Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 34: beauty as alienation from the self 👽

Transcript

34: beauty as alienation from the self 👽 · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

• 0:00
  That's what I believe it, like I believe there's this world in which we see each other as these really divine beings that cannot be
• 0:06
  Flattered into some toxic Eurocentric colonial elitist ableist beauty standard that is always and already going to dehumanize us and going to move us further and further
• 0:16
  From the ability to experience ourselves as love through beauty the self is made to over identify with how it looks rather than all the multi-dimensionality that the self could access in a different kind of world
• 0:30
  We can be so much more, you know, we can be so much more if we
• 0:34
  Hello sunshine and welcome back to paradigm shift with I understood a place where we reframe what is and
• 0:41
  Reimagine what could be I hope you enjoy today's episode
• 0:45
  Let's paradigm shift together
• 0:47
  Hello soul siblings and welcome back to another hopefully delicious and juicy episode with me
• 0:53
  Today we are speaking about beauty as alienation from the self
• 0:57
  And I really hope that I can do this powerful idea justice today
• 1:02
  I posted a tiktok about this in June
• 1:04
  I think and it did very well on the app and people really resonated with it beauty robs you of your sense of self in two ways
• 1:10
  Number one, it equates who you are with how you look so your ideal self is someone who looks a certain way rather than someone who is a
• 1:18
  Certain being which you already are and number two exactly you are always relegated to being worse than your ideal future self
• 1:25
  So then when are you ever allowed to exist as you grow older and you look older people say you don't look yourself
• 1:29
  If you can't wait you don't look yourself if you look tired you don't look yourself
• 1:32
  So then who are you surely you always look yourself know because beauty is the alienation of the self from the self
• 1:38
  Okay, love you bye
• 1:39
  So I've been meaning to make the podcast version of that video
• 1:42
  But I think the suspense or the anticipation was like killing me
• 1:45
  I was like well, I'd be able to do it justice
• 1:47
  I think sometimes when I receive good feedback
• 1:50
  I'm like I won't be able to live up to that it won't be me someone else can
• 1:53
  But it's like babe, you made the video so you have the power within you and also it doesn't have to be the image of it that you have in your head
• 2:00
  Just let it become so that's what we're gonna do today. Hopefully we're gonna vibe
• 2:04
  Hopefully we're gonna learn and let's talk about the colonial paradigm of beauty the capitalist the consumerist the white supremacist the
• 2:11
  Ableist the all the isht paradigm that is beauty
• 2:14
  Culture and the beauty hierarchy as well as beauty standards which we all know are toxic and are
• 2:21
  Hooding so many of us in such deep and profound ways, and I really believe a world with more radical love
• 2:27
  Routed in an anti-colonial understanding of life has to dismantle the beauty hierarchy and has to replace it with a deep
• 2:35
  Or and love for people as people rather than people in accordance to
• 2:41
  Irrability to conform to toxic Eurocentric beauty standards
• 2:44
  So today when it comes to beauty as alienation from the self
• 2:48
  It's very important that we understand what we mean by alienation
• 2:51
  So what I love about this word is there's this intuitive vibe that we're getting from it because it's a metaphor
• 2:57
  And it speaks to is
• 2:59
  Strangement or being dislocated or having this ruptured sense of belonging within a group
• 3:04
  It can also mean when you do something that makes people lose favor with you
• 3:08
  But essentially what we mean by alienation is a person used to belong to some sort of collectible group
• 3:14
  And then they are alienated from that group alienation is most
• 3:18
  Attributed to Marxist ideology Karl Marx a German anti-capitalist thinker philosopher economist
• 3:25
  He theorized that there were four kinds of alienation that were byproducts of a capitalist society
• 3:32
  Workers are alienated from the product of their labor
• 3:36
  So the objects they are made to make from the process of their labor because it's made to prioritize the needs of the capitalist rather than the worker
• 3:43
  And they are barred from doing work that speaks to their deep conscious needs as creative beings
• 3:49
  So they're not able to do work that's an end-in-off itself rather
• 3:52
  It's always a means to an end and then alienation from other people other workers because they become their competition
• 3:58
  So there's that reduction that separation where we are meant to belong to one another and suddenly we are
• 4:03
  Competing with each other and then most interestingly for our conversation today alienation from the self and I think that is such a fascinating idea
• 4:11
  Basically our true selves our fullest nature our species essence. He says and our character as conscious and creative beings
• 4:20
  Is alienated from us because through the capitalist system the workers not allowed to experience their fullness of self
• 4:26
  They have to kind of be cut off from themselves in the work that they do because they're made to do work
• 4:32
  That is a means to their survival rather than an activity that is an end-in-off itself
• 4:37
  I'm definitely giving a brief overview here. It's much more complex than that
• 4:41
  And I will link to an essay on a strange labor that I really enjoyed reading for this episode
• 4:46
  It's 14 pages, so have fun
• 4:48
  But there are so many things if you just Google Marxist alienation you will learn so much about this concept
• 4:53
  It's very powerful
• 4:54
  But what we really want to talk about today is how does beauty dislocate you from you?
• 4:58
  How does beauty block you off from experiencing the fullness of your possibilities as a being on earth?
• 5:04
  Okay, so when we think of beauty we think of this distorted mirror right because it's not like we have an objective view of how we look
• 5:12
  If I say oh, I look bad today. Oh, I look good today. It's not objective
• 5:15
  It's based on a beauty standard that's been fed to me and that has been that I'm reminded of every single day by media by social media
• 5:22
  By movies by everything okay, and then by also the people around me by family by friends by culture, okay?
• 5:28
  So I like to think of it as a filter when we look in the mirror
• 5:33
  It's like what we see is filtered through this paradigm this prism of the colonial beauty standard
• 5:40
  First and foremost, it is anti-black. It's sexist. It's his heteropatialical. It's colorist. It's all of the things
• 5:46
  It is a white supremacist beauty standard
• 5:48
  It's also got a lot of other high-rockies embedded in it
• 5:51
  There's a lot of this kind of wealth
• 5:53
  Politics where if you look rich you will be the beauty standard more so than if you don't
• 5:58
  Do we expense of skin clothes that look expensive just like looking expensive is a new part of the beauty standard?
• 6:04
  So when we look in the mirror what we are seeing is
• 6:08
  Not just our image, but more so kind of this distorted mosaic of
• 6:12
  societal expectations, cultural norms, unattainable ideals things we've been told we need to look like
• 6:18
  Images we've consumed things we've heard people say and there's all these trends around bodies and what we should look like and skin and so on
• 6:25
  Some sort of logic is being applied to our image that it's not just an objective image
• 6:30
  This idea that is part of the alienation, right? It's that we are estranged from
• 6:36
  Our cells, but I think even deeper than being estranged from how we would look if you know an alien saw us
• 6:41
  It's just the fact that we're made to over-identify with how we look in the first place
• 6:45
  So that I think is the primary alienation that happens under beauty through beauty
• 6:50
  The self is made to over-identify with how it looks rather than all the
• 6:57
  Multi-dimensionality that the self could access in a different kind of world
• 7:01
  So you are a multi-dimensional being that is then forced to conceive of themselves in this very one-dimensional way
• 7:08
  Multi-dimensional in that with you you carry emotions
• 7:11
  Experiences stories
• 7:13
  Perspectives a background a cultural history and identity a family structure
• 7:18
  Heartbreaks and love and intuition and inner knowing and all of these deep things you have a relationship to a sort of
• 7:25
  Ideological system like maybe you're spiritual. Maybe you believe in God
• 7:29
  Maybe you don't so you're this multifaceted multi-dimensional being with so many facets to your being
• 7:33
  There's an energy you carry when you walk into a room people feel a certain way in your presence
• 7:39
  And all of that is squashed out of you when you are made to say oh no fuck look how much acne
• 7:45
  I have today. I'm too fat. I don't have the right body. Look at my tummy. It's not flat enough look at my edges
• 7:49
  Look at my hair texture all of these things
• 7:52
  It's so reductive and it's really really alienating because there's a world in which we could have all seen in each other
• 7:59
  This divine energy and presence and by divine I simply mean something that goes beyond what can be materially
• 8:05
  Witness and something that is associated to kind of magic and love and all of the things bliss and eternal
• 8:12
  Just joy and ecstasy and all of these things but also the capacity to grieve and to hurt and to feel pain and to feel a
• 8:18
  Deep kind of suffering divinity in the sense that you are just bigger than any sort of material
• 8:24
  manifestation of you that even when I'm outside of your presence, I can feel you
• 8:28
  Sometimes when something happens to me
• 8:30
  I'll I know what you would say or what you would do if you dial still feel your energy
• 8:34
  That's what I mean by divine so no matter your kind of belief system
• 8:38
  Just know that I'm not really trying to impose any sort of belief system on you
• 8:42
  I'm trying to say that I believe we have within us
• 8:45
  Every single one of us has this property of divinity. Did you know that number stay means?
• 8:50
  I see the God in you and I think that just gives me chills because I also think that word has been flattened as yoga and as these practices have been
• 8:58
  Appropriated by the West that like can you hear how profound that is? I literally get chills. I see the God in you
• 9:06
  Let me just make sure that's what it means
• 9:09
  So the word number stay means I bow to you or bowing to you and I also heard someone translated as I see the God in you
• 9:17
  Because I wouldn't bow to someone you didn't see a sense of divinity within and that just gives me so many chills because that's what I believe it
• 9:24
  Like I believe there's this world in which we see each other as these really divine beings that cannot be
• 9:30
  Flatting into some toxic Eurocentric colonial elitist ableist beauty standard that is always and already going to dehumanize us and going to move us further and further
• 9:40
  From the ability to experience ourselves as love as people who are worthy of
• 9:46
  Love and compassion and kindness and care like how will we ever get there if we are always filtering ourselves and each other through this beauty
• 9:54
  Standard right so it's deeply deeply alienating and I think that there's a lot of discussion on toxic beauty standards
• 10:01
  That I'm very grateful that is happening and what I want to add to that is also the spiritual lens of like we can be so much more
• 10:07
  You know, we can be so much more if we
• 10:10
  Dismanter this hierarchy and if we learn to see the divinity in ourselves and in each other
• 10:15
  But the reason why beauty is alienating from the self is that even as I tell you these words and maybe you start to get a picture of what we could be
• 10:22
  There's a certain block or there's a certain obstacle to that ever really being
• 10:27
  Brought into being that you were truly experience yourself as a divine energy and being when constantly you are being told by this product
• 10:35
  You need this your skin is not this enough your body is not this enough
• 10:38
  You don't have these clothes and so you are blocked off from it's almost like I'm painting this utopic place
• 10:43
  But there are so many obstacles that make it impossible to even access that sometimes even in feeling and that is why I do believe in
• 10:51
  Practices like meditation or things where the self is removed because something I think is also so fascinating is how
• 10:58
  Surrounded by mirrors we are and how much that impacts our sense of self
• 11:02
  We were not meant to have so many mirrors, you know, it sounds so funny to say
• 11:06
  But what would a world without mirrors look like?
• 11:08
  What would it offer us if we were not so aware of how we look and then remembering that we are not aware of how we look
• 11:15
  We are only aware of how we look in accordance with a toxic
• 11:18
  Eurocentric colonial beauty standard matrix that we've been fed our whole life such that it's invisible eyes
• 11:24
  Like it's been made so visible that it's become invisible. We've been fed it since birth
• 11:28
  We've had comments on our bodies or comparisons or movies or books
• 11:33
  Just little throwaway statements to like big bullying things that have happened to us that have made us
• 11:39
  It's impossible to relate to how what you see in the mirror in this neutral way that like my skin isn't good or bad
• 11:45
  My skin is just skin skin is an organ meant to cover and protect my inner organs
• 11:49
  It's not meant to be what is even perfect skin like if perfect according to what it only becomes perfect when you apply this
• 11:56
  consumerist and capitalist matrix that exists in our lives and so what breaks my heart is that even as I feel like okay
• 12:04
  Yes, we could live in a world where the beauty hierarchy didn't exist or where we could experience ourselves as these
• 12:11
  Divine magical star dust beings who have a limited time on earth and how amazing we get to age like we get to live
• 12:16
  You know what I mean like to ages to live to live is to age and yet we live in a culture that wants us to
• 12:22
  Really more than grieve the fact that we get to continue living
• 12:26
  That's the second or third or whatever way, you know numbers are alive sometimes that beauty is alienating is that beauty
• 12:32
  Dislocates you from being able to claim yourself in the present tense
• 12:35
  You must always either imagine a future version of yourself. That is your ideal self your imagine self
• 12:40
  That's so much better than you she has a better body than you she has better skin than you she has better clothes than you
• 12:45
  They do they have a better energy or presence than you they're more magnetic than you and at the same time
• 12:51
  You live in this ageist culture where you're meant to mourn and grieve for
• 12:55
  How you used to look and if you look older than usual if you have bags under your eyes
• 12:59
  You don't look yourself because your self is somehow your youthful self
• 13:03
  And so you're made to over identify with these like this you're dislocated from time like you can't and you're never the right age
• 13:09
  You can't exist in the present you can't claim yourself and in that way
• 13:13
  You are temporarily alienated from yourself because there's no time that you can actually exist as you and say
• 13:19
  This is me how beauty rubs us of our sense of time
• 13:23
  So through beauty we are alienated from our present self because we are told that there's a future ideal sense of ourselves
• 13:29
  That is a better and more perfect version of us and it is our daily work to become that self your ideal self
• 13:35
  Works out a certain amount of times a week your ideal self has a beauty regimen a skincare regimen
• 13:39
  You can't wait to become your ideal self
• 13:41
  Simultaneously as you grow older and older you are told that you do not look yourself that your ideal self was younger
• 13:48
  And so there's this dual effect of time working in both directions to create this friction where the present self is always
• 13:54
  denied you are never allowed to be your present self
• 13:57
  There's never a moment in time where you can actually occupy your now self because in order for consumerism to exist
• 14:03
  It has to paint you this picture of a better version of you that you could become if you only consumed the right things
• 14:08
  Or if you could only afford this or if you but since you can't do that now
• 14:11
  You must project this image of yourself that could this ideal body this ideal image this ideal makeup routine
• 14:17
  This ideal closet this ideal house
• 14:19
  Everything is idealized and that idealization for it to cohere to your logical system has to exist in the future tense
• 14:26
  So you're made to
• 14:28
  Really attach to this imagined self or imagined version of you that in many ways you feel to be more you than the real you
• 14:35
  So you're always thinking of your future imagined self
• 14:38
  But then in you realize that like even when you get to that place
• 14:42
  There will still be the force of of ageism and a culture that's obsessed with youthfulness
• 14:47
  There will still be the force of anti-blackness and colorism and all of the isms working against you and just in a different tense
• 14:55
  And so I think you're dislocated from being able to say I exist in the present tense as myself
• 15:00
  Because you know when people gain weight people say oh, you don't look yourself when people age people say you don't look
• 15:05
  yourself and then it's like when people lose weight
• 15:07
  It's like oh, I feel more myself than ever. It's so dislocating
• 15:10
  It's so alienating because who is the self then like if I look in the mirror and I don't look myself then
• 15:16
  Who do I look like what image of myself have I been made identify with such that if I don't look like that image
• 15:22
  I feel like I don't look myself
• 15:23
  So I think this is really really important because it just it's a distortion
• 15:28
  We're living in the matrix and it's deeply alienating because I think that
• 15:33
  Love has to happen in the present tense and we have to have a world where we're allowed to love ourselves as we are
• 15:38
  Not when our skin improves not when our bodies improve literally what is improvement?
• 15:43
  It's not objective. It's according to this toxic Eurocentric and colonial beauty standard
• 15:47
  The thing that I think becomes so painful is how marginalized identities like black people for example
• 15:52
  Have taken it upon ourselves to construct our own inner beauty hierarchy and it's obviously rooted in white supremacy
• 15:59
  And it's not like we just chose this for ourselves
• 16:01
  But I think it's so deeply painful to hear and to receive some of the beauty standards that exists from your own community
• 16:08
  Like just the feelings that you are not going to be good enough obviously to the white world. That's like fine
• 16:14
  But to your own people there's so much colorism. There's so much hair politic things like oh your edges are so terrible
• 16:21
  In addition to hair politics, there's of course deep anti-fatness
• 16:25
  There are heteronormative beauty standards
• 16:28
  There's a lot of homophobia and that also plays into how people are received in their body and gender appearance
• 16:35
  And presentation as well as ableism and so many other different forms of
• 16:41
  Exclusion and oppression that happened within the black community and I'm sure that that is true in its own way in many other
• 16:48
  Cultural identities. I want to say on a personal level
• 16:51
  I have said this many times and I will keep saying this I fully acknowledge I
• 16:56
  Have a lot of beauty privilege and beauty capital as someone who is thin and also as someone who is
• 17:02
  Has features that often appeal to the Eurocentric beauty standard. I feel like I've in my experiences of myself
• 17:08
  I've moved through the world with a lot of
• 17:10
  Perceived and received beauty privilege and beauty capital at the same time in the like private spaces of my life
• 17:17
  I suffer deeply under this paradigm and the feelings of never being good enough or of self hate and of these pains are deep within me
• 17:27
  I think that at this I try not to focus on my own perspective because I think it is frustrating when you see people
• 17:33
  Who have a lot of beauty privilege or capital whatever it is really like centering their own experience
• 17:40
  And so I look at people around me and people my family women in my family and just like how much suffering
• 17:46
  There is around me and in the media and just like the conversations that are being had around beauty
• 17:51
  And I see a gap that I have tried to speak into and to fill not alone in community with many other powerful voices
• 17:59
  But essentially that this is not right you know you don't have to be
• 18:02
  Experiencing the full brunt of something to know that it's not right and that we could be better
• 18:08
  And so just walking that line of like I know that I have the privilege
• 18:12
  I also experience a pain but I don't want to send to that pain because I know other people face so much more colorism than I face
• 18:18
  I face that face so much face anti-vitness which I don't face face transphobia
• 18:22
  Where I see pain and suffering I'm always going to feel like that needs to be discussed and that needs to be unpacked
• 18:29
  So that we can dismantle anything that is an obstacle to love and to radical care in our world
• 18:35
  Because we've been so harmed by these standards I think the response to that has been to really have standards of our own
• 18:42
  That are so strict and sometimes feel like very suffocating and so you're also alienated from the ability to really feel
• 18:48
  At home within your cultural identity because some of the most strict beauty standards you will face
• 18:54
  As a person who is like black or brown or like Asian or some identity that is other is going to be often from your own people
• 19:02
  That's just how I feel sometimes obviously there are ways that you will always be other by white society
• 19:06
  But because you've been taught to expect that I think it hurts most when it's from your own community that's just what I think
• 19:12
  So essentially when we are experiencing all this toxic beauty standards on us from our communities, from society, from the culture
• 19:22
  What happens is that we feel this disconnection from a part of our own humanity
• 19:27
  We are not able to access parts of our own humanity
• 19:31
  And also we are then alienated from each other
• 19:35
  So we become estranged from our genuine selves like in a different world we spoke about what if there was a world without mirrors
• 19:41
  And as I was researching for this episode I learned that in a lot of indigenous cultures
• 19:46
  Mirrors used to be very divine and spiritual objects
• 19:49
  They were not just things that you just had every way they were specific to divine practices and divination practices
• 19:55
  Because they symbolize something much more deep and profound than what they do now
• 20:00
  And let me read to you about that
• 20:02
  So this is just an example I found so in Mesoamerica which is the historical region and cultural area
• 20:08
  That begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific Coast of Central America
• 20:13
  So it includes the lines of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador,
• 20:20
  Small parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica
• 20:23
  What is now those countries? In Mesoamerican culture the use of mirrors was associated with the idea that they served as portals to a realm that could be seen but not interacted with
• 20:34
  So mirrors in Mesoamerica were fashioned from stone and served a number of uses from the decorative to the divinatory
• 20:42
  An ancient tradition among many Mesoamerican cultures was the practice of divination using the surface of a bowl of water as a mirror
• 20:50
  And what it says as well is that there was the light reflective property, not their ability to reflect images that was considered important
• 20:58
  So mirrors were used for example in dresses and clothing to reflect light, not to look at yourself
• 21:04
  So it's again, what is the mirror being turned on? Is it being turned on the world or is it being turned on the self?
• 21:10
  So I think by becoming hyper aware of ourselves but not objectively as in hyper aware of ourselves in accordance with this colonial beauty paradigm
• 21:20
  We have also been separated and alienated from a more divine relationship to what mirrors could have represented
• 21:27
  towards being able to turn ourselves away from ourselves
• 21:31
  Like it's not I think healthy to be too focused on how you look and how you appear but in our world you have to be
• 21:37
  Essentially it's kind of ironic because by surrounding us with ourselves they've almost alienated us from ourselves further
• 21:44
  The more you see yourself, the less you see yourself
• 21:47
  While I do think a world without mirrors would help us so much with our self perception
• 21:53
  And being able to see ourselves in a way that is less alienating and less dehumanizing because we could get lost in our activities
• 22:00
  What ultimately matters most or just as much is how other people see us
• 22:04
  And the colonial and capitalist and elitist and ableist and anti-black and white supremacist and sexist and cis heteropatriarchal filters that other people are applying to us
• 22:15
  And we know that beauty standards go so beyond how we see ourselves or how we feel about ourselves
• 22:21
  Which is very critical into the jobs that we're able to get into how much will be punished for certain behaviors
• 22:27
  Into how we will be treated and regarded by our peer group into how much we will be able to access needs like love, like compassion, like respect, like dignity
• 22:37
  And so it's so critical I know that I think that I was kind of in this feeling of like ooh a world without mirrors what would that look like
• 22:44
  But I think it's so important to note that even in that world unless we dismantle the social hierarchy that is the beauty structure and beauty system
• 22:52
  And in so doing I mean that's not the first thing I would do obviously we need to dismantle white supremacy, we need to dismantle anti-blackness
• 23:00
  We need to dismantle sexism, these power structures that exist in our world and I think only as a result of that could we even begin to end beauty
• 23:09
  Because beauty is like the end result of the byproduct of supremacy culture
• 23:13
  It's like the visual prism or face of the prism of supremacy is beauty
• 23:18
  And it's a way to get people to buy into their own oppression by kind of taking up the work of their own objectification
• 23:25
  So it plays a bigger role and obviously these are very big and complex ideas and I'm glad that we're able to unpack them here
• 23:34
  But essentially of course I hope that you are co-creating this episode with me as I always say
• 23:38
  I can't say all there is to be said but I'm hoping in your mind's eye and your consciousness you are able to add to reflect, disagree, agree
• 23:46
  You know make more interesting and nuanced so that like what we ultimately create together is far more interesting than anything that I could share
• 23:54
  And so I love you and I'm sending you all the love everything is coming from a place of love and let's go back to the episode
• 23:59
  The more you are forced to conceive of yourself as this is my physical being
• 24:03
  Therefore this is what I deserve in life, this is who I am in life
• 24:06
  The more you are alienated from the fact that you are unconditionally worthy, you are unconditional love
• 24:11
  They can't be the condition that I have to meet this beauty sounded to be lovable and yet in our world there's so many huge barriers to love ability
• 24:20
  People perceiving themselves as lovable and seeing others as lovable that happen through the paradigm of beauty
• 24:26
  Because people say things like oh you're so beautiful you deserve love or oh my word I'm not beautiful enough no one will ever love me
• 24:32
  And that's because the culture has said that like I'm not even trying to diminish that at all
• 24:36
  The people who are worthy of love and good treatment and care are the people who are beautiful
• 24:41
  We will always be alienated from ourselves when we are made to feel unlovable because of something outside of ourselves
• 24:48
  Because of a standard that's been imposed on us and therefore has really limited the possibilities for how we then come to see ourselves
• 24:55
  I could tell you you are divine love but in a culture that will never allow you to experience yourself
• 25:00
  Is that how will you ever believe it in your bones?
• 25:03
  Know it such that you move through the world as divine love such that when love finds you you don't feel unworthy of it
• 25:09
  Or when you see someone in a coffee shop you don't say oh no they would never want to talk to me
• 25:13
  Because in our world that really is more truthful
• 25:16
  Often like people do have these things of like who they write off and who they prioritize
• 25:20
  And the different treatment they will take from people who look like the beauty sounded versus people who don't
• 25:25
  So I think that that alienation in terms of love ability is so important to me and so profound and so deep in our culture
• 25:32
  That I think I really hate the fact that beauty has made some of us feel so unlovable
• 25:36
  Others of us feel very lovable
• 25:38
  It creates this toxic feeling when how lovable you are should not be tied to whether you conform or don't conform to a beauty standard
• 25:45
  But of course in our world it literally does, okay so often
• 25:48
  So I think that this relentless pursuit of beauty whether in idea or in reality
• 25:54
  Of course removes and alienates us further and further from our true selves
• 25:59
  And from not even true selves because who is our true self
• 26:02
  From a deeper self that could exist within us in a different kind of society that allowed that self to shine
• 26:08
  And so there is this kind of repression that happens where we can't fully access our unfiltered self
• 26:14
  And we are therefore removed further and further away from ourselves as we are surrounded more and more by the idea that our physical embodiment is most important
• 26:23
  This relentless pressure distorts our self worth, it removes us from being able to experience ourselves as divine, as magical, as stardust beings, as collective beings as well
• 26:34
  And of course it alienates us from one another because we reduce each other to how we look all the time
• 26:39
  Like people say I could never love someone who looks like that or I'm not lovable because I look like this, that is alienation
• 26:45
  We actually all belong together when we belong to each other and that reclamation won't fully happen until the beauty hierarchy has been dismantled
• 26:53
  Until we see in each other the God, until we're willing to bow to each other in appreciation, in devotion
• 27:00
  And not because someone looks like a symbol of the beauty standard or the beauty hierarchy but because someone is a someone
• 27:07
  Someone is a person and personhood should be respected and loved and adored and admired
• 27:12
  So the last thing that I want to leave you with to ponder is this concept that I've been really called to recently
• 27:19
  And it's this distinction called 3D versus 5D consciousness
• 27:23
  There are different forms of being conscious, being aware of what is happening of reality
• 27:28
  Let's say that's literally what it is
• 27:30
  3D consciousness is very rooted in the material
• 27:33
  It's like what is here, what is now, what can I observe with my 5 senses, what is objective, quote unquote
• 27:39
  Like these are my hands, this is a microphone, I see into this camera that's been made
• 27:44
  That is a 3D awareness, I'm aware of the physical space that I'm in
• 27:48
  And a lot of the science paradigm or the idea of it has to be proven or it's either true or false exists in this 3D consciousness
• 27:56
  5D consciousness goes beyond the material reality into the realms that cannot be physically observed necessarily
• 28:04
  But can be felt, so things like intuition, things like love, things like feelings
• 28:09
  Feelings are part of 5D consciousness because I can't, if I tell you I'm so moved
• 28:14
  What is that, like you can't observe that, like you can't say that's true or false
• 28:18
  I'm telling you my experience and I'm bringing you an energy that may even move you
• 28:23
  So there's something about that that is got this mystical feeling
• 28:26
  5D is also dreams, as I said intuition, if someone says I just knew I had to turn at that moment
• 28:33
  It's not because on Tuesday they observed that there was a sign that said turn
• 28:37
  Because from this other consciousness that can't be rooted in the observable they just knew they just felt
• 28:43
  They just had this intuition that they had to take a certain action
• 28:47
  We access this realm of consciousness in things like meditation but also in things like community
• 28:54
  Like I think laughter, laughter can be observed but like that feeling of energy between people
• 28:59
  Those feelings I think is very 5D in my mind
• 29:02
  So trying to focus on, I think a lot of spiritual teaching is like go isolate yourself and become a person
• 29:08
  And then come back where I'm really trying to unlearn that
• 29:10
  Like meditation is typically something we do alone
• 29:13
  Is there ways we can clear that and bring more community focus into how we think of our spirituality
• 29:19
  So serving other people, being of service, creating things not for yourself but maybe for someone else
• 29:24
  Like writing your best friend a poem or writing your younger self a poem
• 29:28
  Just like using your spiritual practice to be of service to others and to yourself
• 29:33
  Rather than hyperfixating, I hear a lot of people talking about detachment and magnetizing things to you
• 29:39
  And you, you, you, self is selfish selfish and I really think they've taken the spiritual paradigm
• 29:43
  And they've overlaid it with individualism
• 29:45
  Like actually let me get the wording right
• 29:47
  They've taken this notion of individualism, they've kept it intact and then they've tried to apply spirituality as another conduit
• 29:55
  Or means towards individualism and like that's not what we need
• 29:58
  Okay, we don't need more detachment in our culture
• 30:01
  We don't need more hyperfixating on the self
• 30:04
  And I love self love but again it cannot be an end in of itself
• 30:08
  Okay, that's a tangent but we do love those
• 30:11
  So with this conversation on alienation and beauty, where was I?
• 30:17
  Oh, so the 5D consciousness has intuition and feeling and love
• 30:20
  What beauty does is it precludes us from accessing or prioritizing the 5D within each other
• 30:25
  The energy that someone brings, you know, the vibe
• 30:28
  There's some people I just interact with even online and instantly my shoulders relax
• 30:32
  I feel their energy, I feel soothed and calmed by how they speak and how, what they bring me into
• 30:38
  And the slowness and the juiciness and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm at home here
• 30:44
  And there's other people I'm like, oh my way to have to take action, I have to go and go, go, go
• 30:48
  So that's feeling that energy, we are not allowed to, you know, what if we walked into a room and said, you know, I'm softness, hi, how are you doing?
• 30:56
  Oh, you know, I am water and I feel like I just kind of like to match the container that I'm in
• 31:03
  Versus like, where are you from?
• 31:05
  I think it's a reductive thing where we haven't allowed or stepped into a paradigm
• 31:11
  Where 5D can really be seen in ourselves in any other way
• 31:14
  We can bow to this divinity, this multidimensionality
• 31:17
  Instead we reduce each other to this material reality because that's what the society does to us
• 31:22
  And we reduce ourselves to that as well
• 31:24
  So what would it look like for us to step more into the 5D in ourselves and in how we see one another?
• 31:30
  I think that would be the opposite of alienation, getting to know yourself outside of these paradigms
• 31:35
  And there's no individual solution to this, I can't give you a question or a journal prompt that is going to end the beauty paradigm
• 31:41
  In the beauty alienation, what I do hope is this gave you some more feeling or language or knowledge or insight into something
• 31:48
  Maybe you've already experienced or observed and just gave you that feeling of like if I'm going to be in the matrix
• 31:54
  I'd at least like to talk about it, you know what I mean versus be silenced and be ridiculed for my opinions
• 31:59
  So that concludes our journey together today as always, I'm deeply, deeply grateful
• 32:04
  If I'm being truthful with myself and with you, this was an episode that I found really hard to record
• 32:10
  This is actually one of my, I think this is like my third attempt trying to do it because I just kept struggling with it
• 32:16
  I think with beauty especially, there's so many things that I fear getting wrong
• 32:21
  I fear saying the wrong thing or not including enough perspectives or people
• 32:25
  Being dragged or saying something or being seen as out of touch in some way
• 32:29
  or misrepresenting something that I know is so core to how so many people are experiencing the world or pains that they carry
• 32:36
  And so I sometimes just struggle because I think was the language right, was it inclusive enough
• 32:40
  And I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure that it's right
• 32:44
  And that's coming from love but also it doesn't have a good effect on me myself and I
• 32:49
  A lot of my recent episodes that you're irreducible, you can't be reduced to anything you've created or not created or done or not done
• 32:55
  And anything you are, any beauty started imposed on you
• 32:58
  It's really also me talking to myself often because it's like I feel that feeling within me
• 33:02
  I was journaling about this yesterday where I was like dumb
• 33:05
  And so disappointed in myself that I didn't release an episode on Monday
• 33:08
  And I felt like there was this fragile thing that I broke
• 33:10
  And I can't be reduced to trying to produce something on a timeline like art takes the time it takes
• 33:16
  And even though there's a lot, a lot of messaging in this space about consistency and the need to be
• 33:21
  For your audience to know when to expect to hear from you at the end of the day I'm just a human being
• 33:26
  My podcast production is a team of one and so it's just like I'm doing the best that I can
• 33:31
  And I love you all and I hope that this helped you in some way and I'm really grateful to have you here
• 33:36
  I'm sorry to feel emotional but I love you
• 33:39
  And I'm sending you love and I will see you next week
• 33:42
  And I hope that you go out there and find a little more wholeness, a little less alienation, a little more
• 33:49
  Enoughness and a little more 5D awareness and consciousness and a little less
• 33:55
  Hyperfocus on this material reality and also in accordance with a toxic beauty hierarchy and standard and culture
• 34:03
  Okay, I love you and I'm sending you all the love I'll see you next week
• 34:07
  Bye
• 34:09
  I hope some paradigms have been shifted for you in today's conversation
• 34:12
  As always, if you can, please leave a 5 star rating on Apple and Spotify
• 34:16
  Like, comment, subscribe, I love you so, so much
• 34:20
  Okay, I love you, join me on my substack links in the comment section, go there
• 34:25
  Okay, love you so much, love you, bye