Joe: There's reality, which is loving awareness,
Sam: unconcerned by the arising and passing away of phenomena.
Ali: And then there are the 10, 000
things.
Sam: Hello and welcome to the 10, 000 Things.
My name is Sam Ellis.
I'm Joe Loh.
And I'm
Ali: Ali
Sam: Catramados.
And I just wanted to butt in, Joe, right before you launch into the topic today.
This is a show with three neurodivergent people grappling with reality and we
try not to be too boring about it and we try not to be experts on stuff.
And just go with experience.
Joe: Yeah, I had someone, write in and say they wanted us to
speak more about our diagnoses.
So I don't know if you want to do it at the front of the show each week,
but I mean, we can do it briefly now.
I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
That's it for me.
You guys have a bit more of a fruit salad.
Sam: yes.
Okay.
okay.
I'm in the middle, I guess, with less acronyms than Ali, but more than you.
ADHD, where...
Working on the, learning more about the ASD side of it for me at the moment.
What's ASD?
Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Yeah.
And, years before, you know, generalized anxiety, you know,
persistent depression, um, gotten a lot better in those two areas.
And so mental health much better than it was, but now still the
sort of the challenges that come with the neurodivergent, aspects.
Ali: Yeah.
And yeah, I am the fruit salad, so bipolar and uh, premenstrual mood dysphoria,
um, and then, um, ADHD, ASD, and CPTSD.
Joe: Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I know.
If you could see her now, look at her.
She's smiling.
Yeah.
Ali: She's serene.
She looks so put together.
I'm heavily medicated.
Joe: Yeah.
Nah, she's in a full matching tracksuit.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know, guys.
Let's, let's have a meeting one day.
We've been talking about having a meeting for months now.
Do we say that at the start of each show?
Is that Tiresome?
I don't
Sam: know.
Well, I just thought I'd, Preempt things and, and save us all a meeting
and just jump in with it because I think the feedback you got was good
and that, I mean, people like the show in general, we're hearing really
wonderful things, like great little reviews you guys are getting by text and
reposting to me, which just absolutely makes my day and makes me, you know,
want to continue with this because I feel like it's valuable for us, but it
seems to be valuable for other people.
But that specific idea Of, you know, yeah, labelling ourselves,
but doing it consciously.
Yeah, I think, yeah,
Joe: let's come up with a concise way to just say we're all neurodivergent.
Yeah.
And, if anyone wants to know the lore, they can look it up.
That's right.
Yeah, um, look, what I said to that person is, yeah, I'm happy to, we're
happy to mention neurodivergence more.
But, as a bipolar person, I don't particularly want to
talk about bipolar every week.
Yeah.
I don't particularly want to talk to you two about autism and...
Uh, ADHD every week, uh, what I noticed from my own time in psych wards and
my own time working in psych wards and being a patient is, the number one
topic on a psych ward is Spirituality.
The number two topic is probably politics.
Number three is probably philosophy.
That's what people on psych wards talk about.
And I am a crazy person who wants to talk about things that I find interesting.
I'm not someone who wants to talk about mental health awareness.
I want to talk about what I find interesting in the world.
Oh,
Sam: that's the last thing people want to talk about in
the psych ward is mental health.
Yeah, exactly.
Joe: So I guess, look, that's my little coda on what this show is.
It's like...
Three neurodivergent people talking about purely just what interests us.
Yeah, exactly.
Um, but yeah,
Ali: like, can we bring that, that lived experience to those?
Joe: If we were better at marketing this show, we would lean into more
into that angle of the neurodivergence.
So maybe we can do that.
We can just do that in simple ways.
but yeah, that's, that's all of our backgrounds and yeah,
let's get on with the topics.
Sam: Exactly.
We'll come up with a neat way of saying it eventually.
Yeah.
so there's a wonderful quote here from Emmett Fox, who I know nothing
about, uh, but I do like the quote and I think there's an awful lot
here worth discussing, going over old grievances mentally, thinking how
badly someone acted at some time, for instance, and recalling the details.
Has the effect of revivifying that which was quietly expiring of neglect.
Joe: Old grievances.
I agree.
I would use the word resentments.
Sure.
Emmet Fox is a Christian mystic, I guess you'd call him.
He was a healer, Christian faith healer.
Sure.
That book came out in 1934 and I've been, I read it and I've been re reading
it and actually sort of studying it.
It's kind of blown my mind.
But what I've brought in here is some of the less, um, less miraculous stuff.
You know, just that one quote I thought stood on its own.
Yeah.
Um.
It does.
Yeah, like how I got sober was to understand, a huge part of it was to
understand how toxic resentments are, and the place that I got sober, which
I cannot talk about on this show.
It is a place of many cliches and one of the cliches, the cliche about
resentment is, having a resentment is like drinking poison and expect someone,
expecting someone else to get sick.
Oh yeah.
Right.
Very true.
I don't know.
That's what I wanted to throw out to you guys.
I have done nearly eight years.
Of thorough, thorough work on resentments, and I can't say that I'm completely
resentment free, but honestly, I have almost completely emptied out a head that
was full of resentments, you know, and the reasons why that makes you drink Should be
obvious, but basically it's like fuck this person I'm gonna get wasted over and over
again and the person changes or there's a cast of people in your head and and you're
driving home from work and that what your fucking boss said to you and fuck that guy
and yeah and pull into the bottle shop and
Sam: John Howard and
Joe: yeah sure yeah there's always the big ones yeah yeah the big other
and then there's the ones in your life and blah blah blah but like you
A handful of resentment is, that's, you, you, you are ruining your life.
Oh, big time.
And there is no advantage to it.
No.
So, I don't know, yeah, I wanted to hear what you guys thought about, going over,
I think you said going over old grievances and replaying them in your head.
Oh yeah, I've
Sam: done it.
I've done it.
Yeah, I'm, I'm well on board with this quote and everything it says, for sure.
Ali?
Ali: yeah, no, as someone who carried, I suppose, a lot of, Resentments,
um, you know, sort of rooted in trauma from when I was younger, um,
for many years and realizing how Self destructive, those behave, that
turned into sort of certain behaviours that were really self destructive.
So, rather than, mine wasn't, I mean it was alcohol and drugs when I was
younger, but then as I got older it turned into other things, whether it
was more around food and um, that's another diagnosis, eating disorder,
um, or disordered eating I should say.
Oh, let's talk about that sometime, for
Sam: sure,
Ali: yeah.
Maybe ? No, no.
I mean, no.
No.
Okay.
Yeah.
In a general sense,
Sam: I was, I, I've things I'm gonna share about that too, because
Ali: it's, um, it was really what it looked like was Yeah.
Either too much or then really restricting and controlling Yeah.
As a way of feeling out of control in your life.
And then it becomes these really destructive behaviors.
What's the resentment got to do with it?
So the resentment is, so the feelings or the ruminating on
these horrible feelings and these.
So, you're carrying and you cannot control it.
It is a complete lack of control in, over that feeling
and it just is so overwhelming.
So you're a slave to it.
So one of the few things then it manifesting will manifest it in for me.
Being able to control, which is for a lot of people, particularly
a lot of women, but it's very much controlling what you eat.
And so that's how it manifested for me for years and for
Joe: decades.
Yeah, okay, I didn't know about that one.
So you agree that the resentment is the root of some very
self destructive behaviour?
Very,
Ali: yeah.
The most self destructive behaviour is when I was younger,
yeah, around drugs and alcohol.
Um, and then later in, particularly with disordered eating, it was very much...
Yeah, rooted in resentment, and the only way I was, and rather than like,
I suppose in the quote where it's sort of, you know, where you almost forget
it, where he talks about forgetting it, it's more, I had to talk about it.
with, in therapy, in a therapeutic environment, in order to be able
to work through it, to let it go.
So it's sort of almost like exposure
Joe: therapy.
So you're disagreeing with Emmett about the dying of neglect
Ali: thing?
Yeah, so I don't think, neglecting it was sort of still letting it be
there and still giving it some sort of power, whereas, and they talk
about exposure therapy, or like, you know, talking about it, the monster or
the, the thing that you're scared of.
Diminishes.
And it becomes.
Yeah, it's
Joe: less scary.
But can I say, but what if you only talk about it in therapy?
Yeah, that works.
Yeah.
Because, this is, I've learnt this the hard way, it's like...
If I'm carrying around a, I get a, resentments also get obsessions with
people and if I'm carrying them around and then talking to everyone about them,
which is, has been my style, was only when I, they were dissected in therapy that
I was like, Oh, this is the appropriate place to talk about these resentments.
Sam: If you do it to your friends, you're placing them in a difficult position.
They think that their role as a friend is to validate this thing that's
going on and then eventually they might get tired of that and then they
feel an instinct to contradict you.
And then of course, just flatly telling you, you know, yeah,
you're wrong and move on.
Not, not especially helpful either.
Uh, and then so maybe a really clever friend will eventually
take on the role of a therapist.
in helping you to kind of get some sort of perspective on it
that helps you to move through it.
Uh, and you know, deconstruct what's happening.
But the therapist is the person for that, not the
Joe: friend.
But I would say that's true of a big resentment, like your big trauma.
Maybe we should separate the two, resentments and trauma.
So what I would say is the little resentments, the ones...
You've got your colleague at work or yeah, those, those little ones, they
Ali: all sort of come from that same sense of feeling out of control in
Joe: that situation.
But what I'm saying is maybe, and I haven't been good at this, but
maybe what he's saying is right.
Maybe we can just let, so by being out of the habit of forming resentments,
which is not kind of where I'm at now.
Yeah.
Mostly seeing them coming in.
They can just die of neglect.
Ali: Oh yeah, so you can learn to right size them.
I think when you're in the thick of it, you are...
So, you are feeling, even the small things feel more intense than they actually are.
And you feel the perceived slight by the colleague or your boss or
the injustice that you're feeling.
And they can quickly grow.
Yeah.
It can grow into this much bigger thing than it actually is, but it's still,
cause it feels the same as the other feeling as the big resentment, right?
They feel the same.
They feel like you're, yeah, it's like it's something somehow you are
being, you know, it is this like unjustified behavior towards you.
And.
And it's deeply unfair, and when you're not in a place of actually learning
how to deal with the big ones, you're still, you're dealing with them in
all the same way, so it's the same excuse to drink, or to eat or not eat,
or whatever, or whatever your, the behavior that manifests from that.
Excess.
Comes from, yeah, the lack.
It can come from even the slightest, you know, perceived, you know, injustice
versus, you know, the really big ones.
And when you learn to get through the big ones, you realize, Oh yeah,
you sort of do get to this place of, well, actually that thing at
work is really not that important.
Like, you know, that, that thing, that person really didn't,
you know, upset me in that.
You know, or I can get over that, or, like, it right sizes those, you
know, I mean, they're annoying, and you could, but yeah, but it's just
like, oh, well, but I'm not getting paid to think about it right now.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, so you're just like, oh, well, that person's a dickhead, or
we choose, you know, whatever, you know, or that, yeah, that was a bit unfair, but
it's not the end of the world, versus...
When you, like I said, when you're in the thick of it, everything feels
like, oh my god, this is another thing.
This is
Sam: another thing.
And you know what?
They might objectively be completely wrong, but I'm not
going to let it ruin my life.
What about you, Sam?
Joe: Do you carry around a lot of, well first, Ali, do you still
carry around a lot of resentments?
Um,
Sam: you can't be honest.
Ali: Yeah.
No, I, I, if I'm really honest, there's still a couple of things I still
struggle with, but I, but again, that's the therapy and it's still a process.
And I still feel like there's still a couple of things I need to work
through, but I feel like the more recent things and the things that,
you know, have got me down over the last few years or whatever, I've been
able to handle in a much better way.
There's still a few things.
It's, you know, complicated childhood stuff that just takes
a really long time to unravel.
And I just, you know, I mean, I've been in therapy for over two years and
it's, I think, you know, a little bit longer and, you know, but definitely
compared to what I was like 12 months ago versus two years ago versus five
years ago, it's completely different.
Joe: Well, I would say as a blanket statement and it's radical, it
is very radical, but I would say if you can forgive all of those
people completely, that's right.
Not because they deserve it.
But because...
You deserve it.
Yeah, you will feel better.
Yeah, absolutely.
You will feel better.
And it's, it's, it's so fucking hard with some of them.
Yeah.
But, like, it's, it's an uncompromising, what I'm proposing is an uncompromising
and what Emmett's talking about and, you know, the spirituality that I believe in
is a completely uncompromising approach to forgiveness where you always forgive.
Yeah.
You know?
Well,
Sam: it's the essence of Christianity.
So, and we probably need to get the religious DNA of this
statement out into the open.
Now that doesn't mean that, you know, atheists or people like me,
agnostics, can't benefit from it.
Because I think it's all coming from the same place.
The same psychological insight that Ali just shared, I think, was expressed in a
different way in the Sermon on the Mount or this Christian mystical tradition.
Um, but there are many other examples.
So, I won't, you know...
I know I won't sidetrack us by like, you know, bringing in too many other examples,
but there's one worth mentioning, you know, the Hare Krishna tradition that I
grew up in, it, one of the big things that warned devotees against was cultivating
resentments against other people.
So that was like a big one.
It's like, this is going to get in the way of your personal spiritual
progress and it's going to get in the way of other people's progress as well.
If you spend your time.
You know, tearing other people down, even if maybe there's some
justice in what you're saying.
Um, but you just, you know, going around building your case against
people, which is something I saw an awful lot of growing up.
And God help me, I've done an awful lot of it myself.
Yeah.
Joe: Don't you think the, what I see, the vast majority of world political systems
are built almost entirely on resentment?
Sam: Well, fascism thrives on it.
Yeah.
Ali: Yeah.
It's interesting, like one of
Joe: the...
Not just fascism, the left, I think more of the left when I think of resentment.
Like, there's so much resentment.
Proper, proper,
Sam: proper positive action in progressive politics doesn't...
Resentment is part of the mix that helps to bring issues out.
Joe: Things are not forgiven on the left though.
No, but we're...
Things are not forgotten and they're not forgiven.
Sam: I'm sorry.
No, well sometimes you have to keep the record on the record.
But I think that the best things I've seen come out of politics is,
is at that point where you're like, look, at this point, we're not about
dwelling on the grievances themselves.
We've found something positive and useful that we think everyone should get
behind and as a way of making it better.
Which is...
Yeah.
Ali: Sort of, that's sort of the take that my psychologist would say
is that there is justified anger.
Absolutely justified anger.
And because when I feel like angry or resentful about, you know, things
that have happened and he's like, you're absolutely justified to feel
that, but you still have to let it go.
But so, but what it is, is it's not so much about letting it go.
The letting go happens naturally when you then shift your focus
to the positives, correct.
In your life.
And that's, and that's what I do in therapy.
So it's like, it's acknowledging, okay, I'm angry about this
or I'm upset about this.
Oh, I don't have control over this, but these are the really good things.
Let's focus on the really, cause, and that's, you know, well, that would
come back down to like, you know, mindfulness or, you know, gratitude
or whatever, however you, you practice it and actually acknowledging the
really good parts of your life and focusing on building those up.
So they become the bigger net, the things you're focusing on and then
the things that are taking up that bandwidth in your mind, rather than.
The, you know, the resentments, you know, ruminating and taking
Sam: over.
It's clouding your energies.
It's robbing you of resources you can use on other things.
And you know, what you're saying, focusing on the positive, that might sort
of raise alarm bells for some people.
So I wanted to kind of probe that a little bit more.
I was trying to think, okay, what does that look like in my therapy?
And it's like, well, it's, it's, it's building on the strengths,
the victories you've had basically.
Yeah.
And just continuing to move forward with those, which usually.
Will involve me doing something like, uh, going, well I've got an awful lot
of things to forgive people for, right?
And so I'll take your advice, Joe, and I'll just do it here and now,
okay, everyone's forgiven, right?
but what made that so much easier for me to even be in a position to like
acknowledge the truth of what you're saying is realizing all the terrible
things I've done and, and feeling, yeah.
Feeling the appropriate
Joe: shame.
And, and I would say more than that.
Write it all down.
Yeah.
And tell someone Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is how I got sober.
That's right.
Wrote it all down.
All of it.
Everything that's ever happened, but.
The past is not here with us.
It's not here with us in this garage.
The past is something only humans drag around with them.
It echoes
Sam: in our cells.
Oh, absolutely,
Joe: but, but, but we do always have a chance to come into the present moment.
I agree.
Right?
But the more shit we drag around with us, the less present we are.
Sure.
You know, so, I know that's hackneyed, and the positivity, like, oh, Emmett, the
Christian mystic, The stuff that I'm re reading and studying is actually about
positive thinking, and I've never read a book on, this was a book on the sermon,
a book about the Sermon on the Mount.
I've never read a, I think I've read one historical biography of
Jesus, um, but I've never read anything about Jesus teachings.
But the thing that's blowing my mind from Emmett Fox's book is he
talks about, apparently Jesus talked about the secret place, and the
secret place is your consciousness.
And actually, liberation and spiritual awakening happens at
the level of every single thought.
Sure.
And what's blowing my mind is like, I'd gone somewhere along this
path and worried and focused on my behaviors and actions in the world.
But I hadn't gone the final measure, which is, I need to be
responsible for all of my thoughts.
And what Emmett would say is, if your thoughts are horrible, You all
have a horrible life, you know, and resentments are the ultimate horrible
thoughts because you're playing, you're usually, you're focusing on horrible
things that have happened to you or perceived horrible things and the
most horrible people in the world.
In their most horrible states.
And, and if that's in your secret place as apparently I haven't read the
book, but apparently if that's what Jesus called it, then that's will,
will manifest in your outer life.
It will, Emmett would go so far as to say it'll manifest in illnesses.
Yes.
Yeah, it will.
It will.
It will make you
Sam: shrivel up all if that's true.
And it will get in you, it will get in the way of your capacity to enjoy what's
there right now in the present, in the middle of all of it, you know, instead of.
You know, Oh, I'm too busy feeling bad about this when these children right
here, yeah, they need my attention and, and something good could be happening
right now if I just allowed it.
Yeah.
But I'm too busy feeling that I'm, I'm right, I'm in the right and I'm going
to continue rehearsing the, the case that I have for being in the right
and it's like, who's this helping?
It makes you
Ali: bitter.
It just makes you really bitter.
Like, and I've watched.
Like working in aged care for a number of years and some people who, you
know, they talk about getting bitter in their old age and they really...
And I've genuinely observed that in that they've, they let those thoughts
just, they become the narrative, the narrative that all that, because, you
know, their friends have passed away.
Their family's passed away.
Their partner's passed away.
The kids don't want to come and see them anymore because they're just.
Yeah.
No.
And it's just, and so it's just these horrible, it's just this horrible
festering sort of bitterness and resentment towards the end of their life.
And I just, I could not think of anything worse
Sam: for myself.
Yeah.
It's bad enough to have wasted this much of my twenties, thirties and forties, you
know, it's like, let that be an end to it.
Yes.
Yeah,
Ali: absolutely.
Absolutely.
Like, yeah, so much
Sam: wasted.
Well, actually, as my therapist would say, Oh, sorry, buddy, you kind of wasted.
A lot of your childhood also, your teenage years, he says, Oh,
you think it's this recent stuff?
No, you got to go way back.
And you know, that's the thing, like the stuff you have to forgive the most
is often the most distant in time.
And you know, you might have the least clarity about it because you know,
you're only a child and you know, trying to understand, we've talked, we've
covered this on the pod before, but man, yeah, it really is worth repeating.
Uh, when I became a parent, uh, I immediately, almost immediately began
having, like, a lot of intrusive thoughts that were very tough to deal
with and, you know, women are fairly accustomed now, still a bit of a taboo,
to talking about postnatal depression, um, but I think maybe, maybe we're less
comfortable with, you know, not just the organic depression that sometimes
occurs, but just like acknowledging, oh man, I immediately started enacting bad
habits that I learned from my parents and everyone has to go through that and
you, and you have to notice them and then you feel like a horrible person
and you don't want to forgive yourself.
You feel all this shame.
Oh my God, I've done all this damage that can never be undone.
It's like, well, on the grand scale, you've not messed it up that badly just
yet and continue focusing on, you know.
The control you have now, you know, and, and not renouncing it to, because, you
know, like having the revelation fairly early on, like changing a nappy about
six months old in the middle of the night and like suddenly remembering the
experience of someone changing my nappy.
What?
You can remember that far back?
It's like, it's, well, it's a very, it's like, it's a memory is the right word.
But it doesn't resemble even like the five year old memories I've got.
It's like it was through sensation, because my hands were cold, right?
And I'm sleep deprived and there's all this, you know, like
in a very suggestible state.
And all of it, my son's body reacted to like the coldness of my
hands in the middle of the night.
And all of a sudden I had like a sense memory of cold hands.
Like, and I, and like.
Uh, and actually, this is not so bad, I also had a memory of like
doing a way in the middle of that and it like, like, and I was like,
Oh wow, it's all coming back to me.
And then like, and then I had this sudden realization that like, Oh, I
am my parents and they were me and he is, this child is me and I'm, okay.
It's like the illusion of the separate self, the separate, you
know, the illusion of the You know, we're all individuals, right?
So feeling that like epic cosmic connection to like all the generations
before and to the one coming after me, I was like, Oh, okay.
That was a really big help.
And that one, that was like my acid moment without acid, just, it happened
early on in the experience of parenting.
Thank God for that because that was the key that started to unlock all the
other stuff and then going, Oh man, my parents made so many mistakes and I
go, Oh God, I've got to forgive them.
Ah, I understand, but then I was given the equipment to understand at the same time.
Oh, I can see why they made these mistakes.
Ah, okay.
Now it's, once you begin to, once you realize this is very therapy stuff,
once you realize you can get better and that you want to get better, that's it.
It's all possible after that.
Still takes a lot of
Ali: work though.
So much work, like you just think, okay, I've talked about it, I'm
done now, I'm good, I'm well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then it's just
Joe: so much work.
I mean, I had a period this year where, you know, I'd gone into
therapy and I had known that my dad had fucked his life up and died.
So that was obvious.
Yeah.
But I'd always protected my mum in my own mind.
And then what became obvious was that mum had sort of fucked things up as well,
which is the ultimate therapy cliche I guess, but then it led to some hard
conversations with my mum and a bit of tension, but then I had to look again
in the present moment and who's standing before me is this kind little old lady.
Who loves me unconditionally, and only wants the best for me, with
clearly her own horrific trauma history, much worse than mine.
And it's like, it took a few months, and it wasn't, I just, I didn't even
have resentments, I had, my therapist and I had to dig them up, have a look
at them, I didn't even know they were there, have some hard conversations
with my mum on some long walks.
Feel all the uncomfortable feelings, and then, back into the present
moment, completely forgive the past.
And I think it goes to what you were saying, and maybe that's
where Emmett's got it wrong, is now it's a different peace between us.
It's a peace after some conflict, you know?
It's not this peace based with simmering resentment, that's so deep
down, because you can't hate your mum.
So, so deep down that, like, why am I shitty after five minutes in a company?
And then, in the hard conversation, she said, well, you've always seemed
to have this bitterness towards me.
And in my mind, no, no, I love you unconditionally.
I have no bitterness towards my mum.
My dad fucked his life up and died.
Mum is the rock.
Mum always, you know, was there, did the right things financially.
Sam: So you're being unfair to her there, when you won't
admit to the resentment, you
know.
Joe: But yeah, it was never a human picture of her.
And then once what the therapy revealed is, is her shortcomings, and the ways
in which she fucked me up as a kid.
And now I have, I mean, I spoke to her on the way here to record this,
like I have a good, solid relationship with her, but some stuff's been
aired, some stuff's been dealt with.
and then the forgiveness is the crucial part.
That's, the action is actually in the forgiveness.
The action is not in the digging up the past.
It's what people don't get about therapy, I think.
It's like, well, why do I want to dig up dirt on my mum?
I kind of get why you don't want to do that.
But when you dig it up, you're willing to have the hard conversation
and then you're willing to forgive.
It's like, suddenly, you're in a new realm of that relationship, you know,
which is nice, which I get to do that.
My mom's in her seventies, you know, I get to do that as part of our life together.
So thank God for therapy in that, in that respect, but I wouldn't say it was easy.
And there was a time for a few months this year where I was
really fucking angry at my mom.
Yeah.
You know, but I never allowed that for myself as a teenager
or when that shit was happening.
I dig it.
Sam: I dig it.
Yeah.
I had a, not quite the same cause I can't talk to her, but you know, I uncovered.
The fact that, Oh man, no, I actually am really cross at this
person and yeah, it was good.
It's good to do it.
Um, essential.
Look, if you want to honor the person and honor yourself, like it's
it, you have a duty to the truth.
You do like
Ali: a complete picture of that person and faults and all.
And that's right.
It's going from that stage of childhood idealism that we want to have of our
parents and them being right because they're supposed to be the protectors and
to keep us safe and, you know, so it's an idealized version and then realizing,
oh, hang on, they've made some mistakes or they're imperfect people too and,
and yeah, getting to a place of, okay, well, what impact has that had on me?
And that's the exploration that you have in therapy.
But then, yeah, moving past that towards forgiveness and going, okay, well,
They did the best they could with the tools they had, or the understanding of
why they made the decisions that they did, even if they were the wrong ones.
and yeah, moving to a place of real forgiveness.
Like, I mean, I've certainly...
with my mum, which, you know, over the years we had a very, say,
tumultuous sort of relationship.
But like, you know, in the last, particularly the last few years in
therapy, it's been, and also I think for herself and the work that she's
done on herself and her understanding of herself, it's been huge for both
of us and understanding, I think actually just having diagnoses
for both of us and understanding.
Oh, okay.
There are reasons for these things.
It's not that this person actually intentionally, a lot of the stuff
that we had done or the hurt that we caused each other was so much
to do with the behaviors around our diagnoses, rather than actually, it was
never anything malicious or anything, you know, intentional about it.
It was always just, you know, rubbing each other the wrong way, basically.
And, you know, and.
Yeah, and so, so much of that we've been able to move past from, and
it's been, relationships entirely different now than it was five years
Joe: ago.
Have you forgiven her?
Yeah.
Have you forgiven your father?
Best so.
Does he listen to
Ali: the show?
He does, he has, yeah.
He has.
Yeah, yeah.
Look, he would understand.
Yeah, like, there's, there's absolutely forgiven him in, in
so many ways with so many things.
And there's still a few things, like I said, you know, that are still,
you know, still working through.
And I know he's got.
I don't know that he'll ever be able to forgive me for the things
he's perceived, um, or things of me.
So, um, so there is still that tension between the two of
Joe: us.
Because, because I didn't know that I had any issues with
my mother, I have created...
25 years of resentments in my relationship with women.
And I need to go out somehow and ask for forgiveness, but God knows none of them
are going to listen to this podcast.
Well, they might.
And God knows I don't know how to switch that part of me off that
is fucking up those relationships.
But if I didn't think it was of...
Sam: I mean, I do.
No, I do.
The amount of work you put in to trying to, he's like, one
day even just spelt it out.
Look, put it on me.
Like literally the bitterness, the resentment, the anger, the abuse
that you want to give to this person.
Just give it to me.
It's what you're doing anyway.
You're just doing it in passive aggressive ways instead of like
coming at it, you know, like go at it.
I can take it, you know, and, you know, and just going just
a little bit of the way in.
Yeah, I'm gonna, yep, all right.
I'm going to tell the truth about the folks and not just them, other adults.
Okay.
Now I'm going to defend them and just, you know, I had to watch me put up
the walls and start defending them.
And it's like, okay.
All right.
Well, you have to ask yourself, who are you protecting here?
What are you protecting?
You know.
Why are you defending this?
And as everything in therapy does, in my opinion, it all eventually leads
back to some sort of self protection, like the things you're doing.
Yeah,
Ali: absolutely.
That's exactly what my psychologist would say.
It's just your brain has decided to do this because it needed to
keep you safe in that moment.
And that's what was keeping you safe.
Sam: Your brain's decided to do what?
To maintain the illusion that the parents were good after all.
Ali: So, for you, your protection was having an idealised version of
your mother, was to keep, kept you
safe.
Sam: It wasn't about being nice to her, it was serving your purposes.
Ali: It was serving your, yeah, it was like, if my mum's, like, there's
nothing wrong with my relationship with my mum and my mum's great, she's, you
know, and it's an idealised version of her that keeps you safe in that
you've had the parent that you needed.
Joe: But most people would never unpick that, right?
Sam: Well, yeah, of course.
Yeah, unless you go therapy.
Yeah.
Or they've got a very, very...
Clever friend who makes just the right remark at the right time
and it starts something, you know, it's gotta be a bit more thorough.
There are, there are sometimes processes that can occur organically.
I will say that does happen sometimes, but everyone, if you're
listening to this is ringing any bells at all, just go to therapy.
Don't wait for the organic accident to happen.
Yeah, take charge.
. Yes.
. I guess
Joe: I could get, yeah, I've never really thought about how much time.
I spent with those two humans from the age of 0 to 18.
Well, I moved out of home the day I turned 20, so the exact first 20 years of my
life, like, the shit, that's what came to me, was like, my god, like, the shit
that was going on when I was a teenager.
And, and I very early, at a very early age, went into like, drug use, like,
smoking weed, and if you're smoking weed and hanging out with your friends,
and Listening to Hendrix properly for the first time and just sort
of blowing your mind and whatever.
Yeah, I remember it.
Then if, if other things are going on with the adults, like who gives
a f Yeah, like the adults are letting me smoke weed in the house.
Yeah, I'm having all the friends over.
I'm bipolar So the weed is doing like much more for me than it's doing for them.
Yes, and the Hendrix Yeah, and like that's what I did.
I checked out man Things are things got rough around 15, 16 and I just
checked out with drugs dissociation and I kept that going for 10 years and
then I checked out with alcohol for 10 years and then I stopped and then Five
years after that, I started therapy.
But by the time I got to therapy, I had this addiction recovery understanding
of the importance of resentment.
So, I'd done a lot of grunt work.
Um, but the mother stuff was still very hidden.
And how it impacts my relationships with women, I still...
You guys would probably have a better read on that than me.
From the inside, I can't...
I know that it's there.
But I, I know, and I know it's probably the key to the whole series
of unfortunate events, but I, I, I, I can't put it all together and at the
moment I can't afford more therapy, so I'm on a break until next year.
Sam: Well, maybe, I mean, maybe I can help out a little bit.
Uh, Ali, Ali, do you, I feel like...
Ali: No, I just, I was just going to say, like, I think, like,
to come back to that point of, like, I've been keeping you safe.
And I think that is really the root of all of my,
Joe: yeah.
Oh, so maybe I'm looking for another woman to perform the same role.
Ali: That will keep you, that will, it'll somehow...
That makes sense actually.
You need
Sam: to be the safety that the mother wasn't.
Ali: Yeah, and it'll be...
Need them to be the safety.
And you'll be safe when you're in this loving, stable relationship.
Oh, but that person
Joe: they never existed in the first place.
Well, that's
Sam: the problem.
So instead of...
Making her the safety that you thought you had with the mother or
maybe you're a little bit wiser and you're like you're going to be the
safety that I didn't have with the mother, but the further insight...
Ali: How can you make
Sam: yourself safe?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Joe: Ah, and my answer to that is God.
Yes, or drugs and alcohol, that's right.
Well now it's God, so now it's a higher power and I place my emotional security
in the hands of my loving higher power.
Well, I'm having a...
Deepening relationship with, and I will no longer ever hand that over to a woman.
That's the plan.
Yeah.
Sam: Or, or, or for that matter to, you know, your guru cult leader or
to, you know, whoever, but yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Cause everything, everything's deeply parental, you know, if you buy into like
the Western psychoanalytical tradition, which I do, but, uh, and you know, I can
find evidence for that elsewhere too.
But the further insight that I was actually going to mention, though,
I mean, Ali, excellent point, but the other bit I was going to mention
was, okay, so you, you are now going to play out the safety that I had.
Oh, the safety I didn't have.
Oh, but what's actually going to get played out is the
thing that actually happened.
Yes,
Ali: exactly.
Cause that's, what's familiar.
Cause that's what,
Joe: like a tumultuous relationship between
Ali: two adults.
Cause that's what you've witnessed.
That's what feels normal to you.
That's what feels safe to you because that's what.
It's incredibly
Joe: depressing.
That just says to me, I should just, it's incredibly depressing because that
just says to me, I should just lock myself in my room and never go outside.
This and God knows I promote this on dating apps and women go and listen to it.
Um, yeah, who listening to this would want to date me if I'm walking around
with a tumultuous relationship that I'm looking to play out again and again
Sam: and again.
They just heard you have a revelation.
You're one step ahead of where you were before.
Joe: And so what you do, a few steps ahead of a lot of fucking
guys in this town, exactly.
And so
Ali: when you get to this place where you then you're so aware of, Oh, like, you
know, they talk about like the red flags or whatever it is you want to call them.
But then when you then meet somebody.
And then you start to see these certain dynamics that feel really familiar, like
I know how this is going to play out.
Sometimes they feel comfortable.
They feel really comfortable and they might feel really good even.
Or they might trigger
Sam: you a second later.
Exactly.
Ali: And so, but what they, you realize is this is not good for
me or this is not healthy for me.
I'm not going to date.
And you make, consciously make the decision to not engage in that.
Or you like, I see all these other good qualities in this person.
I'm not going to engage in these dynamics, this is how I'm going to be in this
relationship and whether that person can then match that and it's healthy.
You can consciously choose to have your relationship in a different way
to what you, feels instinctual to you.
Hmm.
And that's the thing, it's actually undoing what feels instinctual, and that
instinctual behavior is created through, yeah, childhood, and parents, and trauma,
and witnessing their marriages, and all that sort of stuff, you can, all of that,
yeah, it, it, you, you can make, and I, I mean, as a, If I look at the evolution
of my significant relationships and sort of my first major relationship, a lot
of, you know, it wasn't exactly like my parents, but like, it was, it played out
quite similarly, the dynamic, because, and I, I realized after the fact, like,
oh wow, that was so similar, but, and the, the next significant relationship
I had after that looked quite different, but there was still elements of that.
And then I've.
The people I've dated, you know, after that, it's looked less
and less and less like that.
So...
Evolution's the right word.
Yeah, it really is.
It's an evolution.
And so, you know, I'm now at a place where I'm going into a relationship with...
A very different view of what I want, what I expect, what
I think is healthy, like, um,
Joe: and...
Yeah, it's really annoying.
I'm not happy for you.
Ali's like, oh, he's like, oh, I've got a feeling, I've got a feeling,
I'm just gonna download this dating app, I'm gonna swipe once, oh,
I'm gonna meet the perfect guy.
Oh my god, before we've even met.
This is perfect . And then, oh, now we've met, oh, everything's still perfect
and cut to like over two months later.
Yeah, everything's still perfect.
I'm like, oh man, fuck you Ali like, just like, where did this come from?
She's done less therapy than me.
Clearly.
This is, this is fair.
Everything she's saying is like, it's like.
She's just graduating uni and I'm in primary school from
like therapy understanding.
And now she's like having a happy relationship and I'm
in no way happy for her.
The competition.
I'm getting a resentment on Ali just
Sam: for being happy.
It's so fair.
I feel it too.
No, the, I think that's exactly right.
We can easily get caught up in the battle to be more evolved and more mature and
like, Oh, my psychotherapy is going great.
How about yours?
Mine's
Ali: Yeah, well, I mean, it's certainly not a competition and like, I cannot, I,
I mean, for all of, it is so much, like, as you said before, it is such hard work.
I wouldn't wish it on anybody, like the, the, the, the amount of pain and
reliving trauma and talking about all of that and how hard that has been.
I wouldn't wish that on
Joe: anyone.
Yeah.
But you got yourself into the place where you potentially could be at the
start of quite a good relationship.
Yeah, it's possible.
Whereas I'm still stumbling around no closer.
I don't know.
I,
Sam: I don't agree.
I think it's just very hard to see the progress.
You've got to remind yourself.
That's, that's
Ali: when I, I mean, I get bogged down with that too sometimes where I
feel like I'm not, I'm floundering.
I'm not doing all the things that I said or wanted to do because I've always
had I keep falling short of my ideals.
What's happening?
Unrealistic expectations of myself without having any understanding of my
own capacity or what even A normal, like anybody's capacity, but no, I can do that.
I can, you know, I let
Sam: alone such cripples as
Ali: us.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And with all the limitations and, and just, and being, and being very
human, I just have always had these unrealistic expectations of myself.
And so I always, you know, feel like I'm falling short and that's
the thing that my therapist always comes back to is this like, yeah, but
look at you a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, and it is, it is.
It's huge, that change.
Last week, goddammit.
Yeah, like there is changes every week, like really positive things, really small
things, but it's all in, and it's not linear, but it's in the right direction.
And I was actually talking with a friend about this the other day,
you know, you'd had a setback and.
You know, we, yeah, it was like, recovery is not linear.
You are going to have setbacks, but you, it's still, it's still on
the scale of things moving in the
Sam: right direction.
It's so easy to lose hope, even with a
Ali: small setback.
Yeah.
You could be doing 99 percent of the things you need to be doing and it's
completely human to mess up one of them.
and you feel like, oh my God, it's, you know, I'm gonna throw
the baby out with the bath water.
But it's not, yeah, it's, it's like, okay, the real progress is
getting to the point of understanding and accepting this is where I am.
I just need to just move forward.
This is where I am the next day.
Ah, and that's exactly how, yeah.
I mean, it CA lot of around the eating disorder stuff, it comes back.
It's that same mentality and that same thinking.
It's just.
You know, this is the next meal and it doesn't matter what's happened
earlier in the day or yesterday or last week or last year, you have to
play each shot, each shot as it comes.
And it really comes down to each meal you have.
It's a conscious, it's very, it takes up a lot of bandwidth and it's very
much, you know, a huge thing that, yeah.
And it, it's so, it's like watching, like, you know, particularly with
eating disorders and how that mirrors.
It's the behaviours, all those, that thought pattern of all that other
sort of self destructive behaviour.
It's very much, it's yeah, it's a mirror of it.
Sam: And don't you think when you first get, start to get that sense of
an insight into how it's all connected and how it's actually, oh, it's the
same organic process taking place with these different dysfunctions, at first.
It's overwhelming and you go, Oh no, no, no, no, it's, it's all, Oh
no, it's all tied too much together.
It's, it's inextricable, um, trapped.
So, at first, when you start to get an insight into your condition, your
behaviour, your suffering, and you know, the, the things you're perpetuating
on yourself, it can, because of that greater insight, feel inescapable.
I think my theory, personal theory there is, it's very...
It's scary at first when you're letting go of the fantasies and
letting go of the fantasies that, well, it leaves you feeling vulnerable.
The fantasies are protecting you, but it's fantasies that
get in the way of forgiveness.
It's fantasies that keep you in resentments because resentments
are a form of fantasy.
When I understood that, like, you know, from, um, some reading
I did on Lakan, the subject is entertaining all these fantasies.
And, uh, they're negative and they're positive, but they're all useless alike.
So whether you've got this, you know, this person's demonic, this
person's saintly, or you're demonic or saintly, or you're an exalted being
or a lowly being, all of it's fantasy and like the desire to continually
retreating into fantasy, we have to just keep pulling ourselves away from
Joe: it.
And I had a breakup 18 months ago and have gone, you know, I've just been trapped.
Yeah.
What in, in, in fantasies, uh, replaying things like Emmett said,
just over and over and Revivifying.
There's no more revivifying to do on with that person.
You know, I did, I did a six month relationship and 18 months of
revivifying, you know, but, but clearly, clearly there's more that that last
relationship came to represent every single relationship previous to that.
And all encapsulated in this one person who, you know, never asked for that.
Um, but it's, it's, that's what I mean about dragging
myself into the present moment.
Yes.
But, but it's a perfect example because whether it's my therapist or
my friends, God knows I never need to talk about that person again.
It's not like there's some unspoken...
It's not like there's something that needs to be brought out into the light,
it's all been brought out into the light.
The answer
Sam: doesn't lie there.
Over and over again.
The answer doesn't lie there.
Joe: The series of events that happened across six months have been dealt
with thoroughly in therapy and dealt with thoroughly with my friends.
So if these images keep coming back to me.
That's, that's where it's, PTSD, but that's at the point where I
think it just needs to be neglected.
Well, no, that's right.
You know what I mean?
Rather than, than constantly brought up again.
Well
Sam: to be, so to be full circle back to what Ali was getting at, I think
what you're getting at early, tell me if I'm wrong or right, um, sometimes
we're not in the position yet.
for it to be neglected organically and for it to just organically decay.
And so when we neglect something, what I think what Emmett's getting at is that we
refuse to water that plant of resentment.
And we refuse to give it sunlight and nutrient.
And we recognize that we've been feeding it and we make a
commitment to stop doing that.
And when we catch ourselves doing it, okay, I'm just going to stop.
Joe: But also, what's the lesson?
And the lesson is...
Yes, no more with making a woman my higher power.
Yes, of course.
No more with that.
Yes.
Like, and it, maybe I needed to think about it so much to finally
come to this, this final conclusion of like, all right, like, okay,
that's not where my safety lies.
No.
It never has been, and it never will be.
And there is no safety anyway, cause I'm going to die,
Sam: so.
That's right.
Renounced safety.
It's a tough thing to say to people, man, isn't it?
Joe: Renounced security.
Sure, but then the other part which I didn't have until I read Emmett's
book is the positive thinking, which is so corny and American and
Instagram that I hate it on one level.
He's almost talking about manifesting, actually.
So he goes, but, for some reason, because it's a weird 1930s American text,
Sam: It's slightly more palatable.
It's more
Joe: palatable to be like, okay, so Jesus Christ talked about the secret
place, and in my secret place, I need to put some positive thoughts.
There's the old spiritual, which I think Tom Waits sang.
As well, which is always keep a diamond in your mind.
Yeah, so all I've done for the last couple of weeks is on a few
things that come to mind a lot.
I've had some very simple, positive images that I've been putting not in
place of the, the train of thought.
This happens to you guys too.
I'm sure the train of thought is so fast.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an express.
Yeah.
So by the time you start the train of thought, it's like, ooh.
There goes the train of thought.
Here it goes.
Yeah.
At the end, I place the diamond.
Yeah.
At the end I do the simple image about that particular, and I only have mostly,
I only have four or five trains of thought that are, that are habitual.
Mm-Hmm.
At the end, I just.
A future ideal, a future ideal of a simple image where something
positive is happening in that area.
Great.
Right, and it's had this fantastic effect, I feel, a lot better.
The
Sam: patient must devise their own medicine and repeatedly self administer.
Who said that?
I did.
But
Joe: he did the quotation voice!
Well, it,
Sam: I, well, because, it was a funny story.
Joe: I thought you were going to say it was Freud or
Sam: something.
Well, no, it was my proudest Twitter moment, my only one really.
I was reading a bunch of Lacan tweets and there was a great one from the
Lacan Circle of Australia or whatever.
And it was about, yeah, the therapist doesn't have the medicine.
Alright?
And don't be telling the patient that you have the medicine.
Don't be letting on in any way you have the medicine,
like they've got the medicine.
It was basically the upshot of the quote.
It was all lacan and wordy and unnecessarily obscure.
So I replied.
So you're saying the patient must devise their own medicine and repeatedly
self-administer and they, they, they retweeted and I was like, yes,
Joe: yes.
Retweet from the Australian Macan
Sam: Society.
Yeah.
It was like, oh, a bunch of psych nerds, psychology nerds.
Like endorsed my statement like I'm a master now.
Um, but what I took, but I think I did understand what it was getting at, and
I've gone and read a bit more about it and I think I understand it that.
Yeah, the therapist obviously does have expert knowledge and they are
there as a kind of, you know, guide and a coach and, you know, as you've
discussed, like a coaching relationship and they are pointing you back to
positive things and building up your strategies and there's all the sorts,
sort of specialities and skills they've got that they can bring to it.
But at the end of the day, you found this little thing for yourself and you did it.
And it worked.
And you decided it worked.
Oh, someone
Joe: gave me the book.
Sam: Okay, sure, but you had to decide to act on it.
Yeah.
And you put your own unique practice in place when you did it.
Joe: Everything led up to me being wide open.
To Jesus Christ's words.
Sure.
No, I love it.
I love it.
The honesty.
Years of pseudo Buddhism and years of addiction recovery.
You just needed some proper Jeebus.
And the ground was being laid the whole time.
Once you go Jeebus, you never go back.
I picked up this book on the Sermon of the Mount.
And it just went straight in.
Yeah.
Like no resistance.
Man, this happens to people all the time.
No resistance.
It's just like, and now I've gone back through and I'm just highlighting and
it's like half the books is highlighted because I'm like, Oh my God, these
are my, and it's, and it's actually a lot like the quote we read out.
It makes perfect sense.
The stuff that doesn't make sense is the stuff with, with Jesus in the, in the
words and all the, so I would never send those quotes to people much, but like.
I don't know.
I'm not gonna, I'm also not gonna go read the Bible, but,
Sam: well, most of it's not worth reading, honestly.
Joe: It had to be weird.
And it had to be weird.
But he says that too.
He says, forget about the old.
He does . He says, you know, but he says that Jesus says, forget
about the Old Testament God, the old, there is no vengeful God.
There is only be a loving That's, and the loving God is only right
here in the present moment.
He, yes.
Yes.
And he's always been here with you.
That's why I keep, and you have to have a direct experience
and you do not need a church.
Mm-Hmm.
. That's what's on offer, and that makes perfect sense to me.
So he's a Quaker?
Ali: Was he a Quaker?
Uh,
Sam: no.
Emma, he sounds like a Quaker.
He sounds like a Quaker.
Ali: Well, he's
Joe: not a Quaker.
He's no church.
All he mentions the Quakers, he mentions every church and says every church
has it wrong, because Jesus did not preach a doctrine, is what he's saying.
That's a bit of a rabbit hole, I think we should probably wrap
it up, I've got a headache.
It's a beautiful rabbit hole.
Sam: Ali's DNA of Emmett, yes, he's a mystic and he's gone
down his own rabbit hole, but...
There will be a theological trace there somewhere to
Joe: be happy to be a Quaker if that's
Sam: all I want.
It doesn't mean go be a Quaker, but like, it's just an interesting
resonance with what they were saying.
But, but, but, but,
Joe: well, I guess what I'm saying is spiritually, which
is very hard to talk about.
Sure.
Especially with a couple of, with an atheist and an agnostic.
Spiritually it makes, this book makes perfect sense to me.
It makes perfect sense of my phenomenological experience of
spirituality as a direct present moment sense of being loved
and supported by something.
And he would say that's all Jesus was describing.
However, it goes further.
You have to get yourself right in the secret place, which is your consciousness.
You
Sam: have to look after your
Joe: consciousness.
It's not enough for me to sit here and say nice things to you, Sam,
and you, Ali, and secretly hate you.
I have to have only positive thoughts about you.
Or I have to associate with someone else.
But I can't do both.
I can't secretly hate you both.
And the illusion is that I'm getting away with those nasty thoughts.
What Emmet's saying is, no, no, you pay a price for all
Sam: your horrible thoughts.
And that's why Jesus was, he was on about radical forgiveness.
I mean, like leaving aside the historical issue existing or not, it doesn't matter.
The teachings are there.
Radical forgiveness, you know, turning the other cheek.
Oh, and like, that is this, the words are so cliched, but like, I mean, literally.
In the theology, as I understand it, it's like this person is, you
know, horribly oppressed by the Roman Empire and, you know, so all these
other people and it was a tough time.
And they're literally going to nail him to a cross and he's going
to go, yep, no, it's all good.
You do what you got to do, man, you know, like that's how far
they're going to go with it.
Yeah.
And it's like, that's a level of forgiveness.
None of us here could even begin to contemplate, or perhaps you
can begin to contemplate it.
Yeah.
But I think what's so powerful about that, it's like victory in death.
It was how one theologian explained it to me.
But to me,
Joe: yeah, but the Jesus story makes it insane.
It's a complete surrender.
It is.
It's insane unless you've experienced some Christ consciousness.
Well,
Sam: no, no, no, no.
Zizek, Zizek would say...
No, no, no, all of this makes perfect sense from an atheist
psychological point of view.
Well, I keep pointing you back to Zizek and Lacan.
But
Joe: I'm understanding spirituality.
And
Sam: Freud, Freud came out of a biblical tradition
Joe: in his own way.
But I'm understanding spirituality experientially in my whole...
Being, of course, so that I can understand suddenly what Jesus is saying because
I'm having an experience with it.
Was he?
No, he wasn't.
I wouldn't try to intellectualize it and explain it.
Well, no, we're trying to do that right now.
Well, I'm trying to avoid doing that.
What I'm saying is I picked up this weird book from the 30s and it all went
straight in and in under two weeks, my thinking has become vastly less toxic.
Sam: Makes sense, makes sense.
So,
Joe: if that leads me down the path to become a Christian, I
actually don't care, because all I want is to not be in so much pain.
And fear.
Fear and pain be gone, you know?
And maybe Jesus was my homie the whole time and I was trying to find
it with sexual partners, you know?
Sure.
Sam: Well, no, again, there's a counterpart to that, uh, in, I
can't give you chapter and verse.
You know, the, the
Joe: woman at the well.
I never met her.
I know about the girl by the whirlpool looking for the new fool.
Sam: Well, it's a bit like that.
All right.
So Jesus is down at the, Jesus is down at the well and there's
a woman there and she's had seven husbands or whatever it says.
And it, there's details that escape me, but the overall thing is.
He's not looking at her the way that other people have looked at
her and like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, you're a tramp or whatever, or
geez, you must be bad at marriage or, you know, did you murder them all?
Or the many judgments people might have in that situation.
Jesus is just like, no, I see you.
I dig it.
You've been to some places.
You've been through a lot.
You're ready for the next thing.
You didn't find it there in marriage, but you will find it.
And like, she's like, yeah, what do you know?
I'm the woman at the well.
Yes, man.
That's what I'm trying to
Joe: say.
We've got an episode
Sam: title.
Yeah.
She's thirsty.
She's going to the well to drink.
But Jesus is
Ali: my homie.
I like that.
You could have that issue.
Joe: No.
I'm the, Joe is the woman at the well.
Yes.
Sam: Episode title.
No.
You're the woman who had seven husbands.
And she, and you know, she loved all of that, you know,
there's all these layers to it.
I've heard this story pulled apart in many different ways, like the, the
symbolic, the symbolism, the theology of it, the psychoanalytics of it.
there's a reason Zizek takes the book of Romans, St.
Paul's stuff quite seriously, because it's not just like an intellectualization,
like, you know, from what I understand of his encounter with it, you know,
he's He just grew up in a Christian country like so many of us did.
I mean, just in the Soviet Union, but you know what I mean.
And then he became interested in psychoanalysis.
And then, you know, I started reading Hegel and Freud and Marx
and realizing, oh, there's so much psychology in all this stuff.
You know, reading Lacan and then eventually becoming the
towering figure he is today.
But at the heart of an awful lot of what he's on about is like what
he calls atheist Christianity.
Like he's embraced it.
Like he's like, no, no, this is legit.
He can't do the God thing, but he's like, no, no, this is, this teaching
makes sense to me psychologically and intellectually, but it also resonates
with his experience His own suffering.
So, like, phenomenologically, like, it works.
Well,
Joe: I would say, I already had a God, and now I've come to Jesus.
Yeah.
But, I don't think I'm going to decide that Jesus is the only way to God.
No, no.
Because I already had God before I met Jesus.
Well, that's right.
You don't have to do that.
But, but, but...
In the very simple sense of being a spiritual seeker, and I would say in my
experience in the last few years, a finder of things, spiritually, is that I just
want the fear and pain to stop, you know, and probably that's why I drank as well,
and it kind of works while you're drunk.
Oh, sure.
If nothing else doesn't, it comes back twice as bad in the morning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
. But, um, yeah.
Anyway, we've gone very deep on this.
Well,
Sam: absolutely.
I knew, I knew where I knew it would go deep.
. Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I
Joe: endorsed that one.
Yeah.
Anyway, I think we should wrap it up.
Sam: Mm.
Thank you Emmett Fox.
Um,
Joe: grievances
Sam: be gone.
Yeah.
They're bad for you.
So whether that guy's a raving loony or a wise man well.
A true mystic would say it's both mate, um,
Joe: yeah, but there's something in it.
Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
So, oh, that's right.
I'm going to do one last thing.
The bad news, you know, your parents, the good news, um, they messed up.
Probably didn't mess up because they were evil.
Probably messed up because of their nature and their circumstance
and the things they didn't know and the experiences they'd had.
Which you're not aware of as a child, and then years later you find out, Oh
gee, this dreadful thing happened to my mum, and you know, Or you know, Dad
had pretty bad depression really, for a lot of his twenties and thirties.
Okay, well you know what, once you let go of that fantasy that, No, they weren't
bad after all, it was me, it was me, And I'm going to stop defending them,
I'm going to stop defending myself.
Done with all this defending, you know.
Let's just, let's just concede.
Let's just concede everything.
Yes.
It's all true.
And you know what?
Oh man, it's such bad news.
They weren't perfect after all.
Oh, you didn't get looked after.
Oh, that's not bad news.
You knew that anyway.
You know, Winnicott, the catastrophe you fear has already occurred.
The thing you're trying to prevent and keep yourself safe from, you've
been living with it this whole time.
You don't need to keep yourself safe from it.
You've been in it.
Like you can take it.
That's what I'm telling you, and then like the good news, once you realise how flawed
they were for reasons that they didn't have full control over, okay, same for me.
And now the door can swing both ways and you go, I'm not better
than they are, but we all have to...
We all have to take responsibility.
We all have to do better if we can.
We all must do what we can.
Yeah.
You know?
And then once you get there, it's like, oh man, it's a bit easier.
Joe: Yeah.
I'm not fucking my kids up with drugs and alcohol.
Yeah.
I'm fucking my kids up by being so distracted by my phone and I see it.
Yeah.
Every day I am with them and I just watch it happen.
Maybe like my parents watched it happen with booze and, and drugs.
I don't know.
I can't.
I feel like I can't stop it and I just watch it unfold
and I feel like I'm balanced.
It's probably better than what I lived through and they're certainly
not in a house full of drama.
They're really not, but I'm so disconnected, so, so disconnected.
So it's like, I don't know, I, you know, I've only got a couple of
years left to try and write that a bit, but I'm not even trying it.
Well, don't,
Sam: well, no, well don't try.
You know, it's like, Ali, when you were talking about Relationships and
like, um, the, you know, the evolution and getting, uh, getting another crack
at it and going, all right, this is how we're going to do it this time.
We're going to be quite conscious and I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The ideals and the principles are really good.
Have those there for sure.
But we're always going to fall short.
Yeah, always.
And, but then like, it's like, oh, but it's so easy that the more we
catch ourselves in the fantasy.
Projecting onto the other good things, bad things, you know, making
it their fault, making it their responsibility or, or making it all
our responsibility, all those engaging in all those illusions and fantasies.
We can just keep catching ourselves doing that.
And I was like, it must be so weird.
Sitting down with like a relatively new person and just going, okay,
let's just try and be in the present here and like, see, let me try and
listen and understand them, but not.
Not, not go too far on the understanding, you know, and
Ali: just like as they are in that moment, as they
Sam: are in that moment, because it's not, it's not the rest of everything, is it?
No,
Ali: it's not.
You can only take them yet as they are in that moment.
And it's actually, it's, it's a really lovely feeling.
It is man.
Sam: Just, yeah, it's good.
And if they get it wrong, that's as they are in that moment.
Yeah.
Joe: There you go Joe.
See you guys.
Sam: See ya.