# 73: Mindful Magic: Finding Meaning in the Middle

Transcript

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on some level, let go of all of that and step into the stage.

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Discover what's there because the magic happens when you kind of let go of all the things that you're thinking about or feeling about, and simply step into the middle and discover what might be there

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All right.

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Welcome to the new Age Human podcast.

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I'm your host, Jon Astacio today we're welcoming back to the show, Tim Van Ness, who, if you're not familiar with him, he's a certified Psychosynthesis life coach.

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Now, if you're looking for something that's going to be more of a personal growth and a bit of mindfulness, you're gonna like this.

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And I'll give you a hint.

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We also talk about past lives a little bit, so stay tuned for that.

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Now, I'm actually looking to grow the show and would like to make sure that I'm producing the right content that you are really interested in.

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So.

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What I'm asking you is, can you gimme some feedback?

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I would love to hear from you.

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You can tell me what's working for you, what's not working for you.

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is there anything specifically that you want to hear more of in the podcast on the show?

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Think of, um.

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Some ideas spitballing like mindfulness, are you dealing with anxiety?

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is there any technology you're interested in hearing more about alternative healing modalities that you wanna dive deeper into and anybody specifically that you may follow that you think would be cool for me to chat with?

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now if you want to contact me, you can go to the website Newagehuman.com, on the top right, hit contact me or on the bottom left or right, there's a microphone that you can click and record, I believe, up to two minutes worth of whatever you wanna give as feedback.

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Now, with that said, let's get to the show.

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All righty.

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Well Tim, thank you for coming on the show.

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Welcome back to the show, man.

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How's it going?

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Thank you.

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It's glad to be, I'm glad to be back and it's going well.

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Thanks.

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It is glad to be back.

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We are speaking in third person.

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I feel like because you started off like that, your mind is like already out of your body and like ready to jam.

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Uh, that, uh, I'll take that.

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I.

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Um, so.

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Pre-recording.

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We, we spoke on how we wanted to talk about the theme of creativity and magic and setting the stage for the rest of the episode to dance around that.

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So I want to ask you, my friend, when you say choose your story, what do you mean by that?

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Good question.

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Thank you.

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There's a way in which exactly the way we started, uh, can be an example of what I'm talking about.

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So, uh, I had a moment, maybe I wasn't completely in my body.

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Maybe it wasn't, you know, I was thinking ahead.

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Um, my mouth was speaking.

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Without necessarily connection to my consciousness or my brain or what I was thinking about what I wanted to say.

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So I, I, and I've also, I learned early on, I think I have a little bit of, of dyslexia.

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Um, so I sometimes switch words around, it happens more in numbers, but every once in a while.

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So, um, yeah.

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So

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I

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how, how I.

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sometimes as well.

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So you're not alone.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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My brother, uh, I have two older brothers.

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My, the middle brother is very significantly affected by dyslexia.

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So, um, I, I think I got a little bit of it,

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Hmm.

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the point of this all is that, you know, you said, well, maybe you weren't completely, you know, in your body when you were saying this, and there's a choice point.

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I could choose to feel, I could choose to orient to what happened from a place of like, oh my God.

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Oh, I can't believe I like, I'm here, I am, I'm on a podcast and I'm like, supposed to be like really showing up professionally and I screwed up and I blew it.

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Oh my God, what the hell?

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You know?

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Or I could say, oh yeah, that was an interesting thing.

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Yeah, you're right.

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Maybe I wasn't completely in my body.

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The point is, you know, choose your story is the tagline of my company, van Essen Company, which is oriented around doing organizational work and working on looking at three different things in organizations, living values, developing leaders, and nurturing culture.

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What I've seen are the, the three key drivers of success in an organization.

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And so part of it is around this idea of, it's not like we have choice about what happens to us necessarily, and I think it's important to be very clear about that.

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There are a lot of people in this world that are very affected by all sorts of systemic challenges to to be nice about it.

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That,

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give an example?

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I.

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uh, economic systems, racism, all of the isms,

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Mm.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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that are intentionally crafted.

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There's systems and structures that have been intentionally crafted to keep certain people down and not give them opportunity and not give them choice.

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And so.

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That's real.

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And I'm not saying that you get to choose your reality or what's happening to you or that kind of thing.

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What I'm saying is choose your story is really about, we have a choice about the relationship that we have to what's happening to us.

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So bringing it full circle back to my, my.

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But what could be called a slip up of my tongue.

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I can choose to orient to that from shame and fear and guilt and like, oh my God, I'm stupid.

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That's a story that I'm telling myself.

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Or I could orient to it in a and or relate to that moment in a different way, which is like, oh, how fascinating That was.

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I wonder what that meant or what I, I wonder what that might have as an opportunity for me to learn and grow.

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Maybe I need to, you, you were actually just saying, you were thinking about creating a, a meditation for each episode to do pre episode, just to bring you and your guests into perhaps a bit more of the present moment.

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Mm-Hmm

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So that's what I mean by choose your story.

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Does that make sense?

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Yeah.

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And actually springs up some thoughts because, um.

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Let me ask you this, choose your story.

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I feel like there's two extremes.

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There's the, the story happens to me and someone else chose it and I didn't choose this, so I'm choosing this hardcore journey to fight or the choose your story, as in I'm responsible for everything and therefore I will.

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Just take on the burden and just fight without boundaries, so to speak.

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You see the two extremes

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do.

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and I want to, could you break down what's going on there?

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Yeah.

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Well.

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What's going on there?

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It's a, that's a big question.

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Uh, even the way you phrased the question and the two extremes in the way that you frame them, I hear stories associated with them.

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So one extreme is, uh, everything is my responsibility and it's my fault, and so therefore I have to fight and kind of push through and just kind of suck it up and know that it's all my fault.

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There's a story embedded in there.

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Um, I, I, I am a firm believer in, you were talking about exploring on this podcast, spiritual technologies.

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You could say that there's a, I don't know if it's a technology necessarily, but there's a, a, a, a mindset of living life that makes a shift from the question, why is this happening to me?

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Why is this happening for me?

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Which is to say that one way of orienting, maybe one end of that spectrum you're talking about is recognizing that on some level, yes, everything that happens to us in our lives is an opportunity for us to grow.

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You can make that a connection to some theories around karma and that on some level.

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Everything that happens to us is A, is our responsibility on some level or of our own making and our own creation, which comes back to the sort of maybe the center point, the midpoint of that extreme, which is what's the story that I'm choosing?

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And did I choose this experience in life?

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So some would say when we come into this life, before we come into this physical life, we are not our bodies.

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We are not our minds.

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We talked about this last time in psycho around the psychosynthesis concept.

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You know, we are who we are in our core.

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Essential self is not our bodies, not our minds, not our feelings.

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The idea is that we are something greater than all of that we are soul.

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Um, and I wrote a song about that.

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Um, and so if that's the case, part of theories, one of the theories that, uh, is out there in the world to consider and choose as a story is that as soul, before we come into this physical life, we make a choice about which spiritual lessons we feel like we wanna work on.

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So then we end up actually choosing the context of our life by the family we choose to be born into.

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So that's perhaps one extreme of what you're talking about.

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It's like, did I actually choose this?

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Well, you could say no.

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You could say yes.

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Um,

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Right,

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uh, the other extreme is that.

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All of this stuff is happening to me in my life.

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It has nothing to do with my own creation.

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I'm just simply, uh, um, well, the, the extreme of it is I'm just a victim of it all.

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And so I have to fight and, and suffer through whatever to kind of make my way in the world and try to seek whatever happiness I might want to seek.

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Um, and it could be very futile.

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Like what's even the point?

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There's a lot of people out there in the world right now that I, I think, feel this way.

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Um, because there's a lot of crap happening in the world.

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There's a lot of change happening.

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There's a lot of struggle.

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And yes, the, this physical life can really suck for a lot of people and for some people more so than others.

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You know, I'm a.

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Yeah, I, I, in my sort of physiological and, and contextual makeup represent someone that has the greatest source of, of, of power and control and access as a white, heterosexual, middle aged male.

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There's probably other factors that in there that I could do that, that comes from, I'm, I'm also a, a white Anglo-Saxon, Protestant in my background.

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So all of those factors, there are a lot of people that are very different from me that don't have the kinds of access to opportunity and what we think of as choice, and I think that's real.

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So.

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Hopefully that starts to articulate some of my thinking about the two ends of the extremes.

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Even if you're orienting to the ex extreme end of everything is happening to me and um, I'm a victim of all of this and I'm stuck.

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There are realities about that, and yet there's also.

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What we do have choices once again, how we relate to that story, and do we choose that story or do we choose to say, I'm not gonna be a victim of my, of my, uh, circumstance.

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I'm gonna take action in the ways that I can to live in accordance with my own values and what I believe and what's important to me.

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I can choose to focus on love, or I can choose to focus on fear.

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mm-Hmm.

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Yeah, that right.

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Choose your focus.

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You know, it's interesting because my background, my life experience has been very mixed.

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And so I think I would have a unique perspective on the, the culture aspect, the nationality aspect, the, the color of your skin aspect, and, um.

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What I started to process the world around me as is, um, I like the understanding and the idea of reincarnation and how.

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You get, let's just say, I don't wanna say injected, but you, you know, you, you get the, you as in the, the soul, you get to inhabit a physical body multiple times, and sometimes that body is a different color.

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Sometimes it's on a different part of the planet, and you're, it's almost like a game where you're like, you know what?

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In like those, those video games where you get to choose to be the bad guy or the good guy, or you know, then they have.

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A slew of, um, of backgrounds.

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This one's like big, this one's small, but they all have their own, um, positive and negative qualities.

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And you gotta decide which personality, what body, so to speak, to jump into.

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And I remember just those games, I, I would just take forever.

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'cause I'm like, I feel like I'm a little bit of everything.

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Um, but think of your soul jumping into a body and you're like, okay, cool.

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So I get to.

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Rock this one for a couple years and, um, I, I get to be a badass in this aspect.

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Let's go.

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And maybe in the past life you were just rocking a different body and, um, decided to switch it up.

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But again, the veil makes you forget so that you can have a genuine experience of a new experience, even though this could be like your hundredth time.

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And then you have a couple buddies that follow you around that reincarnate as your old crew.

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And that's like your family, your close friends, the people that you feel like you meet within five minutes and you felt like you've known them forever.

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Like those are your people, right?

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Tim?

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You could be my, one of my, one of the crew, right?

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We're part of each other's crew.

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And so I like that thought because it just blows past all these different concepts and barriers and limitations of.

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Of our culture in this period of time, place, reality, so forth.

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And, um, and when someone says, oh, this happened because of that, I'm like, okay, cool.

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That's an interesting construct based off of what's going on right now.

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Very interesting.

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Thank you for sharing type of thing.

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Um,

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Yep.

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and, you know, reincarnation, that's a really cool subject, but um, I like how you brought that up and I wanted to share my piece.

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Yeah, thank you.

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And we, we, we have taken to calling each other brother at times and who, who knows, maybe we, we were actually family brothers at one point in some other lifetime, you know, and yeah, come into this world at different times in different contexts and circumstances, certainly right.

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Yet.

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It's like, oh, you and I do that.

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I find that is really interesting, right?

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There are people you, you meet and like, oh, I, I know you.

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Like, how do I, like, how do I, like, it's good to see you again.

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I It is.

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Maybe you've been a couple of lifetimes, I don't know.

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But,

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Yeah.

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there is something, right?

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And yeah, that, it's a fascinating topic and we could go down that road too.

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And I know there were other things you wanted to explore here.

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yes.

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Um, we were talking about, um.

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The phrase, the magic in the middle.

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I'm not sure if, if what you meant is, I mean, I showed two extremes.

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Is the magic in the middle the, the middle of that, or are you speaking to something else?

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'cause you, you definitely wanted to speak on that phrase.

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I.

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Yeah, it's a good question.

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Um.

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I don't know if I had thought about it in terms of the middle of the spectrum that we were talking about, about Choose Your Story.

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I, I think it's related, but the phrase comes from my background and experience in a form of improvisational theater called Playback Theater

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Hmm.

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Playback is a form of improv based on the enactment of personal story.

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So it's a bit different from traditional comedy improv.

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In which typically in that context, you ask the audience for to, to just call out a, I don't know, a kitchen utensil and somebody says an egg beater.

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Okay, so we've got somebody with an eggbeater and what's a location I.

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Boulangerie in Paris, it's like, okay, so here's a person with a, you know, two, you know, two people in a scene.

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And, and then you just, you, you just go and you, you improvise on on and you just explore whatever's there.

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Um, in playback, we invite people to share a real moment from their life, or even to start with just a feeling.

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And sometimes there's a theme, like, I'm doing a show this Friday.

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We're doing a, a performance at, at Brandeis University for a class on provocative art.

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And, uh, my buddy will see is the, is the professor of that class.

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And he's also a playback professional.

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And he's put, you know, we, we put together a team of players to go and perform Playback theater as a provocative arts.

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And the theme is gonna be something like, when, when, have you ever felt different in your life?

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And so there may be a theme so people share moments of their lives of when they felt different.

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It might be positive, it might be negative.

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Um, and so in playback theater, the.

00:18:46.575 --> 00:18:58.964
There's, uh, we'll see for instance, uh, who's leading this program, um, who's the professor of the class, and also, uh, the director of our company plays the role of what's called the conductor.

00:18:58.964 --> 00:19:02.355
The conductor is the interlocutor between the audience and the players.

00:19:02.384 --> 00:19:07.394
So is the one that is sort of the MC, the master of ceremonies that, uh.

00:19:08.250 --> 00:19:18.059
Invites kind of explains a little bit to the audience about what's gonna happen, and then invites people to share and maybe clarifies to make sure we understand exactly what they're saying.

00:19:18.059 --> 00:19:21.569
And then there's this magical phrase called Let's watch.

00:19:23.190 --> 00:19:23.269
Hmm.

00:19:23.700 --> 00:19:30.779
That's the handoff between the teller sharing what they have to share and the conductor passing it off to the players.

00:19:31.710 --> 00:19:34.589
And I say players'cause there are actors and there's also a musician.

00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:44.099
And so there's this moment of choice as an actor, I'm standing there and in front of me is the stage.

00:19:44.430 --> 00:19:51.240
And we imagine a, an imaginary line that's like, that's right in front of me as I'm standing on the back of the stage.

00:19:52.319 --> 00:19:56.160
Um, when I'm behind the line, I'm simply just me listening.

00:19:57.059 --> 00:20:00.660
And as actors in playback, we listen with our whole being.

00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:03.809
We don't just listen with our ears, we listen with our bodies.

00:20:03.809 --> 00:20:11.430
We listen with our hearts to seek inspiration and connection to what the experience of the teller was.

00:20:11.430 --> 00:20:25.589
'cause the goal of what we're trying to do is to play back or reenact the essence of the story or the essence of the feeling in a way to really honor the teller and honor their experience and bring it to life.

00:20:26.130 --> 00:20:28.740
And so here I am, I'm standing behind a line.

00:20:29.579 --> 00:20:30.900
I've heard someone share.

00:20:32.279 --> 00:20:35.670
I'm about to be part of an ensemble that's gonna reenact this.

00:20:37.529 --> 00:20:41.670
And it's very easy to stay connected to our, our mental bodies, right?

00:20:41.670 --> 00:20:43.380
I'm thinking like, what am I gonna do?

00:20:43.589 --> 00:20:44.400
What am I gonna say?

00:20:44.549 --> 00:20:45.420
How am I gonna act this out?

00:20:45.420 --> 00:20:46.980
What am I gonna do, right?

00:20:47.369 --> 00:20:52.619
Um, our bodies may have feel and impulse to do something.

00:20:54.164 --> 00:21:04.994
And the magic in the middle speaks to this idea that it's, it's fine to notice the thoughts going through my head about what I might do.

00:21:04.994 --> 00:21:05.025
I.

00:21:05.714 --> 00:21:27.285
I have to be a little bit careful of that because I, I have to be careful a little bit about the intention because we filter all this stuff through our own experiences, and so am I, is the the idea that's coming to me, coming to me because I want to, like, look good or make the audience laugh or, but none of that's really the goal.

00:21:27.289 --> 00:21:33.285
The goal is how can I accurately represent sometimes just through sound and motion.

00:21:33.690 --> 00:21:44.579
This other person's human experience and I like to teach the idea that like it, okay, so notice the thoughts in my head as I'm standing there.

00:21:44.940 --> 00:21:48.509
Notice the physical sensations that go through my body.

00:21:48.839 --> 00:21:52.529
Maybe where in my body I feel the feeling that person just shared.

00:21:54.210 --> 00:21:55.589
Take all of that into account.

00:21:55.595 --> 00:21:59.819
But on some level, let go of all of that and step into the stage.

00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:18.839
Discover what's there because the magic happens when you kind of let go of all the things that you're thinking about or feeling about, and simply step into the middle and discover what might be there.

00:22:19.545 --> 00:22:21.974
That may be beyond everything that I had thought about.

00:22:22.035 --> 00:22:37.934
And then oftentimes I find when I do that and I step in and I access that magic in the middle, I come up with something that's even more powerful and effective to help the teller feel like, yeah, yeah.

00:22:37.964 --> 00:22:38.535
Oh my God.

00:22:38.535 --> 00:22:39.674
That's exactly it.

00:22:39.674 --> 00:22:41.115
That's exactly what it's like.

00:22:42.075 --> 00:22:43.575
And I could not have planned that.

00:22:43.575 --> 00:22:47.565
I could not have thought about that because that truth.

00:22:48.285 --> 00:22:54.015
It kind of exists in the magic, in the middle, on the stage, and not in my own brain.

00:22:55.819 --> 00:22:56.039
Hmm.

00:22:57.255 --> 00:23:13.394
So we're talking about interesting how it's the magic in the middle and not the phrase why, why not use, or is it the subconscious or is this something more deeper?

00:23:14.505 --> 00:23:14.744
Right?

00:23:14.744 --> 00:23:20.744
Because you have your subconscious and then you have the connection to the deeper connection to the scenario.

00:23:20.894 --> 00:23:24.434
And I do have, um.

00:23:25.305 --> 00:23:30.525
Respect for the understanding and the ability to let go.

00:23:31.575 --> 00:23:43.634
Because when you let go, for me, that's let go of your mental processes, thoughts that are limited to your understanding, and when you let go of that, you, you bring space.

00:23:44.174 --> 00:23:50.115
You make space for something bigger than that, that you made you as in the mental you.

00:23:50.775 --> 00:23:51.105
Yeah.

00:23:51.779 --> 00:23:55.319
May not even know about, and I think that's what you're talking about, right?

00:23:56.535 --> 00:23:57.015
Yes.

00:23:57.015 --> 00:24:02.444
I would say that it's not necessarily just the subconscious.

00:24:03.285 --> 00:24:06.134
Um, I think that's.

00:24:06.585 --> 00:24:30.404
Partly it, um, but I think almost more,'cause it's really not about me, it's not about what might be in my subconscious, what I'm actually talking about really is connecting to a field that gets created when you bring together a group of people and you create a sacred container, which is part of what playback does.

00:24:30.494 --> 00:24:32.355
And there's very.

00:24:33.089 --> 00:24:44.640
Structured rituals involved in the process of starting a whole performance and how we welcome people into the space, acknowledging the physical space that we're in.

00:24:44.670 --> 00:24:45.480
Is it a theater?

00:24:45.480 --> 00:24:51.000
Is it a, an old train station with old wood floors that we're using as a theater tonight?

00:24:51.029 --> 00:24:56.009
Because, you know, it's a, like, what's the context of where we are?

00:24:56.430 --> 00:24:59.819
Who are the people, what's the process for welcoming people in?

00:24:59.819 --> 00:25:01.589
Is there music playing when they come in?

00:25:01.829 --> 00:25:18.029
There's a whole structured ritual process to create a container within which there's a field and, and it's the field of, some might call it the collective consciousness.

00:25:18.569 --> 00:25:20.220
That's what Carl Jung talked about.

00:25:20.250 --> 00:25:21.599
Like there's me in

00:25:21.765 --> 00:25:22.710
Like a local one.

00:25:23.009 --> 00:25:23.730
a local one.

00:25:23.734 --> 00:25:25.920
Yeah, a local field that's.

00:25:26.759 --> 00:25:33.779
Where all of our collective thoughts, experiences, emotions, um, past lives, who knows right?

00:25:33.779 --> 00:25:44.670
Are all present in this field and the goal and playback and the goal of the magic in the middle is speaking to can I tap into that field that's even beyond my own subconscious.

00:25:47.039 --> 00:25:47.970
Mm-Hmm.

00:25:48.359 --> 00:26:02.430
It's actually pretty cool how that's whole all set up because you said, um, there's rituals and, and whatnot, and there's rules that are designed sound, sound like they're designed for you to be inducted into this.

00:26:03.089 --> 00:26:05.009
Um, uh.

00:26:06.045 --> 00:26:11.625
This local collective conscious, like this, this local grid of minds.

00:26:12.045 --> 00:26:13.065
And, um,

00:26:13.349 --> 00:26:13.549
to

00:26:13.575 --> 00:26:14.805
agreement is we're in.

00:26:15.255 --> 00:26:16.755
Yeah, that's actually pretty cool.

00:26:17.325 --> 00:26:17.654
Yeah.

00:26:17.744 --> 00:26:17.924
Yeah.

00:26:17.924 --> 00:26:18.105
You're

00:26:18.210 --> 00:26:21.329
not necessarily, I was gonna say maybe not inducted, but, you know Yeah.

00:26:21.329 --> 00:26:38.460
Plugged in or tapped in or have access to, and, and that requires exactly what you were describing, John, which is letting go, perhaps of all of my own things that are in my, in my conscious mind and what I can be conscious of, which is perhaps limited.

00:26:39.644 --> 00:26:39.914
Hmm.

00:26:40.214 --> 00:26:42.404
So a thought popped up.

00:26:42.825 --> 00:26:46.815
What do you have to say for the person that has a.

00:26:47.954 --> 00:27:00.015
Challenge with letting go, knows about it maybe is where I was a couple months to a year ago and still working on the letting go process.

00:27:00.019 --> 00:27:12.765
Especially if you are so good at what you're doing with, with the mind and have like there's people out there that have accomplished so much and then you're telling me to let go so I can have this experience.

00:27:13.875 --> 00:27:14.650
What are you talking about?

00:27:15.450 --> 00:27:15.900
Yeah.

00:27:16.109 --> 00:27:18.240
what do you, what do you have to say to that person?

00:27:18.359 --> 00:27:21.660
You know, if they're listening,'cause I'm pretty sure they're like, hmm, hmm.

00:27:21.809 --> 00:27:22.799
Interesting stuff here.

00:27:22.829 --> 00:27:23.160
You know?

00:27:24.990 --> 00:27:25.589
Yeah.

00:27:25.650 --> 00:27:28.650
Um, well, there's almost two questions in that question.

00:27:28.650 --> 00:27:30.809
One is, why, why even let go?

00:27:30.839 --> 00:27:38.279
Like why, why should I let go of the way that I oriented the world if I, especially from a thinking place?

00:27:38.309 --> 00:27:38.819
Um, I.

00:27:39.494 --> 00:27:49.934
Last time in in, we talked about psychosynthesis, we talked about what is defined as six psychological functions, which is sort of the way that we orient to life.

00:27:49.964 --> 00:27:51.404
And there's our thinking function.

00:27:51.734 --> 00:27:53.414
I used to think of them as different bodies.

00:27:53.414 --> 00:28:00.765
We have a mental body, you know, we have a thinking function, we have an emotional body, we have an sort of an emotion, you know, the function of our emotions.

00:28:01.275 --> 00:28:03.434
Um, physical senses, right?

00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:08.430
We tend to orient to the world and we, we all have strengths.

00:28:08.430 --> 00:28:09.990
Well, we all have access to all of them.

00:28:09.990 --> 00:28:10.170
We all.

00:28:11.115 --> 00:28:13.365
It's like any personality assessment.

00:28:13.365 --> 00:28:21.944
We all have sort of all of them as part of who we are at, and yet we tend to orient towards or have strengths in one.

00:28:21.944 --> 00:28:34.815
So for folks that are really orient to the world from a mental perspective and, and really rely on their thinking function to be successful and get through life, um, yeah, why would I wanna let go of that?

00:28:35.625 --> 00:28:38.234
I'm not saying you should, and.

00:28:39.615 --> 00:28:51.255
Part of what we're talking about context is everything in, in, in a lot of the work that I do in the world, uh, whether it's coaching or organizational consulting or um, or theater.

00:28:51.704 --> 00:29:00.434
Um, so the context might be, well, are, am I, am I trying to move past where I am?

00:29:00.494 --> 00:29:03.585
Am I trying to, am I wanting to have a different experience of life?

00:29:04.394 --> 00:29:10.755
Um, and I'm wanting to try to create something and I don't quite know what I, how to create what I want to create.

00:29:11.085 --> 00:29:23.894
So this topic of the magic in the middle or this idea of letting go of what I think I know and tapping into what else there might be is really valuable in context in which you're wanting to create something new.

00:29:24.494 --> 00:29:31.365
Um, you might want to try to tap into innovation and how to collaborate with other people.

00:29:32.259 --> 00:29:36.884
And how to relate with other people that feel so freaking different from me.

00:29:36.974 --> 00:29:38.954
Like I don't understand'em at all.

00:29:39.315 --> 00:29:41.625
Um, so what's the tap?

00:29:41.684 --> 00:29:42.674
How do you do that?

00:29:42.680 --> 00:29:46.065
Well, um, the, you like many things.

00:29:46.065 --> 00:29:47.595
You have to start with where you are.

00:29:48.315 --> 00:29:51.585
You have to start with what you already recognize, what you already notice.

00:29:52.875 --> 00:29:55.154
And then I'm a big fan of curiosity.

00:29:56.130 --> 00:29:58.559
So if you start with like, well, where am I?

00:29:58.589 --> 00:30:00.480
Well, here's what I'm thinking about here.

00:30:00.509 --> 00:30:03.359
Here's, here's what I think of as the story right now.

00:30:04.769 --> 00:30:05.039
Hmm.

00:30:05.759 --> 00:30:06.630
How fascinating.

00:30:07.230 --> 00:30:08.400
Why is that?

00:30:08.430 --> 00:30:12.660
Like, you know, what's informing my understanding of that?

00:30:13.470 --> 00:30:15.809
And then you might be able to speak to specific data points.

00:30:15.809 --> 00:30:21.599
Well, this person is being like this, or every time I do this, this thing, this other thing seems to happen.

00:30:21.750 --> 00:30:22.049
Right.

00:30:22.109 --> 00:30:29.759
And just like whenever I try to like move beyond where I am, something gets in the way or some blockage comes up or whatever it is, right?

00:30:30.150 --> 00:30:31.170
It's like, oh, okay.

00:30:31.200 --> 00:30:31.380
Hmm.

00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:31.980
Interesting.

00:30:32.039 --> 00:30:35.160
I'm, I'm curious what that's about or why is that happening?

00:30:36.839 --> 00:30:39.059
Another aspect of curiosity could be, well.

00:30:40.454 --> 00:30:49.904
Maybe trying to make that shift we were talking about before from, if I could reframe this story from why is this happening to me?

00:30:50.265 --> 00:30:52.845
To why is this happening for me?

00:30:53.174 --> 00:31:08.894
Which is to say what opportunity might there be to change it up and if I were to access something more than just what I'm immediately thinking in the short term.

00:31:10.559 --> 00:31:13.289
What might I be able to create?

00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:20.734
And the last thing I'll say about this is another way of exploring this or working with this is if you.

00:31:21.329 --> 00:31:24.990
Become aware of, you tend to orient maybe very emotionally.

00:31:24.990 --> 00:31:31.829
Like whenever anything happens, I get really emotional and I want to like, I want to shift that or I want to, I want to only it differently.

00:31:32.130 --> 00:31:39.450
Well, you might shift to one of those other Psychological functions, like you might shift to like, well, what is my body noticing right now?

00:31:39.839 --> 00:31:41.279
Or what am I thinking about?

00:31:41.849 --> 00:31:44.130
Or what's coming up into my image?

00:31:44.130 --> 00:31:49.140
Like if I had an image and of an ideal outcome, what would that look like?

00:31:50.174 --> 00:32:04.605
Even just kind of asking that question and holding that space, you're creating a little space for which the magic in the middle, that truth that might be there, lying in, wait for you can exist and then there might be greater access to it.

00:32:04.930 --> 00:32:06.464
Does this make sense?

00:32:06.644 --> 00:32:07.005
Hmm.

00:32:07.934 --> 00:32:08.325
Yeah.

00:32:08.384 --> 00:32:18.404
And, and it's interesting how you tied the story back into, um, answering that because they're, they're both tied together and how.

00:32:19.289 --> 00:32:28.289
First, it's like it's your story, and if you find yourself in a place where you're choosing your story, you've Empowered yourself to change the story.

00:32:28.650 --> 00:32:32.130
And then at the same time, the magic in the middle.

00:32:32.759 --> 00:32:47.970
It's like if you're, if you're able to dance with that and start to let go of maybe the story that you created and listen to a story that's playing out in front of you and.

00:32:48.375 --> 00:32:49.365
Dance with it.

00:32:49.454 --> 00:32:49.755
Right.

00:32:49.755 --> 00:32:54.134
Literally like dance with it and my mind when you dance.

00:32:54.974 --> 00:32:59.684
It's one of those that's magical in itself.

00:32:59.684 --> 00:33:09.259
When I was learning how to, if I wanted to expand on that feeling when I was, I was learning, um, how I, I was taking salsa lessons.

00:33:10.529 --> 00:33:19.170
And, uh, I remember my, it's weird, I have, my experience with, with dance is it starts off very rigid.

00:33:19.619 --> 00:33:29.460
The left brain kicks in and wants to just take control over everything, wants to know what the counts are, um, the steps.

00:33:29.640 --> 00:33:33.630
And then I watch someone who's been doing it for a while and I'm like, you're breaking all the rules.

00:33:33.630 --> 00:33:35.664
You're doing most of them, but.

00:33:36.105 --> 00:33:41.684

# 73: Mindful Magic: Finding Meaning in the Middle | Tim Van Ness

Tim Van Ness, PLC

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