107. Self-Connection & Social Change

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I just wrapped up recording podcast with someone.
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And so here I am on the swing outside.
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I wanted to remind everybody, when there is a machine that is dehumanizing people en masse,
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daring to in some way rationalize the killing of people en masse,
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hold tightly to your own humanity and hold tightly to the humanity of others.
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And speak up where you see dehumanization.
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Follow your integrity. Follow your compassion. Be brave.
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There is a new world ever waiting to be born.
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And part of that world wants to be born through you.
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Music.
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This is the Abbey Normal Podcast. podcast, here to tell you that you're weird and that's normal.
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I mean, it's interesting because I think it got a lot more philosophical than I anticipated.
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Music.
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Today, we get to talk to Dawn, who you heard at the beginning reflecting on this interview.
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If you're a regular listener, then you need to know this is a new Dawn,
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not Dawn of the Haunted House.
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I met today's Dawn in eighth grade on an Odyssey of the Mind team.
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So if you're not familiar, Odyssey is a competition for dorks where wit and
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out-of-the-box thinking are rewarded.
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Dawn comes off as serious, one of those old soul types with the biggest,
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bluest eyes you've ever seen.
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But I discovered at age 12 that quiet Dawn is not always quiet.
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She's sharp, smart, and funny. I haven't seen her for many years,
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but when I heard about her work, I thought you all might be interested in this
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brand of weird and what she's doing with it.
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Hello, my name is Dawn Bolchandani, and I am a speaker, writer, and PhD student.
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I also have three master's degrees.
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One is in religion, one is in counseling, and one is in Middle Eastern cultures and religions.
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I also lived in Israel and Palestine for a total of three years.
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So I was in Jerusalem for one year and then Bethlehem for two years,
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which is in the West Bank.
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She's been working on a PhD in embodied validation, as well as developing a
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cohort program called WITH, Walk in Trauma Healing.
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I decided to focus on what was just going to be a part of that,
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which is 30 days to self-connection.
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I'm going to do audios eventually for every day, but I could send you what those
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30 points are, and maybe it would just even give you like a helpful reflection
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point toward whatever end.
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She knows I feel disconnected from my body, so maybe this is a tool to help me.
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I went to her website, Dawn Bolch and Donnie, and she's got info about herself
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there, and I think it would be helpful to share it. Here's what she says.
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I was around seven years old when I remember first telling myself something
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like, you have to stay with yourself, Dawn.
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You can't let this stuff around you convince you to be someone different or
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play along with things you don't agree with.
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I honestly don't know exactly where that conviction came from,
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but what I do know is it was that conviction that held me afloat through years
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of immense pain and pressure to self-abandon.
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It was a thin but strong string that tethered me through almost a decade of
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depression and intermittent suicidal ideation as a kid.
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As an adult, that string was there when I made big decisions that my environment did not understand.
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It was there. I was there with myself.
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It's not that I did it all perfectly or had it all figured out,
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but I did have that strong string holding me to me.
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So basically, the program is about getting back to or growing that string.
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She asks the question, how do we get self-separate? And then offers the antidote,
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how do we develop and keep self-closeness? What does it mean to be self-close?
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So I asked Dawn about the program and what she was excited about.
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Like, do you want to talk more about that and share what that's about?
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So that is also on hold.
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I decided not to launch the WITH community, which was really because I wanted
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to focus on advocacy for Gaza. Okay.
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She paused both the WITH program and her PhD dissertation.
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But her work in this area hasn't stopped. It's just shifted to the area of most urgent attention.
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In the grand scheme of things, my PhD and the timing of my completion is not
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as important as what I can contribute toward advocacy for Gaza.
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And what that really looks like for me has been getting more connected with
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some peace building organizations, doing some brainstorming with them.
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And then naturally, just as it's come up with various speaking engagements I've
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had, touching on it where appropriate.
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And in the immediate future, in terms of Palestine and Gaza as topics,
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not expecting payment or directing that payment to support for people in Gaza.
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It was a pretty clear, intuitive decision. As I sat at my computer looking at
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my dissertation, my heart was elsewhere. wear.
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This episode is not technically about the conflict in Gaza, but it is about us.
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She asks this burning magnetic question. How do we get so far from ourselves
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that we dehumanize others, that we foment war, that we foment us versus them,
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and me versus you, and me versus me thinking?
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So that's what we're going to dig into. too.
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Something that I am so passionate about is leading people from the micro of
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self-connection to the macro of social change.
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So what I mean by that is how does our relationship with ourselves,
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the way that we self-inhabit, that's my own phrase,
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affect the way we are able to enact social change, to alleviate systemic oppression,
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to increase justice and a more equitable world for everybody.
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Music.
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How do we see the micro and the macro and vice versa?
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So it's not only this is something that's happening in the world and it's just a thing,
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it's this is connected to how we are as
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humans and how we embody what
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it is to be human I do believe it's all connected like
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something I talk a lot about is like how do we get self-separate meaning like
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how do we lose touch with who we are you know with our intuition with what we
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care about with compassion with you know just who we are yeah what is that and
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for me that is the a through line that leads to,
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I mean, really all human suffering, but including what's happening in Gaza and
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including many people in some way feeling okay about what's happening.
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That right there is a lot, right? So can you tease out first this idea of like
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self-separate? Like what does that mean to you?
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We have been socialized to be human doings instead of human beings.
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We become more focused on productivity you know what we produced you know capitalism
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has something to do with this or at least this extreme iteration of capitalism that we have and,
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yeah we just lose touch with ourselves you know we have jobs we don't love we
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act in ways that don't feel true to ourselves you know we outsource our thinking
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to a religious system educational educational system, a government system.
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It's all of that, you know, and then it's like, people don't know why they believe
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what they believe, because it's been like a frog boiling or something,
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you know, like, you don't know that it's happening, because it's kind of a slow journey.
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And then one day, you're like, I don't know who I am, what I care about, you know.
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I think we all have little baby examples of this feeling of being self separate.
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I remember the first time I got laid off, I had a rumor that I might be and
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this made me feel anxious.
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And then I got to the office the day of and thought, maybe I'm not getting laid
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off. And that made me feel really sad.
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And I realized in the moment, oh, I hate this job and it makes me feel bad all the time.
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I actually don't want it and I need to get laid off.
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But it wasn't until that moment that I fully discovered how bad it had gotten for me, like that frog.
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But here's another trivial example of how we don't listen to ourselves.
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Well, the example that comes to mind is the checkered bath mats that I bought
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two months ago. That's not the most poignant example.
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But I bought pink and white checkered bath mats, Abby.
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And they look really cool when you look at them. When they exist somewhere in
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the internet, they look cool.
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And I like things that are checkered. But when they came and they laid on our
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floor, I thought, this would look great in somebody else's bathroom.
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And I would probably compliment it in somebody else's bathroom.
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But in our bathroom, it's not bringing me joy.
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I feel like I'm trying to be somebody else's bathroom. You know what I mean?
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And I could have 10 friends come and 9 out of 10 would be like, these look so great.
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And I would be like, but I feel sad when I look at them. You know?
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Right. Yeah, checkered bath mats might work for other people,
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but they do not make Dawn happy.
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Self-separation begins early in life when we begin to be socialized.
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And the way we are socialized is largely based on our assigned gender.
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Growing up in an environment where there was a requirement to self-separate,
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you know, the expectation is to self-separate. The expectation is to, you know, whatever.
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And so for me, like my journey isn't so much.
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And then I was self-separate and I realized that it's more like relentlessly
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trying not to be self-separate since I was six or seven years old. Right.
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I mean, I'm in full agreement. And, you know, I have my own things that I have
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worked through in relation to growing up in the church,
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in relation to theology around gender and gender roles that absolutely made me self-separate.
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Right. I think I'm still working on, I'm looking for new ways to work on it,
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actually, because I feel separate from my body.
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And again, I've worked through some of it, like sexuality and that kind of thing.
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But I think there's still like this, I don't fully feel like I'm inhabiting
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my body in the way that I want to, to have my soul and being all like integrated.
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So I don't know, Is that the kind of... I know that's only one piece of it,
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but is that kind of what you're thinking?
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Yeah. I mean, that's totally part of it for sure. This is how I couldn't wear
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pink until I was 30 years old because I felt like if I wore pink,
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I was caving into all these tropes that I'd been pressured.
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Basically, it sounds absurd, but I know you'll understand this.
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If I wear pink, I have less voice than men.
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I don't have personal passion. I will not be a disruptor.
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And it was like, therefore, I cannot wear pink because I mean,
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I didn't agree with that projection.
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But that's very much the projection that existed for my mom in particular,
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but from a lot of like the environment, you know, and so I was like,
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well, I'm not going to wear pink.
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Okay, this is really hitting something for me. Dawn said she relentlessly pursued not self-separating.
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And not everyone can do this. And I don't mean that it's somehow willpower.
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Sometimes our level of trauma requires us to self-separate.
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But when I was younger, I was the same as Dawn, pursuing strategies that helped me listen to myself.
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You said a tiny little thing about your mom controlling how you dress,
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that you weren't allowed maybe or encouraged to wear things that weren't feminine.
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And just that one little thing jumped out to me. I was like,
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oh, ouch, like that hurts, you know?
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Yeah, I am very much a buck the system person too.
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And so I think it was when I was probably seven or eight, you know,
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when I was kind of like, just no, just like literally physically,
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I'm not putting these clothes on, you know?
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So if we play this real analogy out, society or or our family,
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tell us that the ideal sweet, quiet little girl wears pink.
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Some girls then wear pink. Other girls feel that they don't want to be sweet
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and quiet, and so they absolutely, under no circumstances, will wear pink.
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But now, said girls are women. So what do they do?
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Even just interestingly, when we moved to this house five years ago,
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Neil and I were deciding on the colors for our bedroom, and we were like,
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we really want this dark blue.
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And then Neil was like, I think we should just do light pink. you know and
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I was like I think I have been set free because
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I can say yes to light pink right and I have and I
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have no bizarro resistance like
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I like I have nothing against I'm actually literally wearing pink that's very
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really you know ironic it looks great thank you thank you but it's like I want
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to wear pink for years I wanted to wear pink unattached to whatever projection
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of pinkness yes yes right through it all wear what you want to wear and like
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like, you know what I mean?
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I do feel like there's a tendency, especially for me, who is very much like
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bucking authority type personality.
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There's the piece of like coming to the understanding of why I am resisting
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pink as an example, right?
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Like seeing the systems that have harmed me based on this idea,
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understanding where that comes from, understanding where my resistance to the pink is.
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And then there's a piece of, do I actually like pink or not?
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Then it's like, once I understand all these components, how do I actually feel about this?
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And I'm sure that is an ongoing assessment throughout your life. Yeah.
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You're wearing pink too, right? I am wearing kink. That's amazing.
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We're using clothing as an example of the broad and deep ways that every little
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part of us is controlled.
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Another example is the guidance we may get about dating relationships.
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To not rock the boat, keep your opinions to yourself.
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Yeah. You know, when I was in.
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Grad school, well, the second time, I had gone on a date with Sky.
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And in a moment of forgetting all history of my interactions with my mom, I told her about it.
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So basically, I had gotten into a disagreement with Sky on the date about,
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I think it was theology, actually.
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But she was like, you know, maybe you should just, you know,
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go to a movie or something.
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So that, you know, men don't really like to hear a lot of opinions.
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I think you're saying a lot of what you think and maybe just go to something so you just don't talk.
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She literally said it like that. And I just was like, have you met me first? Right. Right.
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In what planet am I choosing that?
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And so in what planet is this a good basis for building a meaningful relationship? Yeah.
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So in this relationship. I will not be sharing my opinions.
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So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Painful.
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Music.
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Again, luckily she did not follow that advice. So much of the trajectory,
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you know, things that you and I are talking about, about
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our experiences growing up and like, you know, at least my language would be
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like an outside side pressure to self-separate, squelch the way that you actually
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feel, squelch what you actually think.
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And then like, to me, it's honestly like pretending, pretend,
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play along with these other ideas that we're trying to coerce people into participating
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in for the sake of power and for the sake of control.
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We learn how to pretend and play along. We behave as objects in a system.
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You know, something that I'm passionate about is like, how do we not objectify
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ourselves and each other and
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how that connects with the micro and the macro? You know, how do we see?
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I think many people can't see, for example, Palestinians as fully human,
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partly because they don't see themselves as fully human.
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And I know people wouldn't say that. They wouldn't necessarily have the self-reflection to say that.
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But I do think that that's inherently connected, that if you're disconnected
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from your own humanity, you're going to be disconnected from others' humanity as well.
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Tell me what you mean by objectification. We use objectification a lot in terms
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of sexual objectification.
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But what I mean by it is we're just seeing people more as objects than as humans,
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more as a cog in the wheel, an instrument toward some other goal,
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or they're like a barrier towards some other goal.
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Somehow we think like we have our worlds, which are like full of life and humanity
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and, you know, our kids and our whatevers, but then somehow someone far away
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doesn't have that, you know?
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So we objectify them because they are less human in our minds.
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They are just like this object that exists in a different environment.
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And I mean, we objectify ourselves again, like that's so much of like where
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it begins. Like you can't objectify others if you aren't objectifying yourself first.
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This is where the harm can come in if we dress for the male gaze,
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if we present ourselves on social media only for a specific audience,
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if we're constantly thinking about how to make our bodies more appealing to others' eyes.
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This is objectifying ourselves, making ourselves objects to be consumed.
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The form that this took for Dawn was being productive.
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In what ways do you think we objectify ourselves? So for me,
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like throughout my life, messages on, you know, efficiency, productivity,
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like you're worth more if you're more productive.
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You're worth more if you're, quote unquote, getting more done. Rest is for the weary.
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You know, my dad used to, like when I was in high school, knock on my door at
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730 or something on a Saturday morning. And he'd be like, why aren't you up?
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Like, I'm doing stuff. up? Why aren't you up? And I would be like,
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this is insane. Where did you get this belief?
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Which I know obviously also comes from his own journey with productivity and
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just self-disconnection.
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But yeah. So for me, I think it was really when I had our first kid,
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so eight years ago, I got hepatitis and mono while I was pregnant. Oh my gosh.
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Yeah, it was very bizarre and severe. Very. Yeah, I had like a crisis in my
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family of origin, which is like what brought it about.
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But I mean, I couldn't even put a glass away in the kitchen without sitting
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down and taking a break afterward.
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Like I had such fatigue and weakness and I was pregnant. I was puking. Yeah.
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And so that was like another like great undoing for me in the sense of like,
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I can't be productive. reductive.
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I can't get a billion things done. You know, I was teaching at a local university at the time.
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And so, so much of my days were like, rest, you know, I mean,
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it even sounds weird to call it rest because it was more like avoiding movement
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because it didn't really feel restful.
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It felt like just prevention of utter collapse.
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And like, yeah, if I'm gonna go teach tonight, then I need to like not do stuff today.
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So that for me was a great undoing around objectification, around my identity
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being so stuck in productivity and what I could do, what I could accomplish, what I could get done.
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And I don't know if I realized so clearly that that was such an issue for me until then.
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I mean, I knew it to some measure, but I've never had a hard time relaxing or having fun.
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It wasn't that, but it was like, oh, like my sense of self, my sense of self-worth,
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My sense of who I am is absolutely tied to how much I can produce and how much I can get done.
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And this is not good for me. This is not good for me.
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So in that, realizing I'm really objectifying myself,
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I am silencing my real needs,
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you know, rest, listening to my body, and pressuring myself to these almost
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like false needs of I must whatever produce, get these things done, be on top of everything,
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you know, not let anything fall through the cracks.
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Yeah, it was like a very painful gift to go through that process.
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And then to have a newborn baby.
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And I mean, I was like, my gosh, postpartum with our first was really,
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really hard, miserable, eye opening.
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You know, we didn't really have any support like the friends that had been,
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you know, our close friends had all moved within probably, I don't know,
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six months or something when she was born.
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That really left me kind of like literally sitting on our beige couch,
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you know, holding a baby, looking at the wall, like three baskets of laundry
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around me and feeling like.
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Obviously the destitution of it, but also this very real observation of,
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I have done one of the most incredible things I've ever done in growing this
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baby, birthing this baby, holding this baby.
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And I feel like I'm not getting anything done because there's three baskets
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of laundry next to me. Right.
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And being like, something is very wrong with how I'm defining my humanity.
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I'm seeing myself as an object, you know, again, more than as a human.
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And then also being like, why am I, you know, I mean, so much of like those
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beginning days of being a mom, like you're just not doing a lot, you know, in quotes,
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but you're doing, you're doing more than you could ever do.
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Meaning you're, you're healing, you're taking care of a baby that needs things
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every 20 minutes or, you know, like, yes.
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So just like just realizing that really problematic cultural definition of what's
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worth what and what's productive and being like,
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if we could remove all this nomenclature around productivity,
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the essence of what I'm doing now actually has far more worth than these three
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baskets of laundry or, you know.
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Music.
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Yeah, so that was like a big, horrible, crushing experience for me,
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which then, you know, really has continued.
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You know, I had a kid every two years. And so that was like the great unraveling
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of a lot of that around my worth, my humanity being tied to productivity,
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and therefore seeing myself more as an object than as a human.
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So now I'm much more able to follow my desire, like lay in the grass outside,
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leave a mess in a pile, you know, leave a laundry mess, for example,
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in a pile and like follow my humanity.
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And it's crazy because it's like when you do that integration journey,
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you are not only more embodied in what you're choosing,
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but also there's, I don't know, this great irony of like a lot of my research is around energy.
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So there's this thing where it's like the purity of our energy gets better,
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gets more pure, I would say.
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That's not great language, but the quality of it, I guess, maybe that's better.
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So it's like if I'm choosing in a moment, you know, like my desire right now
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is I'm just going to go outside, be in the sun with my kids,
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and I'm going to let this laundry sit.
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So often, that will nourish me in a quality of energy that then when I eventually
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do scroll back to the three, you know, baskets of laundry, I'm actually going
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to do that from a more rooted.
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Grateful, embodied place.
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Place right and then i just do it and i get it done and there's also
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an irony where a lot of times then we're doing that activity with more
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joy and satisfaction and we're even
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sometimes doing it faster doing it more efficiently because we're
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doing it from like this clear place yeah within us and
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you you're not sitting there i have to make myself you
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know like do this thing right now which is just never going to
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produce a well-lived like well-embodied self-connected
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life you know when we're constantly making our
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making ourselves do stuff that we don't want to do yeah we
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we definitely have a big focus on that you know
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in learning and development too hopefully we're not using the concept for evil
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and not good but but it is about like you need to take breaks throughout the
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day go outside ride your bike spend time with your family like pursue your purpose
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whether that's you know spiritual or otherwise because then you're going to work harder at work.
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But you're also going to have more satisfaction from the work that you do do, right? Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, there's so much to be said about quality, quality of our energy. I like that.
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Music.
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So if we're not objectifying ourselves, we're able to follow our own desires,
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which enhances the quality of our energy, and helps us connect to our bodies.
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You know, you mentioned like body connection earlier, but, you know,
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the other part of body connection of just being, yeah, figuring out what it
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feels like to be at home in one's body.
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You know, like a friend of mine said many months ago, she's like,
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I think that one of my main life goals is just to feel at home in my own body.
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And I was like, yeah, that's, that's gotta be one of them, you know?
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And this yeah this is like part of
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the weirdness of what we're caught into that almost like our bodies are like
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these shells that like we have these little tiny people inside and they're just
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like walking the tiny people around yes exactly and it's like that's really
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weird and that's really disembodied and it's like that is counterproductive
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to embodying our humanity.
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So yeah whatever that looks like you know liking the way you laugh or you know
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noticing like eye crinkles on somebody, you know, and being like,
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oh, that's like a cool part of like,
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some of their humanity is showing up, you know, and yeah, obviously,
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for women, I mean, that's a whole other, you know, like endless,
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endless conversation about how we exist and who we exist for and who our physicality is for.
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And, you know, so many of us being socialized toward the male gaze,
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you know, like as has been very smartly coined.
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And so for a lot of women in particular, that's just going to be like an ever, ever undoing journey,
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because you're literally taught that like, what's most morally appropriate is
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for your physical body to be chiefly oriented toward others,
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which is like, okay, like that's one of the worst roads you could ever go down, right?
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Like, like, that's kind of how do we get self separate?
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I mean, that's one of the most significant ways that we become self separate
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is believing that us or our physicality or whatever part of ourselves exists
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mostly for other people and not for ourselves.
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That will be an ever undoing journey.
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Music.
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I asked on if there are practices that she recommends to be more embodied.
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You know, people call it like just like nonlinear movement, you know,
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like dancing with or without music and like a non, you know,
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linear way, meaning like it's just not like a, it's not the tango.
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It's not a set dance. It's just moving, right? Yeah.
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Even more so if it's, like, outside or near a waterfall, in the breeze.
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Like, it's, like, following the unction of what your body wants to do.
396
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Yeah. You know, like, sometimes I'm, like, on a walk, and I'm just,
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like, moving my arms and, like, taking up space.
398
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Yeah, you know, noticing how you, just how you're moving through space and time.
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You know, the chair that you're sitting in. Yeah.
400
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:38,380
I think another thing is, is delight, like just being able to follow your delight.
401
00:29:38,620 --> 00:29:42,000
You know, I think delight is something that when we're tapped into it,
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it is very visceral and it is very body connected.
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It sparks something in us, like in our bodies.
404
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And so paying attention to delight, delight is one of my favorites.
405
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Awe is one of my favorites, you know, going outside with my kids and like squealing
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about a ladybug, you know, picking up blades of grass and feeling them or like hugging trees.
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Trees you know my daughter like when she was like i don't
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know if she was even one yet she would hug trees and she
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would say thank you for your electrons again like
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just kind of follow what you want to do like yeah and
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a lot you know i think there is a lot that does relate with nature because nature
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is the organic just being all around us like if we're looking for a lesson on
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just being nature is living that lesson you know continuously so yeah engaging with nature,
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however you want to you know i got up on our barn roof recently and sat and
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i just was like this is what i want to be doing right now and so i bought the
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ladder and got on the roof you know.
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It's interesting kind of the connection between the
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delight and awe and childhood and how like there's that this whole period in
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between right where we get like socialized to not do those things to not hug
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the tree to not skip about and dance when there's no music and all these things
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that like aren't socially acceptable right and.
422
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But for us to be healthy and have healthy connections, like we have to get back to that.
423
00:31:17,121 --> 00:31:21,781
Yeah, totally. You know, like, yeah, I was in this, like, I was a guest speaker
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in a group recently, and somebody asked me a question about,
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like, what do you see part of the revolution as?
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I had mentioned, like, you know, something about a revolution.
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And I said, if you're in the grocery store and you feel like gently singing,
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gently sing, you know, like, you know, to your point about things we're taught
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not to do, you know. And a lot of that's, yeah, simple things like that.
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00:31:45,781 --> 00:31:50,721
For me, I will be gently singing or even dancing in a grocery store.
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In one way, I'm like, I don't really know why I wouldn't. I mean,
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I understand the idea of why I wouldn't, but that's what feels enjoyable.
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And we're all just here living our lives, living 24 hours in a day.
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Why wouldn't we do innocuous things that we want to do, like gently sing in
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a grocery store? or no, I mean, really like, because people will call the cops
436
00:32:14,521 --> 00:32:17,801
on you depending on who you are and where you're at. That's why.
437
00:32:18,681 --> 00:32:22,621
But I agree with you in concept.
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00:32:23,301 --> 00:32:27,261
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, it doesn't need to be a musical,
439
00:32:27,341 --> 00:32:30,161
but the point is just, you know, it's just little bits.
440
00:32:33,001 --> 00:32:38,621
I was at the MoMA a while back and saw this astounding musical video installation called The Visitors.
441
00:32:38,841 --> 00:32:41,941
It's set up so that you can walk around or sit and listen.
442
00:32:42,181 --> 00:32:45,941
And after doing that, I had to lay down on the ground.
443
00:32:46,201 --> 00:32:49,921
My rational mind knew that this was not particularly socially appropriate,
444
00:32:50,061 --> 00:32:54,341
but in my complete delight, I followed what my body wanted to do,
445
00:32:54,501 --> 00:32:58,001
be absorbed into the ground and swallowed by the sound.
446
00:32:58,901 --> 00:33:03,261
Don's example of humming in the grocery store is not about rebelling per se.
447
00:33:03,541 --> 00:33:07,301
It's about noticing and following what your body wants to do.
448
00:33:09,630 --> 00:33:13,210
I mean, and even to your point about, you know, like, yeah, somebody would call the cops or something.
449
00:33:13,290 --> 00:33:16,950
But it's like, there are these things that like, we just need to push the envelope,
450
00:33:17,550 --> 00:33:21,770
on those things on like, why are certain things strange? Why are they?
451
00:33:22,250 --> 00:33:26,330
Sometimes the things are the most human are the things that are judged as the least human.
452
00:33:26,870 --> 00:33:30,510
You know, like meaning like, if you're a proper human, you wouldn't be,
453
00:33:30,510 --> 00:33:33,390
you know, singing your favorite song while
454
00:33:33,390 --> 00:33:36,750
you look look at cereal it's like that makes no sense like to
455
00:33:36,750 --> 00:33:39,870
me embodying your humanity is exactly that
456
00:33:39,870 --> 00:33:42,990
if you're a clear-minded person and all the things but
457
00:33:42,990 --> 00:33:47,710
like you know so yeah it's just like it is like pushing those little bits of
458
00:33:47,710 --> 00:33:50,890
an envelope it's you know asking a weird question to the person that you like
459
00:33:50,890 --> 00:33:56,290
buy your coffee from or whatever you know like i'll just add here that dawn
460
00:33:56,290 --> 00:34:00,190
has no problem asking weird questions of the person who serves her coffee or
461
00:34:00,190 --> 00:34:01,370
she passes on the the street.
462
00:34:01,530 --> 00:34:07,010
Her dedication to following how she feels and her desire to connect far outweigh
463
00:34:07,010 --> 00:34:08,990
seemingly random societal constraints.
464
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:16,560
Music.
465
00:34:15,990 --> 00:34:19,730
Yeah, it's following those prompts. And I think like, that's how we all get
466
00:34:19,730 --> 00:34:23,290
freer is like, follow the little prompts, follow the little unction,
467
00:34:23,550 --> 00:34:27,030
you know, do the little bit weird thing, like, because ultimately,
468
00:34:27,110 --> 00:34:28,590
it's not serving all of us,
469
00:34:29,310 --> 00:34:31,010
in embodying and living out our humanity.
470
00:34:31,310 --> 00:34:36,110
If we're all like, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to, you know.
471
00:34:37,339 --> 00:34:40,119
Do the weird and we're just always living like that because again i'm like
472
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:43,879
years are passing days are passing like let's
473
00:34:43,879 --> 00:34:46,679
go you know like we're not
474
00:34:46,679 --> 00:34:51,459
getting any freer by all that stuff you know and i think those there's an irony
475
00:34:51,459 --> 00:34:57,859
where the more we push those little bits of envelopes we create not just ourselves
476
00:34:57,859 --> 00:35:05,119
but a world a society that is more creative that is more free to whatever,
477
00:35:05,379 --> 00:35:06,519
think the new invention,
478
00:35:06,779 --> 00:35:09,839
live the freer life, better articulate emotional health,
479
00:35:10,679 --> 00:35:11,799
make a scientific discovery.
480
00:35:12,379 --> 00:35:18,619
It's all connected. And do those things, hopefully, from a more relaxed, self-connected place.
481
00:35:19,879 --> 00:35:23,379
That's so much of what we all want, deep, deep, deep down.
482
00:35:23,619 --> 00:35:28,159
I mean, for a lot of people, it's pretty deep in their subconscious, that core desire. Yeah.
483
00:35:28,499 --> 00:35:33,779
But I mean, after like food and shelter is met, we all want that.
484
00:35:34,279 --> 00:35:38,359
Yeah. Just, yeah, more freedom and less objectification.
485
00:35:42,479 --> 00:35:48,279
Are you feeling self-separate? Are you feeling like a human doing and not a human being?
486
00:35:48,699 --> 00:35:52,759
One place to start is to follow the little prompts. Do the weird thing.
487
00:35:52,979 --> 00:35:55,919
Take a sweet moment to lean into awe and delight.
488
00:35:56,259 --> 00:36:00,839
These may seem like small things, but as Dawn says, these things make you freer
489
00:36:00,839 --> 00:36:05,159
and create a society that's more free and creative and compassionate.
490
00:36:05,479 --> 00:36:07,179
So push the envelope.
491
00:36:10,659 --> 00:36:15,159
Next episode, we're going to continue to explore the micro, owning our feelings
492
00:36:15,159 --> 00:36:21,219
and beliefs, and the macro, the systems that we participate in that depend on our objectification.
493
00:36:22,619 --> 00:36:25,739
It doesn't matter what that unit of belief is.
494
00:36:25,899 --> 00:36:32,219
It's about if we can all be pressured to believe this, then we create this thing
495
00:36:32,219 --> 00:36:33,539
that has more power and control.
496
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:38,079
And if people are willing to give up their own intuition, their own self-connection,
497
00:36:38,079 --> 00:36:41,879
if they're willing to squish what they know is wrong and just do stuff for the
498
00:36:41,879 --> 00:36:45,459
sake of some moral good, then we increase our control.
499
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:49,679
In the meantime, time, if you're interested in hearing more from Dawn,
500
00:36:49,819 --> 00:36:52,419
you can find her on Instagram, Dawn Bolchandani.
501
00:36:52,599 --> 00:36:57,739
For the past eight months, she shared a lot about Gaza and explains more about the ideas shared here.
502
00:36:58,019 --> 00:37:03,239
She also has a sub stack. If you're like me and sometimes need text to process big ideas.
503
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:09,840
Music.
504
00:37:08,619 --> 00:37:13,399
Oh my gosh, there's a mouse on our roof. Is it outside or inside? It's outside!
505
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,079
I've never seen that! Oh my gosh.
506
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:30,160
Music.