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More about LaRae and Scott | Getting to Know Your Hosts · The Observatory | Discovery of Consciousness & Awareness

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Welcome to the Observatory Podcast with your host Scott and Laray Wright. Join us
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each week as we explore living life from the inside out. Welcome back to
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the Observatory Podcast. Today, Ray and I are going to sit down and
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we're going to have just a little little chat together. We've had people that
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have been interested in us getting to know us a little bit better. We've
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had some requests for that. We're going to take a little bit of a
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deeper dive today about who we are. So sit back, relax, and
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enjoy. Hello, honey, Hi are you I'm doing well? So before
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we start, I just have to ask you, are you having fun?
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Always if we're not having fun and we're not going to do it. I
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have found that in each conversation I learned something that I didn't know from our
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guests, even many of them have been dear friends. And I'm also seeing
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myself differently in some of the conversations. So it's been in a selfish way,
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it's been something that I've I've been learning a lot from Yeah, me
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too. I mean, we've had some beautiful people come on here and have
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conversations with us. I can't think of any one that I would do any
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differently. They unfolded just the way they needed to unfold, and it's been
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been fun, as you say, yeah, it's been fun. So today
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we're kind of sitting here and we love to just be in the moment.
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We haven't really said what we were going to chat about, but I kind
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of feel something coming up that i'd like to explore with you and have you
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share with the audience, because it's been really powerful and it happened, I
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like to say, pre ray in those times before I came into your life,
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but you had gone through a divorce and as a father of three that
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had really impacted your life, and I think it would be wonderful to kind
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of share kind of fast track to the year or so before we met,
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and you had a significant experience that kind of opened a window for you to
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know yourself deeper. So why don't you just dive in and let's start talking
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about that. Okay, sounds good. I mean, I want to be
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authentic, I want to be vulnerable. I want to be able to share
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this in an as authentic a way as I can, and I'm just gonna
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sit with it and let it flow. So to begin with the thing that
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I would want to say about that is when I divorced. That was back
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in two thousand and two. And when that happened, I started going to
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a place of very much a place of fear and disconnectedness, and I started
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down a pathway that I created that was something that eventually I had to let
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go of. That I had to see it clearly for what it was,
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and as I as you've heard me saying in the past, I had to
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learn who I wasn't in order to begin to understand who I was well.
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And fear can create a framework that can't sustain itself unless you continue to add
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more fear to it. So eventually you knew that that fear path was going
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to have to come undone. Yeah, And it was a pattern in my
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life that had been manifesting for years from childhood really, and in that experience,
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it was difficult for me to look at it. I didn't want to
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see it, but I was living it, and that just continued to spiral
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and create more and more disconnectedness as time went on, and finally got to
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a point where I like to call it, I had created an enough spiritual
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distance from whatever I saw myself as that it was like the rubber band.
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I've said this before, like the rubber band had stretched far enough that now
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it was going to snap back. And that was in two thousand and eight,
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December of two thousand and eight, and that was kind of the beginning
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for me. I had an experience which to this day I can't really explain,
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but that experience was one of kind of seeing things with more clarity and
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having an understanding within me, not in my intellect, but an understanding within
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me that I was truly, in the most real way loved. I experienced
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this kind of what I call it, like a washing of unconditional love wash
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over me. And I don't try to explain what that was. I don't
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try to say this, it was this, or it was that, because
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I think each individual has a perception of that in their own way. But
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what it shifted for me in that experience, it was in December of two
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thousand and eight. What really shifted was I really started to see things differently.
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I started to feel more connected. I started to go outside and connect
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in nature. I started to look around me and see the beauty of everything,
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the beauty of all creation around me. I'd never missed a sunset or
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a sunrise. I'd go out and just observe them and watch them and feel
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the expansiveness that that brought, laying back on a chair and looking at the
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stars and just really feeling a deep connection to all of that. I didn't
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really know what was happening, and it's only in reflecting on it that I
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can see now that it was just the beginning of a new me, really
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letting go of that that old self. But that old self sometimes is audamant
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about sticking around. So the first thing I did for the first six months
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or so was I went back to what I knew. I decided to go
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back to church and see if that was going to be able to help me.
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And I soon realized about six months into it that that wasn't going to
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be the answer for me. It was I was going back into the old
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patterns and the old habits. Actually it was it was taking me back there.
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So I made the decision to leave that all behind me, and as
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I as I would say, I wanted, I was going to wipe the
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chalkboard clean all of the things that I knew, no matter what it was,
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any attachments that I had, I was going to wipe that clean and
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and just continue to let life unfold again. So as you thought about wiping
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this chalkboard off, that had to have some trepidation in it. I mean,
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did you have any idea or sense about what that the impact of that,
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or what that actually meant. Only in reflecting, because at the time
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I really didn't have and I didn't know. It wasn't like I made the
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decision to do that. As I look back on it now, I realized
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that that's that's what I did. I wiped the chop board clean. And
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so it was fearful because I didn't know what was coming. It was,
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but I knew that it couldn't continue as it was. That something had to
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shift, something had to give, so to speak. And you've often as
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you've talked about this, you you talk about the profound feeling that you had
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about your children, and especially about your youngest son, Grayson, because he
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was he was the youngest, and you knew that you had to you felt
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that sense of responsibility. Yeah. Yeah, And during that period of time
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being vulnerable here, I hadn't been the most responsible father, and I was
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having a realization of that. And in that realization, especially with Grayson because
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he was the youngest. The other two were in their teen years. You
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know, it wasn't wasn't really fun to come and hang out with dad,
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the single dad living alone. But Grayson loved to come and we spend a
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lot more time together. He loved the outdoors like I did. We would
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camp and fish and all sorts of fun things together. But I had the
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vivid realization that if I continued down the path that I was in, it
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was going to have a major impact on his life. And so that that,
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I think was the catalyst to the change happening, because I had that
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realization, and I love all of my children equally, but the experience itself
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was one of knowing that Grayson was going to be hugely impacted if I didn't
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shift that direction. So and so, in this moment of feeling loved,
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because you said it was a feeling that you knew, beyond anything that you
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had done, beyond the sorrow of divorce, beyond the things that you had
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busied about your life since you had been divorced, you felt that just wave
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of unconditional love. So would you call that a wake up call? Would
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you call that I don't mean to be tried, some sort of awakening to
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your soul, sort of a call to you to just bring you into your
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own awareness. I you know, I've called it an awakening, right,
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and many people EXPERI varience different kinds of awakenings. My good friend who we've
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had on the podcast, jeffles And talks about his near death experience being an
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awakening for him of sorts. But I think everyone has that in their own
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way. It really did feel like some somewhat of a death to my old
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self, but it was really just a realization. So it was it was
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a powerful moment. We don't really need to name it as much as that
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you felt a significant shift happened in you that day, yes, and in
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that moment, and you knew it frightened you definitely afterwards, but you knew
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something was changing, yeah, And you know, I was going back to
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my old thinking to try and reconcile it. And I think that's why I
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initially went back to church, because I felt like that was safety for me.
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You know, I grew up in the Mormon church, and I felt
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like that that was definitely a safe place for me to go. And it
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did feel safe initially, but when all of the stuff six months later started
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coming back and the old patterns started to raise their heads again. I realized
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that I needed something different, so I started looking within. I started to
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turn my gaze inwards so that I could look at who I was. I
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had needed to start observing myself. And it wasn't like that was a thing
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coming from my intellect. It was just I innately felt that that was what
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needed to happen. And so basically what I did was I went into nature.
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And going into nature, I would go out and I would be in
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the creek fishing, I'd be in the mountains. I used to go up
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into the mountains of the head of the Grays River in Wyoming. That's I
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spent lots of time there with my father when I was young, because we
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had a cabin and pine Wyoming. So I was going back and just having
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reliving that experience, remembering how it felt when I was twelve, thirteen,
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fourteen years old in the mountains of Wyoming, and it was profoundly connecting.
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It was something I had already experienced as a child, went away from for
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a number of years, and as I came back, it was really powerful
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and going and visiting my childhood home in the Bear Lake Valley of Idaho.
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Same thing, but I was noticing things and seeing things I call up with
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a new vision, I say real eyes because I was I was able to
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connect to it in a different way where it wasn't that I was just noticing
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that everything was beautiful. I was seeing it as a mirror and as reflection
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of myself that I was beautiful too. And that came later in a much
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more profound way, when I was growing sunflowers in my backyard when you were
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here, right, And so that happened in December of two thousand and eight.
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The next couple of years you spend connecting to nature, and then we
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our life began in twenty and ten, so it's almost about a year and
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a half span of time. And as you think about that, and you
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know, I love what John Dewey says. You know, when we think
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about the power of reflection and just knowing, he says, you know,
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we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on our experiences.
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So we definitely have to have that power of experience, or we have to
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have experience. But it's the power of reflection that helps us unpack that experience
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to really know what that experience means for us. And each experience can be
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very different, and we can have shared experiences as we've talked about, and
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each of us take away our own reflection on that. So as you reflected
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on that experience, when did you start to feel ready to embark on another
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relationship? It was part of that process, you know, as as I
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was reflecting, when you're in it, you don't notice, you know,
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when you're in the in the moment of the experience, you're a lot of
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times you're not really noticing the profound impact that certain experiences are having on you.
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Like you say, in the reflecting of it, then you start to
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see it more clearly. And as as time went on, it was about
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when you and I met, it was in June of twenty ten. So
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I had gotten to a place where I felt like I could trust myself to
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to find out how to be in a real, true, real relationship,
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because from from my childhood and my teen years, all through my marriage and
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everything, I was broken when it came to understand ending what a real relationship
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was. My focus was not on the relationship as a whole. It was
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only on fragmented parts of the relationship because I didn't know how to do it
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any other way. And when I started to look within, I started to
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realize that I could be in a relationship of wholeness and I felt like I
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could trust myself to be in one. Right. I dated a little bit
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during that period of time, had some experiences that were the old patterns raising
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their heads again and me having the realization that, you know, that's that's
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not where I'm going with this. It's this isn't about just a physical relationship
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or about just hanging out. It needed to be about something deeper than that.
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So, um, when when I finally made that choice and that decision
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that I was, I felt like I was ready to do that. I
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mean it wasn't. It was less than a month that pass crossed and we
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sort of reunited. But I think that's a powerful sort of pause. You
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know, the power is in the pause, right for any young person,
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old person that is going through, whether it's a divorce or a loss of
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a loved one, to understand that there is in that pause, there's there
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is some work that can be done that really shifts a pattern patterns perspective.
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Recognizing a pattern of self awareness right to kind of ask yourself what do I
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need? What has And I don't like the word broken, but you know,
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what has the experience been so far that I can learn from? And
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how can I look at what I've learned and myself? What has this taught
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me? What are the shifts I can make? And how do I ready
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myself for what comes next? Sometimes I don't believe we have the level of
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self awareness to stop and have that pause. It's I love that you were
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being somewhat and I shouldn't say somewhat you you were definitely in flow of your
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life, not even realizing it, not realizing it. It didn't come from
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self awareness. It came from feelings of this is what to do. I
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was following the feelings of what to do I was. This wasn't an intellectual
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thing, right, And so perhaps that's what it is. It isn't a
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pause for us to go intellectually into ourselves, but it's a pause to go
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into our feeling self yes, and just feels what's right for me next?
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And if there's any advice I could give to anyone who's going through a transition
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out of a relationship or anything like that, And it's a pattern. It
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keeps repeating. It's one that has happened maybe more than once, or twice,
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or three times or four times. Is to take time to process all
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of that and take time to look within and look at yourself, observe yourself,
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because without that, that same pattern is going to continue to repeat itself.
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And I didn't want that pattern to repeat anymore because it had been painful,
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or because you felt shame about it. What was kind of the motivator
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of not wanting it to repeat. I think it just got I don't like
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to use the word dark. It got difficult enough. It couldn't sustain.
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It couldn't sustain itself. And I realized what the impact was going to be,
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especially on Grayson, but really anyone in my life was going to be
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impacted. My feeling was that if things didn't change, that I was not
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going to continue to live very long. I was doing things that were detrimental
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to not only my physical health, but my mental health, my spiritual health,
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my emotional health. And without going into any detail about it, because
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it doesn't matter, everyone has stuff, but it was it was not sustainable.
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And I had that realization that was one thing I knew for sure it
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was not sustainable. I had to had to shift. I love when you
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say, you know I found by knowing who I wasn't, I kind of
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found the path to who I was. And I think we all go through
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periods of that's it's a bit of an unlayering and knowing who we aren't is
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a way to look at it without shame, to understand the lessons that are
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coming into our lives, the experiences that are coming into our lives that sometimes
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act as a stern teacher. But we see that and we start to ask,
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what have I learned? And instead of looking at it in a shameful
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way, understanding this has taught me something. What can I learn from this
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to make a significant shift in my life? Yeah, you know it is
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as a human being, it's an inescapable journey that everyone has to take.
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I didn't know who Joseph Campbell was back in those days, but as I
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started to look into some of the things that he wrote and others that heroes
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journey is a journey that we all have to take. That we all it's
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an unavoidable process of living, of being a human being because we learn all
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sorts of things from all sorts of different sources, whether it be family or
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friends, or religion or political systems. We learn all of these things,
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and those things that we learn create a pattern within us, and it's unique
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to each of us as a human. My pattern's not your pattern, and
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my pattern is not anyone else's pattern. It's just mine. But I have
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to have the realization of that pattern, seeing it with clarity, realizing that
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I'm the one that's created this and it's my thinking that keeps me in it
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because I'm trying to reconcile every experience that I have in my life with the
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things that have happened to me in the past. So the lens that I
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see everything through is the lens of my experience. Now. That can serve
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you in certain ways, but in a lot of ways it doesn't serve you
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because if you're always looking at the things of your experience to try and reconcile
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what's happening in this moment right now, it's easy to miss what's actually happening
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and how deep that experience can be. I take the sunset as an example.
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Prior to my shift, I'd notice a pretty sunset and say, hey,
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that's a great look, there's a sunset. After this experience, I
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would not just look at the sunset. I would open myself up to the
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experience of the beauty of that sunset and the miracle of all of those colors,
22:15
of the orange and the red, and the blues and the purples,
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and the shapes of the clouds, and the way the sun would come through
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and the light would shine. And I had this powerful recognition one day of
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that light. And you know how sometimes it comes through the clouds and you
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can see the actual rays of light shining through the clouds. And that was
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the perfect metaphor for that experience of unconditional love that I had experienced. That
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love emanates from some source, use whatever word you want to do to describe
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it, and that love emanates just like those rays from the sun. The
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sun never stops shining. It sometimes gets obscured by clouds or the moon passes
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in front of it and there's an eclipse, but that light never stops shining.
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And later, as I had the experience of awakening to who I am,
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which is an infinite onion process, continual layers over and over for the
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rest of our lives. We never arrive at this place. But where we
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can arrive to is that with the ability to live in the now and experience
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the now in each moment, in each present moment, right Because in that
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that's when I get to notice that light shining through and notice the metaphor of
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that and the reflection of that, and how that is such a powerful opportunity
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for me to see my own divinity, to experience my own divinity and feel
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that expansiveness of what that is. It's hard to belief systems try to put
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a description around that and say this is what that is. Is, well,
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you can't name this. It's why when Moses went into under the mount
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and God told him what his name was, he said, I am,
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I am that I am right, because there isn't a word to describe that.
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I am. If I am, you are, and we are I
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am. It's the now, it's the present moment. That's what That's where
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the divine is found, that's where you're found, That's where everything is found.
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Right well, And I love that I have the good fortune of living
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with you and knowing that that's where you live from, and that most of
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you live in most days, most days in that place. It's not a
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guarantee I can tell you that. But you know, also it makes me
24:47
ponder or at least think about the fact that, you know, we don't
24:51
live in isolation, so any of our experiences that we have, it impacts
24:56
those that are closest to us. It impacts their life. It's a ripple
25:00
effect. And so your life was having a ripple effect. And sometimes when
25:07
we are when we feel the ripple effect of others in our lives, we
25:11
can sometimes get stuck there ourselves and we can feel victims or we can feel
25:18
that my life is now forever changed. But I think it's really important for
25:23
us to kind of reflect on that and ask ourselves, you know, because
25:29
I know for myself the things that I've done that have impacted others, I
25:32
have at first felt like I had to fix it for everyone to go back.
25:37
And you can't undo, you know, you can't undo the experience,
25:41
and you can't feel that heavy weight of being able to make it right,
25:48
whatever right is. For that, my mind tells me, for everyone that
25:52
I impacted, I've realized that while we live with others in our lives,
26:00
that each of us it adds and contributes to our own path. And I
26:04
think That's important too, because I see often how challenging it becomes for people
26:12
to let go of the shame or guilt. There's a difference between shame and
26:19
guilt and accountability and how letting you know, being able to let go of
26:25
that so that they can really move on for their lives, and that it's
26:30
it's moving on and finding who you are that starts to give permission to others
26:37
or embody your own embodiment allows others to see the steps they need to take
26:44
for their own embodiment of doing the work of letting go of some things that
26:48
we we'd like to say, well this happened to me because of X y
26:52
Z. But I get to be in choice every day as to every experience
26:56
that comes across my path, how I learn from it, how I keep
27:03
it, or how I let go of it. Take the lesson and let
27:04
go. So I know that that's been something that you've given a lot of
27:08
thought to. And especially as a father, how do you what is it
27:15
that you wish for your children to see from your own experience of how you've
27:19
navigated and what you'd how you hope their navigation continues. Yeah, Well,
27:27
with my kids, it's hard for me to not look back on the experience
27:33
that they had in the divorce and in their subsequent life after that. What
27:41
I have realized is I don't have control over that, over the past,
27:47
over the things that happened, over whatever disconnectedness or damage to relationships that was
27:52
done. The only thing I have control on over is what I'm doing right
27:56
now, And so I come into a space of wanting that to show up
28:04
differently than it has in the past, letting you go of those old patterns,
28:08
the old old ways of doing things, and having a peacefulness about where
28:18
things will end up in the end, the building of relationships and the help
28:26
that it is to me to understand that I can can be in a better
28:32
space my relationships. And I think any any parent will say that, you
28:37
know, your relationships with your children can always get better. But where they
28:41
are now as compared with what they have been in the past is night and
28:45
day. You know, I get to see all of my children, and
28:48
I get to hang with my children, get to have conversations with my children,
28:52
love my children, and have experiences with them. You know, is
28:56
it to the extent that I would like it to be? You know,
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there's always room for improvement. But as I've gotten to know myself a little
29:08
better, coming into a deeper awareness of myself, the realization there is that
29:14
if you love yourself, that all everything else takes care of itself. If
29:19
you're not selfish, if you're not worried about, you know, all of
29:26
the material things in life, that the more important things take care of themselves.
29:33
The material is very fleeting, it doesn't last. Where these relationships is
29:40
the most important thing that there is. And I don't try to especially force
29:45
them into it. I kind of let it flow. I don't I'm not
29:49
a helicopter dad, that's for sure. I try to stay in touch with
29:55
them, let them know I'm here, help them when they need help,
29:59
and there they help me. I mean, you know, just just coming
30:02
over and helping with projects around the house and different things that they do.
30:06
That and uh, I think that's that's the most we can expect. It
30:12
is just to be in the flow of living and experiencing each other and not
30:17
trying to make it something right. It's been so powerful for me as we've
30:23
talked about our different life experiences, you you know, growing up and having
30:30
kind of overnight cousins come into your family and become part of your family and
30:34
life experiences in my family when I was a child you're talking right, when
30:38
you were a child, and when I was a young adult, just experiences.
30:41
It's been it's been such a powerful lesson for me to understand just because
30:47
you share an event with someone, a life event and experience, does not
30:52
mean that you're that You all take from that experience the very same thing.
30:57
Yeah, because we all each have our own feelings, we all have we
31:03
may be at different aspects in our lives ages, and so I just have
31:11
seen that so powerfully that even being married, you know, we will have
31:15
experiences anything from a sunset to a walk to a powerful experience as you know,
31:25
our visit to Peru and such. And yet just because we had the
31:30
same event, the same experience, it does not mean that we had the
31:36
same experience, right. You know, we each our accumulation of who we
31:42
are, of what we've learned, of the place that we're at. And
31:47
so that's just been really powerful and knowing. And so I think when people
31:52
go through hardships such as a divorce in a family, I think everyone experiences
31:57
that experience very differently. Yes, And it comes to us for our own
32:04
lesson, for our own experience, and then we unpack it. And I
32:08
think that's something that we often don't stop and reflect on. I remember with
32:17
each of the children, you know it, the divorce itself showed up differently
32:22
for each of them. They were at different ages, so it showed up
32:25
differently in their interaction with it. I remember your we were at Thanksgiving or
32:31
somewhere with your family, and when we were at a sibling our family.
32:37
Again, because we're predominantly sisters, we we orchestrate opportunities to get together and
32:42
hang out, so we have a sibling retreat, and we were at a
32:45
sibling retreat, sibling and my father with my father, I know the experience
32:50
you're going to talk about. And just to kind of preface it, Ray
32:53
and her mother were in a horrific car accident in nineteen eighty five and her
32:59
mother they passed away in that car accident, and Ray was driving the car.
33:02
They hit a lumber truck and her mom passed away in that accident,
33:07
and right before Christmas, two days before Christmas, Tony third December, and
33:12
we started having a conversation about everyone's experience of that day and what happened and
33:16
how they found out and all of the experience that each one had had it.
33:21
And this is like almost twenty years later when you asked this question to
33:25
my family, more than twenty was that it was like twenty five. Maybe
33:30
yeah, it was twenty five, but we had never really talked about it
33:36
in the way. And you we were all sitting together and you asked the
33:38
question, yeah, like, what does everyone remember about that day? Yeah,
33:43
And we all kind of looked at each other like, Wow, we're
33:45
gonna actually do this conversation now, And so they did. I mean,
33:50
everyone just just chimed in and someone would start to talk about who who came,
33:57
and who said this, and how did they find out and what was
34:00
the reaction of that not. I know for your father it's hard for him
34:05
to even speak about it today because it was such a traumatic experience, so
34:09
painful. You guys were all there were still some kids that were still at
34:14
home. I think Melinda was the youngest, she was nineteen. We were
34:16
all home for the holiday. She and I had come from New York.
34:19
We were home from the holidays. But it was it was around like at
34:23
first, it was about how everyone heard the message and where they were and
34:29
who was the messenger? Yeah, and then from there it really continued to
34:37
take deeper the event again because it was around the holiday's tragic loss. And
34:42
I figured that for me as an outsider, you know, I was curious.
34:47
I wanted to know because I'd never heard it before. But I realized
34:51
soon that it hadn't really been talked about before, right as a group,
34:55
you know, and I think individuals had definitely shared, But as a group
35:00
it was really powerful because everyone was there and everyone shared their perspective and their
35:05
experience, and it was interesting how diverse that was and the impact that it
35:09
still has on everyone to this day. Right, And there was so much
35:15
that I learned about that, like because I had my path was very different,
35:21
you know, I was obviously being rushed to a hospital and then being
35:25
lifelighted to Salt Lake. Didn't even really get to have a conversation with anyone,
35:30
No, you were so badly injured. But it was the experience of
35:35
you asking the question was was probably the most powerful example of here we were
35:40
as a family that had we experienced an event together, predominantly the loss of
35:49
mother, and and yet in that moment, not only about that day,
35:57
but ongoing how the experience is so different for each of us. We share
36:02
a loss, but the experience of that is really different for each of us,
36:08
very powerfully different in fact. And some were you know, young parents
36:15
and had children to well, all except Melinda and I had children to then
36:20
tell. Yeah, and the children were there too, right, I remember,
36:25
And there were several too. He was I can't remember how old he
36:28
was, but he was pretty young, very young, five or six something
36:30
like that. But that I do think that conversation was definitely a defining moment
36:37
for me to come to that conclusion that while we share significant events in life,
36:45
and each of us take that event into our life and into our experience
36:51
differently. Yeah, And I have such a better appreciation for that because you
36:55
know before that, you know, you sometimes hear family story and they get
37:00
embellished and you kind of look at us one of your siblings and say,
37:04
was I there? Because you know, I don't remember it that way,
37:07
And but this was different. This was you know, an experience that was
37:10
defining it and to kind of just see that definition. There were some similarities,
37:17
but each of us took it in our own way. Would you call
37:21
that event probably the one that defined your family from that point on more than
37:28
any other event. I can only speak for myself, but yes, for
37:35
myself that that is definitely a defining momentum, mostly because I feel and I
37:44
have had the kind of that example, kind of what you said that I
37:49
had a an experience that said I can choose to live again. Because it
37:54
was painful and I was very I was literally broken, bones broken. You're
38:00
in the hospital for several months and so and I when I was told that
38:06
mother had passed, was just before they put me on a life flight.
38:08
The doctor had said, you know, she needs to know so that she
38:12
can focus on she keeps asking, she needs to know so she can focus
38:15
on her well being and surviving. And I remember as they told me,
38:22
I can remember deciding if I wanted to choose to live, and so yes,
38:28
that that event had so many, so many layers that had to unpack
38:34
in a matter of moments and days and feelings for me personally that and the
38:39
biggest one was choosing for life to continue and making that choice to fight to
38:46
live. And it's interesting because I've also had the experience where for years I
38:52
talked about that I fought to live and then one day in meditation, in
38:59
just a very deep contemplation, I knew beyond that it was not about fiding,
39:05
that it was about I made a choice to live, and in that
39:08
choice, and that choice was more with myself and divine power to make that
39:14
choice. And then in that choice, the healing process that had to come
39:20
from the physical wounds as well as the emotional wounds was just going to be
39:24
part of the process. But before all of that came choice. Yeah,
39:28
yeah, I'm thinking as you're talking about this the defining moment for our family,
39:35
and there were others, but I think this was probably the most impactful.
39:39
Was in nineteen sixty seven when my uncle David passed away, and that
39:45
shifted for every everyone again perspective, right, each person has their own perspective
39:52
of that event and then what transpired subsequent to that. So when he died,
40:00
yeah, he had he had had a heart attack, and then he
40:01
subsequently had a second heart attack, and the second heart attack took him and
40:07
my father, my father Warren, was close with David, and they had
40:15
made a brother's agreement that if anything happened to him after the first heart attack,
40:21
they made disagreement if anything happened to him that his children would then come
40:24
and live with our family. So I was six years old at the time,
40:30
and when he passed away, his family was I had three brothers,
40:36
so there was four of us, and then his family was two boys and
40:38
two girls. And then they came from Montgomery, Alabama to Mount Pillier,
40:44
Idaho, joined our family, and we went from four to eight overnight,
40:47
me being the youngest of six, and the next closest was Paul. I
40:52
was first grade, Paul was sixth grade, and then it was from Paul
40:54
on up through high school and it was all pretty much all teenagers. So
41:00
talk about the perfect storm waiting to happen for my parents. And I look
41:07
back on that experience and how and that was a defining moment and shifted everything
41:12
right, and it ingrained in me some patterns of behavior that only recently i've
41:19
I've come to realize that some of the anger that I've expressed in my life
41:24
is a direct result of that and the frustration that was there of things being
41:30
different than I had expected. Just as a six year old boy, you
41:32
know, I had expectations because of the experience that we'd all had together,
41:37
Dad and Mom and my brother, three brothers, and I. We would
41:40
go to Yellowstone on family trips and we would do lots of fun things together.
41:46
We'd go camping, we'd go fishing, all sorts of things that we
41:52
do together. And when the other family came in, Mom and Dad made
41:57
their best attempt to continue those things, but it did all shift, and
42:01
I remember my father being very regretful about me, specifically because he felt like
42:09
I had been impacted the most. I didn't necessarily feel that, but he
42:15
felt like, you know what, what I experienced, being the youngest of
42:21
everyone was not what it could have been if that hadn't happened. Right,
42:29
But again this goes back to kind of now the three experiences we've talked about,
42:35
you know, the awakening that you had, or the experience that you
42:38
had after being divorced, and the trajectory changing, the accident in my life
42:45
and losing my mother, and now you know the experience of your family doubling
42:52
overnight, you know, And I think it kind of we cannot We can
42:57
get lost in pondering the what if that event had not happened, But instead
43:04
we lean into those events and we realize we can do hard things. And
43:09
it comes back to this life. Earth School is filled with events and challenges
43:17
that will come to us in unexpected ways that teach us and help us know
43:24
who we are. Everybody has and we all we all get to have them,
43:30
and as each of those come about, we it's an opportunity to just
43:36
become aware of how the lesson that it brings or lessons and some of them
43:43
continue for the rest of our lives. Like you said it, when I
43:46
say it was a defining moment, it it definitely had forever change. You
43:53
know. I often talk about what it was like to become a motherless daughter,
43:59
and that alone could be a huge conversation. But you know, losing
44:06
that guiding post as a young woman in your life and just what that meant
44:13
for even to this day, what continues, you know. And so there
44:17
are layers and layers and layers that these experiences bring to us. And so
44:24
for anyone, and we do, for anyone to grab on to an event
44:30
and hold too tight to it that this forever changed me, and hold the
44:34
event as wrong, or hold the experience as painful and define ourselves by the
44:40
experience. I feel is an opportunity for us to revisit that and understand that
44:47
it is not the experience, it is ourselves. And if we can step
44:52
deeper, then we move from those and we don't become tethered to an experience
44:59
of pain or a heather to experience of difficulty, or even to an identification
45:07
like identifying ourselves so strongly to the experience that we become we go inward and
45:14
we really continue to discover and return to who we are, the potentiality of
45:22
our being, and stay open then to all sorts of other experiences, because
45:29
a challenging event can close us off to a lot of what life has to
45:32
offer us if we allow that. Yeah, I think what we naturally,
45:37
the natural tendency for us to do is we don't want to feel those difficult
45:42
feelings, and so we end up in resistance to feeling the feelings, and
45:46
in the resistance of feeling the feelings, it actually makes it worse. It
45:52
doesn't get better, because we have to realize that in the feeling of the
45:57
feelings, that's how we can allow them to go. Like the clouds again
46:00
passing in front of the sun, if they're temporary, they're happening in this
46:06
moment. It's difficult, you know, A difficult thing, as difficult as
46:10
losing your mother or losing my uncle, or the divorce or whatever experience it
46:15
is that we have. They don't last forever, and we can pass through
46:22
those. You know, people have a lot of different traumatic experiences of experienced
46:25
abuse and trauma is in their childhood, and we can let those define who
46:34
we are. I am this, I am that, or we can feel
46:38
the feelings and allow it to dissipate, because that is the natural process.
46:43
This is dissipation of it. We hold onto it with our thinking. Our
46:46
mind is a powerful thing. And as long as we hold on and keep
46:52
those things in judgment or shame or blame or victimhood or any of those things,
46:58
they cannot pass through us. And that's the natural process. It's meant
47:00
to happen. And I think that's why Michael Singer's book resonated so strongly with
47:07
me, is the untethered soul is really understanding the things that we have tethered
47:13
ourselves too. Sometimes it's just my identity, you know. And as we
47:16
continue to have experience, you know, there's a lot of other things we
47:21
can talk about in terms of the movement that I went from a small farm
47:25
girl to New York when I was twenty five years old, and I attached
47:30
to an identity of myself, and then losing my mother made me lean in
47:32
even further to this identity that I was curating through my career. But it's
47:38
all of those things that as we experience life, that we that we attached
47:45
to, whether those things are our accomplishments, our material possessions, you know,
47:52
having that sense to step back and look at our attachments and really become
47:55
untethered. I mean, think about that word just tethered. It's a perfect
48:00
word. And at first, you know, feeling untethered could make you feel
48:05
discombobulated because it's like, well if I'm not tethered, well I just spin
48:07
off. But you know, sitting with that concept of being untethered to a
48:15
point where you then go deeper in yourself and really know who you are.
48:19
And think of the word untethered and unrestricted, right because going into that deep
48:27
place as you're about to express, that deep place of who you are,
48:31
it's so vast and so magnificent that we have no concept of it, and
48:37
it's ever unfolding, and I think just the untethered nous of it is then
48:43
knowing that in this life, in this moment, I'm choosing to be tethered
48:51
to you, but that that tethered experience is through choice and never through fear.
48:58
It's through love and never through the sense that I may be abandoned or
49:02
the sense that I may be alone, and those two things right, And
49:07
even as I'm talking about it, I feel it energetically shift as I say
49:10
those words. You know, so I think that that's a beautiful reflection for
49:17
us to ask ourselves. Yeah, I agree, am I am tethered in
49:22
a way that allows me to live in the fullness of who I am,
49:27
And yet in choice I stay, I stay tethered to what I love,
49:30
who I love, and release those things that I've tethered to that perhaps limit
49:37
me. We you know, I love the direction that this has gone,
49:45
because we just we never know where we're going to go when we start talking.
49:51
But bringing up these things that that in whatever way they come up in
49:54
your own personal life of you stay tethered to, you stay connected to You're
50:02
there because of your thinking, because of your thought process, because of your
50:06
mind, and none of them are happening right now. It's all in a
50:12
past experience. Doesn't mean that you have to forget them. You can remember
50:17
as much as you want to, right, And they are part of your
50:21
mortal landscape. I mean, they are part of your physical experience, you
50:27
know, absolutely. But the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell talks about is going
50:31
into the cave that holds all the treasure that you seek, and fearing to
50:37
enter is the whole problem. Yes, if we don't go in, and
50:43
if we don't look, if we don't see, if we don't or we're
50:45
afraid of what we might find. And in the end, and I can
50:52
only say this because I've gone in the cave a few times, the experience
50:58
of it is is one of your own divinity, your own magnificence. And
51:06
that doesn't make me better than anyone because because I know who I am,
51:09
I know who you are, and everyone is, we all are that we
51:15
all are one and united in this experience of life, of living, of
51:22
having this experience. It unfolds in different billions of different ways, but it's
51:28
all pointing in the same direction. Yeah, And I love the fact that
51:30
you said you've had several opportunities to go into the cave, because that's it
51:36
is an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing experience, and our perception shifts about
51:43
the experience of the cave. You know, once we've gone in, we
51:45
know what that process is and not that we skip into the cave and you
51:51
know, in jubilation, but we know. We learn how to navigate it,
51:55
and we learn what it's for and why it's important to us in this
52:00
life to experience that. So well, it's that like that thing I was
52:04
telling you about my children or myself as a child, and my recognizing somewhat
52:13
where that anger came from. That's a new thing for me. Right,
52:16
it's still unpacking. It's still unpacking, So I get to I get to
52:21
lean into that and go deeper and deeper into that cave, recognize the ways
52:28
that's shown up in my life, Recognize the damage that it may have done
52:32
to others or relationships in different ways. My brothers and I have had this
52:40
common saying that we've said about ourselves that we have the right gene which somewhat
52:45
has given us permission to be angry sometimes. And you know, I don't.
52:49
I don't believe in genetically carrying anger. I don't think that that's a
52:54
thing. I think it's more of a we can give you almost permission to
53:00
say it's okay to be angry, when the reality is it's a choice.
53:06
Yeah. I like to think about it as a relationship that we have with
53:08
anger, right, yes, And so if we anger is not necessarily a
53:13
negative thing something no, because it's anger is a teacher as well. And
53:16
so if that relationship with anger has been modeled a certain way, you know,
53:21
it's not genetic, but it may be the relationship that you adopt,
53:24
and whether that's with anger, whether that's with love, whether that's with expression,
53:30
you know, expressing how you feel, people expressing emotions. We all
53:36
have sort of relationships to our emotions that were modeled by parents, and we
53:43
have the opportunity as we get older to have and craft our own relationships with
53:49
those emotions, as we get to know ourselves better. Yeah, it's all
53:52
a journey. Well, and I'm so glad that we're doing this together.
53:57
I love the fact that at each moment is a learning moment for me and
54:05
that everyone that crosses my path I take something. I'm seeing how I have
54:09
the opportunity to learn from everyone, everybody, and that's been and unfolding for
54:16
me. That I have just had such an appreciation for It's I guess it's
54:20
part of my wisdom. That's I'm starting to be aware of that everyone that
54:24
crosses my path. I there's something for me to learn. Yeah, we're
54:29
all mirrors for each other. And thank you for being my mirror. Yes,
54:35
thank you for being mine. Sometimes well, no, I really appreciate
54:40
it. My readiness to accept it at times can be and that's on that's
54:46
part of my own path. But I'm sometimes not ready for that mirror.
54:51
But most of the time, as I lean into it, I do have
54:55
deep appreciation and gratitude for you in the mirror that you are for me.
55:00
So I was a little tongue in cheek, but yes, I do appreciate
55:02
that. I know, But so I think that's a rap. We've been
55:07
chatting for a while, but we did want to just share a bit more.
55:13
Like I said, we started this unscripted, just being in the present
55:16
moment, and for whatever that brought to each of you, we want you
55:22
to know that it came from our hearts and that will continue. We are
55:27
really enjoying the conversations that we're having. Continue to send us those comments.
55:31
We love that people are finding us, so share the podcast as you would
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55:52
interesting guests that we'll be bringing in. I'm excited about some of them that
55:55
we have. Yes, we have a good lineup coming. They've all been
56:00
good. They have been so continue and guess what, We're just going to
56:04
keep having fun. That's right, we are having fun. So let us
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56:12
We're eager to build a community that opens up to conversation and allows each of
56:16
us to learn deeper who we are. Who we are. Yes, I
56:22
love you, Ditto till next time from the Observatory Podcast. Here we are
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