Unearth the transformative power of self-reflection with us, as we embark on a journey of personal growth and mindfulness. Brace yourself for an enlightening dialogue that peels back the layers of the human psyche, revealing the role of introspection in identifying our limiting beliefs and childhood wounds. We promise to guide you through understanding your emotional and psychological reactions, helping you to foster forgiveness and self-nurturing.
We've all been shaped by our early experiences, but have you ever wondered about the impact of these experiences on your beliefs and behaviors? We offer a detailed discussion on this, underlining the influence of our upbringing on our self-perception and needs. In this astonishing exploration, you'll learn about the concept of neuroplasticity and the potentiality of reprogramming our brain for positive change. We also dig into the intriguing concept of shadow work, illustrating how practices like meditation aid self-reflection. This episode, loaded with personal anecdotes and poignant insights, serves as a guide to questioning our assumptions and interpretations of reality. Tune in and transform, as we journey together towards personal growth and self-discovery.
Unearth the transformative power of self-reflection with us, as we embark on a journey of personal growth and mindfulness. Brace yourself for an enlightening dialogue that peels back the layers of the human psyche, revealing the role of introspection in identifying our limiting beliefs and childhood wounds. We promise to guide you through understanding your emotional and psychological reactions, helping you to foster forgiveness and self-nurturing.
We've all been shaped by our early experiences, but have you ever wondered about the impact of these experiences on your beliefs and behaviors? We offer a detailed discussion on this, underlining the influence of our upbringing on our self-perception and needs. In this astonishing exploration, you'll learn about the concept of neuroplasticity and the potentiality of reprogramming our brain for positive change. We also dig into the intriguing concept of shadow work, illustrating how practices like meditation aid self-reflection. This episode, loaded with personal anecdotes and poignant insights, serves as a guide to questioning our assumptions and interpretations of reality. Tune in and transform, as we journey together towards personal growth and self-discovery.
How's everyone Good, good enough, good enough.
Jake:Good enough, yeah, how do you judge?
Frank:that.
Noah:I guess by feel Good enough for what. What do you feel?
Frank:Fine. Oh, I meant, like, which part of your body do you feel Body? Yeah, I don't know. I thought I'd feel, as a sense.
Noah:Jake's just a floating brain.
Jake:Why did you say it like a joke, seems?
Frank:like you're wearing a sweater on your brain.
Noah:Wasn't there a cartoon villain that was like a floating brain.
Frank:Pinky in the brain.
Noah:No.
Jake:Yeah, I think this was like in Looney Tunes, like Marvin the Martian ran into some sort of floating brain guy.
Noah:Yeah, maybe I don't know, but there was like a floating brain villain. You know we could Google this.
Frank:Oh, and someone's gut or something. Yeah, brain, super villain DC Comics. His name is Brain.
Noah:Creative Super brain. You say Just Crang. Super villain from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Jake:Oh, oh, I was not thinking that.
Frank:There are three that I know of, there's Brain on Animaniacs and he's always trying to destroy the world or whatever. Take over the world.
Noah:Whatever he's just called Brain, though he's not a floating brain.
Frank:He's not a Brain, but he's Nimble and he's named Brain. I'll give you that he's named Brain and he's a super villain of sorts. He doesn't do much villainous stuff actually.
Jake:I don't know that his brain is floating, but it is most of him, yeah, so in a way, right.
Frank:And then there's Brain of DC Comics.
Noah:What is Pinky most of?
Frank:Blah Point Point.
Jake:Point. What are we going to do tonight?
Noah:Brain. What is Pinky mostly. I guess that's the correct answer.
Jake:Happy, he's just a joyful little guy.
Noah:I think we're going to open up the phone lines. Tell us Line.
Jake:Line. We have one line.
Noah:Don't tell them that. They might not call if they think they're not going to get through.
Frank:We've never done the phone line before, so we wouldn't know how to use it.
Jake:I was having a nostalgia conversation yesterday about 56K dial-up and, like you know, when people started getting DSL and the original edging. It was just getting so close. It was Insight BB. You know broadband and my friend had it and we didn't have to. You know his mom could use the phone at the same time. It was so crazy and we could download whole seasons of shows on Kazaa and it was fantastic.
Frank:In like three days.
Jake:Yeah, I know, as opposed to three weeks. It was amazing. You just watched that progress bar. Oh, I got another percentage point. Only one more hour until I get the next one.
Frank:That's true.
Noah:Recently Amy's internet went down and they took like three days to fix it Like it was a larger problem with the internet provider and so she was without internet for three, maybe four days, something like that and ever since they fixed it, her internet has been awful, and so when you're in a long distance relationship with somebody, you try to have video calls so you can spend time together.
Jake:Yeah.
Noah:And a lot of the time we've been spending together recently has been yeah and but that.
Jake:Sounds nice.
Noah:It reminded me of 56K.
Frank:It doesn't sound that nice to me. It's not nice, it's very annoying.
Jake:Anyway, what is today's topic, Frank?
Frank:I think usually I ask you that.
Jake:I know, but I forget this time.
Frank:The importance of self-reflection and personal growth strategies for incorporating reflection into your life.
Noah:Can you read that one more time? I zoned out, just being honest.
Frank:Yeah, I read it before we started. You zoned out then. How can we prevent you from zoning out this time? I'm really going to focus, discuss the importance of self-reflection and personal growth, and share strategies for incorporating reflection into daily life. Self-reflection got it.
Jake:So what do you think of when you think of self-reflection?
Noah:What was your question?
Jake:What sort of concept I thought you were doing an object first In your mind.
Frank:What do you think of when you think of tire?
Noah:I guess I'm for them.
Jake:It was a picture for me of a tire.
Frank:Are you for them or against them?
Jake:Oh wow, I think I'm for them, but I don't really know what the other option is Against them. I guess any sort of tire is a tire, but I remember when the movie I Robot came out and it was like these futuristic cars and they were rolling around on four balls where the tire is. But you know, the ball allowed them to go in any direction.
Noah:Huh, why haven't we done that yet? That doesn't seem futuristic at all.
Jake:It's just a ball.
Noah:Just replace your tires with balls, we would go ahead I thought it was awesome.
Jake:It's like parallel parking becomes so easy.
Noah:Self reflection.
Jake:That's what you think of.
Noah:Yeah, the only time I see my own reflection, not the only time. Sometimes in water sometimes in televisions, like if I stood up In televisions. Oh, if I stood up right now In the glare of a television. My reflection in the television. Yeah, it's a black mirror.
Jake:Hmm.
Noah:Huh, yeah. Well, I think you can't change what you can't see.
Frank:That's right. I think that's right. The unexamined life is not worth living, or something.
Noah:Yeah, we really are getting efficient at this podcasting thing.
Jake:Oh, was that the end of the episode?
Noah:Yes, yeah, I think. What did we talk about last week? I mean, what was the title of the topic?
Frank:Automatic negative thoughts or something.
Noah:Yeah, everything we talk about is very connected to want to teach. Other topic we talk about we're always speaking on mindfulness and growth and self-reflection and these things they all tie together because they're all the same. If we're going to examine those negative thoughts, if we're going to make goals for ourselves and want things and accomplish things, all of this you have to be able to see it. No different here. With self-reflection We've talked recently Remember if this is on the podcast or if it's just something I've mentioned in our private conversations but working on digging into some of, if you want to call it, shadow work or whatever, going back and trying to figure out where some of my limiting beliefs and stuff like that comes from childhood wounds or whatever trauma throughout life yeah, so lots of self-reflection, and it's super important for that, because if you can't be honest about where you came from and what causes you to react the way you do, it's really hard to change those things. So, self-reflection for identification, self-reflection for change, self-reflection for even just uncovering something you didn't know was there.
Jake:How do you do that? Those are my thoughts. That makes sense. That's the reason you would want to do self-reflection. But what does self-reflection look like for you? Is it journaling?
Noah:I journal sometimes, but not a lot of journaling. I do a lot in meditation, I do some guided stuff where more or less your you know Frank has talked about. You're going to have to put your words to it again because I can never remember how you express it. But the idea of saying, is this the first time I've ever felt this way? Yeah, and then no, I remember this time and then it was that the first time I ever felt this way and you just kind of keep going back. It's similar to that. The concept is the same, but identifying things.
Noah:For me, typically, what happens is I start with a thing that I want. Typically, this is not necessarily a material thing. It's more like what do I want for myself out of life, or whatever? What's the goal that I have and what's keeping me from getting it? Usually it's a belief I have or an attitude I have, or whatever. And so then I go okay, I can identify this thing that's really holding me back from going after this thing that I want. Now, what are the beliefs that are keeping me in this space? And then, once I identify the beliefs, okay, now where did those beliefs come from? How did those beliefs start and when did they start.
Noah:And it's a lot. You never usually get to it the first time or the second time or the third time. It's continual work. You have to continually be working on it. And trauma and trauma I'm using as a general word I don't necessarily mean trauma doesn't have to be horrible, like something awful. It is just something that created a defense mechanism in you. But a lot of times if you can't bring something up, it's because it is surrounding something traumatic in your life, and so you have to really keep working on that, to keep sort of going back into your past to figure out where maybe it originated, and then you have to more or less forgive that child and nurture that child yourself.
Frank:Yeah, yeah, I mean I think of that as like one of the cabinets you can look in for self-reflection. Like your past, your history, like is this a repetitive emotion that I'm having, or defense mechanism that's certainly like been one of the most powerful ones for me. But I think there are all kinds of areas you can reflect on that and like there's probably even bad, like you could probably spend too much time in bad areas reflecting.
Noah:Do you have examples, not necessarily of the bad, but like when you say you have different cabinets or whatever, like what do?
Frank:you? Oh sure. Well, there's like the drives, like what is motivating my behavior here, like, is it out of control? Is it out of I want pleasure, is it for a great? Is it like an aggressive sort of? The drives are big. I think like, or is this generative, like, is this helping to move the world forward in some way? Because that's really important to me. When it's not, that, I think that's worth looking into. All the ones on that Huberman thing are really good ways to look at it.
Noah:I think there would be. For me it seems like they all kind of lead back to those initial limiting beliefs. At some point they may take different pathways, but I do think there is a lot of value in determining Is this emotional, Is this psychological, Is this biological? Because I think there is can be clear separation there in a sort of like a current decision or current reaction or whatever.
Frank:Yeah. So I mean, like there are traumatic things that happen when you're a kid or even when you're an adult, whatever this like look back, go back. You know I find myself angry and I feel it in my jaw or whatever. Is this the first time I felt like this Go back until you get to the source. That's a really valuable practice, but it's there's also like stuff that has nothing to do with that. Like every day I go to work, I hate my job, but in the back of, like the corner of my subconscious, I know that I really want to be a writer. And you can just ignore this and many people do, and this isn't like. You should reflect on that and if you don't ever reflect, you're never going to go. What's going on with that? Maybe I should try writing.
Noah:Or even why do I want to be a writer? Is there something, is there a different motivation underneath that? Yeah, true.
Frank:Yeah, and if you have complex defense mechanisms, which you do because you're human, then they might be so layered on top of each other that you don't even hate your job. You just think you do. I don't know. There's like an unending number of things that you can self reflect on. Salience is one that they talked about in the Huberman podcast too, which is just the things that keep coming up in your mind, that you don't necessarily know why, but you're just ignoring them, or something. Jake, do you have a different experience?
Jake:Yeah, I mean like when I obviously everything you said is correct.
Jake:I mean the term self reflection literally just means like looking at yourself. For me, the term seems to evoke this idea or this behavior that I go through often, which is when I have an interaction with another person and it doesn't. Well, this isn't even a necessity, but I have an interaction with another person and I think one of the givens about self is that we think we know ourselves. You might even know that you don't know everything about yourself, but you're operating on the assumption that you do. And so for me, self reflection is this very intentional practice of acknowledging the distinctions between perhaps my intention and what I actually do, the distinction between my desire to be something and who I actually am, and finding the difference between those things is really important for acknowledging myself, the person that quite often I have kind of avoided looking at directly.
Jake:So an example of this would be I wanted to help my friend, I wanted to give them nurturing or good advice, that in a time when they were hurting, but somehow I I misspoke and they ended up just feeling invalidated or hurt or something like this, and when I really look at that situation Retroactively I say, oh, what I was really doing was validating a need in me to be right to feel Useful to my friend. Something like this, like when I see that clearly for what it is, this is to me the Product of the practice of self-reflection, and then taking that away in the future says Okay, I'm about to speak. What's my intention here? What's the drive behind it? Is this generative? So like these things all go hand in hand, but I think that's kind of what I think about. We all want to see ourselves as like this great ideal version of who we are, but the truth of the matter is is, if we want to get close to that, we probably have to acknowledge where we're falling short.
Frank:Yeah, that one I think of as Paul Conti's cabinet he calls defense mechanisms in action. Hmm which is like I Might know some of my defense mechanisms from the structure of self, but when it comes to the function, like how I actually act in the world, something different happened than what I planned on happening here. What was it and why?
Jake:Mm-hmm.
Frank:That's like that. One falls in that cabinet for me. I Don't know. I like this diagram. I think I've said that about a hundred thousand times.
Jake:Mm-hmm, which one? I mean like, you've kind of described a Way that you can look at it, but is there any cabinet that resonates with your personal experience?
Frank:Oh, I mean Almost all of them, certainly all the big is the list.
Frank:So there's structure of self. This is the ones that I think of Jake as being far better at than me. Then there's function of self. This is where I've mostly spent my time, like in my adult life. So under function of self, there's strivings. This is like what? Just like? Hope, dreams, vision. I'll fall under that. There's behavior like what am I actually doing? And now can I change that?
Frank:Salience, the things that come up all the time, either internal or external, you know, like salience is like there's all the ones that are internal, like I just keep thinking this thing. But then there's also like a Really good reflection is like Throughout my life, people have always come to me for technology, things. This is salient in my life, really good way to see yourself, to reflect on what keeps coming up. Defense mechanisms in action are just like what we just talked about. And then there's Self-awareness, which I don't necessarily know what is meant by that, but I think of it as like agency, like starting to really like Make choices based on these things, that sort of deliver you to some actualization of who you want to be. That's the function of self-sight. And then, under structure of self, there's self, character structure, defense mechanisms, conscious mind and unconscious mind. These are like the more concept side I.
Noah:Do feel like I and derail the thought you had when I asked that, but I was just curious how many Areas you kept referring to the diagram or whatever, and I. I think I looked at it several weeks ago, but sure it doesn't mean I can remember it.
Frank:Yeah, I just think like if you're gonna be self-reflecting, looking at that list is a good place to start.
Jake:Absolutely. I think it was kind of interesting. I Don't know if it it falls into a different category. Maybe. Maybe it's the same, but no way, you kind of talked about more about.
Jake:Like the past and Like some of these limiting beliefs or where these beliefs come from, and it's it's funny. I have some sort of like shorthand definition for trauma. Trauma is like this buzzword, and so you know, it kind of has boiled down and distilled into this idea for me, which is Living a past event in a present moment like this is what trauma evokes in my mind, and it's so interesting that this process that I just described and how I view self-reflection is like okay, I responded to that person based on their words, but really I took their words and I interpreted them right. That parts me. It's not any. They could have meant the best thing in the world, but I take it negatively because when I was seven years old, the first time I heard these words, they meant this and they made me feel this way the thing I would change and I think your sort of example says the same thing, but with the thing I would change is from a Pastive living, a past event, in the present.
Noah:I would say letting a past event inform the present.
Jake:Which I think is different yeah.
Noah:I.
Frank:Think they, yeah, they're different, but they're only different in the degree of healing you've had, really, I think, because Certainly, people who are very traumatized can literally relive the event If they haven't done done much healing or they can't seem to heal Right.
Jake:I mean you're right from like a time perspective. I guess you're not. You're not reliving that event because the environment slightly different. But if we say here was the, the catalyst, here was the stimulus and here was the response, I took the same interstate to get there. You know, I'm reliving that neural pathway, regardless of the fact that the input was actually something totally different. It's like putting coffee in a sawmill and getting a coffee and a sawmill and getting a two by four.
Noah:Right, and a lot of the self-reflection Going back to that sort of like past trauma thing is really digging into whatever that event actually caused you to think, because sometimes they're like you said this isn't what the person said to me, this is what I heard or whatever, or this isn't what the person did to me, but this is what it felt like they did to me.
Noah:Yeah, sometimes it is that sometimes they did something to you, something, sometimes they did say something to you, and sometimes it's just how you responded to it in that moment, especially when you're a child and you don't fully know how to Understand something or deal with something or Whatever just comprehend the moment. And so a lot of the self-reflection is okay. When did I first start feeling this way? Okay now, what was it? What is it that that made me believe about myself? Not just what happened in the moment, but what it? What is it that it made me believe about myself?
Noah:And Sometimes that's the real key because, like for me and this is something I'm still trying to figure out, but I think for me, a big thing that I learned when I was young and this isn't something anyone told me, and this is the point is that my, what I want doesn't matter. I, but I wouldn't, even until recently, been able to verbalize that probably and it wasn't anything, I mean my parents, or whoever like, didn't. I think a big piece of that comes from my parents, but it wasn't. My parents didn't ever say what you want doesn't matter. Then my parents loved me.
Noah:They tried to do their best to help me but some of the dynamics led me to think okay, well, what everyone else needs and wants, that's the most important thing, and so the sub context of that is what I want doesn't matter. And so then you make decisions from age what? Seven, eight, nine, whatever, until you're 40 years old, based on this belief that you never got to the heart of.
Frank:Yeah, and more than belief, I think even they're like and I really think Jake knows this stuff better than me, but I'm gonna try to summarize the structure side a little bit. So like we are a self and we develop a character structure, which is not only the emotional reactions we have to specific events that are reminders of prior events, but it's also like, literally, neurologically, there are neural pathways that are developed, they have myelin sheath around them, and so it doesn't you can have fully processed the event, but when this kind of thing happens, your character responds to it because of just a life, of doing it in a certain way.
Noah:Yep and that's why I've been doing a lot of reading and research into neuroplasticity because you can actually reprogram yourself. But it takes continual work because you think about how many times that fired for you to believe that over the course of 20, 30 years. You can't just reprogram yourself by thinking about this once or twice or three times. You have to continually do this and continually reprogram that belief until your neurons fire in a different way. Right, yeah?
Frank:well, and that's, I mean, 100% true, and part of it is conscious, like you can know about it, and then there's a huge amount of it that's not, and so we're always sort of looking at, like, the results of the neural pathways, not at the actual pathways, so you can like see, oh, that result isn't good. I'll try to work back to how it came to be, but a lot of that's in sort of darkness. So I don't think you can I don't know much about going into the darkness, to be honest, but I think you can.
Noah:What do you mean by going into the darkness?
Frank:exactly, Like doing shadow work directly, like I'm going to go on a retreat for two weeks in total silence and just work in the shadows or a hallucinogenic trip or something like that.
Noah:I'm no expert, but my personal opinion is that you're better off doing this over the course of time as opposed to going on like a retreat, like not that a retreat can't help you, but again, a two week thing isn't going to change your brain.
Jake:Usually something like that is going to be a catalyst. It's going to fracture something enough that you can't deny it and then that sort of sits there and it's on process in the background for quite some time.
Frank:Yeah, I don't think it could change, like it's not likely to cause the change, but it is good for self reflection. It's going to do it in a different way than a normal life where you have all these notifications and life going on and distractions. If you really self reflect for two straight weeks, that's going to produce a different finding then. Yeah 10 minutes of meditation a day, will, or something.
Jake:Yeah, there's all these layers of not only what we know about ourselves but also how we know what we know and we make certain assumptions without ever really questioning them. So for instance, I might say, oh, jake is, at four years old, had this traumatic experience and it made me, it made that kid believe, something that I've kind of carried with me since then. But it's like okay, but Jake at that time perceived reality and like this whole world in a certain way and he understood himself in a certain position relative to that reality and that in itself had a ginormous effect. So, like the other night I was doing this meditation. Every once in a while I fall into this like liminal space between sleeping and dreaming, where I'm still very, very aware, but usually it's like two or three hours, usually between the hours of like 10 pm and 1 am, where I am exploring some weird places.
Jake:And during this last one I had it was something like a Rorschach test, right, where there's just these shapes and my brain starts associating meaning to them. And the shapes were. It was kind of like a sculpture and on one side is like this black obsidian snake that's rising up vertically and on the other side is this like pure white marble and they're entwining and in sort of like this, like the medical staff, you know, they're like winding up, and my brain said, oh, look, the light, the good is running away from the bad, the evil. And this was a story, this was an interpretation, and then I went well, that is one possible interpretation, what are the others? And so I kind of went through this process and I went okay, well, maybe there's about four interpretations of this.
Jake:The light is running away from the dark, okay.
Jake:No, actually the light is in so much pain because of the weight of sort of consciousness and, being that the darkness would be a reprieve, I just want this void, god, make it all stop.
Jake:The other one is that the light is actually the evil one and it's extinguishing the darkness and the darkness is running away from the light, and this is like a terrifying experience. And then there was this fourth one, and the fourth one was they're in this dance and the darkness is becoming the light and it wants so much, it has this desire, so much to be something that it almost wills itself into manifestation. And it's like this cycle that, you know, this dance can't happen without the two partners, and I sort of thought about it afterwards and I realized that the order in which all four of these potential interpretations struck me probably said something about my disposition in this world, about the way that I interpret every single other thing that I encounter, and it's like okay, the first story was one of fear, the second story was one of pain, the third story was this fear of never really knowing, and then the fourth story was like just floating and accepting and everything being okay yeah, the third one sounded like I mean, all of them sounded like you.
Frank:This definitely is a experience from your subconscious without a doubt never heard one more like you. But the third one sounded like a trick on like you're like, is it? This is all a trick? Yeah, which is a third level Jake disposition to life, for sure, trust, it's a trust issue.
Jake:Yeah, but it's like you know, I don't know how to evoke this in someone else or say like, so, just go do this. This is really good. But for me, like paying attention to this was a huge self-reflection exercise, because it showed me the position, the orientation I have to the world, my bent toward interpreting the stimuli that I encounter and the way that I might interpret that data and come to conclusions. So, knowing that about myself, maybe, maybe I can do a little bit of a better job of knowing which part I'm playing in that experience and and how much I'm interpreting that yeah, and it's it's like very revealing about it's from your unconscious.
Frank:It's very revealing about your character structure and it's it like points out something that's very different about us and sort of makes it easier to understand you in ways. I just net like I have never had an experience where I care that much about good and evil and it's like core to most of your decisions. Yes, on some, yeah, I just think everyone has both and so like it's just a base layer foundation for the world.
Noah:I've never really put much thought above that into it darkness and like, give definition to each other, mm-hmm yeah, but I think like you had experiences where, like you, should be a good boy, jake, like yes so that's what I was talking about.
Jake:Right, four-year-old Jake has this traumatic experience, but that traumatic experience is so much more than disappointing my father. It's oh no, there's evil that's overcoming right, and so it's like this other base layer epistemological framework that I'm interpreting everything through, and it it's giving meaning where perhaps there is no meaning, definitely and I have the same thing.
Frank:My, it's totally different, but it comes from the same problem, which is where you had people saying there's evil in you. Basically, I had no one saying anything, there was no parent, mm-hmm. So when an authority tells me to do something, I'm like who are you? You were never there for me. And they're like well, I'm your employer, I'm here for you now. I'm like no, you were never here for me. Yeah, you know so yes yeah, I mean, there's no truth to it, you know, but it's like it's a part of my character the authorities are not trustworthy and they shouldn't be trusted yeah yeah it's.
Jake:It's interesting, I have that similar thing, but usually with male authority figures, because if you take everything I just said about myself and my upbringing in that framework, my mom most exhibited the qualities that were good and light and in the world, my dad most exhibited the qualities that were evil and the ones that I then repressed and said you can't be, that, that's unacceptable, and eventually believed you are not that, except I still was.
Jake:I just told myself I wasn't. And so, like, growing up, I had these more male authority figures in the form of pastors or bosses or or anything like this. And then, and eventually, you know, through this process of creating this parallel between all of them and my father, who, in my subconscious level, was evil, eventually I became a father and I distrusted myself and I hated myself and I thought he was evil and it wasn't until I went through essentially this four-part interpretation breakdown where I was able to say, yeah, you are, you do have that in you and you're okay but also your dad undoubtedly had good in him without a doubt, and your your four-year-old self, starting to believe everything about my father is bad.
Noah:Mm-hmm also leads you to believe that the good things you see in him are bad. Yeah, which skews what you believe is good yeah, it's a.
Jake:It's a chaotic ocean that's just churning man. Yeah, all these things we are our character are.
Frank:Yeah, I've correct like there are evil people, that's true. Yeah, I've seen them occasionally. My disposition is not to believe that about them. I'm like to a fault like no, I mean, everyone has evil in them, so they'll figure it out. Some people are just evil until they die yeah it's true. It's not how. It's not how I see it, but I know about that truth yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Jake:So I don't know. There's this other part of me that's like all right, self-reflection is good. But when you start to delve into this stuff, you start to realize that layers of meaning, of symbolism, start to fall away and then you kind of get to the inherent root of it all and you go maybe it doesn't really mean anything. So I get to choose what that meaning is. I get to become who I want to be. I get to be the force that I want to be in the world, and then it's kind of like shaking hands with this new friend and you say, okay, well, who is that guy? What does he want? What does he want to do in this world? What kind of things does he want the world to be and what does he want to see?
Noah:yeah, and what do you think when you realize that what, what he wants, is really evil?
Jake:okay, that's fun, but I think about that stuff too I do I know.
Noah:I'm really just trying to make internal Jake like really have things I know well.
Jake:You often like call me out for you know you don't settle on one side and I'm like there's no meaning to any of it. There is no side. It's actually all on the same side, which is generative, otherwise we wouldn't be here looking at it.
Noah:Hmm and a fun experiment would be. Try to believe that there's meaning for a while about what you want. I'm specific to you, like, specific to your framework. Okay, this matters, there is meaning here. I think maybe that's the next episode so so next time, what are we talking about?
Frank:we're gonna talk about these same areas, but how we can reflect on them through others, and in a later episode we're gonna talk about myth and story yeah, I can see how that's a different episode next time on the unbecoming platypus podcast different than what I thought it was thanks guys thanks for listening.