Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 114: A Year to Live: What Would You Change If You Had One Year Left?

Transcript

114: A Year to Live: What Would You Change If You Had One Year Left? · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:29
  Polly Mertens: Polly here.
• 0:29
  Polly Mertens: Sam Pruitt in the house.
• 0:32
  Polly Mertens: What's up, beautiful humans?
• 0:33
  Polly Mertens: Yo yo.
• 0:34
  Polly Mertens: Today, you guys, this is the start of okay, so it's 2026.
• 0:39
  Polly Mertens: This year, something Samantha has taken on if you haven't listened to come some of our recent episodes.
• 0:44
  Polly Mertens: We're calling this A Year to Live.
• 0:46
  Polly Mertens: A year to live, modeled, after modeled, or titled by the book by the famous author Stephen Levine.
• 0:53
  Polly Mertens: And tell us, my dear, what are we talking about today?
• 0:56
  Polly Mertens: What is a year to live about?
• 0:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 0:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So A Year to Live is, of course, the book, but it's also a program that came out of that work.
• 1:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 1:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So you can get the book and read it.
• 1:10
  Samantha Pruitt: You can get the audio book.
• 1:12
  Samantha Pruitt: It's very, very fascinating to hear her told, heard it, hear it read by the author.
• 1:18
  Samantha Pruitt: He's no longer with us.
• 1:19
  Samantha Pruitt: He passed away in 2016.
• 1:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, but what I am undertaking, in addition to reading the book, uh, is going through a program through Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
• 1:30
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's in California.
• 1:31
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I've got three instructors: Vinny Ferraro.
• 1:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, your favorite.
• 1:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Pam Dunn.
• 1:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm obsessed with Vinny.
• 1:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Pam Dunn, she's also totally awesome, badass.
• 1:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the other author of the second book that we'll bring up here, okay, Frank, and I believe it's pronounced Ostasecki.
• 1:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Sorry, Frank, if I didn't pronounce that correctly.
• 1:54
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:55
  Polly Mertens: The five invitations.
• 1:56
  Polly Mertens: That's the book.
• 1:57
  Samantha Pruitt: The five invitations.
• 1:59
  Polly Mertens: So these are the curriculum, or these are the books that are part of the curriculum of this year-long program that you meet once a month and additional things started in January, goes all year.
• 2:09
  Polly Mertens: And um, do you know some of the history?
• 2:11
  Polly Mertens: I could teach uh talk a little bit about the history that I know from where I live in San Luis Obispo, but what what do you know about the history of this?
• 2:17
  Samantha Pruitt: And what it's what it's well, this program's been around forever, since literally the book, right?
• 2:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And so um Levine used to go and with his wife, go and basically work with the dying.
• 2:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, and through their work, they decided to come up with basically their own program for themselves and anyone who wanted to undertake it with them to act as if they had a year to live.
• 2:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, to act as if.
• 2:45
  Polly Mertens: So I think the book is from the mid-90s, and one of the things I remember from one of the first chapters is he talks about like on January 1 or like New Year's Eve, he was like, Okay, next year I'm living as if I have a year to live, right?
• 2:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Like yeah, they did the whole start it on New Year's Eve.
• 3:00
  Samantha Pruitt: I have not done that.
• 3:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Listen, my year has been ready.
• 3:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 3:04
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm just getting my um feet wet with the programming, and the course actually didn't even start until about a week ago, so it's like late January.
• 3:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, but then we go through the end of January 2027.
• 3:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So it is a 12-month program, but we don't start it on January 1, like his model.
• 3:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But basically, there's a whole process, um, practices and a process around acting as if you have a year to live.
• 3:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And they walk you through it and you do do some practices.
• 3:33
  Samantha Pruitt: We'll briefly mention some of the practices today, but we're not gonna do a deep dive on all the practices because this is a year-long program, people get a grip.
• 3:41
  Samantha Pruitt: But we're here to tell you today, just sort of like, hey, this is what it is, this is why we're doing it.
• 3:46
  Samantha Pruitt: We have our individual reasons, and then maybe consider something like this, or maybe just plant a seed in your brain that at some point in your life trajectory you might make space for something like this.
• 3:59
  Samantha Pruitt: I decided to do this.
• 4:01
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, I've been looking at this program for years.
• 4:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh so I've been watching the and I found out about this program probably three years ago.
• 4:08
  Samantha Pruitt: It was a podcast interview.
• 4:10
  Samantha Pruitt: It was Vinny being being interviewed.
• 4:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and he just briefly mentioned the program in the interview.
• 4:18
  Samantha Pruitt: It wasn't the the interview was not about the program.
• 4:21
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, what is that?
• 4:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Insane, ludicrous.
• 4:26
  Samantha Pruitt: What cut what?
• 4:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And of course, you know, for me, it just struck a chord.
• 4:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, at some point, I need to check that out.
• 4:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I just really didn't have bandwidth for making it happen.
• 4:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And then also it's hard to get in, so it does sell out.
• 4:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Now, last year I was experiencing familiar family and friends, disease, death, and dying on a very personal level.
• 4:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yet again, it's not my first rodeo, but I was like, okay, if I can get into the program this year, I'm gonna get in.
• 4:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I saw Vinny was one of the primary instructors, and I was like, oh, hell yeah, I will be the first one registering.
• 5:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Open, open, open.
• 5:06
  Samantha Pruitt: So good.
• 5:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I got in.
• 5:08
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm in the program now.
• 5:09
  Samantha Pruitt: There's uh just under 700 of us globally.
• 5:13
  Samantha Pruitt: 700 globally.
• 5:16
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, shh.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Amazing, amazing.
• 5:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And yeah, we had our first um class basically that was three and a half hours long.
• 5:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And then in addition to being in this once-a-month big group with a collective, um, we have breakouts, which are basically what they call home groups.
• 5:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And you have a small group of people.
• 5:36
  Samantha Pruitt: There's nine in my home group, they're all females from California.
• 5:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's kind of cool because we have already pretty much decided we're gonna get together physically at some point in person, um, somewhere in the middle of it all.
• 5:50
  Samantha Pruitt: But we'll go through the program together in a more deeper dive or personal level so we can have more intimate conversation and stuff like that.
• 5:57
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's kind of the gist of it.
• 5:59
  Polly Mertens: I love it, you know, and we're this, so I've owned this book.
• 6:02
  Polly Mertens: I can't even remember when I bought it.
• 6:03
  Polly Mertens: I want it, I feel like I bought it maybe 10 years ago.
• 6:06
  Polly Mertens: I'm not quite sure.
• 6:07
  Polly Mertens: And it's and I think I picked it up and tried to read it, and I couldn't get into it.
• 6:11
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, I'll come back to it.
• 6:12
  Polly Mertens: But I are you know how so how I heard about it first is in you know, city I live in, San Luis Obispo, there was a local hospice that did a 12-month in-person version of this.
• 6:23
  Polly Mertens: And I came to find out, we were just speaking about our friend Jen, one of our close friends, her name is Jude, so Jude used to lead it in town.
• 6:31
  Polly Mertens: So I'm like, have her on this, you know.
• 6:33
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:34
  Polly Mertens: She used she Jen said, she goes, Oh yeah, I remember doing that with Jude.
• 6:38
  Polly Mertens: She led it for years in San Luis Obispo, it was amazing.
• 6:41
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, we'll reach out to them and and maybe have them.
• 6:44
  Polly Mertens: So one of our, you know, this is the intro.
• 6:47
  Polly Mertens: Like, we're just cracking this book open, we're just cracking these concepts open.
• 6:50
  Polly Mertens: You've attended your first event or whatever.
• 6:52
  Polly Mertens: So throughout the year, we're gonna be, you know, in it.
• 6:55
  Polly Mertens: You know, I can't Oh yeah, that won't be the first.
• 6:58
  Polly Mertens: I can't wait till like a year from now.
• 7:00
  Polly Mertens: We're like, whoa, like what could be different?
• 7:03
  Polly Mertens: Like what it what are we gonna anyway?
• 7:06
  Polly Mertens: So that's where I learned about it.
• 7:07
  Polly Mertens: It was my local hospice, and they stopped.
• 7:10
  Polly Mertens: I tried to apply for it, you know, find out about it.
• 7:12
  Polly Mertens: And this was right around the time of COVID, and they weren't, you know, weren't doing it, whatever, and they haven't started it up again.
• 7:17
  Polly Mertens: So we were similarly, you know, attracted to this material.
• 7:21
  Polly Mertens: And when you said, I'm doing this, or hey, do you want to do this?
• 7:24
  Polly Mertens: I was like, sure, let me, you know, so I'm sort of writing on your coattails, I've got the books, and we're just gonna learn together through this journey, and and we'll share some of the things that we're already discovering.
• 7:35
  Polly Mertens: So it's really fascinating.
• 7:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally, totally.
• 7:37
  Samantha Pruitt: And in these groups, or in this giant group, I mean, there's all walks of life.
• 7:43
  Samantha Pruitt: So everybody comes to this work from a very personal place, like why people are in it.
• 7:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, I really only got discovery with my small group, and you know, everything we discuss is confidential, but you know, there's nine different humans in the room, and we all shared kind of our reasoning for why we're there or what drew us to the work.
• 8:06
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'll read mine and then maybe you can express what's calling you to the work.
• 8:10
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and maybe some examples.
• 8:11
  Polly Mertens: Because one of the things I think if you're if you tuned into this, either you found us and you're like, oh, why they're discussing some of that book or whatever.
• 8:19
  Polly Mertens: Um, and like, what are some of the reasons, you know, you're not dying.
• 8:23
  Polly Mertens: I mean, we're all dying.
• 8:24
  Polly Mertens: Sorry, let me say that differently.
• 8:25
  Polly Mertens: We're all dying, but we don't have a prognosis or something short-term.
• 8:29
  Polly Mertens: So this is, let's say, optional, or we've chosen to this work, but there's people that come into it because they work in that field or they have a diagnosis, or they have a loved one who is, or whatever.
• 8:40
  Polly Mertens: Ours is, I think we'll we'll talk about our whys, but there's all kinds of reasons you don't have to be in your last year, you don't have to have a diagnosis to step into this and just be curious about what you could grow in in this area, I would say.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So wake the hell up.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: This should be fun.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: We're talking about death.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 9:01
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, we're gonna talk about death today.
• 9:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow.
• 9:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, here's my why to expose my own fears, my curiosity, to see connection with others and with the earth, all living beings.
• 9:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, for me, it's a creative act within my lifetime to really deeply know myself.
• 9:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, that's my personal reason.
• 9:28
  Samantha Pruitt: And then additionally, I want to provide comfort and a safe space for people who are dying and grieving, which is what I just experienced recently with my brother passing.
• 9:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And it opened me up to being able to do that for other people.
• 9:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I have done that in different ways, never at the level I did with my brother.
• 9:48
  Samantha Pruitt: But I want to be able to provide that for others.
• 9:53
  Polly Mertens: Wow, wow, wow, wow.
• 9:54
  Polly Mertens: That was, I'm still moved over here.
• 9:57
  Polly Mertens: I want to hear those again at some point, or I'll go reread the transcript myself because that's where so good.
• 10:01
  Polly Mertens: I'm just like, whoo.
• 10:03
  Polly Mertens: So my why is A, I'm just curious about development, you know.
• 10:07
  Polly Mertens: Like when you said, hey, I'm like, yes, that feels like a yes, you know, and I just go like that.
• 10:12
  Polly Mertens: Like, you know, like with this landmark work that I've done, I'm like, that feels like what I need to do this year.
• 10:16
  Polly Mertens: Okay, and this feels like what I'm doing this year, right?
• 10:19
  Polly Mertens: I would say, um, one of my key, you know, Gandhi, my life is my message.
• 10:25
  Polly Mertens: One of my key life messages feels like live your life alive.
• 10:30
  Polly Mertens: Like live your fucking life alive right now, not for Sunday, whatever.
• 10:34
  Polly Mertens: And so there's something about this material, this process, whatever we're going to discover through this, that feels like a deepening of that core who what I believe in, which is we're here to fully, you know, embody and love our life.
• 10:50
  Polly Mertens: And if if you shorten it, you know, people don't know when the horizon is, you know, like not all of us know when our end date is, our expiration date on this thing called life, right?
• 10:59
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, really, who does?
• 11:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Right, right.
• 11:03
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it's it's rare that you do, right?
• 11:05
  Polly Mertens: Whether it's sudden and shorter than you thought, or you have a long time and you live way longer than like my mom's like, do-do, just kind of hanging out, doesn't know, you know, whatever.
• 11:15
  Samantha Pruitt: My mother-in-law's 97.
• 11:18
  Polly Mertens: You could live way anyway, but it was like, if I could falsely or in in in introduce something, a paradigm that I could live more from the way of being that life is precious and meaningful, what what would that open up?
• 11:36
  Polly Mertens: What could I discover in that journey?
• 11:38
  Polly Mertens: So that's mostly my why.
• 11:40
  Polly Mertens: Um spending time with you, and I think this is a fascinating subject.
• 11:43
  Polly Mertens: And last year I became a just a I don't know what rabbit hole I got down with, those near-death experiences, but that was like Dude, you went.
• 11:52
  Polly Mertens: I and I love I still enjoy that whole world.
• 11:55
  Polly Mertens: And it just opened up so much spiritual aw awareness and awakening to me that I mean, A, I didn't have a fear of death or dying before, you know.
• 12:03
  Polly Mertens: I haven't had I think I was a teenager was the last time I I had any sense of like, oh, I hope I don't die, right?
• 12:10
  Polly Mertens: I have more of I have a aversion to pain, not an aversion to death or dying, right?
• 12:15
  Polly Mertens: Like, no pain, I don't want to be in death, dying.
• 12:17
  Polly Mertens: So okay, so be it, you know.
• 12:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So okay, that's really interesting because that's one of the things we discuss.
• 12:24
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 12:24
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 12:25
  Polly Mertens: So that's my that's my why.
• 12:27
  Polly Mertens: Mm.
• 12:28
  Polly Mertens: Mm-mm, mm-mm.
• 12:29
  Polly Mertens: Living more fully alive.
• 12:31
  Polly Mertens: I think that's yeah, and just really there's there's I I'm curious.
• 12:36
  Polly Mertens: I'm curious what there is to discover.
• 12:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna read a few pages.
• 12:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so people can get a taste for the book.
• 12:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, for Levine, his work, his wife's work, and the program.
• 12:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Are we ready?
• 12:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes.
• 12:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Catching up with your life.
• 12:54
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, I love that.
• 12:57
  Samantha Pruitt: This is from Levine's voice.
• 13:01
  Samantha Pruitt: As I have accompanied the dying to their threshold over the last 20 years, it has become painfully clear how often death takes people unaware.
• 13:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Even those who had months or even years of illness to prepare themselves often lament how completely unprepared they felt for their death.
• 13:24
  Samantha Pruitt: In their last year, many people feel as if they have a second chance to grow, to do inner healing.
• 13:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Many speak of catching up with their lives just in the nick of time.
• 13:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Having observed the renewal that occurs for so many people because they have been given a terminal diagnosis, renewal, he says, or because their natural wisdom inspires them, inspires them to open more profoundly to life, I offer an experiment that amplifies your potential for healing by living the next year as if it were your last.
• 14:06
  Samantha Pruitt: And then he basically goes on to express, you know, some of the things he has witnessed.
• 14:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And I personally can completely relate to bearing witness to many people, friends and family that I have that I love that have died, um many that saw it coming.
• 14:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh you know, it it's different for everybody, it's very unique, right?
• 14:49
  Samantha Pruitt: But in bearing witness to and being part of, I felt what an incredible gift these people gave me by allowing me to be in it with them.
• 15:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Honestly, it blows my mind.
• 15:07
  Samantha Pruitt: It blows my mind.
• 15:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And if that doesn't wake you the hell up, nothing will.
• 15:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And if I just can impress right out of the gate, maybe this particular project, assignment you and I are taking on doesn't resonate, people might not be ready, whatever the dynamic is, have awareness about death, and we're gonna talk about it because it's inevitable for all of us.
• 15:33
  Samantha Pruitt: None of us are getting out of this alive.
• 15:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you are given the precious gift by anyone to be present in their own process and their own physical dying, please show the hell up for that.
• 15:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Show the hell up.
• 15:52
  Samantha Pruitt: I've had many conversations with people after my brother's passing recently, um, tons of conversations.
• 15:58
  Samantha Pruitt: It's great.
• 15:59
  Samantha Pruitt: It's been like really opened up a lot of people to being able to have the conversations, which I think is invaluable also.
• 16:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and somebody expressed to me because she's terrified about the whole thing, that she literally, anytime somebody is sick or ill, it runs the other way out of her own fear and inability to process her emotions or to bear witness to that.
• 16:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And to me, that's a tragedy.
• 16:30
  Samantha Pruitt: That's a tragedy that I would not wish on the person who is dying or the person who is bearing witness to the death.
• 16:41
  Polly Mertens: For some reason, this reminds me so when I became an animal activist, you know, animal rights activist, you know, um one of the ways that that it's funny.
• 16:54
  Polly Mertens: I I think I'm gonna have to for these episodes, I think I'm gonna have to start having tissue around because these topics were so moving.
• 17:01
  Polly Mertens: But I remember um when I first learned about the abuse of animals.
• 17:09
  Polly Mertens: Um how moved I was by seeing videos like this was in the 80s, I would see videos online of all the torturous things that happened to animals in cages and laboratories.
• 17:23
  Polly Mertens: And it just saddened me so much.
• 17:27
  Polly Mertens: And then I learned about factory farming and you know, zoos and all and um circuses and you know, all these things that uh are just uh abusive to animals and people won't bear witness.
• 17:41
  Polly Mertens: You know, people won't watch a video to educate themselves on something that they're too afraid to face, right?
• 17:50
  Polly Mertens: And I think death is one of those things.
• 17:52
  Polly Mertens: It's like like you can you can get through it, it's moving, it's uh a little scary or whatever, but you're strong enough, you know.
• 18:01
  Polly Mertens: And I've been willing to watch lots of animal abuse movies to educate myself about because I care, and I think the same is true of death and dying is you just you uh face it, you know, like being there, um being with it.
• 18:19
  Polly Mertens: Um you're not it's not gonna kill you, you know.
• 18:22
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not it's not gonna kill you, it's gonna open you up to your own uh impermanence, yeah.
• 18:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And the impermanence of every one of us's physical body, irrelevant of what your beliefs are after that.
• 18:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Like every one of us sits in this physical body.
• 18:40
  Samantha Pruitt: We are here delivered in this package for whatever reason.
• 18:46
  Samantha Pruitt: It's kind of comical when you think of it.
• 18:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And we can know I can make everything funny, like the com the comedy of it all is a little ludicrous.
• 18:54
  Samantha Pruitt: But so what happens is that that physical body is going to die from something, from something it's gonna wear.
• 19:03
  Samantha Pruitt: And so pretending that's not gonna happen is not gonna serve anybody.
• 19:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you can be really tender and open and be able to maybe you can't even communicate because it's you don't have the right words or you don't know what to say, or whatever the thing is for you, I would task you with trying anyway, yeah, but you can also sit there in silence, totally, and just being in the room in the silence, uh, you know, whatever, allowing that person to feel your unconditional love just by your existence with them and however they might want to communicate or not is the most remarkable gift.
• 19:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and everybody deserves that.
• 19:51
  Samantha Pruitt: For sure.
• 19:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's talk about the stats of death.
• 19:54
  Samantha Pruitt: You ready?
• 19:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Because I just said everybody's gotta get it.
• 19:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's discuss this topic.
• 19:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Just kind of blew my mind.
• 20:01
  Samantha Pruitt: 175,000 people die every day.
• 20:07
  Polly Mertens: Wow.
• 20:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that's two people every two seconds.
• 20:14
  Polly Mertens: That's like a big city.
• 20:15
  Polly Mertens: That's like you know, my little city over here.
• 20:17
  Polly Mertens: That's a couple of my cities, yeah.
• 20:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, so globally, exactly.
• 20:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Every day.
• 20:24
  Polly Mertens: Wow, yeah.
• 20:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, 63 million people annually.
• 20:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, is that right?
• 20:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Dude, it blows my mind.
• 20:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh mostly from diseases, of course.
• 20:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh cardiovascular disease being number one, uh, cancer disease being number two, respiratory and infectious diseases, number three, so flu, pneumonia, malaria, infectious diseases, and then accidents and suicides, number four.
• 20:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, wow, wow, wow.
• 20:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, okay.
• 20:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And I think, again, good to be look at this honestly.
• 20:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, right?
• 20:59
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just what's so I could literally walk out the door.
• 21:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm a perfectly healthy, fit person, but something could transpire, or I could live till I'm 101.
• 21:07
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 21:08
  Samantha Pruitt: We don't know.
• 21:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 21:10
  Samantha Pruitt: And the reason to do a program like this is to make peace with your life now, or hat as he calls it, catch up with your life now.
• 21:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Why in the hell would you want to wait until you're on your deathbed to be like, damn, I should, I should really sort some shit out.
• 21:27
  Samantha Pruitt: I should call some people, I should really for that.
• 21:31
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:32
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 21:32
  Polly Mertens: Well, I mean, and one of the logistics y things, this we're not gonna belabor this, we can maybe talk about, but like finding out that your brother did not have his properties all like or his property and his affairs in order, let's say, and he had been ill for a year, you know, or more, and hadn't gotten to that.
• 21:50
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like yeah, I don't know if that'll be part of this process with this work.
• 21:53
  Samantha Pruitt: I assume it was is, but yeah, you you go through things with other people and you're like, oh damn, I better look at that.
• 21:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I I you and I talked about it, and I immediately, you know, text five people.
• 22:03
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, Hey, when's the last time you updated your trust and your this and that?
• 22:06
  Samantha Pruitt: And most people I talked to had not oblivious.
• 22:10
  Samantha Pruitt: We had done ours, yeah, 20 years ago, or whatever the hell it was.
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what I mean?
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't all of a sudden every year go, Yeah, I should redo that.
• 22:17
  Samantha Pruitt: That's just not like on your radio.
• 22:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Samantha Pruitt: You know?
• 22:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, anyway, we're off topic.
• 22:23
  Samantha Pruitt: But so there's a fear of death.
• 22:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's a fear of death because historically and through religious beliefs, you know, there are crafted stories about death and dying.
• 22:36
  Samantha Pruitt: And we we are not here to judge whatever anyone's belief systems are.
• 22:39
  Samantha Pruitt: More power to you to have your belief system and and go with that if it works for you, right?
• 22:45
  Samantha Pruitt: But if it doesn't, and it instills fear, like a concept of hell and different things that are scary to you, then the this kind of work is even more important than anything else because you need to make a reckoning with that belief system now.
• 23:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:04
  Samantha Pruitt: They're not really things that were on my radar, but in this reading and sort of listening, I was like, wow, that would be difficult for somebody on their deathbed to be thinking and having that ingrained story or idea or concept about what happens next as part of their belief system.
• 23:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, they would really want to be doing this work double time.
• 23:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:25
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Polly Mertens: You know?
• 23:26
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, totally, totally.
• 23:28
  Polly Mertens: I was just thinking, you know, a lot of, I mean, unless you examine your beliefs around death, which not a lot of people sit around and do, you may be surprised what got programmed into you, whether it's through your religion or your family or your culture or whatever.
• 23:41
  Polly Mertens: And so your experience or your relationship to death and other people dying is going to be through that lens of whatever's programmed inside of you.
• 23:50
  Polly Mertens: And whether you face it because someone's dying, and then you go, Oh, whatever, um, you may not realize what's there, and you may not like what's there if you haven't, you know.
• 23:59
  Polly Mertens: So I don't I don't have any of that over here.
• 24:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I've you know well, but lots of people do, and I would even say from my own experience of experiencing uh death relatively young.
• 24:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So first started, my first real like death experience was um I was young, probably seven or eight or something around that age, and my grandfather died.
• 24:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And when he died, he was in England, my family's from England, and I remember when my mom got the phone call and her reaction to the phone call.
• 24:31
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, hysterical the the emotional pain that I witnessed at that young age watching her experience that and the death of her father is still ingrained into my brain this at this day, at this moment.
• 24:45
  Samantha Pruitt: I can literally hear it.
• 24:47
  Samantha Pruitt: And then over the course of time, you know, losing even friends in high school, and then losing, you know, other family members throughout time, and then losing friends, and then so and all of those experiences being different, you know.
• 25:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Sometimes it was a traditional Catholic casket, open casket in a going to the cemetery, and sometimes it was a celebration.
• 25:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Just I've been to a lot of different experiences around death.
• 25:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 25:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, again, these are all gifts because I got to see different things.
• 25:17
  Samantha Pruitt: But some people have seen nothing and don't know.
• 25:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Or another thing I want to just express for myself is when my dad passed away, and that was a sudden you know, shocking uh he had a heart attack.
• 25:33
  Samantha Pruitt: I was in such shock, and all of us I'm sure were, that we didn't really have our shit together.
• 25:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And I don't feel like we really did justice by celebrating his life, like the series of events that happened a couple weeks after that basically were just sort of us surviving our grief.
• 25:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 25:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And I mean, I felt like I was in a trance.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Even to this day.
• 25:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Like I'm I remember being basically speaking at his funeral, but I swear I was totally in trance.
• 26:04
  Samantha Pruitt: I was having an out-of-body experience.
• 26:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So having things like that happen and then having the reverse where there's a long tale before a death, and really being able to and having that variety, um, it's so important for me personally, for my own dying and death, as well as anybody that I love, to be able to make sure that the space during that, whether it's minutes, weeks, years, is precious and is incredibly personal and reflective of the individual that we have lost, or I call it the great tree that fall that fell.
• 26:46
  Samantha Pruitt: When great trees fall.
• 26:48
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it's like that needs consideration.
• 26:52
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's another reason I just want to point to why these processes are important because everybody deserves that consideration.
• 27:00
  Polly Mertens: I don't know why this thought was happening when you were talking.
• 27:03
  Polly Mertens: I was thinking, because as you described the number of people that you've lost over time, and I thought about um witnessing death or the loss of someone, whether you hear about it or you're there with it, um, and I've lost way more animals than I've lost people, just say, you know, buried way more animals than I've buried people, um, is I was like, uh, I wonder if it's a little bit like the more you experience the exposure therapy.
• 27:33
  Polly Mertens: You know, how they say, like, um, oh, if you have cold exposure therapy, you get more accustomed to it.
• 27:38
  Polly Mertens: Like it, you know, you can sort of do it.
• 27:40
  Polly Mertens: Like if you have exposure to death as a younger person and you have it through life, it's not as triggering or shocking.
• 27:50
  Polly Mertens: I mean, yes, your dad, I mean, um, that's like a leg of your table, like just, you know, what it's like, whoa, we gotta restabilize here.
• 27:57
  Polly Mertens: But if it's like an uncle or someone further afield, if you will, the grandfather, like it's traumatic, but in a different way.
• 28:04
  Polly Mertens: But I'm wondering if there's a exposure to this.
• 28:08
  Polly Mertens: And the more you are, you know, like I think about the people who do hospice, they couldn't do that work if they weren't, you know, growing through it, understanding it, experience, and like something in the wiring of it, you know, their paradigm that through which they see it.
• 28:21
  Polly Mertens: Um, it's sort of like a surgeon.
• 28:23
  Polly Mertens: Like if you went in, like cut someone open, you'd be freaked out.
• 28:26
  Polly Mertens: Like, what the hell?
• 28:27
  Polly Mertens: You know, but if you're trained in surgery and you do it every day, you just walk in, cut a person open, put them back together.
• 28:33
  Polly Mertens: Like, all right, next, right?
• 28:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Um I don't think it's exactly that way with death because every relationship and experience is so different and unique.
• 28:42
  Samantha Pruitt: But I will speak to uh like I have raised children, and my son in particular, when he was young, his grandfather died.
• 28:53
  Samantha Pruitt: This is my dad, right?
• 28:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And literally, I mean, that relationship was he was the one and only grandchild born in our entire family line.
• 29:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 29:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And my dad, I mean, that was his human, and for my son, that was his human, right?
• 29:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So I was like, oh shit, I'm traumatized by the whole thing that's happening.
• 29:14
  Samantha Pruitt: But I was like, I absolutely have to involve him in the whole process.
• 29:18
  Samantha Pruitt: He needs to be part of it all.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Whereas a lot of parents think I should hide this from my child, I should protect them, all these things.
• 29:25
  Samantha Pruitt: That was not my belief system, and I believe that that was a very powerful moment for him.
• 29:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And then he, of course, has lost his grandmother and his grand other grandfather and like other people.
• 29:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 29:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and so my son, who's an adult man now, 30, has a pretty rich understanding about life and death and can handle yes, these are difficult, challenging times, but he can show up and be there and be present in those moments.
• 29:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And I do believe there is a learning and a growth that happens with the exposure for sure.
• 29:58
  Polly Mertens: And I wonder if the difference between how you were there to sort of facilitate or foster him through that journey with your dad's death, if your mom wasn't quite as capable with um either her dad's death or your dad's death, you know, like um, I mean, it's just different with, you know, it's not like Forrester lost you or his dad.
• 30:21
  Polly Mertens: He lost grandfather, but he was, you know, very important in his life.
• 30:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So yeah.
• 30:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I think this work speaks to that.
• 30:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So to me, this work that we're gonna be doing over the next 12 months speaks to having a greater understanding for not just the process and me developing my own unique beliefs irrelevant of anyone else's, right?
• 30:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Any religious traditions, family traditions, whatever.
• 30:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Me developing how I feel about death and dying.
• 30:49
  Samantha Pruitt: And then, you know, building my toolbox for that.
• 30:53
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, so I think all of us have the opportunity, of course, to build this toolbox.
• 30:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And it each of us, it's gonna be so different.
• 31:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you know, but by me doing this for myself, I feel like I'm also going to be giving a gift to my friends and family when it is me.
• 31:13
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Because I will be showing up to my own physical body, dying and death in a way that is true for me.
• 31:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm really hoping that gives them an incredible amount of freedom and you know, expression to have their own experience and be with me there.
• 31:31
  Samantha Pruitt: You know?
• 31:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Love it, love it.
• 31:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 31:35
  Samantha Pruitt: And I have written very specific things.
• 31:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, you've already done it.
• 31:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, okay, okay.
• 31:40
  Polly Mertens: Oh, heck yeah! Is that part of the homework?
• 31:42
  Polly Mertens: Wait, I need to be catching up.
• 31:43
  Polly Mertens: Or is it no?
• 31:44
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not part of the homework.
• 31:45
  Samantha Pruitt: I did something like that actually quite a long time ago.
• 31:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And then when I was experiencing my brother dying, I had quite a bit of time on my side there, sitting with him in the hospital um bed, and I was giving it thought.
• 31:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And so I continued to sort of process that for myself.
• 32:03
  Samantha Pruitt: It was very powerful.
• 32:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Nice.
• 32:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, so just to be clear, because I mentioned this, that how it's taught here, and I love this, and we talked about it briefly, is that dying is the body.
• 32:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Dying is the physical body, and there is a process, okay?
• 32:19
  Samantha Pruitt: There is literally a process that happens.
• 32:22
  Samantha Pruitt: I have witnessed it, and I know it to be scientifically true.
• 32:26
  Samantha Pruitt: A series of events that happen with the physical body.
• 32:28
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not sure.
• 32:29
  Polly Mertens: We're not talking like by accident, like a like inserting uh, you know, you know, right.
• 32:34
  Polly Mertens: We're not talking about somebody that like a more natural death.
• 32:38
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, let's call it.
• 32:40
  Samantha Pruitt: So people can despair dispel a lot of their fear by understanding this natural process.
• 32:47
  Samantha Pruitt: And you spoke about pain, and that is part of many people's um fear concept around the dying of the physical body.
• 32:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Will I be in pain?
• 32:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Will it be pain I can handle?
• 33:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Will the pain be too great?
• 33:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Like lots of things around pain.
• 33:05
  Samantha Pruitt: And you can see all of us as a sort of a society have decided that we don't like pain, you know, we every little thing we take something for pain and blah, blah, blah.
• 33:13
  Samantha Pruitt: So we have an aversion to pain.
• 33:16
  Samantha Pruitt: So it makes sense that that would be one of the things that people would um have fear around.
• 33:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you're trying to grapple with the reality of the fact your physical body will go through a dying process and understand it, then you can understand that through part of that, there is a pain management that happens.
• 33:34
  Samantha Pruitt: It is very rare that anybody is going to experience tremendous pain because there's a pain management protocol, unless you choose to not opt into it, of course.
• 33:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So I think for people just to know like what happens in their physical body, what are the series of events?
• 33:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And I will just be candid.
• 33:52
  Samantha Pruitt: When I knew my brother was in his final week and he was not going to be leaving the hospital because his liver was failing, I flat out asked the doctors specifically, and if they didn't tell me, by the way, I would have gone and researched the damn thing, what is going to happen because it's his liver failing, like what are the things that are specifically going to happen in his physical body?
• 34:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And then, of course, I did go and do a little more reading so I could have awareness and be prepared for what I would witness and what he would experience.
• 34:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And that gave me great comfort.
• 34:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 34:26
  Samantha Pruitt: You know?
• 34:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like the more knowledge is power, knowledge is liberation.
• 34:32
  Samantha Pruitt: It really is.
• 34:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And I just want to encourage people to have some curiosity around that and then explore that and understand what happens, and then that a great amount of suffering is highly unlikely.
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, depending on your circumstances, I cannot guarantee it, but nonetheless.
• 34:52
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 34:53
  Polly Mertens: I like it.
• 34:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 34:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, one thing I think is interesting about death is there is a spiritual experience that some people have in you and your near-death experience obsession.
• 35:04
  Samantha Pruitt: This is more of a thing that maybe a lot of people haven't even heard of before.
• 35:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Do you want to just speak really quickly to what the heck that is?
• 35:16
  Polly Mertens: Well, I you mean like near-death experiences and what what what I and what people say they experience.
• 35:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean the common threads.
• 35:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, maybe I'll try and summarize I hadn't thought of like, oh, the whatever.
• 35:26
  Polly Mertens: But um two things I want to say is uh I've been so in 2025 I was quite obsessed with near death experience stories and just the just from the spiritual aspect, you know, not a like a uh curious about death aspect, but I was like, wow, like what can they like somebody who quote goes to the other side, you know, we we have this big unknown, it seems like like there's this black box of death.
• 35:52
  Polly Mertens: What happens?
• 35:52
  Polly Mertens: And there's lots of theories and going to heaven, going to hell, whatever you want to call it.
• 35:56
  Polly Mertens: And so just hearing these people's stories who didn't die and that they left and didn't come back, but these ones like went somewhere and various journeys for various durations.
• 36:06
  Polly Mertens: Some people were in a coma for a month, some people were, you know, their heart stopped for seven minutes on a surgery table, all sorts of stories, right?
• 36:14
  Polly Mertens: Um, but some of the common threads, you may have heard this before, they do a oftentimes you hear a life review, which is their life, and there's various experiences of that, but often it's experiencing the whole life, not just like looking at it on movie screen, like they feel everything.
• 36:30
  Polly Mertens: And they often talk about actually they feel uh everyone that was involved in it, like if they had an argument with somebody, they not only felt their life, but they felt the impact of that person that they were with.
• 36:42
  Polly Mertens: Like from both, it's fascinating, like they're the oneness of it.
• 36:45
  Polly Mertens: Anyway, um, and then and then the dynamicism beyond that is so vast.
• 36:52
  Polly Mertens: The journeys, everything from being in gardens to black abysses that feel like pure love to white lights to um seeing some sort of beings.
• 37:03
  Polly Mertens: Often the beings are quite tall, you know, they a lot of them report like they're like seven feet tall or ten feet tall, and um uh relatives coming to them, you know, lots of variety, like it's all over the place.
• 37:15
  Polly Mertens: But some of the most uh common things are pure love.
• 37:22
  Polly Mertens: As soon as you're out of the body, it's pure love.
• 37:25
  Polly Mertens: Like boom, like it's like falling into just unrecognizable.
• 37:30
  Polly Mertens: They they none of them have words to describe what that pure love feeling is.
• 37:34
  Polly Mertens: It's undescribable.
• 37:36
  Polly Mertens: And if there's anything that they're seeing, it's not like black or white or whatever, if there's anything they're seeing, it's colors you can't even they've we've never we don't even have the spectrum for them, right?
• 37:46
  Polly Mertens: Like that kind of a thing.
• 37:47
  Polly Mertens: And I think about, well, I'm sure like in LSD trips or something like that, maybe maybe they get closer.
• 37:52
  Polly Mertens: I don't know, but most people say it's unrecognizable.
• 37:55
  Polly Mertens: Colors, the time space thing is all made up, you know, there is no time space.
• 37:59
  Polly Mertens: They go over there, they're like, I think I was there for a thousand years and then I came back, you know, like it's totally different.
• 38:05
  Polly Mertens: Um, what else?
• 38:06
  Polly Mertens: Um I one of my one of my favorite things is the the the popping out of the body.
• 38:11
  Polly Mertens: Like oftentimes because of the near death, like they're probably like traumatic-y things, you know, like car accident, overdose, accident, heart attack, surgery, malfunction with anesthesia, whatever, things like that, where they pop out and then they're in the they're in the surgery room, they're in the ER, they're somewhere, right?
• 38:29
  Polly Mertens: But they're there, you know, and then they have that over over the body.
• 38:32
  Polly Mertens: So, and then they often travel, you know, usually they're like going through the hospital in the various whatever.
• 38:38
  Polly Mertens: Um, but the and then the going back into the body is the other one, right?
• 38:42
  Polly Mertens: And I don't know the the number, but half say they were told they like they were like, Oh, I don't want to go back.
• 38:51
  Polly Mertens: Like, you know, there's someone they're talking to, whatever they're negotiating, like going back and stuff, and they're like, nope, I'm here.
• 38:56
  Polly Mertens: I'm I'm loving this, like I've never felt love like this before.
• 38:59
  Polly Mertens: Don't send me back.
• 39:00
  Polly Mertens: And they're like, nope, you have to go back.
• 39:01
  Polly Mertens: And they're like, nope, don't want to go back, and whatever.
• 39:04
  Polly Mertens: So they they there's negotiations.
• 39:05
  Polly Mertens: There's negotiations.
• 39:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Polly Mertens: And then some are asked, Do you want to go back?
• 39:09
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, how do they get options and they don't?
• 39:12
  Polly Mertens: I don't know, whatever.
• 39:13
  Polly Mertens: But there's the going back process.
• 39:15
  Polly Mertens: And often some of them, it's like like split second, boom, and then I was back in my body.
• 39:20
  Polly Mertens: There's no realizing that I was going back or whatever.
• 39:23
  Polly Mertens: But then there's a group of them that they let's say they see their body and they're like, How am I?
• 39:28
  Polly Mertens: They they're so expanded.
• 39:30
  Polly Mertens: Like they, like, if I had to describe whatever what it maybe feels like, is like they're as big as the sun, and they're like, How am I gonna get into that body?
• 39:38
  Polly Mertens: Like they're like, there's no physical way that this big me is gonna get into that body.
• 39:43
  Polly Mertens: So there's that, and then they just go, and then I'm I'm in, you know.
• 39:47
  Polly Mertens: Um, and oftentimes they're like in pain because they something had occurred or something like that.
• 39:52
  Polly Mertens: So they went from this bliss state and they're like, oh, and then I know I'm back in my body, and they're like, Oh, and then it's heavy and it's form, and you know, they describe that.
• 40:00
  Polly Mertens: So I could go on, but those are some of the common things.
• 40:04
  Samantha Pruitt: What a trip.
• 40:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I mean, and there's not a small amount of people that have experienced this.
• 40:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 40:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I told you I got obsessed with a podcast.
• 40:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh gosh, I'm just trying to blink on it.
• 40:17
  Samantha Pruitt: But telepathy tapes, that one?
• 40:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, telepathy tapes, where the second season is near-death experiences.
• 40:23
  Samantha Pruitt: The first season was some other subject matter.
• 40:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So anyone who wants to like hear it from these people from their own word, and then of course you can just Google it and see all kinds of stuff, but it's totally fascinating.
• 40:35
  Samantha Pruitt: One other thing I want to mention, just because before it slips my mind, is there is also people who do decide to end their own lives.
• 40:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's uh assisted suicide, basically, and it is legal in some states.
• 40:49
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm surprised it's not legal in California, honestly.
• 40:51
  Samantha Pruitt: I think it might be.
• 40:52
  Samantha Pruitt: I know somebody that did it, so I think it might be.
• 40:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I do too, but it's not legal currently in California.
• 40:57
  Samantha Pruitt: But that's a whole other topic.
• 41:02
  Samantha Pruitt: But there's a great film, a documentary about this, and I'm sure there's multiples, but anyway, you just look on Netflix and you can just type that in.
• 41:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's near-death also not about so not near-death experiences, which I'm sure those do exist, but there's also great films and documentaries and stories.
• 41:19
  Samantha Pruitt: This is what I'm just trying to introduce people to, where they can start to explore this in a different way and maybe get more comfortable with these concepts through video or through audio or through books or things of that nature, right?
• 41:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Because there's a lot of different ways that this is all going to be happening for people.
• 41:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So I do think people having awareness around that and understanding the perspective of the person dying.
• 41:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So, what I love about the stories you said is these are people's real life experiences, near-death experiences, that they're sharing.
• 41:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 41:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And same with this um documentary on assisted suicide is like you're experiencing in real time that person's story that they're willing to share.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 42:04
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so beautiful, it's so remarkable.
• 42:06
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's so empowering, incredible.
• 42:10
  Samantha Pruitt: And also to be on that journey and bear witness with your friends and family.
• 42:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So by doing those things, this is the exposure you're talking about that can allow you to have a more open idea or possibly dialogue with people.
• 42:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So I just want to kind of offer that up too.
• 42:24
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, let's explore this concept, which is more about near death.
• 42:29
  Samantha Pruitt: We're gonna have another dear near death.
• 42:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I just love talking about that.
• 42:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, oh, that was really fun.
• 42:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 42:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 42:34
  Samantha Pruitt: So the catching up with your life is this um taking on the challenge, the project, if you will, to do this life examination, to do this inventory or whatever you want to call it, right?
• 42:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Of your life.
• 42:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And so that is part of the curriculum that we will be doing, obviously.
• 42:56
  Samantha Pruitt: But let's just talk about what that is and how might people might do that, right?
• 43:00
  Samantha Pruitt: So it starts with just starting to become aware.
• 43:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, now this could be a little shocking for people.
• 43:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 43:09
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm I I'm just gonna speak for myself.
• 43:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So I am gonna be 57.
• 43:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So I got a few years under the belt.
• 43:18
  Samantha Pruitt: I was gonna say the inventory.
• 43:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I really can't remember a lot of shit.
• 43:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And then all of a sudden, when I start to like try and, you know, um, with a calendar with a timeline, sort of unpack or hey, where the hell did I live and what all whatever?
• 43:34
  Samantha Pruitt: I can't remember a lot of things.
• 43:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm dude, as you said that I'm like, Do you have the same problem?
• 43:39
  Polly Mertens: Wow, like, yeah, I know I'm gonna.
• 43:41
  Polly Mertens: Oh, I know.
• 43:41
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 43:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Now I have other people who remember freaking everything, and I'm like, what the hell?
• 43:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Are you like a savant or something?
• 43:47
  Samantha Pruitt: They're like, remember when that happened?
• 43:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Remember when you said that?
• 43:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, I got nothing.
• 43:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, I don't was I even there.
• 43:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Are they just making this shit up?
• 43:54
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 43:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally.
• 43:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's gonna be different for everybody.
• 43:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Don't there's no judgment around like, well, can you remember and what you can't remember?
• 44:01
  Samantha Pruitt: I think it's really about like going back to um your birth, right?
• 44:05
  Samantha Pruitt: And being like just starting to weave the fabric a little bit of, you know, this is what my family unit looked like, this is where we live.
• 44:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So you just kind of just the basics, you don't have to get too crazy.
• 44:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Are you like writing this?
• 44:17
  Samantha Pruitt: What are we doing?
• 44:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You should be journaling it.
• 44:19
  unknown: Okay.
• 44:19
  unknown: Okay.
• 44:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, I basically just started like a timeline.
• 44:23
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm like, birth, line number one.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: I was born a cute little baby.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Amazing day.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Amazing day.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I came into the world.
• 44:33
  Polly Mertens: There was an earthquake the day I was born.
• 44:36
  Polly Mertens: Boom, Samantha's here on the scene, y'all.
• 44:39
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 44:40
  Samantha Pruitt: So what was interesting is to do that, and again, without judgment or a lot of emotional uh attachment to it.
• 44:47
  Samantha Pruitt: And as I slowly started doing it, then things started kind of like coming back to the surface.
• 44:54
  Samantha Pruitt: I was starting then to have like these flashback things, like of me at a certain age in a certain place.
• 44:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes.
• 45:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And then uh these people were there.
• 45:02
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know, so like why are these things in my mind?
• 45:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Why are these memories that I have held on to?
• 45:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Like I have assigned some kind of meaning to them.
• 45:10
  Samantha Pruitt: They maybe have meaning, and maybe I need to explore that.
• 45:12
  Samantha Pruitt: So I would just write them down without like overdoing the dramatic part of it of like, I need to know what.
• 45:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, just write that shit down.
• 45:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 45:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 45:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Just write the shit down.
• 45:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And I haven't gotten all the way to age 57, by the way.
• 45:25
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I'm barely started here.
• 45:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is quite a process, and I do think it's gonna be a slow drip.
• 45:31
  Polly Mertens: Is is it um is that part of the homework now, or are we doing this like throughout the year?
• 45:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Or so this will be part of the homework.
• 45:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I haven't technically been assigned this homework except in the book, and I have been reading the book.
• 45:43
  Samantha Pruitt: This is the second part of the process.
• 45:47
  Samantha Pruitt: The first is get on board with doing this project.
• 45:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, okay, because you can be part of this group that I'm in, this course.
• 45:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and you can kind of be showing up, or you can literally take your shoes off and walk through the door and be all in, right?
• 46:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So you're gonna get different people in the room having different experiences.
• 46:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And just from what I've already witnessed, I see some people do have quite a bit of fear, and so that might be a slower process for them to be willing to really be engaged in the work and be willing to do like an inventory and stuff like that.
• 46:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's gonna be there's no judgment here.
• 46:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm just sort of gonna talk through a couple of the first steps so people can be like, that sounds amazing or that sounds horrible.
• 46:38
  Polly Mertens: Totally, totally something I want to just insert now or could insert it later, but I just feel like saying it now.
• 46:44
  Polly Mertens: So two things.
• 46:44
  Polly Mertens: Um one is having last year listened to so many near-death experiences, not only do I not have an aversion to it, I can't I can't wait.
• 46:54
  Polly Mertens: Not like I'm like wanting to die sooner, but like, oh, sure.
• 46:59
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh my god, unconditional love, feeling peace, all this stuff.
• 47:03
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, bring it on, you know.
• 47:05
  Polly Mertens: The second thing, so you know, any fear of that, it's like, wow, go listen to these people talking about it.
• 47:11
  Polly Mertens: It's so blissful.
• 47:12
  Polly Mertens: It's un you know, and one thing I can say, if anybody has any of that fear of like having an accident, is every person I listened to who had an accident that would have caused severe pain falling from a cliff, hitting a side of a guardrail or whatever, like that, they pop out of their body before the moment of impact.
• 47:31
  Polly Mertens: So just like that's one of my things.
• 47:32
  Polly Mertens: I was like, man, if I'm some of these hikes, I'm like, oh my god, if I died and I felt the pat whatever, you pop out before the impact, you know, and then you know, you might go back in, whatever.
• 47:43
  Polly Mertens: But anyway, it's um so that's one.
• 47:45
  Polly Mertens: And then the other thing is um two things.
• 47:46
  Polly Mertens: So I've been listening to a lot of Ron um, so Stephen Levine was hanging out with Rom Doss when he was, you know, in these days of writing this book and doing this dual of work you're talking about.
• 47:56
  Polly Mertens: And uh one of the things that Rom would say is um that was given to him by a a teacher was um dying is like taking off a tight shoe.
• 48:11
  Polly Mertens: Or something like something along that line.
• 48:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly, something that you don't fit in anyway.
• 48:15
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, it was like it's gonna feel like taking off a tight shoe.
• 48:18
  Polly Mertens: It's like, ah, it's gonna feel good.
• 48:20
  Polly Mertens: So yeah.
• 48:21
  Polly Mertens: I just wanted to say that because you know, as people think about like, ah, death, dying, it's like, wow, I've only like A from my near to the death experiences, like the amount of unconditional love and beautiful experiences is worth it.
• 48:32
  Polly Mertens: And then like taking off a tight shoe, oh that sounds fucking good too, you know.
• 48:37
  Polly Mertens: So that's why I'm don't yeah.
• 48:40
  Samantha Pruitt: There's the dying of the physical body, and then there's the death.
• 48:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And in my uh personal opinion, the death is the liberation, yeah, yeah.
• 48:50
  Samantha Pruitt: You're not in your body anymore, you have left the rented building.
• 48:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, you don't you're just renting this thing anyway.
• 49:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Don't get too attached.
• 49:03
  Polly Mertens: Totally, totally, and and the sooner you can get unattached from it in it, the better as well.
• 49:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I want to read this because I just thought this was so good.
• 49:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh Stephen Levine said this it's time to get a passport, even though you have no idea where or when your adventurous trip will begin.
• 49:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, first of all, wouldn't we do that?
• 49:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, wouldn't we like prepare ourselves for the trip?
• 49:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 49:30
  Samantha Pruitt: So, this is really all we're asking is like that trip's going down.
• 49:36
  Samantha Pruitt: There's going to be an adventure.
• 49:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's work to create a relationship to that trip that is uh positive.
• 49:48
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and however you choose to make that happen is up to you.
• 49:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But this is what we're doing is we're getting a passport.
• 50:00
  Polly Mertens: Love it.
• 50:00
  Polly Mertens: We're going on a trip.
• 50:01
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, it reminds me, I was just, I just had a friend who had hip surgery yesterday and thinking about you going into surgery.
• 50:08
  Polly Mertens: And I was telling her she was preparing for her, she had had hips and the other hip surgery about six months ago.
• 50:13
  Polly Mertens: So this was the second one.
• 50:14
  Polly Mertens: So it's not like, oh my god, hip surgery.
• 50:16
  Polly Mertens: She wasn't like afraid of it or anything.
• 50:18
  Polly Mertens: But I was telling her how amazing your story of going into the OR and talking to the doctor, you know, the your whole perspective of it was like, y'all are my team and you're my people, and da-da-da.
• 50:31
  Polly Mertens: Like you were just so light and love and like feel good and you know, positive energy, just that whole experience.
• 50:38
  Polly Mertens: I would say the story about this journey or your death or whatever you say about it, like that, you bring that to it, you know.
• 50:46
  Polly Mertens: If it's gonna be the worst thing of your life, okay, then guess what?
• 50:49
  Polly Mertens: It's probably gonna you're just gonna have some suffering, you know.
• 50:51
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you bring, like, wow, I'm really gonna be graceful for this, or graceful through this, or I'm gonna be connected with people, or whatever, you know, that will be your you want to hear something, even bigger people may not like this, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
• 51:08
  Samantha Pruitt: How you live is how you die.
• 51:13
  Samantha Pruitt: So if there is a lot of angst and fear and regret and anger and sadness and resistance and all the things the suffering, we'll just call it all one big bucket of suffering, there will be suffering because what you're expressing, which is the ultimate truth, is how your mind perceives it, so it will be.
• 51:40
  Samantha Pruitt: So the liberation is to bring your mind into a place where it is not suffering, right?
• 51:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And you have that power.
• 51:53
  Samantha Pruitt: You do.
• 51:55
  Samantha Pruitt: I had complete you know, power over the situation of I'm going to be in surgery, I'm going to be unconscious, I'm going to be cut open, I'm going to be all these things.
• 52:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And I could have gone in, which many people do, you know, with angst and fear and all the things.
• 52:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And like you said, I was like, hell no, I gotta drop the goods in here.
• 52:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, I gotta come with as much love for myself and for the people who are caring for me as possible.
• 52:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna create the environment for success, for healing, for everything to go right today.
• 52:34
  Polly Mertens: I say how this is gonna go.
• 52:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 52:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 52:36
  Polly Mertens: Love it.
• 52:37
  Polly Mertens: Totally, totally.
• 52:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so how do you take a personal inventory of your life?
• 52:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I kind of alluded to some of the things.
• 52:45
  Polly Mertens: I'm gonna get a new journal for this.
• 52:46
  Polly Mertens: Like just my death story or my, I guess this is my life year, life review, is that we call it life review.
• 52:51
  Polly Mertens: I'm gonna get a life review journal.
• 52:53
  Samantha Pruitt: This will be fun, yeah.
• 52:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, every time you can get a new journal, it's fun.
• 52:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, hell yeah, yeah.
• 52:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So you gotta make time to clear the path, right?
• 53:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like one of the things you and I kind of went back and forth on, you're like, hey, what are you doing getting started?
• 53:07
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm like, I don't, I don't, my path isn't clear yet, is is really what I meant.
• 53:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, I haven't started the work yet because you need to be in the right place and you need to have space and time for this to be something you can be available to.
• 53:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so if you have three screaming kids or whatever all your crazy life might be, um, this is gonna be very difficult to do, right?
• 53:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So, unless you can carve out time.
• 53:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And I even said to you, I've been going to the library, I finished my certification with Dr.
• 53:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Sims, blah, blah, blah.
• 53:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And I think I'm gonna continue to go to the library and do this weekly work um as part of my writing assignment or whatever you want to call it, because the focus, the quiet, the intentionality to that moment in the week for me to give myself that space.
• 53:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So I would make that suggestion for people as well.
• 53:57
  Samantha Pruitt: What do you think?
• 53:58
  Polly Mertens: So, are you finding that it the homework?
• 54:00
  Polly Mertens: Well, you haven't uh gotten access exactly to the homework yet.
• 54:04
  Polly Mertens: So, like I'm just what I've done so far is I've been reading the chapters, right?
• 54:09
  Polly Mertens: I haven't done work.
• 54:10
  Polly Mertens: I've been, I would say I have two things that you will add at some point.
• 54:14
  Polly Mertens: I want to add like what I've already discovered, you know.
• 54:16
  Polly Mertens: I want to contribute that, but um, I haven't like started journaling or anything.
• 54:20
  Polly Mertens: I'm just sort of like taking in the book and the material.
• 54:23
  Polly Mertens: So I was like, oh, there's a lot of homework, you know, there's like a meditation and then there's this, and then I'm like, okay, I gotta.
• 54:28
  Polly Mertens: So are you finding that you're doing it like homework, like uh like you're in a classroom?
• 54:32
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 54:33
  Samantha Pruitt: No, but you know me.
• 54:35
  Samantha Pruitt: You know me.
• 54:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't roll like that.
• 54:37
  Samantha Pruitt: They can be like, hey, you meditate for 40 minutes.
• 54:41
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not gonna do that.
• 54:42
  Samantha Pruitt: This is my life journey, yeah, my journey, my experience, my process.
• 54:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Y'all, I am not gonna play by the rules.
• 54:51
  Samantha Pruitt: That is just not how I even everybody knows that.
• 54:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's cool if that's what people need and want is that formal structure.
• 55:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Some people did express in one of our conversations that they really are like liking the structure to this.
• 55:11
  Samantha Pruitt: That's not at all what I'm attracted to.
• 55:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, but like sometimes I'm listening to the book sometimes while I'm driving down the freeway in Los Angeles the other day, freaking 75 miles an hour.
• 55:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 55:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not I'm not gonna meditate or take notes because I'm drunk now.
• 55:27
  Samantha Pruitt: But then other times it's gonna be uh five o'clock in the morning while I'm drinking my coffee in you know, the sun's coming up, or whatever the hell.
• 55:36
  Samantha Pruitt: It's gonna be all over the place.
• 55:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But back to sort of how do you take this personal inventory, right?
• 55:41
  Samantha Pruitt: We got to clear the path, and then you need to be in a place that's really non-judgmental where you can take this inventory, and I think this is gonna be a tough one for people to unpack these memories, these ideas, these thoughts that you're having about your life trajectory up to this point, and not attach too much emotional, you know, weight to it.
• 56:05
  Polly Mertens: Well, I was just gonna say, so are you just sort of documenting the who, what, where of your life, or are you Well, that's the first step.
• 56:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, okay, and then after you've done that, you are starting to look at things that are bubbling up for you that are causing emotional discomfort.
• 56:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, that could be regrets, that could be things that you feel shame about, it could be things that you have still, anger towards a person, you you know are traumatized from experience, all of that stuff is real.
• 56:37
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not saying that those things aren't real, but like out of the gate, don't put so much heavy weight that you never get through the damn process.
• 56:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Gotcha, gotcha, get it down on paper to the best of your abilities.
• 56:48
  Polly Mertens: Okay, this is the who, what, where, and then all that other stuff can be added later or whatever, but just start to build the timeline to start.
• 56:55
  unknown: Okay.
• 56:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, because what does come happen next, oh, wow, is that you are tackling these harder things, and in particular, the relationship you hold with yourself emotionally around these things and with others.
• 57:13
  Samantha Pruitt: So it could be an unresolved thing that happened to you, unresolved in your emotional mind.
• 57:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, when I was young, this thing happened.
• 57:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I have no hello.
• 57:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Do we have stuff?
• 57:27
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, Lord have mercy.
• 57:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Some unpacking.
• 57:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you got some material to work with.
• 57:31
  Samantha Pruitt: The interesting thing about it is I was like, I don't really can't think of that much stuff.
• 57:35
  Samantha Pruitt: But then, like, once I started to like superficially play in the sandbox, I was like, what the hell was that?
• 57:42
  unknown: What the what the huh?
• 57:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 57:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So I still have some stuff, we all do, we're human, um, throughout my history where I have some emotional um sadness, grief, that these are unprocessed, or maybe anger or maybe regret or whatever.
• 58:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So the next level will be in resolving those things.
• 58:06
  Samantha Pruitt: It could be that I need to have a conversation with somebody, it could be that I need to write a letter to somebody, it could be that I need to write a letter to myself.
• 58:14
  Samantha Pruitt: It could be I need to apologize to somebody, it could be that somebody maybe I wish would apologize to me, you know, whatever the dynamics are.
• 58:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, there's gonna be shit, people.
• 58:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Life is messy, life is messy, and what you're going towards is not resolution because you can't have expectations about, well, I'm gonna go have that convo with my mom and she said that.
• 58:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Can you believe he did what that?
• 58:42
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, like, no, you're not picking a fight.
• 58:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Me, there might be some I'm not saying no convo, but you're not going to pick a fight, right?
• 58:49
  Samantha Pruitt: You're going for simple expression.
• 58:52
  Samantha Pruitt: This is a healing journey.
• 58:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, you're not there to write, wrong, you point fingers or whatever, blame, complain, that whole thing.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: It's yeah, healing, you know.
• 59:00
  Polly Mertens: Like, oftentimes, if I've done this ever, it's um discovery, you know.
• 59:05
  Polly Mertens: It's just like I'm just discovering like a what was their perspective and what was there, you know, like looking at it from two different perspectives, almost like third-person observer moments.
• 59:15
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 59:16
  Samantha Pruitt: This is so good.
• 59:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I love this term.
• 59:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I think I sent it to you because I thought this is freaking classic.
• 59:22
  Samantha Pruitt: You are having a going out of unfinished business sale.
• 59:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Say that again.
• 59:30
  Samantha Pruitt: You are you are having a going out of unfinished business sale.
• 59:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean I love that.
• 59:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm gonna literally probably tattoo that on my arm or something because there's this lightness to that, there's this levity and joy and humor and insanity of that.
• 59:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, I'm gonna have a garage sale with my unfinished business.
• 59:56
  Polly Mertens: Put up a science like clearing the house, this stuff's gotta go, you know, whoo-hoo, gotta make room for, you know.
• 1:00:02
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 1:00:03
  Samantha Pruitt: So this process isn't gonna be all dread and doom and you know, reliving old traumas.
• 1:00:08
  Samantha Pruitt: There's also like can you can have some fun, you can laugh about it, it can be ludicrous.
• 1:00:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, get rid of whatever.
• 1:00:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, get rid of that old furniture you don't need, you know.
• 1:00:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Get rid of that old furniture.
• 1:00:20
  Samantha Pruitt: I like it.
• 1:00:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Unfinished business.
• 1:00:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I dig it.
• 1:00:24
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and if you think about who do you have unfinished business with?
• 1:00:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And you made that list of people.
• 1:00:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Hopefully it's not too long, by the way.
• 1:00:36
  Samantha Pruitt: At the top of the list for myself, I would put I would put me.
• 1:00:43
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and it's the revelation for myself around, hey, there's a lot of other cool shit you want to get up to.
• 1:00:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Yo, so if you got a year and I'm talking to myself in the mirror, what are you doing?
• 1:01:02
  Samantha Pruitt: What in the hell are you doing over there?
• 1:01:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is just me calling me, you know, on my unfinished business.
• 1:01:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And of course, it can be old relationships and you know, parental sibling, whatever the thing is, you know.
• 1:01:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and then the second, so any questions about that?
• 1:01:21
  Polly Mertens: No, I I just was thinking of that might be a good place to add the two things that I've already discovered, but I think they'll come after you keep going on your list.
• 1:01:28
  Samantha Pruitt: They're gonna come at the end, uh, because I just have one more thing.
• 1:01:30
  Samantha Pruitt: So because I don't want to go too far in the process, but another part of the process after you've started doing this is again, because you've woken up now, you have awareness.
• 1:01:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Ideally, you're operating and walking around with a different pair of glasses, right?
• 1:01:47
  Polly Mertens: Which is, oh, now all of a sudden I'm kind of awake to and and you've cleared the house, you got rid of the whole furniture that was, you know, going out of the business sale is cleared, like we got room here.
• 1:01:57
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I call it wake the fuck up, but they call it noting, which is a Buddhist term for a practice.
• 1:02:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like, oh, that really makes me feel this way.
• 1:02:09
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm thinking this way, noted.
• 1:02:11
  Samantha Pruitt: So without emotional attachment, you're noting.
• 1:02:15
  Samantha Pruitt: I notice that when Polly says this or goes like that, I feel a certain way, noted.
• 1:02:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't get attached to it and be like, what in the hell?
• 1:02:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You just said that would, you know, I'm just hey, note it.
• 1:02:28
  Polly Mertens: What's there for me?
• 1:02:28
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Without an attachment to the emotion or the thing that's happening.
• 1:02:34
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm really practicing the hell out of this right now in the business world, and I'm not going to name names or projects or whatever, but I have a very complex project right now with a lot of people.
• 1:02:45
  Samantha Pruitt: And these people are not getting along.
• 1:02:49
  Samantha Pruitt: So for me to bear witness and hold space and try and be Switzerland, as you call me, um, in this environment, I'm doing a lot of noting.
• 1:02:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, and not just noting on the shenanigans of the humans, but like noting on what comes up for me.
• 1:03:05
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:03:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 1:03:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm like, wow, Susie or Fred or whatever, I can't believe how controlling they're being or how bullying or whatever the thing.
• 1:03:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I'm like, huh, why is that coming up for me?
• 1:03:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, just note it.
• 1:03:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Rather than me responding and being like, oh, I've got I'm I'm coming, you know, no.
• 1:03:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's called noting.
• 1:03:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 1:03:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Recognize what's happening when it's actually happening.
• 1:03:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Recognize what's happening when it's actually happening rather than being asleep.
• 1:03:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 1:03:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm going through the day, all these things are happening, but I'm actually not there at all.
• 1:03:45
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm in my head thinking about what my husband said to me this morning when he walked out the door, or what my mother said when she left me a voicemail, or fill in the blank of a thousand things that I could be obsessing about and ruminating over.
• 1:03:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And meanwhile, you know, here's my loved one in front of me, my grandson.
• 1:04:04
  Samantha Pruitt: I was just with my grandson, you know, asking cool questions and doing cool things, and like I need to be present in my experience with him, but I'm too busy thinking about something else.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:04:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, return to the moment with inquiry and curiosity.
• 1:04:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 1:04:21
  Samantha Pruitt: You do this exceptionally well.
• 1:04:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You're always curious.
• 1:04:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Sometimes I'm not so curious about people.
• 1:04:27
  Samantha Pruitt: You just wear me down.
• 1:04:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I've I thought you were interested.
• 1:04:32
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm not interested anymore.
• 1:04:34
  Polly Mertens: Uh so in my landmark work, one of the questions that just came up last night that I just love this question is that I think ties in with what you're pointing to is um, what's at the source of that?
• 1:04:44
  Polly Mertens: I love that question, right?
• 1:04:46
  Polly Mertens: It's like if something comes up for you or whatever, what's at the source of that, right?
• 1:04:51
  Polly Mertens: Like what's behind the what whatever it be?
• 1:04:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So well, hell, you're going through this practice, you're gonna have to get to the source of life and unpack a few things here, people.
• 1:05:05
  Polly Mertens: Christmas is coming early.
• 1:05:06
  Polly Mertens: There's some packages coming out.
• 1:05:08
  Polly Mertens: Bing!
• 1:05:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally, totally oh gosh.
• 1:05:14
  Samantha Pruitt: I love this.
• 1:05:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Our lives are a collection of what we touch and what touches us.
• 1:05:18
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so true.
• 1:05:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Our lives are a collection of what we touch and what touches us.
• 1:05:23
  Samantha Pruitt: I one of my favorite quotes, which is similar to that, is that your only true belongings are your actions.
• 1:05:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh when you hear things like that, your only true belongings are your actions, or our lives are a collection of what we touch and what touches us.
• 1:05:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Doesn't it just make the shit real like that?
• 1:05:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Who can put sentences together like that?
• 1:05:45
  Polly Mertens: Like that.
• 1:05:46
  Samantha Pruitt: All of a sudden, I am like, whatever, y'all.
• 1:05:49
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm running off to the ashram.
• 1:05:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Bye! Like because you very quickly look around at the insanity of it all.
• 1:06:01
  Samantha Pruitt: The Zoom meetings, all e 50,000 emails.
• 1:06:04
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like, are you kidding me?
• 1:06:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Who's selling me this BS anyway?
• 1:06:09
  Samantha Pruitt: It doesn't really even matter.
• 1:06:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I know.
• 1:06:11
  Samantha Pruitt: I know so you get present, you get present, and if something triggers you, you go noted, and you're released.
• 1:06:19
  Samantha Pruitt: It yeah, yeah, and you can get curious about it later or not.
• 1:06:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You're gonna be more curious than me.
• 1:06:25
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna be like, bye.
• 1:06:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, because I just don't want to, you know, like hanging out in the swamp is what I was calling it last night.
• 1:06:32
  Polly Mertens: Like last night I was just spent, energy spent, body and mind were just like taxed, and I had a long our meeting went till like 10 o'clock last night, and I was just like, I'm so over it.
• 1:06:43
  Polly Mertens: And I was just kind of slumped down in the back of the room feeling, I was just like, don't call on me, I got nothing, you know.
• 1:06:51
  Polly Mertens: And um and it's just like you know, why was I even telling that anyway?
• 1:06:56
  Polly Mertens: It's just like the the energy for that.
• 1:06:59
  Polly Mertens: But when you're in a good state, like you you have energy for things and you want to be up to things, right?
• 1:07:05
  Polly Mertens: So, like that's not the moment to be like putting a lot of inquiry into myself.
• 1:07:09
  Polly Mertens: It's like I'm just tired, like you know, the body's just tired, like, okay, next, you know, and I woke up this morning, I'd let myself sleep and reset.
• 1:07:16
  Polly Mertens: And it's like, okay, I think I'm I think I'm back, you know?
• 1:07:19
  Polly Mertens: Here we are.
• 1:07:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:07:21
  Samantha Pruitt: And I would say, you know, when you get those times where you're really in sync with yourself, you are rested, well taken care of, and you really feel connected, or this deep sense of connection to your own knowing, like the awareness is really like firing.
• 1:07:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Carve out time right away.
• 1:07:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Cancel some other shit, yo, because that stuff ain't important anyway.
• 1:07:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Cancel that stuff and go do this kind of work, or any kind of self-inquiry or journaling or reflective work because most of our life we're walking around exhausted, tired, tuned out, or whatever because we're in survival mode.
• 1:08:00
  Samantha Pruitt: A, we'd like to get you out of that, but all of us get in it sometimes.
• 1:08:06
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know, for many people, they've been stuck in it for a long time, and they actually don't know how it feels to even feel good.
• 1:08:16
  Samantha Pruitt: So you're gonna have to make time and space for these kind of practices, you know, it's not something to do take lightly.
• 1:08:23
  Polly Mertens: I think the other thing just as you were talking.
• 1:08:25
  Polly Mertens: So I appreciate the idea of self-reflection and journaling and stuff, and enroll a friend.
• 1:08:31
  Polly Mertens: Like, don't do this alone either, right?
• 1:08:34
  Polly Mertens: Or somehow share this.
• 1:08:35
  Polly Mertens: Like I feel like the speaking and the sharing and the collaboration or the conversations around these things is is helpful, you know, is is going to extend it or help you clarify, right?
• 1:08:47
  Polly Mertens: Like, I don't know about you, but I can have all sorts of things dancing on going on up in my head.
• 1:08:52
  Polly Mertens: And as soon as I one hear myself speak it, A, it gets more crystallized instead of nebulousy.
• 1:08:58
  Polly Mertens: And then sometimes I go, that's not even true, that's stupid.
• 1:09:00
  Polly Mertens: That, oh, that's smart, right?
• 1:09:02
  Polly Mertens: Whatever, right?
• 1:09:03
  Polly Mertens: And then reflections and feedback, you know, um, it just allows it to live more out in communication.
• 1:09:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So I am torn about that because I'm a very introspective person and I do love my alone time.
• 1:09:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I frankly, I'm in love with myself.
• 1:09:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, have you seen my bitmoji?
• 1:09:21
  Samantha Pruitt: She has a t-shirt and it says, I love me.
• 1:09:24
  Samantha Pruitt: That didn't happen overnight, people.
• 1:09:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 1:09:28
  Samantha Pruitt: But the point is, the point is that when I get around a group and I've been doing some group stuff on this, and of course, I talk to a lot of people, um, I have a very different experience with this conversation or work.
• 1:09:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm not always looking for that feedback because how can I say this nicely?
• 1:09:49
  Samantha Pruitt: The reality is that we're all coming at it from our own place.
• 1:09:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally.
• 1:09:56
  Samantha Pruitt: And so depending on who's in the room, who's in the conversation, whatever, you're gonna get their stuff.
• 1:10:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And sometimes it's better to have boundaries and not be in other people's stuff or even bearing witness to it, because there can be a heaviness there that might stop you from something else that you could be experiencing.
• 1:10:18
  Samantha Pruitt: So I would say play with that and just see.
• 1:10:22
  Polly Mertens: We'll see how your home group is in 90 days for you.
• 1:10:27
  Samantha Pruitt: We'll see how totally well, you're gonna, I mean, because I don't play by the rules, you should already know.
• 1:10:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So I basically have already said, so listen up, people.
• 1:10:36
  Polly Mertens: I will not be doing this and I will be doing this.
• 1:10:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, okay, it's once a month for an hour makes almost no sense to me because if we're actually doing this work and there's nine people in the room, I'm totally confused how that makes an hour be a thing.
• 1:10:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So I said, first of all, it needs to be at least 90 minutes.
• 1:10:56
  Samantha Pruitt: And then second of all, um, some people who are really into like doing maybe the five invitations, um, could have a separate breakout and we could just do that together and whatever, whatever.
• 1:11:08
  Samantha Pruitt: So I've already posed a couple other ideas because I'm a creative person, Polly.
• 1:11:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And about half the people were like, oh my God, I can barely do this, and I'm overwhelmed, I don't have time.
• 1:11:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, okay, I didn't say anything that this was mandatory, I'm just posing some concepts.
• 1:11:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the others were like, Yeah, I would totally love to do that.
• 1:11:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So again, it's very personal, it's very individual.
• 1:11:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And if they all said, I want nothing to do with that, I don't really care.
• 1:11:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I'm gonna be doing it.
• 1:11:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm just like you, you know, we just create space, and if people show up, great, and if they don't, they don't.
• 1:11:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, okay, so what is it that you've already what's already shifted for you since you began conceptually embracing the idea that you have a year left to live, or even reading the book.
• 1:11:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like what's already shifted for you?
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Do you want to go first?
• 1:11:58
  Polly Mertens: Or no, you go.
• 1:12:00
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so I would say I feel like there's a third thing, but I was telling you two things at least.
• 1:12:04
  Polly Mertens: So the first thing, and I I think I told you I enrolled my mom loosely in this.
• 1:12:09
  Polly Mertens: We'll see how closely she does this with you and I are in it.
• 1:12:13
  Polly Mertens: We're we're game on, we're in it, we're already started the race, right?
• 1:12:16
  Polly Mertens: Um, my mom is like sitting maybe on the side, whatever.
• 1:12:19
  Polly Mertens: She was like, Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  Polly Mertens: So in the first conversation with her, hey mom, we're gonna do this, whatever, we're gonna live as if this is our last year.
• 1:12:25
  Polly Mertens: She's like, Oh wow, it sounds amazing.
• 1:12:27
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, let's do that.
• 1:12:28
  Polly Mertens: And then two minutes later, she wanted to complain about something.
• 1:12:30
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, Hold up, hold up.
• 1:12:33
  Polly Mertens: My last year, your last year, we're not gonna be having these kind of conversations.
• 1:12:38
  Polly Mertens: They we got no time for that.
• 1:12:39
  Polly Mertens: We gotta like make the magic and experience the love and whatever we want to do, but complaining and all the lower vibrations, sure you're gonna have that.
• 1:12:48
  Polly Mertens: But if we can choose, like, like I'm aware that you're about to complain and I'm just telling you about it, I oh, oh, snap out of it, right?
• 1:12:56
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh yeah, I don't want to spend my time doing that.
• 1:12:57
  Polly Mertens: So that's one of the things is things that create resistance in my body that are like lower vibration.
• 1:13:02
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, right.
• 1:13:04
  Polly Mertens: And the other one is keeping my heart open, right?
• 1:13:07
  Polly Mertens: So things, ideas, concepts that want make me separate and close my heart.
• 1:13:11
  Polly Mertens: So I want my heart open and I want no resistance.
• 1:13:13
  Polly Mertens: So I'm just like flowing through life, flowing through communication, staying one with people, all of that.
• 1:13:18
  Polly Mertens: So those are the two things so far.
• 1:13:21
  Polly Mertens: And I guess the third one, if I am present to it, is um, and I've had this since my kitty cat passed away, Pisa a couple years ago, is like super presence with meaningful relationships, especially my kitty cats or whatever, the thing, and even my own body, you know, like oh, body, I'm so appreci, you know, things like that, right?
• 1:13:41
  Polly Mertens: So the being here, uh be here now, be in the present, appreciate the thing.
• 1:13:48
  Polly Mertens: Like, um, I was thinking this morning, do you know how they I don't know why this came to be, but um what was the thing that you know how they say, like, oh in a such and such lifespan, you will spend X amount of time.
• 1:14:02
  Polly Mertens: Um, I was thinking about like making your bed or folding laundry or whatever.
• 1:14:06
  Polly Mertens: So I was like chewing, yeah, stuff like that.
• 1:14:09
  Polly Mertens: So I was like, oh, I'm doing dishes.
• 1:14:11
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, I wonder what the estimate is of how many because I feel like I do a lot of dishes.
• 1:14:15
  Polly Mertens: That's just like one thing.
• 1:14:16
  Polly Mertens: I just like, if I never did a dish again, I'm better like good.
• 1:14:20
  Polly Mertens: I was like, I but my brain just went, you're gonna spend three years of your life doing dishes.
• 1:14:24
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, that's shocking.
• 1:14:26
  Polly Mertens: Like, wow, you know, like so.
• 1:14:28
  Polly Mertens: I was like, how can I not pass through something that's three years of my life I'm doing?
• 1:14:37
  Polly Mertens: What could I bring the presence of, you know, because things like like you were, or somebody was telling me, like, you go into trance, like in a shower, driving in your car where you know the route and stuff like that, doing dishes, whatever, like whenever you your mind starts to kind of wander or like be open, I was like, wow, how could I do these dishes in a more medical, mindful, creative and mindful state?
• 1:15:00
  Polly Mertens: So that's something that I'm just noticing, you know, especially for things like if I'm gonna be doing this damn thing for three years, right?
• 1:15:08
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:09
  Polly Mertens: What about you?
• 1:15:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that's good.
• 1:15:11
  Samantha Pruitt: I feel like very quickly what happened for me is when I showed up to that first class and I was bearing witness to not only the three instructors that I'm in awe with, um, but the 700 other people, you know.
• 1:15:29
  Samantha Pruitt: I feel like I'm walking around now with my shoes off and a different pair of glasses.
• 1:15:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Like I'm having a different physical experience.
• 1:15:42
  Polly Mertens: Yes, I am too.
• 1:15:43
  Polly Mertens: Literally, I am too.
• 1:15:45
  Samantha Pruitt: And that is kind of blowing my mind a little bit.
• 1:15:48
  Polly Mertens: It's hard to even describe.
• 1:15:50
  Polly Mertens: I can totally relate little different words I would put to it, but exactly like well, just having the lens on, like this is my last year to live.
• 1:15:59
  Polly Mertens: And I think what's beautiful is there's no harshness or seriousness that we've put the lens on.
• 1:16:06
  Polly Mertens: It's more with wonder and curiosity and awareness and focus or consciousness.
• 1:16:13
  Polly Mertens: That's the general sense of it, right?
• 1:16:17
  Polly Mertens: But yeah, I agree.
• 1:16:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, but like this shoes off thing is like I'm really connected to my physical body.
• 1:16:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I was before also, and of course, I just came through a surgery and a rehab and all these things.
• 1:16:32
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm so I'm so in my body, like it's crazy.
• 1:16:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So it could be a combination of those two things, and in a really, really powerful and respectful way.
• 1:16:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And again, I probably had 80% of that before or whatever, but this 20% is like holy hell, and it's tripping me out.
• 1:16:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Like it's wild.
• 1:16:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the new glasses are like how I'm perceiving situations, like, yes, how I'm spending my time, who I'm spending it with, whatever, but just this general awareness of like looking at things and seeing things, whether it's like the palm trees or the trail and the plants, or like today, I had this totally random experience, not really, because I talk to everybody, but I literally was just in a store picking up some freaking place maps.
• 1:17:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so like I'm just you know, doing my thing.
• 1:17:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And I get in line, and there's this little lady with kind of a cart in front of me, like dragging her cart, a little bit of shopping cart, like old school style, whatever, this teeny little lady, and she's looking at every little thing in the aisle.
• 1:17:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But we're in the checkout line, but you know how they try and sell you stuff as you're checking out, and she's like, You can go ahead.
• 1:17:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I said, No, I'm good.
• 1:17:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm actually looking at all this stuff too.
• 1:17:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, what's that?
• 1:17:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Do I need that candle or whatever the hell, you know?
• 1:17:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And so she just starts like chatting me up, and she's definitely 70s, maybe 80.
• 1:17:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And she's just this curious little thing, and she's picking up every little thing and looking at it or whatever, just taking her sweet ass time, and I'm taking my sweet ass time.
• 1:18:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Why am I in such a hurry?
• 1:18:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Do I need to go around her and be in front of her?
• 1:18:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Look, what that just right?
• 1:18:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, so I have this curiosity about this little old lady, and you know, I'm a curious with people, I'm curious.
• 1:18:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and so she starts saying whatever she's saying, and I'm just intent, you know, I'm looking her in the eye, I'm having this exchange with her, and she's telling me I'm from Canada, everything's so expensive, everything's really cheap here, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:18:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So we're having that little chitty chat.
• 1:18:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And she said, But I live here now, and she lives in the same town as me.
• 1:18:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And I said, Isn't this the best town ever?
• 1:18:34
  Samantha Pruitt: And she goes, You know what?
• 1:18:36
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm gonna die here.
• 1:18:38
  Samantha Pruitt: That's what she said to me.
• 1:18:40
  Samantha Pruitt: A perfect stranger tells me she's gonna die here, and that she couldn't be happier about it.
• 1:18:46
  Samantha Pruitt: So, what is now everybody gonna tell me how they're gonna die because I'm in this class about a year to live?
• 1:18:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Everybody I meet is gonna be like, Let me tell you how I'm gonna die.
• 1:18:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I'm gonna do this.
• 1:18:55
  Samantha Pruitt: And I said to her, I think I am too.
• 1:18:59
  Samantha Pruitt: But I think But it was just this really tender moment.
• 1:19:03
  Polly Mertens: I was gonna say, I think the other thing is like just the not slowing down for slowing down's sake, you know, there's that, you know, but the aware, like the the moments matter, like like, oh that's what I'm saying.
• 1:19:18
  Polly Mertens: Yes, I'm in a moment, like I was doing the dishes, you know, I was just doing the dishes, and I was like, what can I notice?
• 1:19:24
  Polly Mertens: And or just I was just what am I aware of that normally?
• 1:19:28
  Polly Mertens: I'm just like off somewhere else and this is happening or whatever.
• 1:19:32
  Polly Mertens: But I was like, I'm doing the dishes right now, you know, or you're like, oh, and I I do find myself way more curious, and this is a little bit of the landmark work, but way more curious about the people that I interact with.
• 1:19:44
  Polly Mertens: You know, Ram Doss has this thing, he goes, like he talks about like if you can get a conscious person, you go, Oh, is that you in there?
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: How'd you get in there?
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: You know, like, oh, it's me in here, and and you're in there.
• 1:19:56
  Polly Mertens: What's it like in there?
• 1:19:57
  Polly Mertens: You know, like there's this, you know, and some people you come up against, they don't know that they're in there, you know, like they're they, you know, it's like nobody's home, you know, whatever.
• 1:20:05
  Polly Mertens: Um, but that curiosity and that sense of this wonderness, it's I don't know.
• 1:20:13
  Polly Mertens: We're gonna just I think there's more that we'll start to be able to speak to this, but I'm I'm having it too.
• 1:20:18
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:20:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:20:19
  Samantha Pruitt: And that is a really beautiful pair of glasses to be looking through.
• 1:20:25
  Polly Mertens: Well, it's like from the heart.
• 1:20:27
  Polly Mertens: Like I feel like my heart is coming out through my eyes, and like in my eyes are like going into my heart.
• 1:20:32
  Polly Mertens: There's some some other dimension that's opened up than just like you said, like, oh, I gotta go pick up things, I gotta run the errands, you know, and whatever.
• 1:20:42
  Polly Mertens: But something else is doing it with us or an awareness that's that we've opened a layer up or something.
• 1:20:50
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:20:52
  Samantha Pruitt: She's about to get real, people.
• 1:20:53
  Samantha Pruitt: That's so good.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: So good.
• 1:20:56
  Samantha Pruitt: It's so good.
• 1:20:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, let's wrap this party up.
• 1:20:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So there's two books if anyone's interested.
• 1:20:59
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, um Spirit Rock.
• 1:21:03
  Samantha Pruitt: If you want to look up the course, Spirit Rock, A Year to Live.
• 1:21:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, it is currently closed because we're in the course and it does sell out.
• 1:21:11
  Samantha Pruitt: So you'll need to get registered.
• 1:21:14
  Samantha Pruitt: I think it registers somewhere October, November, is what I remember at the end of this year.
• 1:21:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So get on their email list, or else you will not know when registration opens, and the chances of you getting in are slim.
• 1:21:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, the book is A Year to Live, Stephen Levine and His Beautiful Wife.
• 1:21:31
  Samantha Pruitt: And then the other book is The Five Invitations.
• 1:21:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Frank Ostaseki.
• 1:21:38
  Samantha Pruitt: That's okay.
• 1:21:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Yep.
• 1:21:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So lots of fun stuff is gonna be happening this year.
• 1:21:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Polly and I will not talk about this every time, but we will brief you regularly on updates and the process, and we'll share our journey.
• 1:21:55
  Polly Mertens: Exactly, exactly, and what's opening up.
• 1:21:57
  Polly Mertens: And you know, I I think there's gonna be little spin-offs to this, you know, like as we do this review, and then we go, you know, and you've got, I from what I recall, and I'm not sure what I heard about the hospice one that was done when this was done in slow, is like every month was like like a a section or a module or something.
• 1:22:14
  Polly Mertens: So I'm wondering if yours is gonna have that flair to it too.
• 1:22:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Like yeah, there is a course um syllabus and modules and all those things.
• 1:22:21
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't have access to that, and I tried to look at it before this session, but again, I'm not really I'll happily share that with you, but I'm less attached to that uh for whatever reason.
• 1:22:34
  Samantha Pruitt: It's how I've decided to live my life after 50, to be totally honest.
• 1:22:38
  Samantha Pruitt: So this has been happening for a while, y'all.
• 1:22:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, I was pretty much a rule breaker before, but I've taken it next level.
• 1:22:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm taking it next level, and not to be like an a-hole about that rule breaking, but just like, I'm pretty sure this is my life.
• 1:22:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So I might be doing it a little different.
• 1:22:56
  Polly Mertens: For sure, for sure.
• 1:22:57
  Samantha Pruitt: It's all good.
• 1:22:58
  Polly Mertens: What's what's your one thing about this journey, this book, this study?
• 1:23:03
  Polly Mertens: What is something?
• 1:23:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, my one thing for this particular podcast on this subject matter is I really I exhausted it out of the gate.
• 1:23:13
  Samantha Pruitt: I know people were sick of listening to it, but um, they've got to come to terms with their fear around the dying body and the death, the transition, the liberation.
• 1:23:24
  Samantha Pruitt: They've got to come to terms with that fear, otherwise, they'll never be able to look honestly at the inevitability of their own and the people they love, and they won't live as really deeply and as fully and as beautifully as they could otherwise.
• 1:23:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So that fear's gotta go.
• 1:23:46
  Samantha Pruitt: The fear is a limiter, limiting factor.
• 1:23:49
  Polly Mertens: And I would say um my one thing is um join us.
• 1:23:56
  Polly Mertens: Like, like whether you do this now or you're just curious, maybe this is the seed, and in three years you, you know, like you've heard it three years ago with Vinnie or whatever.
• 1:24:04
  Polly Mertens: Like, we hope we've planted something in you that gets you curious about it.
• 1:24:08
  Polly Mertens: I can't wait for our one-year anniversary on this and the shit of stuff we're gonna share.
• 1:24:14
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh, I mean, already, like you've we've been doing it for just a couple weeks, and I'm like, whoa, this is feels so good.
• 1:24:21
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like, where will this take us?
• 1:24:23
  Polly Mertens: So I hope that something in this either gets you to start it now or we're planting that seed for you when it's time for you to go, you know what, that thing, I that sound and I don't think either one of us has a morbid curiosity.
• 1:24:36
  Polly Mertens: That's not what and I I think any of this is.
• 1:24:39
  Polly Mertens: It's um it's a spiritual curiosity, it's a life curiosity, it's a how to live a life more enriched because you're looking at all dimensions of life, the death and and not those fears.
• 1:24:52
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so I think there's gonna be some I I hope the takeaway is whether you do it with us now or you take it on at some point.
• 1:25:00
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I hope you take it on.
• 1:25:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So I think it's a path to freedom.
• 1:25:04
  Samantha Pruitt: It's that simple for me.
• 1:25:07
  Polly Mertens: I love it.
• 1:25:07
  Polly Mertens: And I want you to share in the show notes your what your why is because those were so good at the beginning of this.
• 1:25:12
  Polly Mertens: That was really important.
• 1:25:13
  Polly Mertens: All right, what's our what's our signing off?
• 1:25:16
  Polly Mertens: What do we want to let them know as we sign off?
• 1:25:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that one crazy life that you have and that one rented body.
• 1:25:23
  Samantha Pruitt: How it feels in that rented body and in that life is more important than how it looks.
• 1:25:31
  Polly Mertens: And every day is your opportunity to find your