The Atmosphere You Grew Up In

How the emotional climate of childhood becomes the invisible setting for adult life.

We often believe our thoughts and reactions reflect reality, when they may actually reflect the emotional atmosphere we were raised in. In this episode, I explore how family, culture, and conditioning shape our internal “settings,” influencing our sense of worth, joy, productivity, and identity. Through the metaphor of “the goop,” I examine the difference between inherited conditioning and the authentic self, and how discernment helps us reconnect with embodied wisdom.

Walk with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning. Everyone. Welcome to Embodied Wisdom, a walk in a talk with Dr. Brooke. I was thinking about how I am running late. Running late with this podcast. So what does that mean? Well, what it actually means is that um is that I didn't do it when I told myself I was gonna do it, or when I said to myself I'm supposed to do it. Because I usually do it, you know, within the week, let's say. And I created that rule for myself, even though I said I wasn't gonna have rules about this. And now I got some break in that rule. Um and I believe that uh leads me to feel extremely aggravated. Um I was doing some research and I came upon, I mean, this is seemingly obvious. I've probably talked about it before, but I never really thought about it this way before, so I always like to share um new ways to think about things. And what I had discovered is it's like you know, you have two people, they both worked a 50-hour work week, and that's the fact. But then the climate is something inherently different. The climate around the fact, one person says, Wow, that was meaningful work, and another person says I could have done more, you know, and I feel like that climate, that's sort of a conditioning, right? And so that it's sort of like maybe of an idea of like, you know, uh like that's like on autopilot, that sort of phenomenon, that sort of attitude. And so like this idea that I promised myself I wasn't gonna do this this time is like I don't know, it's it's inherently assuming that I understand that I do that. That I do that, that it's a climate. I'm gonna go even beyond it being a lens. Sometimes I've talked in other contexts about getting gooped. Um what I mean by getting gooped is it's like you walk into it's kind of you walk into your you know, you walk into a room and the room feels goopy. You know, I don't know, it's you know, the atmosphere is goopy, and you end up, it's almost like an entering another person's force field. And I I say be careful to sensitive people because sometimes we walk away and we've been gooped. Well, a childhood is a gooping, you grow up in the atmosphere, and that's all you know, and it's sort of like I'm gonna say, like, goops your sense of self. So although I said, Oh, I'm gonna do this differently this time, I don't even realize what I'm doing. Because I'm not, I'm doing what I'm doing, but the atmosphere I'm doing it in is it's not enough. Okay, but like, can I expect to change that? I don't know, maybe not, but can I change an attitude around it? Like, if I understand that's an atmosphere I stepped into, and I can better define it and understand it as such, it's not inherent because sometimes I think we think we are those things because we got gooped and that's what we learned. You know, it's like that means it's real, but it's not real, it's just an atmosphere we grew up in, right? And the atmospheres, they go, it's like your sense of self gets all goopy, it's not clear because we're all really value neutral. Whatever we are, we are. It's the cultural, it's like you know, it's the family that puts the critique or the judgment on it, it's the culture, but at the inherent basis of what we are, we're just what we are. You could say it's good or bad, you could say long hair is good and short, you know, like and short here hair is bad, or brown eyes are good, and whatever. But I guess long hair, the hair example is not the best example, right? Because we would more go with hair color because the rest, but still, you still understand, you know, different generations think tattoo came to mind, you know, different generations think more or less highly of different types of art and things like that and how we should adorn our bodies and things like that. Okay, so we're going, but what we are inherently is what we are. There is no value have you know, positive or negative. There's, I can argue a purity if we're to allow it, but I don't mean that uh in terms of um moralistic purity, I just mean that in terms of spiritual purity. So um, and spirituality to me is is it has no doctrine, has no meaning assessed to it. It's the essence of everything of Namashivaya, like just just a pure consciousness embodiment. Um okay, I'm coming up on some friends who's gonna interrupt me for a second. So hi. Hi, morning. Hope you guys enjoyed. Have a great day. Probably not till Friday. Okay, how are you? Okay, how are you? Well thanks. Actually, Friday, I'm just gonna directly. Sorry about that. So to continue, um, you know, if we're talking about spiritual um, you know, purity, what that what I'm basically saying, there's moral morals are our indoctrinations, which means a society created them. I'm going before that. Just essence, just allowed to be what we are, being given permission to be what we are at zero. Okay, so that's where I'm coming from on that. So if we come into an atmosphere, right, that determines the the way we I'm gonna say, like, this is it's so it's even bigger, like I'm gonna call perception, but it's like a perceptual like setting. It's like a full atmosphere. It's like it's like what settings do you set your phone to? You know, like these are the settings of your life. And and I guess we could change those settings, but we first have to know where they're set. Like where they set. So if they're set to, I'm not worthy unless I'm producing something. I can't just be, I can't just rest, I can't, because um I unless I'm doing something, I can exist, opposed to I exist, and then the rest of it flows out of me. Well, I can rest in existence, but not necessarily if the atmosphere I grew in said existence basically has no meaning. You have to be recognized or you have to be noticed because whatever you exist as you exist is not in inherent, like you don't, you know, it's not inherently worthy. I mean, so you're just proving yourself so you can exist all the time. Is that's the atmosphere? That's the atmosphere, right? So some people are like, I can't stop comparing myself. Well, did you grow up in a comparison atmosphere? Maybe you did, right? We are people around always comparing, you know, that's a thing. So you kind of learn opposed to like another person where they notice anything because that wasn't that wasn't the atmosphere. They grew they have they have other they have other stuff they're grouped in. Okay, so you know, we come we go around, we go around, and I think that sometimes our suffering is so deeply connected with the only truth we know. The only one we know. It's not, and so it's like so sometimes people, I'm so uncomfortable with I'm so you know, I'm afraid the other shoe's gonna fall if I'm enjoying myself. I'm enjoying myself like it's too dangerous. Well, that is because the atmosphere you grew up in taught you that. Because where did you learn that? Or maybe like you're right, you didn't do any of that because inherently it felt dangerous in the atmosphere you can grow up in it. Because I'm gonna tell you, if something's neutral to people, I don't see see them struggling, they're not really afraid of it. It's when it's perceivably dangerous in the culture, so like things that are value neutral, it's like kind of like if if um one thing's coming to mind about like if if if there weren't like parents were like, oh, you can you're free to like any food you want, you know, you don't have well then people they they just eat or they don't eat or they you know they don't pay it my that much mind. Or if like people who grew up and people just you know they just drove they drove places all the time, you know, they didn't get on airplanes, so people do drive anywhere, they don't think anything of it, but they're not necessarily giving them credit themselves credit for drive. There's no one even they talked about we just drove places, right? Okay, so what I'm gonna say is it's the loaded areas in life where the treasure is buried, right? It's the place that makes us uncomfortable, makes us feel yucky, makes us feel worried if we're doing something new. But what if the new thing you're doing is joyful? Like, oh, I can't enjoy myself because the other legs would have fallen. Well, yeah, it is because life is this freaking way. It's kind of like take the good times when they come, right? But I'm not that's I'm not saying that as a doctrine, I'm saying that because life brings shit. It's natural, it's not unfortunate, it's natural. So if life's gonna bring stuff and and and you're lucky enough to predominantly have stuff that only is produced in the mind that causes the problems, you know, like basically, you know what you mean? Like, I don't know, a real problem. A tree fell on your roof. Okay, real problem. Um car accident. Real problem in real life, ill not diagnosable illness. It's on this plane, okay. Yeah, but like the rest of it we don't need to concern ourselves with because they're it's in the mind, but no, that's you know, wow, of a whole career, a whole sector humanity created, and nobody can seem to really find find the most effective ways to help because everyone's miser seemingly miserable. So probably because of what I'm talking about, or fundamentally, because they can't, they don't feel like they're allowed to be themselves, and to me, that's the greatest pain of all. Um uh, or maybe I feel like if we were shown the path to that, a good and a good enough amount of our psychological pain would would uh subside enough that we could experience have more experiences of joy in our lives. But again, we have to know how to find joy. So if we're comfortable with suffering, then we're gonna be uncomfortable with joy. But that but we won't know that. It's not on principle. It's more that if you grow up in the everything's earned, you know what I mean? Like um, you know, you have you're rewarded for the hard work, no hard work, no reward, you know, just this that type of environment. Produce, produce, produce, no rest for the weary, or you don't exist if you're resting, doesn't matter, that doesn't get credit. Um, then you just assume those values. You assume them, like assume them in your body-mind complex. Assume, you embody them. They're literally, it's like you stepped in the goop and and you're covered inside and out. So I don't know, like I think about like, oh well, that's daunting because I'm starting all these new endeavors and I'm not gonna do that this time, except that I don't know I'm already doing it when I say I'm not gonna do it. Right? Doesn't it make sense? I'm already saying not gonna do this, but I'm literally doing it. So, like if I feel like skipping a week, no problem. No, no, no, no. No, don't want to do that. Um, does that's not what happens because uh yeah, that's never that's not what happens to me ever. And it is because I'm in the goop. Now, if I was to step outside the goop, then there would be I'm gonna say no pressure, but I don't mean no pressure, I mean uh no inherited pressure, more uh self-expectation, which does not feel as bad as if your worth is associated with it, which to me is connected to the goop and the conditioning. Okay. So so in so but but the thing is I I find this to be a like a dilemma because you're comfortable in suffering, but you're seeking constantly to get out of the suffering because you don't know how or when the suffering started, because it started at hello, and then I don't know, me or somebody else says, go find the joy, and you're like, What do you mean? What do you mean? Should I get a hobby? Or I don't know what what should I do, what does that mean? Now, some people do, they know they know what that means because in their original gooping, that was there, so they had they know of it, but maybe it was always in a backdrop of drama, you know. So everything's dramatic, even the joy, you know. So it's you're back, you're bound with a different um auspice. I'm using pretty much these words as one example. When I say you could use any example, you could use any way you find yourself repeatedly to be. I don't even want to say it's the way you are, it's the doing. That it's not the being, it's the doing of what you are, and you can mistake that as the being, and here is the dilemma of understanding the difference, right? What's the goop and what's you? Calmness is one way to decipher this. If you're calm, right? So I gave it's a really good example. When I was anticipating coming to do the podcast this morning, I wasn't calm. So then I told myself that means I I I don't want to do it, but then I put myself in the process of doing it in my mind, and I was like, no, I'm gonna be calm. It's gonna make me feel better. I could stop it at any time. It's a good experiment. It's a good experiment because the bottom line is I I have the right to be tired, I have the right to be exhausted by what I'm doing, I have the right to want to take time off from some things and not others. Yeah, and and and and there's a lot of ideas about this, about vacationing and how we should do it and and all of these things. And maybe, you know, depending on the circumstances that you're in, maybe find work comforting to you. And maybe it makes feels it makes sense, and you just take off time here and there because you don't really want the prolonged, you know, time off. Again, a lot of times society may give a prescription, but again, that that doesn't mean, listen, not to be careful to trick yourself into thinking if you do need it. You know, this is you can't, you you have to not base worth on anything. Okay, I can't look our mind looks to make meaning. This is where the dilemma is. So we're gonna do this. So it's almost like where do we where do we want our our our worth to be um focused upon? Right. So if in other words, if if we're gonna look for, I'm gonna say in a new atmosphere, because that's what our minds do. It looks for meaning. So when I say that looks for meaning, it would it goes back to the this means I'm doing well. I'm doing the podcast every week, this means I'm doing well, and if I don't do it every week, it means I'm not doing well. No, that's something called a complex equivalent in neurolinguistic programming. It's meaning this equals that generalization. I mean, we all distort, delete, and generalize information. Our minds do that. These are all concepts and thinking, but this is what we do. So it's just uh to be efficient, if nothing else. We had to figure out how every single time how to untwist a bottle cap, you know, don't we have to figure that out or open a door, you know. So this is what happens. We gen we're able to generalize. So it does really work from an evolutionary standpoint, but sometimes we do it like I don't know, there's an incident at work because someone disagreed with what you did, and now that means you can't trust what you did. Okay, so our minds do this, so I'm not saying we're not gonna do this, we're gonna do it, and this is the thing about the convenience of the goop. Your mind is just gonna go there unless it's reprogrammed or redirected. But if we're at hello, not knowing, like I'm not gonna do it this time, right? But you don't know that it's the atmosphere that needs to be corrected, and that atmosphere lives in your neuroogy, your biology, your psychology, your socialization, biopsychos, and in your spirituality, it's like I would say you signed up for it, it's the essence of your entire existence. So, really, the answer is probably just not to fight with it, but to understand there is an existence, I would say beyond that. In if you want to use like a more lay way to think about this, would be like Christ consciousness, pure Shiva consciousness, but also in if any of people are familiar with IFS is really popular right now, internal family systems, very interesting theory. Um, then that's the big self. It's like the self that exists beyond all the conditioning. And listen, I'm not making an S up. It exists and it's accessible. But what line of inquiry leads us there? How do we get there? How do we know the difference between what gooped us from the very beginning regarding what makes us what we are versus us moving from that actual essence? So it's sort of like what is the truth of the expression with yourself? So, you know, what is it that brings you joy? That helps you rest your mind. That you know makes your heart sing. And you know it because you've experienced it, okay? It's in the fabric of your experiences, but it's not necessarily acceptable, accessible, ooh, for radiance lift excess excess, it's in the intellect. Hence, hence, hence, hence the embodied wisdom piece of our our story here. So I don't know why I called the podcast that. Right? I didn't really know that. And um it means what I'm talking about. How do we know? How do we come to know what is from the goop and what is not, especially if we're living in there? And the word, the best word that comes to mind is discernment. Discernment. And I don't know, when I was growing up, one of the most touching scenes that I, you know, kind of held in my heart was at the how that in the miracle worker, when Helen Keller, and it's like, I don't know what you guys think I was gonna say. Like so, it's so me. The random Helen Keller reference. Anyway, so so and and you know, when they're when she realizes that she's spelling water in her hand, and that's water, she makes that connection. And if Helen Keller can do that, she can't see, she can't hear, she cannot speak. But she figured that out. So I'm thinking if we can't see, whatever the goop is, because we're gooped, and that's the nature of human existence, and Helen Keller can figure that out, then we can figure it out. But we must use discernment, which means we need active practices, active practices where we are paying attention to what we're thinking and the decision making that comes out of that thinking. Because are we thinking in the goop? So we're not supposed to solve this. I think we're supposed to use our embodied experience to inform us. People be like, well, I'm numb. And I mean, this is look, the beauty of an antidepressant, if it really, if it works for you, is it numb you, right? That's the beauty, and sometimes you need that because you're so overwhelmed. It's a time and a place for everything, but sometimes you're on it and it's numbing you out. So you can't take in the new, you can't feel the embodied data. That's just a drawback. That's not it's we always we just need to think about the consequence of what we're doing again. Discernment that but I still think I don't know, I still think we would know. I still think that self's gonna exist, might be harder for us to get there, but we will know in our body that this feels fun. Or not. Feels, feels maybe, maybe it doesn't even matter, maybe it's just like I like how that feels. You don't even have to know if it's fun because then people be like, well, how am I supposed to know about fun? And and it also maybe you know, you had an idea about yourself growing up that you now don't have anymore. Like you didn't like casual social interactions, but you grew up and now every so often you really like them, you know, because you changed and you need a break sometimes, and you know, you don't want to be so serious, but your whole childhood you were serious. You know, this is we like whatever we change, we evolve, and this is the other thing. This can change. So maybe one day, or one point in time, one thing would feel more fun. You know, people talk about this, especially about travel and backpacking. As you get older, you're more tired. So driving all over the country, seeing a ton of new things, taking a backpack across Europe. Wow, we you have energy for I I thought it was the most exhilarating time of my life, frankly. But now, no, to get let me stay in one place, let me lay there, and let me not think. So yeah. So in the end, here, at least for today, in the end, um, if you're frustrated, like I was earlier, and say, um, and you begin doing the action, not anticipating, not thinking about, and you will you you will come back to that sense of embodied whatever it was, and and this is what we need to discern. So when I was talking a little earlier about methodologies, I mean this is one of the true reasons why we meditate is to learn how to watch our own thoughts or how to watch our own reactions and these methods of inquiry. I'm developing some exercises about it, but if we were to just really, you know, and asking ourselves certain questions could help. That being said, we have to stop and discern in order to do that. We can't just keep running, running late, can't keep doing that, running to the next thing. We need to stop, look, listen, look around us, especially if we're have a strong emotion coming through. Right? And this is just even if you wanted to do this as an exercise, right? Like, hmm. Step one. Like, what happened? Right? Step two, what's the what actually happened? What did I, you know, more like the initial. Step three, right? Take each situation that really upsets you and go deep and look at it step by step. Don't look for who's right and wrong. Examine it in yourself so you learn, so you can have a more peaceful life. But I think this is this a version of accessing that sense of self. The truth of that sense of self. Think that's what's happening when we check in with how we feel and what we're thinking and look at the atmosphere of what we're in, and then maybe we could say, wait, that's the atmosphere over and over again. I'm in the same atmosphere, but I'm making responses in that atmosphere. But is that using discernment? Am I just assuming the same thing? Am I in a self-fulfilling prophecy with a story I tell myself just keeps happening? Because I am not looking elsewhere, meaning I'm not feeling what I'm feeling, and I'm not discerning you. Feelings are not facts. Now, feelings are like going to the bathroom. So usually there is something true, but it could be very exaggerated in the imaginary field. What I say is the gooping. Not really imaginary, really conditioned. So I know this was a mouthful today. I hope still working with my discerning all of this, but I think that's just part of the process. I'll be doing that forever. Good reminder. Um, and I hope you'll walk with me on that journey. Thanks for being here today, and um, have a great week. Walk with me again soon.