way. Like w maybe it is beneficial to us. I mean, I would like to believe that it is. And I'm not just spinning my wheels. You know, maybe if I die and I take off this headset, I'm gonna be like that was a bunch of shit. I should have taken more naps on the table with the cat.

SPEAKER_04

Um okay, so does evolution select for wisdom?

unknown

Maybe.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and I think it I think it goes back to how we're how do we how are we defining wisdom? Um I think of Yeah, I think of yeah is I think that that would be that would be my question before answering that other question. Because then I start thinking about I hear, you know, this sort of like Robin Walkhammerer perspective of like oh yeah, I mean, d did evolution select for the wisdom of the plants? I've been I've been really obsessed with plants and like understanding more about them and how they've come to evolve over time and um yeah, this sort of like, you know, is there some intelligence in there? Like what what is what is going on in a plant's consciousness and you know, this whole idea of the mycelium and how it all communicates with each other and then it I don't know, I was like reading a thing the other day where it's like the trees will sort of negotiate for canopy space and and some of them will like intentionally leave space for other tree branches so that they don't monopolize the entire canopy. I mean and I don't know, there's just just all this beautiful symbiosis that happens in nature. And of course, you know, if you watch nature documentaries, you know that there's also prey and predators and but it's just us that is putting this these labels of I don't know, I don't know. I feel like there's so much wisdom we don't have full and complete access to that, but it's right on the edge of our fingertips.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean and and totally said by someone that's spent a lot of time in the garden the past three months despite the heat. I read something interesting on Substack recently. It was a woman who who was criticizing psychotherapy for the treatment of trauma.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And um I I found the article really fascinating and I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, she had a really g a couple of really good points she was that she made and she brought up some points about the data that indicate that, you know, it's sort of like that maybe talking about it so much isn't actually so helpful. Um And maybe meditating isn't so helpful uh for certain people. And you know, she just sort of brought up I I don't I don't wanna go too far down that I don't want to get lost in talking about the science 'cause it's not really where my interest lies. But I think what was more interesting to me was that she said that, you know, actually and she spoke from the first person, which is why I liked it. She said for her um it was actually more useful for her to hang around with people um who were behaving in a way that was ethical and moral. And you know um and because for her, her experience of of of being a trauma survivor was that it affected her ability to to behave well with other people. In other words, she was likely to get angry and pop off in conversation and be unkind to people.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Or she was likely to be impulsive and make impulsive decisions. Um, you know, there's you know, in in other words, she was sort of tracing back uh some of her own struggles in her life kind of globally to some traumatic experiences that she had had, and then and then saying more so that it was like these practical changes in her behavior and hanging around with people who could uh who were behaving in ways that she wanted to emulate, you know, back to this idea of sort of like um aim yourself at being with the people. Aim yourself at being with people who facilitate you being the person. And th this is the thing about uh that I personally really like about Murray's sayings, is that they're uh it's so practical.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

They're just so practical. Totally. And they they they kind of sit in the middle between you know, reflective and wise and irreverent and funny, but also hey, just do try this.

SPEAKER_04

But they're not like didactic. They're not they're not yeah, they're they're not they're not strongly prescriptive, they're suggestive. Suggestive.

SPEAKER_02

Right, which I like. Right. And you know, I mean, I don't know, like maybe there is a mess a master list of these sayings somewhere. I mean, and I think we might be the ones who are creating it. You know, uh a master list of these kinds of sayings um that can be or suggestions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These little thought suggestions that come from who knows where all these varieties of traditions, but ultimately from down in the soup somewhere.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It's sort of like the DN the DNA. What's the DNA? Can we can we decode the genome of wisdom?

SPEAKER_02

Well, it it it begs the question, I think. Or would we even want to?

unknown

I know.

SPEAKER_02

It's like all these creation stories seem to have at the root of them that somehow human beings were made from something that created us that had some kind of wisdom or divinity. But there's mystery. And there's mystery in that, but it's like, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_04

I think we didn't need the mystery, though, is the thing. I th I think that there's something to that. What do you mean? Say more about that. Um like we need the mystery. I mean, to just put it really, really simply, it kind of goes back to that whole version of creation that I feel like I heard from Alan Watts that was like, God, this unified force, this unified reality wanted to experience itself, and so it became not itself. Right. And that created duality. You know, it was not just light, but it was light and dark, light and shadow. That's you can't see light unless you can also see the boundaries of it, the the shadows. You can't know you can't see a shadow unless you can also see the light surrounding it. And so that duality and then multiplicity comes out after that, all the varieties of things. Um and and to experience those varieties, to experience that duality, you have to have a space. There has to be a distinction. And and so it it it and I'm sure that there are Christian mystics, I'm sure that there are mystics of other traditions. I feel like other this is where it's like, I feel like I'm going into that primordial soup and pulling out something about I I feel it is it part of, yeah, maybe the Christian mysti mystic tradition in particular of like the mystery of God. Like that that there has to that that that mystery also has a function. And maybe it maybe it's so that we do reflect. I learned so much more by sitting and thinking this stuff out to myself than if it were to be like, okay, here you go. I mean, I just to like bring it down to like an actual example, I've been trying to do more stuff in the garden. And you know, there are some like sometimes I just want to read a bunch of Reddit posts about it. I mean, I could go to the Google AI thing and I'll see what that says, and that's usually like do X, Y, and Z. But then if I go and I read a bunch of other people write about it, I see so many other variations of how things could be done different ways. And so I learn more by reading about all those different variations and different people's experiences. And I don't feel like I totally know what I'm doing yet, but I feel like I know more. Like it actually makes more mystery, which makes me want to do it more. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. I don't know. Yeah, so there's something about the mystery and and letting ourselves ponder.

SPEAKER_02

Ponder. Wander. Yeah. Meander. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, I think you know, even even though we want we want to know, I think that's another thing. It's that we want to know, but how often do I learn a thing and then I'm like, okay, well, well then then there's the next thing. And I think there's something inherently human to being attracted to a mystery and then wanting to solve it and then wanting to solve the next one.

SPEAKER_02

Well, that's it's archetypal, right? Yeah. I want to be in pictur gadget.

SPEAKER_03

Figure it all out.

SPEAKER_04

Well, do you think we solved um the mysteries of the world with this podcast?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I'm ready to I'm ready to discover some more. I mean, the thing about the wisdom, it seems to me, is that like I'm I'm really I can only it's embodied for me. It's embodied. It's embodied, it's it's experiential and it's embodied and and it's like I'm it's like people can say things to me, but they land differently after I've experienced different things. Totally. I you know, when I was a teenager and I heard honor thy father and thy mother, I thought, uh, fuck you.

SPEAKER_04

I was gonna say screw you.

SPEAKER_02

Um that's exactly, and we just earned our explicit rating for this week's podcast. Uh so you know, I immediately thought that because at that point I was wanting to find my own self and I had to be different from my parents in order to do that. And I, you know, I probably spent about 10 years by the time I was from between 16 to 26, I think it took me, um, to really kind of wake up. And right around 26, I went through some kind of harrowing physical stuff, and and then I realized, oh, you honor your father and your mother because that is effective.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna say because most instances gave you.

SPEAKER_02

If you had good enough parents, if you had what I consider good enough parents, yeah, and you know, it's like they weren't perfect, but they didn't, I don't know, sell you into white slavery. I mean, you know, like terrible, terrible. I'm not talking about it. You awful, awful parents. I'm not speaking to you, and you have my sincerest compassion. I mean, this is one of the things about there just seems to also be compassion, that's part of human wisdom. Like, how do we know to be compassionate? Yeah, because evolutionarily it makes sense. We we bring them we bring the most wounded with us, we take care of them. Um but anyway, you know, hearing that now it lands a lot differently, totally especially having raised a family. Yeah, and um it it it just hits me differently now than it hit me back then. And um and it's more in my bones now in a different kind of way also. Um and I do can I and I can also really understand sometimes how those when it when it comes through as more dogmatic or more you know, like this is how you should be, and we're kind of forced into those holes. How human beings seem to be evolving out of maybe really needing to be ordered around so much. Oh, right. Right. And this is a a shift that's happening with us where it's it's it's it's becoming more it's more internal.

SPEAKER_04

And I think that too um we can deal with nuance. You know, some of us can.

SPEAKER_03

Some of us.

SPEAKER_02

If you're listening to the pod, you probably can. That's true. That's true. If you didn't turn us off within the first two minutes.

SPEAKER_04

Well, and if you are here with us towards the end, I just want to thank you for being on this this ride with us through the wisdom of uh the kitchen table. The kit the kitchen table.

SPEAKER_01

The wisdom of the kitchen table.

SPEAKER_04

Yes. Oh yeah. We hope you will come back again. And if you enjoyed this, please share it with someone else. And maybe leave us a little rating and review.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, please like, share, give us a five-star rating. And if there was a bunch of if you haven't already.

SPEAKER_04

Um there was a bunch of sound in this episode, I'm not sure if it made it, but our edition is getting its mini split today. So that's what you were hearing, and uh, we appreciate you and we love you. I love you.

SPEAKER_01

Aw, I love you too, honey.

SPEAKER_04

We'll see you all the next week. I'm being different. Together.