Episode 87: Calling in the Circle of Support

[MUSIC] Welcome to Earth, a love story. I'm your host, Robin Lasseter. And this is a special episode with my two dear friends, Carrie Murphy and Haley Roth. This episode was recorded in direct response to the allegations about my former colleague, Jay Christopher King. For those who don't know, Kelly Chase, host of Cosmosis, formerly the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. Put out a statement a few days ago around these allegations, which have recently come to light. Specifically around Jay's sexual boundary crossing and multiple women coming forward with very troubling accounts. I've taken my time with this and spoken to those in the inner circle, including Jay's wife, Sherry. Yes, he was married and no, according to Sherry, the relationship was not open. I've also spoken to Kelly and other women who've been close to Jay in support roles. I am not at the center of the impact of this. I broke with Jay in the experienced or group about a year ago, but I'm still closely connected to this community. Because of my previous role as the community manager of the experienced or group, many people are reaching out to me for my take. Lots of people don't know that I broke with the experienced or group in Jay a year ago. I am recording this episode in response to the request for a statement and also because I feel the connection and relationship to the broader experience or community as this ripples through. I want to show up in the collective metabolization of the impact of these allegations. And as I've been sitting with those affected and hearing stories and comparing notes, my mind can make mind sense. My heart can make heart sense. I have a lot of capacity to be with hard things. And then, often suddenly and without warning, my body arrives to weigh in, insists on weighing in. Naja, exhaustion, horrible headaches, crushing, contracting grief and rage. My body insists on first things first to literally feel the impact and centering those harmed and placing the accountability where it should rightfully be. To those directly affected and inside the primary circle of harm, I see you and I'm with you. To the broader community, I know the shock waves are moving through. I see you and I'm with you. To those experiencing the secondary trauma of this, I see you and I'm with you. These kinds of allegations and revelations and shocks in the collective have been relentless. This one is particularly close to home. In my processing, I've turned to some of my closest spiritual colleagues and friends. And this conversation is my official statement regarding a situation both exhaustingly personal and horribly relentlessly collective. In other words, we are in the time of reckoning. Apocalypseus will not let us look away. May this conversation between Carrie, Haley and I be medicine for the field. And those friends. I, I Robin. Carrie Murphy and Haley Roth. Thank you for being here. For this, for me, challenging, complicated, um, shocking, coming in waves, moving in and out of perspectives moment that I realized I needed, uh, support metabolizing. So thanks for showing up. Very honored to be part of who you call in. Yeah, happy to be a circle. Thank you. So I am noticing that I'm moving through lots of different perspectives and speaking of circles. It feels like circles to me. Like there's a close circle of impact. There's circles of harm. There's close circles of accountability. And then they sort of become more and more subtle as it moves out away from the center of this. And I'm finding myself as I'm having conversations with people and getting more information. That I can inhabit these different perspectives and circles at different times, meaning making and. Looking at systems that create things like this, looking at, uh, close impact and just being directly with people's experience and. Able to do all of that and move between that and then. At some point. During the day. And this has been many, many days of this. There will suddenly be just the body. And then it will be beyond. Logic or concept or anything like that. It'll just hit my body. And that always when it happens, it always feels like a really, really important place to stay with it. If I'm feeling it now. Yeah, just feeling how much our bodies. And that's the story for. Our entire lives. And before we were born through, you know, the bodies and our lineage and feeling. That impact, especially in the broader like cultural conversation and revelations and apocalyptic that's going on around all of this. And so, you know, I think that's one of these things that we have perhaps always felt and now we're getting direct. You know, information about what I just call the horrors. And so. So that's how I'm feeling. I'm just like watching all of this movement, all these perspectives. And then it just lands in my body and that always feels an important place to be. You know, it's the processing center point. The only place you can actually work with the material from. So it makes sense that as you've accepted the mission. To hear the story, to listen to it, to transmute it. Now that it would be hitting the body. And that the body is completely capable. Of doing this work. It makes sense to me too that you're in your in multiple roles in this story and in this situation. And it makes me think of one of my favorite articles ever from the LA Times. It's called something like how to not be a jerk to a sick person. We'll find it from the show notes, but it has a series of concentric circles. And the model is like at the very center as the person most affected. And then. So if it's a cancer patient, it's them. And then the next circle out is their spouse and their child. And the next circle out is. They're close friends and the next circle out might be their co-workers. You know, and the next circle out might be like the husband of the co-worker who suddenly working more there. There can be these circles and the model is support in complain out. So you don't say to your wife who supporting her colleague like wow, you're really not making dinner enough for me. You complain to your friend like my wife's been really busy at work and you support your wife. So wherever you find yourself in the circles. It's legitimate to ask for support, but you should ask for support from somebody less impacted, not equally or more impacted. And so I think, you know, by bringing us in here, you've asked if. Complained out and we can support in. And I think that sometimes there can be confusion and. People complaining and asking for support in less helpful directions. And the desire to center the most impacted. Is really important. And also it shouldn't prevent the less impacted from also receiving support. So everyone has a place. Yeah, not for nothing. You both were somebody who was in a close role, not that long ago in proximity. Right. So like there's actually probably a few different like I think of these circles that you're discussing. I think it's a very, and I love that article, but it's kind of like the stone drops and the impact rings or like in the water or in a. I don't know a meteor maybe is more like this. And you're kind of caught in a bunch of different variations of that ring because this. This particular situation had a few different meteor drops. And there was the one that was very close to you. that it didn't sound like you had a lot of support for at the time. Overall, that might be kind of re-impacted by being in a kind of more outer ring in this case. Does that sound at all true in your body? Yeah, I think I am appreciating the frameworks. I'm really appreciating just like finding a space to name things and like, we know it feels really helpful to place things somewhere. And that's all feeling really true and really helpful. And to be honest, it's bringing up a lot of past stuff. Like, I have a messy history. I have a messy relationship history. I have a messy like. Everyone from bosses to romantic partners, to even some friends. Like, there's kind of similar patterns that have played out that me and my past have arrived in all kinds of different ways. From like, I am 1 million percent the victim to I am 1 million percent responsible for my role in this situation. And like, everywhere in between. So, surprisingly, I don't know why it's surprising, but it is. But it's like hitting. It's just reverberating that impact that you're talking about. Hey, like, dropping the stone. It's like, all these things are getting lit up. And I imagine that similar for other people. And I actually, just to name, I feel kind of appropriately centered right now. I don't feel like I'm at the center of this. I don't feel like I'm close in. I'm in one of those, like, farther out rings. And that feels correct for this, because other people are more closely impacted. And I'm also noticing it just moving through me and moving in my body and affecting, like, sleep and conversations and energy levels and all of the things. So, yeah, it's helpful to name that and feel that. And then, like, from those spaces, try to make sense of things. It's easy to, I think, see where an event like this or an allegation set of allegations like this. It makes me think of when people say, "Not all men," you know, and then you think, "Yeah, but all women understand what the pit of the stomach is." Maybe not all, but a statistical all, like close to all, that when it hits in the stomach, when it hits in the gut of just, like, "I'm not safe." And we get triggered back to that point, to points in our own history where really we should have been centered. And maybe, weren't, and maybe that's another point of harm. You know, so I think that we're never just dealing with the present. We're also dealing with our own history with it. And that is why we often need to seek support and circling so that we can be clearing and processing from our own histories, as well as turning and being in support to a community that we might want to be in, where we feel like, "Yeah, I'm this one, I'm an outer circle, so I can support, but also I have to work through what this is bringing up for me and my own past." And for fear of standing a little bit on a soapbox here, when the people who are directly impact aren't holding it in their bodies and processing the feelings, they're going outward and they're making sense of it. They're trying to organize it based on their good person, mentalities, or their ways to handle and not accept the grief and not accept the pain, which most people will, the people in the outer circles get the energetic explosion of what isn't being processed through other people's bodies. Like there's a saying, I think, in Resman Manakum's work, about if they're not doing the work, or if you're not doing the work, you're asking someone else too. And often in traumatic events like this, people who are more sensitive and open and capable are going to be feeling the wind of the impact in some different ways and so just one accolade to everybody to stay in the body even though it effing hurts. And like learning how to do that is I think maybe the human work. And then for those who are in their bodies putting up healthy light boundaries, that is the kind of like deflection of what isn't yours. It's not because you want to deflect or you need to deflect, but because it isn't yours to do the work for others. So just something that came up when I'm thinking about how women take on women's bodies tend to take on, and women, work it typically and socially tend to take on responsibility. My own experiences included like a thousand, thousand years in millennia, probably, of that. But I've also been the man, right, in some lifetime, that used the wound and fed off the earth in the ways that we all are. And so I don't know where exactly I'm landing with that, but I think just a knowledge that it is both ours to feel and to set the boundary to set the healthy aura around us that is, you know, not taking on too much or not taking on what our bodies can't take on. That's interrupting sleep or interrupting our eating or, you know, keeping us from breathing. Like that. Thank you. That there's so much in there and that's, and it's so much the center of, you know, the work that we do in our community spaces in women's groups around building capacity to feel the feeling body. And this is like people have heard me say it a million times, but like how do we start with UFOs and end up feeling our feelings. And it's like right like this right here is how that happens. And the subtleties of that and building capacity to be with the grief, which is really hard. And as you said, our culture doesn't support it and doesn't we're supposed to just like get over it, pull ourselves up, could be where somebody else has it where all these things. And also it's. This is to me where the link between thousands and thousands of years of. The feminine being in the underworld is directly in our bodies that it's been pushed away for so long we're relearning how to do it. And the effect of not being in our bodies and not feeling like grief makes meaning of things and not feeling the impact of it for so long culturally like in the West for such a long time. And then the result is in this results in in and by this I mean like this conversation that we're all having right now the way that it's metabolizing and all of our bodies in this space all of the bodies around me. And then it's just like the way that we're all being metabolized and then ends up coming outside ways in directly to like mattress side like the killing of the mother the killing of the earth. All of this to me is deeply connected to that. And so what you just said about if we're not. And then we get in the body than somebody else is that feels like a certainly true and a process of learning how to do that. But also a call. And a reminder that like this is the thing. And I because even so it's a deeply interjected in me to push past the body or nor it's amazing how again and again it comes back to like no actually this it is the body. And then it's the work like this is what we're doing what I'm doing on the planet at this time in this lifetime is like re. You know what I call it healing the split you know inviting all of this back in and it's just. It's hard work and nobody like I don't know anybody who kind of wants to feel these feelings until there's an experience of feeling these feelings so completely that. And then it's just become ecstatic like it's like oh god I'm alive you know it's what it feels like to be alive. Well there's also the catch 22 that we get into this situation that we get into by not being in touch with our feelings right like there are signals our bodies give us when we're with somebody who is dangerous. like you I think I think I think I'm gonna have to go. every woman has the experience of walking down the street and having their back tell them that something's coming or something isn't okay. And maybe men too. That's something current experience. But we have those signals and when we override them when we're set or taught to be like, that's too much. Don't get over dramatic or whatever word was instilled in you. Don't hallucinate whatever it is. And we turn that off, then we actually get ourselves into situations that are more dangerous. And we continue the pattern by continually not listening to the nervous system who's wise and capable and help me at 19 years old turn around and look someone directly in the eye who was following me home and all that person did was walk away. Because they're like, oh, I was seen now. That person's going to be harder to trap. And I think that there's a circuitousness to this, right? It's feeling the grief, but it's also like trusting the body to tell us something that we're so tuned out of learning. And to be a problem, I think for a woman to say no, to just stand up and leave a situation, to, you know, you have to have enormous self-esteem and courage to override the cultural impacts of someone asking you for help or someone asking you for the time or like all the ways that we're intruded upon and our politeness, our intro directed politeness, you know, causes us to stay somewhere where we don't want to and to do otherwise is to really be difficult, you know? And it's understandable why we don't and it's a necessity that we do. And I was also, you know, just thinking about the, for me, it was feeling complicated, the, the space holding and the processing on behalf of, you know, that like in our friendships, we have consent, you know, how resource are you? How resource am I? I'm not sure what I can hold today. I am sure what I can hold today, you know, that, that adds in so much safety in our relationships and bringing in consent to what a woman is holding and processing and holding space for processing is such a game changer, you know, and it's interesting. I'm just, I'm just thinking about consent as sort of the main thing. What am I, what am I, what am I consent to? And what's my safety to not consent? What's the judgment on me when I say, you know, I'm just not comfortable around that person and I won't be coming if they're there. Which is something I've said a lot and I've, you know, I'm no longer in my family of origin because of that. And that's okay because they're not prioritizing my safety and they're not believing me when I say I'm not safe. Then I mean with friends like this, any enemies, you know, so I don't, I can have a new, I can have a different kind of family. But there's a steep price to be paid. You have to be okay getting sent away and you have to be okay getting called a bitch and you have to be okay being called difficult and wrong and crazy and dramatic and over sensitive. And I would say zero of which things I am or enough to be fun, you know, whatever. But I feel like to be really explicit about it as as Hailey was of sometimes like, I don't like it is enough. I don't know why. I don't know why I don't want to be in a room with that man. But I don't. And that's enough. We don't have to take it to court. I don't want to. I don't like it. And you know, just not to blame anyone who's ever we've all been in a situation where we've overrided that. But bringing forward. Like we can hold space for this conversation, Robin, for you to process. As you've been helping so many people to process and also with awareness of like, this is not mine to hold even as I might hold space for someone to process. And I think the key is consent, you know, have I consented to be a part of the circle? I've I've certainly had people tell me things where I thought, gee, I really wish I didn't know about. And it's hard. It's hard to hold all of this. You know, when you said Robin, like, oh, it's worse for other people, that does not make me feel better. It makes me feel like I'm in hell. You know, like, oh, everyone goes through this. You know, when the me two movement happened and it was like, well, if that's what you're calling sexual assault, then I guess I've been. It's like, yeah. Yeah. That's the upshot is how pervasive it is and what a nightmare it is. And this apocalyptic unveiling of, oh, I guess we weren't crazy. I guess it was happening in all these rooms and to men as well. It's really, really difficult to breathe in that with that awareness and essential to breathe. Yeah, breath and sweat and laughter and screaming and shaking. Are my recommendations? Barthang, if you need to, yeah, I purge a lot during high yield, but like also like not letting yourself not find this ridiculous in some ways. Whatever, whatever brings up the comedy of it is going to be healing. And that's also one of the quick, I think you were saying Robin of like feeling these feelings as like an ecstatic release. Right orgasms and other great one like, but these like that is the upshot of feeling more alive. And the feeling more human is that those things become easier. Right? Like it becomes easier to sweat and laugh and cry and feel that I want to say like clarity or cleanliness that comes that opens space that wasn't there before. And the bodies in the amazing thing about this human life is like the body is the only place that that can happen in right and that can only happen in the present because the body is only ever here. In this moment in this time space and. That's such a beautiful thing like that's such a like that's such a gift and so. I know for myself like when I feel like I'm taking on too much, I'm like put it down, watch a funny movie, like put it down, take a bath, put it down, go for a run. I live some heavy ass weights and like feel totally capable of taking it on and not because I need to take on more, but because the body will do the work for me in spite of me. Like as a yoga teacher like I used to start my class is saying like this will work in spite of you. Like you've shown up 90% of the work is done. This was done for 2000 years like trust like just trust the body. Just do the things and just check in at the end and see what will happen. And that's become like less of like I have to do a 90 minute yoga class and more of like I can jump thing Jack for two seconds and like give a good tribal scream and it's we're done. But you know like we practice to practice that and holding space. For our bodies that like our freaking miracles like your bodies are freaking miracle Robin. And you're doing it. And given that all that space and context, I wonder what you'd like to process now. The layers of it for you. Yeah. Well, I just love I'm so grateful for this conversation because this is what like it feels in some way that the kind of mind space and meaning making all those things have there's been so much work happening there for particularly the last few years like as we even bringing in semantics and then learning what is semantics and learning like how do we do it, you know, and how do we go slow and how do we learn to listen to the body and how do we build capacity and there's just been so much work around all of this, which is so necessary and wonderful. And then at some point in some ways kind of getting that under our belts and then sort of putting it down and just coming into relationship and being like, OK, this, this is the medicine, not having to do it alone, you know, even all the things that both of you named I was there was so many things that I wanted to ping off of but carry bringing in the consent that we have in our relationship and it takes it's these things don't happen overnight like this is I'm feeling all of the beauty. beautiful kind of labor that goes into building. I've been weird about the word safely, I don't know, like say it, like for sure safe spaces, but also it's like we're also being really wildly edgy sometimes and that's being held too and that we're going to places that are hard to hold sometimes, but all of that to say the work that's gone into building these relationships where for a while, and still, you know, it's like I have something do you have space for this? And the other person saying actually I don't, I'm really full right now, I love you, can we talk tomorrow? And then everybody dealing with how that feels and all of the subtleties of how that might bring up like, oh, this person doesn't love me or oh my gosh, this person loves me so much that they want to be really resource to talk to me or all of this. It's very, I am with probably younger selves who did not have the capacity to listen to her body when her body was screaming at her to get out of that room or didn't have, like I just, and so I'm feeling in some ways everything that's being said is like yes, this is all correct and I'm feeling the truth of the times and the people and the past or present to have not yet gone on this incredible journey to go down and be able to listen to the body or be able to have relationships where there's these deep layers of consent and openness and so I'm feeling that. I really don't want to talk about like specific details around this but I left the experiencer group and I broke with Jay, I'm gonna, you know, like this who we're talking about, this is what the intro is gonna be talking about a little bit and so people know this is why we're having this conversation but I left that situation a year ago and one of the things that I, you know, to both of your points, I look back on and for whatever reason, right? Not the, there's no need to like extrapolate what this means exactly but for whatever reason, my body felt bad for a really long time in that situation and I would watch my body feel bad and I would not and I would internalize it. You know, this is, I need to get over this. I need to, like this is insecurity on my part and I just need to get over this insecurity so that when I step into this space, I don't, I'm not feeling this way. I overrode my body, I overrode my values sometimes, like being around a person who says bad things about other people and instead of like stopping it, I would like nervously chuckle or something and like that, I don't feel, you know, so all of these ways that I subtly, in this situation and so many in my life and it's so interesting to me because I have, like why, like how did, how was this my story that this has happened so many times in big ways and small ways in my life? But the result of all of it was just internalizing there's something wrong with me in this situation and then hearing from people kind of far out, I would say farther out in these like circles of impact, reporting the same thing. Like my body was telling me and I didn't know why and I pushed past it and then really, there's like a sort of landing lesson here again and again of like I now will listen to my body. For me personally, this is just my, it's like my kind of personality and also my mission on this planet, whatever. I'm always looking back in to see what my role was to see where I can, you know, heal where I can do this and I notice that it does create a little bit of conditions to take on more, like you were saying, hey, like to take on things that aren't mine and to like I'm feeling this layer of accountability and that can become the center for me and I can forget that the accountability lies with, you know, the closest center, like the meteor or the, you know, like the rock that was dropped into the, like that's where the accountability should be centered and so that's been something that I've been working with to is it's in my nature to look at and to listen to my body and to heal and to not push past my values or my body, all of those things and so I'm taking that on as my kind of work in this and I also feel a little bit of bypassing around like the part of me who's that that I think is what is hitting the body. I think what hits my body is the part of me that just wants to fucking burn shit down and be like none of this was okay. This shouldn't have happened. These people shouldn't have been impacted, you know, lay the accountability at the feet of the, of whoever is doing this and I'm feeling like this is just an inquiry and kind of an edge for me. I'm feeling how much I and often other women, I mean, I'll say like overtly, like many of the other women in this situation are doing a lot of labor of accountability and I'm feeling the mismatch of that, you know, that like I think you told me Haley when I was talking about this, you were like, can I say to that part like later? I can look at more things in a more subtle way later, but it's okay right now to just be like, God fucking dammit, this happened like for the love of God. Like when does this stop, you know, like this keeps happening again and again, we've lived with it our whole lives. It's such a deep pattern. It's like a virus. It has an enormous impact and like getting to the core of that in my body feels kind of like the most important thing on days because I'm doing, I can feel myself doing so much labor of accountability that actually well meaning, you know, like beautiful compassionate wise, all of those things and also a buffer from just the direct fuckery of situations like this. - Well, and I think Harry probably all have something like this too, but like what I think about is like when you get a cut, your body immediately floods the surface with antibodies and cells to regenerate the cut and it's immediate and it's like, go to the place, feel the thing, make sure you know exactly what's in that wound. And at any point like it would not, like if the body had to then go, what caused the cut? Like was my skin, or my anemic, was my skin like two week for this like what is my immune system? Like if your body had to do all of that first, which is what I think we are doing when we take this mental accountability and not reacting in a appropriate way to the urgency of the situation. You know, we would not heal a wound properly. We would probably have more scar tissue. We would probably know like whatever would happen, like I'm also like, probably that's not a perfect physical metaphor, but like I think about a injury I had as a dancer in my teen years where I've been rehabbing the scar tissue for that my entire life because they told me just to take Advil and keep walking on it. You know, like just take like 800 milligrams of Advil and like make and like look, like but then later I was like, oh, and I was doing all the dancer work of like, oh, what was my alignment doing that caused this injury? But like did I have a good person who gave me an MRI and said, no, you tore through your like main tendon in your groin and that's gonna like probably screw some stuff up for a while. Like maybe we do something else here. No, I didn't have that. So all that to say like go to the place where the wound is and flood it with what is necessary and what is necessary for healing as accountability is repair is, you know, looking at the direct cause like if there's a knife, your skin is gonna bleed. Like it can get cut. We don't ignore the knife and be like, oh, your body should have been stronger. It shouldn't have had to be cut. You should get like another layer of armor which is what it feels like we do when we try to heal something that's concrete, like in a more, in a more, I don't wanna use those words so much but when like a biological, physiological impact with a psychological or psychological, psychological. Yeah, it's like we're going all out and it's like actually like stay where it hurts and that's, you know, and that's what suffering is is like avoiding what hurts and resisting feeling the thing. And so it actually perpetuates more suffering to avoid it. - I do have a version of that. - I think it would. - Yeah, which is if a building's on fire, you put it out. you don't start researching like less flammable building materials. There will be a time for that, but when it's burning you put it out. You get the firefighters to the scene, you get right to where the fire is and you put it out. And when there is a situation where there is someone who I firmly believe through unconscious beliefs, like wrong beliefs about what will cause happiness and safety, is harming others. You start with taking the one who's harming others and taking them away from the others and saying, you know, you have to stop this right now. We're putting out the fire, we're putting down the knife. No more harm. We're going to come around to the community and what let this happen and how we, you know, what, what did I miss and super reasonable things to be asking, where is this a pattern in my life? Have I ever been this person, you know, bringing in compassion all these things, which makes sense. But if the building is on fire, we're not listening to Ted talks about like eco materials for the future. And I will say also just to add to that the intro per second, like it is compassionate to go to the fire. It is compassionate to remove somebody from harming others. Like I don't want to say like compassion is later. It's actually the compassionate, most loving action to do for someone is to stop them from hurting people and saying, hey, for whatever reason you think that this is the way to your joy or the way to your safety or the whatever reason you're acting this way or, you know, completely non like their psychopathy and sociopathy. And those are reasons that like all of us kind of brush under the rug because they're so unknowable to people who have the empathy and compassion that those, you know, rare humans have less of. It's compassionate to stop that. It's compassionate to say no. And I think we miss that sometimes. So thank you for that, Carrie. Yeah. If that feels like a powerful place to claim and I felt that in other ways before it, I feel the absolute ring of truth of that, you know, of all of that. I remember being a very, I don't know, this was probably like 15 years ago or something and I was working with my yoga teacher and very close to her and she's a deep sutras like has studied sutra for a really long time and and I don't even remember how the conversation came about or even what the question was, but I'm putting pieces together now. She runs this beautiful like yoga teacher training in our local prison and it's spread to other prisons in Colorado and it's really beautiful and she's graduated like 60 students or something and now they're teaching and it's just as beautiful spreading through the prison system. But so I'm like putting that together right now, but she was talking about how, yeah, when someone is doing something bad that's harming other people that it can be done with the utmost like clarity and even ferocity and compassion to just stop them and take them out of the situation and it can be like that it can happen from that level and to me that's not it's not feeling in my body right now like removed from the wound or the it feels like like a real act of power to see that things you know that as you said Haley like in the actual act of stopping this it comes from a it can come from a really really powerful place. It's I keep thinking of like Kali you know or like Manjushri sword it's just like stop stop this is not okay and it cannot continue. Contrary to what you might think it's not benefiting you it is not benefiting you. Right. You know it's not a service I provide that you abuse me and I take it because that's not good for you it's not good for me either you know but it's not like I almost feel like somehow there's this idea well I know why I think it you know my mom had an abusive boyfriend and I was like you got to get rid of this guy I can't take it and she said oh but he had a really bad childhood you know and I was like well now I'm having a really bad childhood and it was not like a service that we provide to be compassionate to that person and understanding where their dysfunction was arising from is separate from whether they we allow their dysfunction to continue to cause harm. It doesn't it's not good for them it's not and it's like this cookie I want to speak into the space somehow belief that if we take this person away which might be their worst fear might be horrible for them it might be terrible suffering and we might feel for them but that it's somehow a service to them to let them keep back to that way and it that's wrong that's a wrong thought it's not correct. Yeah and it's since it's I think insidious in terms of like where does that like if you are really tuned into your body and this is like I think some of the fallout from some of the movements that have been happening recently where we're calling people to account that like it meanness or like talking about other people or they start to feel bad in your body and you want to stop those things and then somebody might say oh you're being overly sensitive or oh like you know and so like we're like if we really look at the where the wound begins or where the you know the red flags or whatever yellow flags that come up are it's how are they holding other people are they are they treating them with dignity you know which is a high value of mine um are they respecting someone's yeses and nose right like this is and I work with young people like this is like toddler stuff that we don't get well trained in because we go straight from toddler hood where we're allowed maybe sometimes and sometimes not to be the wild right like the wild warriors that toddlers are and then we go to school and school is like no and we need that at that age but if we're not everyone's in a while allowed to be wild and say oh and this is you to learning how to risk remain kind right and not being restricted but I'm learning where my edges are like I feel like this is sort of the echo of us not really looking at those younger transitions and those younger parts of like oh actually I can claim my space and I can also be kind while I'm doing it like it's a contradiction that we until we get to adulthood we can't really always hold well that there is like I'm not going to let this person do this because that's not kind but I'm also going to be kind while I stop it I'm going to stop it as kindly as possible um I think there's been a long confusion I was raised to Catholic you know of loving um and forgiveness as being somehow it odds with discernment you know like we can say you're you you're not a piece of shit but you can't come to Thanksgiving you know that's somehow if I love you and I understand where the harm came from and I forgive and I don't hold resentment in my heart and I'm not trying to let it get the past that then oh the door also comes open and you can come back in and continue your behavior and that if you don't accept that you're unforgiving you know and that's that's not that's a confused that creates a lot of confusion and it is a place a point of confusion and there's a difference between I call it judgment and discernment you know I'm not judging this person's beyond redemption this person's no good he's not one of us he's out there he's bad he's you know sucks whatever that to me that's judgment discernment is this is not a safe person from you right now and in my case I'm not a safe person for them you know I'm not confident in my ability to stay kind with this person in the situation I have a boundary around where I can stay in my center and when I start throwing stuff I think um if I'm it feels to me like I'm this is and this is kind of what I was what I've been experiencing in myself and what I've been hoping for that you know staying with the body for a long time and now sort of moving out in my in some sort of circle in me is like moving out to a different space about thinking you know meaning making and how to think about these things. And I do want to do that. I do want, you know, it's all all the different perspectives and levels and circles are great. And one of the things that I really want to talk about because for whatever reason, I am in kind of an archetypal swirl of what happens when leadership and power are misused, abused, corrupted, and caused harm from that place because that's the, that's the, that's the, that's like the theme that's coming up for me big time. And part of it, just, I'll say is that as I take the seat more and more as a teacher, as I, you know, lead community spaces, I'm asked by my teachers and peers to continually, like, look at my own shadow and my own places where I might inadvertently cause harm because I can't, I can't see. And that feels like a huge piece of this to me. Like, there's, if that's not done, like, people in power, this is my, like, what I want to call this episode, I don't know if I'm going to be able to call this episode this or not, but I want to call it, like, gurus want to smash, because this is my, as I've been talking about this to my partner, he's like, yeah, man, gurus want to smash. Like, this is just a thing that, like, it's, it's true. And how much harm has been caused in that dynamic between, you know, spiritual leaders or teachers or, you know, professors and their students or, you know, there's a power imbalance and then there's certainly like a culture that isn't looking at these patterns and all the way out from that sort of circle, all the way into the person themselves, like not having, not allowing anyone to get in or reflect or, you know, that there's not, kind of honesty and willingness to look at the shadow. And so it comes outside raised with all of this harm. And so I would like to talk about that because that's really, it's not up for me, like, I guess it's up for me in a way that, like, I've experienced from teachers, the power that they, that is, that can move through them. And I've experienced it in ways that feels held and contained correctly and like soaked in ethics and personal responsibility. And I've experienced it in other ways where that, where, where it's true that there's power moving through a person and they are not doing any of that other work to make sure that it's holds like cleanly and well and just creates so much fucking harm. And so that, like I'm curious, I would love to hear what both of you have to say about that. Well, I feel like this is an entire course that, you know, one of the things I did was teach a course or help create and lead a course at Harvard that was about Nick's social responsibility using mindfulness and these questions went on for semesters. So the topic is large when we talk about the introduction of power. One thing I was thinking, I think I said this to yesterday or I said it to my husband is like what an appropriate leader is. And an appropriate leader can have trauma as long as they are doing work and they have support systems. It's not, it's a few different things that they need holding to accountability like on the personal front, on the social front and on the like checks and balances within the leadership organization. Whatever that is, like it's not like we're not banishing people. Everyone has trauma, especially when you have a lot of power and energy moved through you're going to actually have more. You're going to more come up because you're not only doing yours, but you're doing the epigenetic and you're doing the so you know, there's more responsibility as you move into these positions as a teacher. I've experienced that myself, but it's not okay to have shadow that's unexamined. And so if you're in a like anyone who's listening or in a community where it's clear that this person like you're forgiving their shadow and they are not actively engaged in some kind of process, it doesn't have to be therapy. It can be any number of shadow work modalities or community circling, right, which is like the more you know traditional or modernist way of doing it is like hey we have a circle like we hold our you know, rabbi to account, we hold our priest to account in these ways. If they're not having that peer review, if they're not having like I would try to implement that and see if they're open to that and if they say they're open to it and then they don't do it, that's not an appropriate leader for you. That is as we've learned more in leadership research and when we learn in experiences like those are the things that prove time and time again the healthy community can hold and the container will break at some point if it is not done that way. And what the impact of that container breaking and can vary, it could be like the leader has a breakdown, it could be that the community has a breakdown or break up, any of those things can happen. So that's like my headline right now but just you know, who? Power, you know, we all have power, we all have human beings have so much power and then when we say okay I'm a community I'm going to actually resource my power into a leader, you're electing to give that person more power right like some of your power, you are empowering them to do that and that container is supercharged and so you need someone who can handle that kind of supercharged, that kind of a voltage and there are some that just are not able, it gets confused right like it gets confused like oh they love me so much I'm so desired I can you know take advantage of people sexually or flirt with them right like that's one way it happens. It could be I can be more authoritative and demand things of people that's another way it can happen right so just watching for those very typical ways leaders can perform when they are not like the right use of power phrasing is coming up for me like not using their authority and power that is given to them with wisdom and compassion I mean essentially it's my headline but we could go on this can happen in a lot of relationship and I was thinking about safety but then the guru container the teacher container the doctor container is like see me I'm I don't know I don't know how to get better I don't know how to grow I need somebody who's up there to like throw down a ladder and then it's so tricky navigating how much authority am I going to maintain over who I think I am and how much authority am I going to give over to someone to hold such strong accountability and I had a brilliant teacher years ago really like a genius who was always telling us how he had done the shadow work and cleared his arrogance and become you know completely enlightened in every way and impeachable and um it always felt like I'm not sure you're totally done with that arrogance you know and so didn't make him less brilliant but for to me it made him not a role model and it kind of in my mind this whole topic has called your father as a wonderful man because I've had so many patients who were afraid of their father terrified nauseated and they would say I don't want to go in the car with dad so your father's a wonderful man you know this override of the body I just think it's so complicated to honor someone and to respect someone and to put them above as a role model hold me teach me and then have that person do harm that's not an answer that's just the whirlpool of the complexity for me of what it is to be a student in a community where I am with it is the necessity for personal authority like the necessity to to have my own authority and I'm also leaning pretty heavily on um I'm part of ASI you know the Association for Spiritual Integrity to have a lot of context around these kind of things and a lot of um instruction and offerings and one of the things that is spoken of there is like not pedestalizing you know pedestalizing is is dangerous for teachers and students the awareness that I am empowering this person I'm gonna sit in front of them they're gonna teach me something and also seeing the humanness this person is a human and as you said at the beginning, Haley and my belief too, like this person has to have accountability and have peer reflection and be doing shadow work. And that has to be, like I have to see that to teach me and it's like the surrender comes from my consent to it and knowing that and having the ability to have that self authority feels like where I want to live in it. And I could go like I'm mindful of time, but I could go on about this for a really long time because it's so complex. I also wonder if we're in a moment where that phrase about the next Buddha is the Sangha is really it right now. It's like, it feels like a moment of decentralizing power, basically, which means that all the places that power is flowing to from whatever central place that had been empowered, all of those people also have to claim their power and work with their own internal power and their power structures and their relationship with power and self authority. So it's like we all have to grow up, like we all have to take responsibility and for ourselves and for our roles and things in lots of different ways. And then maybe just to circle back to the very beginning at the same time, not excuse harm. There's an absolute difference between subtle, like teacher student community dynamics and someone overtly misusing and abusing power that causes really huge impacts and ripples of harm. So that's not like what we're talking about here. But that's how this stuff happens. - And for me, what is really coming up from all that is deep forgiveness of the self, because I can feel anger and frustration coming up in myself, like how did I let myself get into the situation again? For reasons, because of glamour, because of attraction, because someone who's gonna love me and help me and see me and whole space for me. And in moments, we might be caused to override a little knit or a little confusion. And the shame and the guilt that I see some people going through for having been close to someone who ended up being someone who was harmful to them and to others. Like I should have known, I should have seen, I did know, why didn't I respond to that and are knowing, because of thousands of years of reasons. And letting some deep loving acceptance of the part of ourselves that wanted that relationship, that wanted the closeness or the proximity or whatever acceptance, the safe space that, of course we want that. Well, also simultaneously building a future resolve to be in more self-trust, to listen to the body more, yes. But also not built on the foundation of shame or anger with the self for having found ourselves in a situation. I don't know if that resonates. I'm just feeling it and loving it. - It's been one of the themes of recent conversations is how did I let this happen and feeling shame. It's always interesting to me how much shame is held outside of that primary center of impact. Yeah, and then just to everything that you're both saying as I'm feeling into it, I'm feeling the, like in some ways, exhaustion of, like, "Whoof, man, this is all relationship in many ways. Like this is relationship." And the importance of, as we've all said, of like really vetting who gets into the inner circle and into our interior, like into the mind, into the heart, especially if there is a power dynamic in there, like that they're taking that seriously and making sure that people are doing what they need to be doing on their side if it's a leader, that these are real important things to look at. And I'm feeling it's like both internal, my stuff, external, how is the other person acting? Always, always for me coming back to the body and learning ever more how to be with the subtle signals and cues of the body. And also how just when it's done well, how beautiful that relationship can be, you know, between how beautiful I would say, like, relationship is in all the different ways that it is. 'Cause there's power dynamics in every single relationship, from subtle to enormous and everything in between. So I don't know if I've landed where I feel, I feel like actually more, a little bit more in complexity around all of it, but it feels really good to have metabolized all of this with you guys. I think I feel more in complexity around like my personal unfolding of authority and accountability and power, like, but in a good, rich, like I want to chew on it kind of way. And I feel a lot of metabolization around this broader subject that has arrived, this experience that has arrived into this community that is kind of navigating the shock waves. So thank you both so much. I appreciate you. - Yeah, and it might just be that like this went really wide. And we gotta, it's now time to go deep and like direct, right? Like I feel that often in my processing. So back to the body. - So great. Yeah, so grateful that you asked for support and that you're giving us the opportunity to show up with you for our own healing too, you know, our own consideration of this. - Yeah, thank you. And to be really clear, this is not the 90 minute allocation that you get on this. - Yeah, let's go. - Let's go. And we're done. - Yeah, we're done. - Like, you haven't used up your time on this issue because I definitely see it in four dimensions. It's like a big object that's rotating that we're looking at it from all sides. And in a place among the three of us of great safety for you to arise any kind of way about it and also to be changing in it. - Yeah. - And seeing it, of course, from all the perspectives. - Yeah, thank you so much. We are at time, I know you need to go carry. - All right, I sort of, go ahead, please. - I could stay on and process with you if you wanna do a little bit of wrapping more. I'm flexible. - I think the only thing that I'm sort of called is to, I feel just like a desire for a dedication for this to sort of be of service and medicine to clear all the bodies and all the ways and all the past and all the future and may this serve all of us, even including the people who have done the harm at the center made their experience with this clear the harm that has been done in the past and future as well. May all of this be medicine for everyone so that we can heal and transform and evolve through these things and not have to continue to repeat this cycle of harm and be in this really heavy archetype, archetype of unfolding that keeps happening and keeps happening, like may it shift, may it change. - Soha. - Thank you, thank you both. I love you both so much. - I love you. - Thank you again to Carrie Murphy and Haley Roth. Words cannot express my gratitude for my friends and communities and I'm gonna be putting another episode out soon talking about where we go from here, particularly about some cohorts that are opening up the mystery school for the brokenhearted, how all of this, this whole experience and so many other things have been rearranging me lately. Stay tuned for that coming soon. And if you would like to get on the waiting list for the becoming a poccaliptic mother cohort that starts in June or to find out any other information about my work or to book a one-on-one session with me, please visit robinlaceter.com. (gentle music) (upbeat music)