7 Lenses to See Reality: How Trauma, Coherence & Consciousness Unlock a Deeper Life | Charla Pitre

Support the show:

https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

One on One Video Call W/George

https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting

In this transformative episode of True Life Podcast, Charla Pitre reveals her groundbreaking 7 Lenses framework for navigating life with clarity, presence, and deep coherence. From surviving childhood trauma and abusive relationships to thriving in Hawaii through radical self-awareness, Charla shares how she turned survival instincts into powerful tools for conscious living.

Discover how the heart-brain loop, electromagnetic fields, and nested systems shape our reality. Learn to see consequences as feedback instead of punishment, rewire your nervous system from reactivity to responsiveness, and bridge quantum physics with spirituality. Charla breaks down each of the seven interconnected lenses — Systems, Quantum, Consciousness, Intelligence, Lived Experience, Spirituality, and Relational — showing how they work together to cut through modern noise and reveal hidden connections.

This conversation dives deep into trauma healing, CPTSD, self-abandonment vs coherence, the observer perspective, inner child work, and why certainty can actually limit growth while embracing uncertainty builds profound wisdom. Whether you’re healing from trauma, seeking meaning, building conscious leadership, or simply want to stop reacting and start responding with intention, this episode delivers practical insights you can apply immediately.

Charla Pitre’s unique blend of lived experience, systems thinking, and spiritual intelligence offers a revolutionary map for personal evolution in an increasingly complex world.

Key Topics: 7 Lenses framework, heart brain coherence, quantum spirituality, nervous system regulation, radical self accountability, relational lens, meaning making, observer consciousness.

Connect with Charla Pitre:
https://charlapitre.substack.com/p/seeing-the-world-through-seven-lenses

Substack & LinkedIn @ Charla Pitre

If you’re ready to upgrade how you see yourself and the world, press play now.

One on One Video call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting

Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US

🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door.
Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first year

https://www.district216.com/

Legal Disclaimer / Release of Liability for Podcast:
This  content  is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this transmission constitutes legal, financial, or professional advice. I am not your lawyer, financial advisor, or telling you what to do.

This podcast documents historical events, analyzes publicly available information, and explores hypothetical scenarios. Any actions discussed are presented as educational examples of how systems work—not as instructions or recommendations.

You are solely responsible for your own decisions and actions. Any application of information presented here is at your own risk. I assume no liability for consequences of actions you choose to take.

By continuing to listen, you acknowledge that this content is educational commentary, that you’re responsible for researching applicable laws in your jurisdiction, and that you’ll consult appropriate professionals before taking any action that could affect your legal, financial, or personal situation.

Creators and Guests

Host

George Monty

My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!

What is TrueLife?

What happens when a scientist, a mystic, and a comedian walk into your nervous system and refuse to leave? TrueLife is speculative audio that takes the most dangerous ideas in neuroscience, consciousness, and human potential — and makes them impossible to unhear. Fictional compounds. Real mechanisms. Experiences that don’t have names yet. For the seekers, the rebels, and everyone who has ever suspected that reality is significantly stranger than advertised.

George (00:01.48)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope you're all having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining, the birds are singing, hope the wind is at your back. Today I am joined by my friend Charla, a writer who sees the world through seven interconnected lenses that cut through the noise of modern life. She helps us understand how everything connects, how consequences are really just feedback, and how we can move through complexity with a little bit more clarity, presence, and meaning.

I'm excited for this one, Charlotte. Thank you for being here today. How are ya?

Charla Pitre (00:33.178)
Yeah, thank you for having having me. I'm doing great. We have a little bit of trade winds here on Oahu, so feels good. It's gonna be a hot one though. It's definitely gonna be a hot one.

George (00:44.78)
Yeah. Shout out to Hawaii. I'm so stoked you're there. I wish I was there. I bet you all the listeners are like, what, Charlotte's in Hawaii? So stoked for that. It's such a beautiful place, right?

Charla Pitre (00:52.754)
Yes. Yeah, it's it's amazing and the simplest way for me to say how I ended up here was I just tell people that the universe plopped me here. I followed coherence, refused to self-abandon, and the universe said, okay.

We're gonna give you something and they plopped it it plopped me here. And I'm not mad about it, even a little bit.

George (01:24.064)
Yeah. Yeah. I've met so many cool people when I lived out there. And that the idea of being being there is so spiritual. The same thing happened for me. Like I just I sold everything I had and condensed my life into two black bags and just moved there. And it was such an education and just

Eco ecology and environment and relationships and for those people that have been there, they probably know what we're talking about. For those that still haven't gone yet, it's like going to one of the most beautiful campuses on the entire planet and learning from nature. It's so awesome there.

Charla Pitre (02:00.011)
Absolutely. If for people that are intuitive and are able to connect with the spirit of nature, it's almost it's a religious experience to say the least. I don't like saying religious, but yeah. Without the dogma part.

George (02:04.567)
Yeah.

George (02:15.277)
That's so well said.

George (02:20.237)
Yeah. You're so connected to source there. Like it just seems like, at least for me, I could go on long hikes, or I guess even go outside and look around, and you feel so connected. There's just so many blues and greens and just it's so beautiful there. Is that yeah, it's interesting to me that we're talking about beauty, spirituality, and coherence, and just ha listening to the universe, and yet that's so much.

Charla Pitre (02:47.056)
And what better place to do it?

George (02:49.015)
There's no better place. There's none. But so much of what we're talking about now, I think dovetails with a lot of your writing. Like I was going through your Substack, and I recommend everybody check out Charlotte Petrie's Substack, the link's down below. There's so many cool articles on there. And there's so it's such a different lens through which I'm used to reading things. Like I really think you have a unique understanding and relationship with moving through life. And I'm curious about that today.

Has that always been a thing with you? Have you always seen the world a little bit different? Or is that something you developed or both?

Charla Pitre (03:20.924)
a little bit of both. It's something that I've always done even from a child, though up until a few years ago I really didn't understand what I was doing. And then it was only in the last year that I was actually able to articulate articulate it, put it into words and wanted to start sharing what I see and write about it from inside the architecture.

of how I see things.

George (03:53.728)
Yeah. The article that I read, like there was a lot of great articles that I saw, but the one that kind of jumped out at me first off was like the seven lenses through which you navigating life. And it I had to pause for a minute because I never thought about seeing a situation, be it a relationship or be it a conversation or just be it alone by yourself or the world around you as seeing it to these different lenses and it started making so much sense. I'm like, I've never thought about it that way.

But you've broken it down into like these seven different lenses. And it really helps at least it helped me to understand how to interpret information from different views all simultaneously, which I I don't think people think about that that often.

Charla Pitre (04:38.832)
Yeah, it's in kind of like the beginning stages,

Well, let me not say beginning stages. It's part of metacognition in a sense. And then after metacognition you it develops further a little bit. and that of course comes with consciously

being present in those lenses. And for me personally, it's something that has just throughout tra trauma in my life, it became a survival instinct, survival perceptions.

George (05:19.584)
Yep.

Charla Pitre (05:22.586)
that I was able to then hone into away from survival and actually apply it just to life itself instead of surviving life. I was able to look at life finally. And when you take the survival aspect out, you really start seeing the beauty of everything, and you start seeing that.

It's all connected and everything is interpreted in the relational pieces that we don't typically see. One I guess the best leading point would into it would be I've talked about the heart brain loop. And to explain that one, so our heart.

Has an electromagnetic field that extends at least seven feet out from your dermis, from your skin.

And then when you look at how the heart and the brain communicate, okay, the heart itself has its own intricate little nervous system of comprised of about roughly 40,000 neurons, okay. Now, of the information traded between the heart and the brain, okay, so it's it's going back and forth, only 20% of that is the brain putting information into the heart.

is the heart feeding information up.

George (06:54.253)
I didn't know that.

Charla Pitre (06:55.696)
So then you look at, okay, if you have if you're in a crowd or just have a few people around you, and they're within your electromagnetic field, your fields are feeding off of each other. So they're trading information. The heart sends that information up to the brain, and then you start actually interpreting after. So it's you there's a lot that goes into it.

Час і наспект.

George (07:28.629)
Yeah, it makes so much sense though. Like a lot of the times I'll walk into a room and I think other people are probably on the same page as this, but you can feel someone else's energy. And that sounds a lot like your heart interpreting these these you know ma these frequencies that like, you can kind of get a really good read on somebody if if you just

sit patiently and listen, maybe take a deep breath, like kind of read the room. And there's all those things in language that talk about reading the room or following your heart or you know getting a sense of what someone's intentions are. And I've learned that, you know, when you when you do take that information into consideration consciously, you can start making a lot better decisions instead of just an analytical, right to the point decision. Like you're leaving out a lot of information there. But

Let me let me let me bring it back a second though. I have I've also learned that survival through suffering teaches us some of the best lessons. And you had mentioned that some of these strategies through seeing these lenses and cultivating these ideas came from survival and suffering, it sounds like. At least it sounds like to me in the way you explained it, like it there were some difficult times there. Would you mind maybe sharing something that

a time in your life where you begin to develop these strategies. I know that yeah, go ahead.

Charla Pitre (08:50.322)
so I guess the first ones would be in childhood really. I was adopted, there was a lot of stuff. I moved out from my adoptive parents at sixteen, so I've been on my own since I was sixteen, so surviving really became, you know, the main way of just interacting with the world.

Abuse of marriage

Charla Pitre (09:24.764)
Just you know, a l a lot of things that reshaped, rewired my own nervous system towards survival, towards threat. And then it took it took a long time after for me to be able to convince my own nervous system that I was safe. But once I did,

George (09:26.113)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (09:52.657)
just get that l a little it wasn't a massive change. It was just finally a small click and my nervous system was like, okay, well we'll we'll try. We'll we'll try this. And a lot of that is giving your nervous system new experiences as well.

So that way it's retrained towards, I don't have to react this way. And it becomes when you're in in presence and not in survival, you become responsive instead of reactive.

George (10:29.793)
That is really well said. And I c I can speak to the idea of trauma in many ways, but I remember I remember being like a a teenager still and one my sister had a she attempted suicide and it didn't work.

And I remember at that point in time like standing over at the hospital and staring at her body and just holding her hand and being like, Don't fucking leave me. Don't leave me And that's but I remember like it is instances like that, be it be it an abusive relationship or abuse of drugs or

for people listening, any experience in your life where you are up against real loss or you're up against situations that you have no idea that are beyond your control and there's no human way to thoroughly integrate them in the moment, like that's when you begin to build these incredible patterns of seeing the world differently. And I I I I feel bad for people that go through those traumas, Charlotte, but be it abuse or for me, like lots of different loss in my life, but

Ultimately, they kind of become the catalyst for change. They become a gift to you. And like, my God, now I can see the world differently. I heard a good quote that said, there's tears that tears that make us cry, and then there's tears that wash our eyes so we can see differently. And it sounds to me like that's the only way to really begin making those changes. What are your thoughts on that?

Charla Pitre (12:02.397)
Well so what I would say is there's we're all we all have these innate abilities, okay. They're they're very natural. What trauma does is trauma amplifies it and focuses it in on a certain category. So threat, survival, trying to find safety. and then it

Like I said, you ha it really takes conscious effort and work. It takes radical self-awareness, self-accountability, self-discipline to be able to rewire yourself away from that.

But once you do, you don't lose that amplification that you gained from the trauma in a sense. You just get to refocus it. So it's the same gifts we all have. amplified and refoc repurposed is the best way to say it.

George (13:16.331)
Yeah, it's a great way to to think about that aspect. I'm gonna name I'm gonna name these first of all I want everyone to go to your Substack and read this article because it's full of awesome information. But I'm gonna read some of the what the lenses are and then maybe we can go through a little bit. So the first one is the systems lens, like seeing the bigger picture. Like what does that mean?

Charla Pitre (13:37.245)
So for me, when you talking about, you know, the human body and the electromagnetic field that we really are, we really are antennas. Our bodies were created as antennas that actu that pick up on the world around us, not just the energy in the air and other people, but in the earth itself. And then for me, what I personally believe and how I see things is we

Life is a nested system, all the way from the tiniest atoms to the cosmos. We're all in f when you look at like the heart-brain loop that I talk about, every my system interacting with your system, okay, just by us being in each other's presence. Then you look at how that's going to influence those around.

George (14:09.09)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (14:32.58)
Then you look at the frequency of the earth and the human body as you as you're constantly connected. So each system is all from the micro to the macro is all influencing each other, and it's not a top-down kind of influence. It is

Recursive, it goes through all of them. Anything that happens in the micro will influence the macro and vice versa.

George (15:07.479)
Yeah. That brings up another point. I remember in some of your writings you were talking about consequences, seeing consequences not as a moral punishment, but just as feedback. But that's hard to do sometimes. It's like especially when you're in these in difficult situations, you know, it sounds so good on paper, but sometimes when you're in it, Charlotte, you're like, dude, why do they hate me?

Charla Pitre (15:29.53)
it is so hard. It is so so hard. 'Cause we as humans we naturally we wanna place meaning on something. We want it we want there to be a reason, you know, like well I because a lot of people, you know, if you do something and you kinda mess up and you're gonna suffer the consequences, which is just feedback. So you can learn not to do that, right? It's just the n

George (15:37.334)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (15:55.505)
the nature of consequences. It's not because you're an evil person, you know, it's because you if you do this, if you do Y, you get C, you know. It's just how it works. but we wanna place meaning so,

George (16:07.909)
Ha ha ha

Charla Pitre (16:14.288)
You know, God's you know, God's mad at me. I mean, look at how we react like when it rains, you know. I I grew up when I was a kid, if it rained, I was like, God's really mad or God's sad right now. You know? Like it it goes really to that. but no, that for me it's it's feedback. So you you learn, you take it, you integrate it, and you move on and you try not to do that again or do it again if it was good feedback.

George (16:16.908)
Right.

George (16:45.687)
Yeah. What do you do with meaning then? Like do you do you is that how you interpret like how do you it almost feels like I'm taking a meaningful experience away. And maybe that's just the way I think sometimes, but I l I'm I think we're meaning making machines.

Charla Pitre (17:01.518)
I feel we we are. We absolutely are. And that's something that I am really working on right now is the meaning making aspect of it. Because it's like, okay, well, I've figured out, you know, like the the basic structure. Okay. but I'm trying to figure out, and if anybody out there can help me with this part, you know, I'd really be happy to hear it. but

George (17:23.917)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (17:29.956)
It's not to take away the magic of life and learning and experiences, but it gives us something to hold on to in a sense when it is something tough.

a a better way of processing and integrating the information than just like, no, that means I'm bad You know.

George (18:00.491)
I do know. I do know. And I I I think that one of the things I love ab about

Finding something meaningful is it says a lot about who you are. Like you can ascribe meaning to almost anything. And people should be aware of their pattern of meaningful things. Because I think you can change the direction of your life, you can change who you are, you can change where you want to go if you find a better meaning for something. Maybe this means I'm a dummy. Or maybe, maybe this means I need to.

better understand my relationship to myself. Or maybe this means I need to interpret the patterns of a relationship better. But to those people listening out there, how you make meaningful events happen, or how you ascribe meaning to them, can really lead you in a direction that's either negative or positive for you.

George (18:59.647)
It's something that I've I've been working on and that it's really helped me in my life. So people are out there try that. the next step is the quantum lens, seeing possibility and potential. Give me the give me the breakdown here.

Charla Pitre (19:14.126)
Okay, so this one is a fun one. It's really, really fun because I've always been the spiritual girly, the words girly. Okay, so never, never math. Don't get it. Never science. What? That that no. It's too close to math, not doing it. You know, would not but then about a little over a year ago, something happened and I was really

George (19:16.191)
Okay.

George (19:21.835)
Mm.

George (19:30.039)
Mm-hmm.

Charla Pitre (19:44.283)
really hitting like that rock bottom of my spiritual shadow shadow work in a sense. and I happened to be scrolling and I saw this this reel, something I think it was quantum entanglement.

George (19:53.25)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (20:10.18)
And the different the different forms of quantum entanglement and I just I happen to sit and actually watch it. You know. The words girly is watching a science reel. And I and one thing I realized is, wow, okay, I I understand this. This sounds the same as a few different spiritual aspects that I look at. And so I was like, okay, hold on. So then I catch myself

Middle of the night watching quantum entanglement and quantum physics lectures on my laptop.

George (20:48.621)
Nice.

Charla Pitre (20:50.258)
and under in st instead of the appropriate response for a girl like me would have been like, wow, that is so cool, you know. No. I ended up with the internal response of that's what you call that. That is what the the term is here. So then I start I was like, no, okay.

Let me see where where they connect anywhere else. Like are there any other connections between science and spirituality? So that is really what started all of my writing at this point, because I was like, the the truth is in the connection, in those pieces that we do not typically look at.

One of my favorite things to say at that point was if we would just remove the boxes, the man made boxes off of everything, science, spirituality, consciousness, we would actually see that they where they connect. They would connect themselves and that is actually physics.

George (22:06.165)
Mm.

George (22:10.198)
All the labels.

Charla Pitre (22:10.556)
So yeah, it it's it's been a journey, a very fun, interesting journey.

George (22:19.371)
Yeah, it is. I sometimes I feel like it's really easy to get caught up in the future or live in the past, but you know, if you just enjoy every step of it along the way, every step along the way you can learn something, if you can be in the moment right there. I love I love that you said the truth is in the connections. Like that ring that that hits home for me. Can you unpack that a little bit more?

Charla Pitre (22:45.916)
So for me I l see it as the connection is it the relational aspect between, which is part of

Charla Pitre (22:59.25)
Part of the unseen. A lot of science right now is it's still considered, you know, it's metaphysics. But thankfully I'm really excited that science is starting to catch up and they're starting to really be able to measure and

George (23:12.621)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (23:18.706)
see that connection where they couldn't before, which is changing how we actually view science at this point and spirituality.

George (23:31.073)
Yeah. I think they're opposite sides of the same coin. You know, for a long time science would throw out anything you couldn't measure. Like, you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. But that seems like a pretty faulty premise to me.

Charla Pitre (23:44.914)
Yeah, they they I like to say that they are two different languages saying the exact same thing.

George (23:54.674)
I'm gonna write that one down here. Well said. And that makes a lot of sense too, because if you listen to people that speak other languages, they can say something radically different with like the verb in front of the noun or the noun in front of the verb. And if you translate it literally, it makes no sense. But they're saying the exact same thing. That's a beautiful way to put it there. Do you speak multiple languages? How do you like how do you know that?

Charla Pitre (24:20.582)
I I studied French. can't speak a look of it really anymore. Don't have any French friends. I mean I have one French friend, but we speak in English, so I don't get to practice my my French. I do now that I'm here, I want to learn Korean, I think would be the one that I wanna learn, which is gonna be a hard one, but I think I think I can do it.

George (24:48.907)
Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing that like Hawaii is such a melting pot of like East Asian cultures. There's so many different just ways of being over there and to be submersed in it. Especially for me coming from California. I had no idea that like and this may sound bad, but I just tell everybody. I remember when I first went to Hawaii, I was on my route and I had an incident with a with a with a gentleman.

And he called in this complaint on me. And my boss says, George, was the guy Japanese or was he like Filipino? And I'm like, dude, I don't know. And the guy looked at me like I was crazy. He's like, you don't know the difference, George, between someone and I and at that time, like I didn't, I didn't know. I didn't know. Like I was so humbled and like, I don't. But it speaks to this idea of understanding cultures and dialects and language. And it's interesting to think.

how big the world is out there and how many different cultures influence us and how easy it is to be to miscommunicate with somebody. You know, you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, it can be interpreted through a different cultural lens that can be incredibly disrespectful without you trying to be disrespectful. So that's kind of a little bird walking there.

Charla Pitre (26:05.042)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you pile on pe most people will react to what you say and like they perceive it through their trauma or like you said through their culture. And you know, that that's another one of those lenses that people perceive the world through. It's one of the social ones.

George (26:17.377)
Yeah, yeah.

George (26:31.841)
Yeah. It's kind of amazing to think like how good we actually get along without really communicating effectively with each other. It's kind of impressive, like, whoa, you guys can make it this far?

Charla Pitre (26:47.154)
Yeah. The the fact that we haven't completely imploded the world yet is kind of funny. my goodness.

George (26:54.817)
Ha ha ha

Right. Yeah. That kind of what so the next lens coming up is the consciousness lens, like seeing inner experience. And this is one that I I I go down this rabbit hole all the time. How do I interpret my own experience? And then that's is that relatable to reality itself? But what what is your breakdown on the consciousness lens and seeing the inner experience?

Charla Pitre (27:04.587)
Mm. Ooh, I love

Charla Pitre (27:21.18)
So that my inner experience, and this is something that I've kn I've learned, especially with neurodivergent type people, we're more prone to watching ourselves through everything that we do. So we always have ourselves talking in our head. And

George (27:29.164)
Mm-hmm.

George (27:44.086)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (27:46.994)
And it's like, well, if I'm watching myself, why don't I intervene? You know, when I'm doing somet you know, about to do something. And then I kind of realize that that is

Charla Pitre (28:03.579)
my consciousness watching in a sense and it's highly

influenced by your nervous system. So the nervous system and the heart brain loop comes back into play here again. So when you are what I like to call in alignment, so you're not feeding your trauma, your survival instincts, and you're focusing on your own center, okay.

And by your own center I don't mean being selfish. I mean actually just coming in and into yourself.

Charla Pitre (28:55.066)
you don't you lift out of the cultural lens, the societal lens, the survival lenses that you develop and you can make a

Charla Pitre (29:11.93)
Your actions, your thoughts, and your words are going to start aligning with who you really are. And when I was able to consciously become present with myself in that way, is when I really started being able to make the changes. Now with consciousness itself.

that is such a deep subject that I am constantly exploring and evaluating and I don't have all the answers for it yet. I don't know if I ever will. But it's it's a deep subject.

your consciousness is not your soul. It's separate. It's not the exact same thing. I do know that.

Charla Pitre (30:14.962)
Charla Pitre (30:21.082)
I really wouldn't know the best way in this moment to describe it, unfortunately.

George (30:32.683)
Not unfortunate, and I think it's a beautiful answer. I I sometimes I default to awareness when I start thinking about these big topics like consciousness. I I default to something that I can sort of get my arms around, and that seems to be awareness. And this brings me to something you said just a moment ago. You said that you sometimes default to

seeing yourself outside of yourself. Like you take yourself out of the actual picture and you observe what's happening. Like that's a pretty advanced technique to to get through situations, to see yourself. What what is that what does that look like? I mean I I've had some experience, a lot of experience with psychedelics that do that exact same thing. For me in the psychedelic state, it allows me to this is metaphorically, but like rise above myself.

Or to see myself outside of myself and be like, I can see my actions without judgment. I can see my actions without any shame or guilt. I just see it happening and I'm like, well that's silly. Yeah, yes. Yep.

Charla Pitre (31:35.921)
Yeah, you see truth. You see the truth of what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Even like even right now I'm literally watching myself sitting here at this picnic bench. Yeah. Talking with you and your listeners. And I don't know. I'm still I'm honestly it's been been doing it really my whole life. I've only been consciously doing it for about a year.

And I'm still getting used getting used to it because it it really is something else, 'cause it does kind of strip the ego. It it it takes the ego away because the ego is really the brain. It's here. And

When I get to pull myself outside and watch myself, I'm seeing the like you like you said, you're actually seeing the truth of what is happening. It's not, well, this is happening to me. No. This is what is happening, and I get to choose how I'm gonna respond. And it's a much better viewpoint up there. You can see more.

George (32:51.913)
It's so true. It's so true. It's like you have this one and I know through my own experience, and it seems through many people that I've spoken to, it's really easy to get caught up in this one-dimensional thinking where I'm just George, I'm going to my life, this is how people react to me, this is what it is. But if you just take if you if you can find a way, be it through breath work or psychedelics or meditation, or for most of us, suffering and and and survival.

You begin to develop this new lens, this consciousness lens, where you can see it for for something true enough, where you can really see your actions and the consequences of your actions and the beauty of your actions and which your actions inspire inside of other people.

Charla Pitre (33:34.003)
Yeah. You get to see how your actions, your words, even your vibrational responses to people without words, because words are only a small portion of actual communication. So you actu you really do get to see and choose how you interact with the world around you.

George (33:39.457)
Mm-hmm.

George (33:44.717)
Mm.

Charla Pitre (34:04.144)
Because you get you get that vantage point. So I can see, okay, well, I'm showing up in this energy right now. Well, it's affecting this person over here in a negative way. And that's not what I want to do. So what what happens? We have to pivot, we have to fix it inside ourselves. But this is where that radical self-awareness, self-accountability, self-discipline come in. If you do not

do those things if you're afraid, if you do not want to face yourself, if you are just holding on too tight to your ego, you're not gonna be able to do that.

George (34:46.925)
See, this takes me back to the beginning of our conversation where we spoke about some difficult times in our lives. And those situations force you to separate. Like they force you to see outside yourself. Maybe it's a defense mechanism when you're younger or something like that, but situations that are really difficult or maybe truly inspirational, they actually pull you outside of yourself and force you to see things in a different way, which seems like an evolution of the ego, if you're asking me. Hopefully.

Charla Pitre (35:15.814)
Yeah. Yeah, it's

Charla Pitre (35:25.136)
The ego the ego is trying to protect you. Okay. That is essentially the part of you that is trying to keep you safe. Okay. And

how would I ex how would I say this one? I wanna say it right.

George (35:51.597)
There's no right way. There's only the Charlotte way.

Charla Pitre (35:52.966)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

George (35:57.036)
And that's the right way.

Charla Pitre (36:00.607)
Yeah. I I I so with the ego, once you realize and you face your ego and you see what and why your ego is responding or reacting in a certain way, this is where ra where awareness, self-awareness comes in. You look at it. You have to be able to look at the why.

And then you have to hold yourself, your ego, accountable. Okay, this is what we did, this is what happened. That's not okay. We don't want to do this. So why did we do this? And we look at it, and most a lot of the time it is just our ego trying to protect us, trying to keep us from being hurt or feeling shame or any of these things. But it's more that's usually a lot of the time the inner child.

George (36:56.247)
Hmm, what's that?

Charla Pitre (36:56.946)
So when you look when you look at your ego at in that way, you can t you can actually look at it with love and acceptance and say, It's okay.

We are safe and this is okay for us. And a lot of times that will calm the ego down, the inner child that's scared and trying to keep you from living life to the fullest. It's not that's not what it's really trying to do. It's just trying to protect you. So that's one of the that's another thing that is really so much fun to work on.

George (37:38.286)
It's so much fun. I do that sometimes. Like sometimes when me and my wife are joking around and like if we get on each other's nerves and she'll be like, I love you so much You know, like but it's funny to to think about. I love that breakdown of the inner child. I know in my life so much of the things that bring me shame or that I run up against a situation where I feel a certain way.

Charla Pitre (37:41.618)
Yes, exactly. I love this.

Charla Pitre (37:49.371)
Ha ha

Charla Pitre (37:55.957)
Yeah.

George (38:08.075)
And it's usually the root cause is something similar that happened when I was young, like triggered me. Like, I'm not even reacting to the situation. I'm reacting to something that happened 10 or 20 years ago or five years ago. And it's like, And then that observer response comes back in again. If you can pull yourself back out and realize I'm not even reacting to the situation, I'm reacting to a situation that happened between a different individual seven years ago that I never resolved. Just that thought alone can snap you out to be calm and clear and be like, okay.

It's okay, little George, that's not gonna happen again. Let's move forward with this conversation and not bring our

Charla Pitre (38:42.352)
Yeah, yeah, it yeah, exactly. You have and you pull yourself into presence. And that's one of the advantages of looking at yourself from outside of yourself is you actually get to see what part of you is responding, reacting, and being influenced by the situation that you are in in any moment.

It takes a lot of practice to be able to be fully present and outside of yourself and watching. It it's a lot, but it it's life changing. It really is.

George (39:21.165)
Yeah, that's well said. It's and like that that's something that I think you do in all of our conversations, be it like talking online or talking in person, like I think you really develop this ability to shift through all those lenses so quickly. Like you're interpreting information and seeing things through all of these lenses that we've covered a few so far, but is that second nature to you? Obviously you had mentioned that it it came through these different sort of trials and tribulations, but

How does that look when you when you do it?

Charla Pitre (39:51.056)
The

The reflex is pretty just natural. the focus I had to develop, like I said, I had to pull it away from survival, looking for safety, to now focused on observing myself and those in my vicinity.

And then always there's a thousand background tabs running. You know, I'm pl I'm planning on okay, well what am I gonna write about? What am I gonna research? You know, c mental notes of this will be a fun topic. But you know, it's stuff like that, typically that is always ever running in my head.

George (40:21.847)
Totally, totally.

George (40:33.089)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (40:44.026)
And yes, it's very it's very much just an automatic reflex at this point.

George (40:44.311)
Another feeling.

George (40:50.263)
Yeah. That's a great way to put it. Like you have all these open tabs running and you just shift between them. Like, yeah, this one, this one. The problem for me is sometimes I can't close one of those tabs and they just keep running. And I got them running in the background. And then sometimes I forget. You can't find it, you just non-stop loop. Shut up, gummy bear song. I don't want to hear that right now.

Charla Pitre (41:06.672)
And it's playing the gummy bear song and you can't find it to turn it off.

Charla Pitre (41:14.889)
Yeah.

George (41:19.681)
What do you do with that? Like what do you do with those voices that can play on that loop like that? Have you is there a certain technique or what do you do when those voices come and you you can't shut them down?

Charla Pitre (41:20.175)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (41:29.712)
Well it it depends. It depends on if it on where it is coming from. So if it is coming from a part of myself, I have full control of that. So I can

George (41:41.485)
What do you okay wait? What what does that mean coming from a part of yourself?

Charla Pitre (41:44.989)
So if it's some so like if it's my ego or, you know, like that's playing something in the background, you know, well you don't belong here, you know, who are you to write up like this is something I the imposter syndrome. I deal with that constantly because having no formal educational background and being self taught, I had to learn to give myself permission.

George (41:57.858)
Totally.

Charla Pitre (42:11.652)
And I ha with that, I have to constantly tell remind myself, like, I don't have to get permission to know what I know. I so I had to start giving myself permission. Now, if it's something outside of me, being the environmental, social, corporate, something like that, I really don't have a lot of control over.

George (42:21.357)
That's right.

Charla Pitre (42:40.208)
what is happening there. I only have control over how I respond. So I will just shift my focus.

Charla Pitre (42:50.916)
And usually if I shift my focus long enough, it will kinda just dissipate and fade into the background completely.

George (43:03.189)
That's good advice. The trying to pinpoint the idea if it's internal or external. Like, where is this coming from? Locating the source is a great way to understand what the message or who the message is coming from. Like, is this my message? Is this somebody else's message? That's awesome. Right, right.

Charla Pitre (43:18.554)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, is this something that I need to work is this myself? Do I need to work with myself on something right now? You know? Do I need to give myself a little pep talk? Or do I, you know, is it something that I can, you know, say, okay, I'll deal with this later, you know, something outside of myself.

George (43:30.765)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (43:46.299)
the biggest thing is trying to figure out if it's something that I actually have control over. And one thing I always I I I will die on this hill is that the only thing you will ever be able to control is yourself. That's it. But most people are not in control of themselves. Their their ego is their their inner child, their trauma is

In a majority of the cases, unfortunately.

George (44:23.597)
I have this idea that people that have fit who have faced difficult traumas in their life, like life-changing traumas in their life, are taught the lesson of how to hold uncertainty. And the people that haven't gone through them. Like sometimes I'll see I've I've talked to quite a few people. I was working with I was working with

Company called iboga says with Lakshmi. If we just if you're if you're curious about a iboga, people should check out awake.net and look up Lakshmi. She's brilliant. She has so many great connections. Lakshmi, I love you. You're an incredible human being. Her and I were working together on on this, helping people in addiction with iboga. And I remember talking to some people that were deep in the throes of addiction. And some of the things they would say.

were so profound with this idea of certainty. Like better than doctors that I have talked to, like the way that they were able to hold uncertainty. Like I get goosebumps when I think about it. I'm like, dude, this person is has, they're at the doorstep. Like they understand uncertainty and how to live with it. Like they don't know where anything's coming. And I would ask them these questions like, are you aren't you afraid of like not knowing where someone's gonna

Where you can find help. Aren't you afraid of not knowing this? And they're like, I can't control that. I can control what I do. And like you could hear the wisdom in their voice. Like, that's someone who has lived with uncertainty. And I think so many people that are certain, and so many professionals that we have, and so many people with letters after their name. It just it bothers me so bad that they're so certain about things. I'm like, this person in addiction has so much more than you. They know so much more.

Isn't that interesting to think about the level of uncertainty and suffering?

Charla Pitre (46:14.128)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And one of that's one of the things, so as somebody who that's been dealing with traumatizing events, you know, since childhood, all the way up until two like about two years ago was the last big one. for me, my entire life is uncertain, was uncertain.

George (46:25.302)
Yeah, here, here.

Charla Pitre (46:38.882)
I didn't know if I was gonna be okay. Moved out at sixteen. I didn't know if I was gonna make it. You know, got married, turned it tur things turned bad. I didn't know if I was gonna stay or leave. I left. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to make it on my own with two children, you know. y there all all of the things you you learn I think that's part of what ends up amplifying.

your abilities to perceive the world around you.

Charla Pitre (47:14.707)
Is exactly that being able to live in uncertainty and the ability to pivot.

In the moment. It's it becomes a reflex that we are able to that we develop to survive. Somebody that's lived in comfort, you know, you know, great. I'm so happy for these people. Okay. If you had a safe childhood, great parents, you know.

George (47:37.355)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (47:44.22)
Grew up, got married, you know, everything's good. Love that. Love that. But they never have those people never have to develop these abilities.

George (47:59.982)
Yeah. It's like a muscle, like those skill sets atrophy unless you use them. But if you use them all the time, you get really good. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (48:07.45)
And and that that comes from certainty. They are certain that their mom and dad are gonna protect them. They are certain that they they go to school, they do this, they are going to get that job. They are certain that, you know, things are gonna work with their spouse. They that they pick the right one. All of these things, like the certainty, it locks them in, but they do not develop these other ways of

George (48:13.004)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (48:37.404)
same they don't have to develop the awareness that those that go through trauma do.

George (48:46.669)
Yeah, that's well said.

George (48:51.181)
Hmm. And I'm sure that everybody, even the most privileged person you can think of, they have their own traumas they're dealing with. That's what I tell myself. But you know, they have their own things they're working through. But I don't. It just seems to me I talk to a lot of people that have been through some really difficult times, and I admire their relationship with uncertainty in a way that I don't see in other people. But I want to make that I know that everybody's going through their own.

Charla Pitre (49:00.619)
absolutely.

George (49:20.951)
their own issues and traumas and stuff like that. But it's it's interesting.

Charla Pitre (49:22.006)
yes. Well well it's everybody's everybody's perception, okay? So and this is not gonna this is not me minimizing anything for anybody, okay? But the way that people that have lived had certainty in their life their their life, the way that they're going to per experience

George (49:27.692)
Yeah.

George (49:34.731)
Yeah, yeah.

Charla Pitre (49:50.003)
A minimally traumatic event is going to hit their system harder.

George (49:52.949)
Mm.

Charla Pitre (50:03.347)
They're not accustomed to it. But a lot of times, given the right tools, their recovery is very quick because they do get to go back into that certainty. It's one of those things where it's kind of like the difference between PTSD and CPTSD.

George (50:23.467)
I can you what is I don't know what CPTS D C P T S D is.

Charla Pitre (50:26.384)
Okay. So we have PTSD and then C PTSD is complex PTSD. So it's literally the difference between somebody having a one-time traumatic experience that does it hits their nervous system. It completely rewires it. Versus CPTSD is somebody that has lived inside trauma for days, months, years.

George (50:32.065)
Okay.

Charla Pitre (50:53.842)
So they so that that those are the differences between the two. And the way it rewires the nervous system is a little bit different. It it gets more down to the root of the system, in a sense. So it may it does take a little bit more to claw your way out of it.

George (51:21.335)
Yeah. Yeah those patterns become ingrained in you. It just becomes it becomes an identity.

Charla Pitre (51:26.786)
It a lot of people would sit there and say, well, this is just how I am. Yeah. This is what my trauma made me.

George (51:42.571)
Is that someone who's not dealing with answers? Or is that

Charla Pitre (51:45.786)
That's somebody that doesn't want to take the self responsibility for their own healing.

George (51:55.692)
Yeah. I always look at it from one technique that I use for people out there, and may maybe people can use this in their life is and this is sort of my way to moving to the to the observer lens, is that what if you're what if your life what if you are the main character in the greatest story ever told? What would that look like? It wouldn't be a linear path. It would be like you would go through this thing and you'd be devastated. And then you would come back. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (52:19.876)
It'd be recursive. It'd be recursive.

George (52:25.131)
Yeah, like and I I I try to look at that whenever I find myself on the cliff edge and slipping and falling. It's like, okay, what what's my character arc? Yeah, I failed huge right here. That was gigantic, but you know, circumstances don't make a person, they reveal them. And wouldn't it be a great story? Like everybody loves a comeback story. And the harder and f deeper you fall, the more powerful your story is when you rise back up and you get back up off the ground.

That helps me, you know, see myself as like, okay, I'm the character in this story. How do I get how do I move past this? Instead of just saying, I'm down at the bottom of the cliff now. I guess this is where the story ends. But it's interesting.

Charla Pitre (53:05.326)
Yeah. Well, and I I love that. I love that you do that. And I'll tell you, the universe really does love an underdog. Okay. The universe really, really loves the underdog. So that's one of the things I like to, you know, like kind of lean on a little bit.

George (53:12.973)
Thank you.

George (53:19.059)
Yeah, it's so true. It does.

Charla Pitre (53:30.492)
Do I have absolute proof for that? No, absolutely not. But you know what? I'm rocking with it for now. Until I'm show, unless I'm shown something different, I'm gonna stick with that one. But it's one of those things that makes it easier to embrace the hard times. So that way when you do find yourself, you know, hanging off of the cliff, you can sit there and be like, okay.

George (53:36.523)
Yep, yep.

Charla Pitre (53:56.167)
Well, as an underdog, you know, this would be this would be that point. So what would what what do I do as myself to to fulfill and stay in in who I am? And instead of just releasing and letting go, you're gonna find a footing and you're gonna pull yourself up. So yes, I I absolutely love that.

George (54:22.679)
That should be someone out there listening, you should make someone should make that t-shirt. The universe loves an underdog. That should be a bumper sticker. Yeah, send us bone one. Send us bold one. Man. I got let's move to this to the next lens, which is the intelligence lens, seeing how systems respond.

Charla Pitre (54:28.122)
Ooh yes. Send me one.

Charla Pitre (54:44.688)
Yes, okay. So this goes back into the relational in-between. because that's where you get to watch. Okay, so something as simple as interactions with people.

So you get to, you know, because you're outside of yourself, you're watching yourself while experiencing everything and being present. So you get to sense how your system is operating in the truth of it. Okay. But you also get to see the other person's system and the relation between and what's happening there. How your energy is influencing theirs. And

I don't mean that in a woo-woo, you know, way, but it in actual physical energy that we that our electromagnetic fields give to each other when we're in close proximity. So

Watching how things influence. And then one of the things that I've talked about a lot is corporate inhumanity. It's one of the man-made system man-made systems that I will probably always talk about because it throws us, it throws the human system so far out of whack. So we

Charla Pitre (56:18.928)
bio biologically we were not meant to be the w run through these systems and adhere to these metrics and be extracted from. Okay, but these systems do that to us. Okay. And

George (56:30.711)
Yep.

Charla Pitre (56:42.128)
You get to when you look at it over time, you see what it's done to the human system and how far it actually goes down. It just doesn't stay with that one person. It affects their family. It affects how they show up in the world. So therefore, it really is influencing all these other some systems. And it's

Charla Pitre (57:10.994)
Tragic?

But you can see it if you look. And it's not sitting there inside the corporate system. It's not sitting there inside the human system. It's happening in that relational field between.

George (57:35.34)
I've lived it like I and I see it to this day. I work at a casino and it's interesting to see and this it doesn't have to be a casino at this I could probably give you better examples at UPS which was a Fortune five hundred company. And what would happen is that like the the people at the very top and the board of directors, they would hand down rules and regulations and laws and all these protocols, but they were aimed at treating the person like a number.

When you treat a person like a number, you strip the humanity completely out of it. And it it doesn't stay in the workplace. It causes tension between like the middle managers and someone who might who is an employee. And they start treating each other with such disrespect and contempt. When I was at UPS, they they had metal detectors and Bobwire gates because the management team was afraid drivers were gonna come in there and kill them. I was I was in UPS multiple times.

When drivers threatened to murder this guy and his family. And I'll never forget, I was sitting in the office and this guy's like, I'm gonna fucking kill you and your family. And I was like, Whoa, whoa. You know, and I like I knew the guy well, and like it wasn't so much that the manager hated him. He he he didn't they didn't hate each other, they hated the system they were in. And if you can pull back and see that, I'm like, dude, this guy's ready to kill his family. Like he maybe he wasn't going to do it, but he said it out loud to the guy's face.

Charla Pitre (58:53.458)
Peace.

Charla Pitre (58:57.735)
Mm-hmm.

Charla Pitre (59:02.16)
Yeah, but that that's the energy he was holding and he was emitting. And that's what he's putting out into the world. That's what he's internalizing. And then now the manager's going home, carrying this energy with him, okay, to his home, around his family. And it's going to inter affect how he's going to interact moving forward with the world. Same thing with this guy. It's changing his perception.

George (59:02.583)
And it's like, yeah, yep.

Yep. Yep.

George (59:15.051)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

George (59:27.617)
Yep.

Charla Pitre (59:31.374)
And he's gonna go home to his family possibly with this anger and carrying that there. And then guess what? All those people that they're that they're touching with that energy, it they're going out into the world with these perceptions now.

George (59:33.933)
Yep.

Yep.

George (59:50.231)
It's contagious. Like once that energy erupts, it's contagious.

Charla Pitre (59:56.467)
Yep. Systems that are built on extraction from hum humanity are literally built to cleps.

And you don't even have to lift a finger. They end up collapsing on their own.

George (01:00:24.429)
What's the how do we how do you change that? It seems like so ginormous, when I start thinking about it. Like if the whole system is built on this, can it be an easy change? Can we shift our frequencies? Can we start can it can the ank can that energy be as easy to transmit anger as it can be to transmit like beauty? Can we can we just flip it on its head?

Charla Pitre (01:00:35.953)
It's

Charla Pitre (01:00:43.858)
So it's so simple yet so not easy, okay? It starts with the self, with everybody. It starts with self awareness, self accountability, self responsibility, and self discipline. If you do not do those things, you're not helping.

And no, you can't blame the next guy. Because how are you showing up? You're showing up with the same chaotic energy as as the other person. No. It is how I choose to show up is the only thing I can control. The only thing you can control is yourself.

Charla Pitre (01:01:40.346)
And that's where your ultimate power lies. Is in the self.

If every if you think about it this way, okay?

If everybody would take that self, all the selves, okay, accountability, awareness, all of it, responsibility, discipline, all for the self.

How many more people would be showing up more present?

Charla Pitre (01:02:15.238)
half of our turmoil is everybody's trying to blame everything except for themselves.

George (01:02:21.805)
So true. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:02:27.044)
I can't control how you're gonna show up. I can't control how I show up.

Only you can control how you're gonna show up and be present.

Charla Pitre (01:02:45.318)
So simple but not easy.

George (01:02:52.033)
Yeah. I think there was I think it was von Clauschwitz, like this famous general who said everything in war or the objective of war is easy, but everything in war is hard. You know, it's like it's like it's easy, but it's incredibly difficult at the same time. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:03:10.202)
Yeah, let's go to war with these guys, you know. But no, then you have to talk strategy, then you actually have to carry the weight of, you know, having to take lives, having to, you know, give those orders that, you know, you really don't wanna give. But you have to do it.

George (01:03:19.052)
Yeah.

George (01:03:25.527)
Yeah.

George (01:03:29.697)
Yeah.

George (01:03:36.238)
Yeah. I talked to lots of veterans that have gone through some psychedelic therapy and some of the stories they tell. My father included my father was in Vietnam. He got a purple heart. And to hear him talk stories about what happened over there and why he was over there and to try to make sense of of killing, you know, like I I don't know how people are supposed to integrate that into their lives.

In any way, you know, it's it's so traumatic.

Charla Pitre (01:04:12.049)
Yeah.

It's I cannot speak on war as I haven't personally had to go through it. It's not an experience that I am able to really trace. I know the general ideas of what happens to the nervous system when you have to go absolutely against your your hum your humanity.

George (01:04:22.795)
Right? Me neither.

Charla Pitre (01:04:44.346)
You know? And unfortunately in war, in corporate world, and just in life, they force people out to abandon their own humanity constantly and to treat other humans inhumanely. One of I guess you could say my biggest goals would be to bring humanity back to humans again.

George (01:05:15.789)
Yeah. And then we're right back to what you said about the self awareness, self accountability, self responsibility. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:05:22.574)
It's recursive. I d I don't this is one of the things when my AI laughs at me all the time because these I I don't think or process anything or integrate anything linearly. It's always recursive and I come back to the same ideas and it's deeper. There's another layer that I'm uncovering and it's fascinating. It really is.

George (01:05:53.346)
I agree. This sort of brings us up to the next one, which is like the lived experience lens. Sounds like we've covered it a little bit, but maybe you could speak to this idea of the the lived experience seeing through the embodied knowing.

Charla Pitre (01:06:09.5)
So that is when you're able to be present. So when you're present, you're able to really understand what you're living through. And if you haven't been able to be present, 'cause a lot of times life pulls us out of being present, we will abandon self so we don't have to deal with the feelings of having to

Do this, do that. You know half the time our body, our ourself actually needs rest. But guess what? We are needing to get up, go to work, because we got bills to pay, we got kids to take care of, you know, XYZ. it's a very small example of it. But even

even if you haven't been able to before, you once you're able to and you look in the past, you're able to see.

the experiences for what they really were and it helps you to be able to understand your now. The hard part is not getting stuck there in the past lived experiences to where you can be present in the current what

What you're experiencing like for me right now, being able to talk to you on your podcast. You know? we're talking about things that I've done, things that I've written about, things I've discovered, but I'm still present here with you right now. And the lived experience brings you a lens, the interpretation, the meaning that we as people give to life.

Charla Pitre (01:08:06.502)
So this is kind of where the human magic gets to happen.

Charla Pitre (01:08:14.484)
And

I'm still trying for me personally, I'm still trying to figure out

Charla Pitre (01:08:23.92)
The meaning of

I just know for me the lived experience gives me more truth.

Charla Pitre (01:08:36.762)
when I'm able to apply all the all the other lenses with it. By itself, if you use that lens all on its own, it can feed delusion and fantasy.

Charla Pitre (01:08:52.304)
That's one of the things that I why I s use all of the lenses together. If I look at everything else, I'm only intellectualizing, but adding lived experience brings it home. Something that my body can integrate, my heart can digest, and my mind can articulate.

George (01:09:21.642)
Yeah. It

Maybe that's the foundation of intuition is the lived experience. Like this knowing. Like you have this idea, like this sometimes I have this knowing of like, well, why do I think that? And I'm like, this is what happened in the past when I whenever I got into a similar situation here. This has been my lived experience of this thing that looks like a precursor. But yeah, it's there's no substitute for experience. You can read every book out there on how to do anything, but unless you've experienced it, you don't know.

Charla Pitre (01:09:54.202)
Mm-hmm. Or allow yourself to experience it.

George (01:09:58.069)
Hmm, well said.

Charla Pitre (01:10:02.851)
Yeah. Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to actually embody the experience.

George (01:10:12.279)
Can you give me an example of that?

Charla Pitre (01:10:20.27)
Okay. So recently, very, very recently, I went through a trying time, with family.

Charla Pitre (01:10:35.546)
And it would have been very easy to

kind of disassociate so I'm not actually experiencing what's happening. which is something that you know a lot of trauma survivors we're really good at. We can be very much here but not here. So while it's happening to us we're still not experiencing it. So it's choosing I had to choose even in that time.

to stay with it and experience it and make the conscious choice to move through it.

Without

Charla Pitre (01:11:28.166)
without self abandoning both myself or allowing other people to pull me away from myself.

I know who I am and I did not want to become reactive.

Charla Pitre (01:11:53.042)
So there is

There's a lot of

Charla Pitre (01:12:08.816)
It t it takes a lot.

It takes a lot to stay and choose to go through the harder ones. It's easy for us to choose to stay and be present in the fun times when things are going good. But you the a lot of the real learning comes from choosing to stay with yourself when you'd rather self abandon.

George (01:12:45.195)
Yeah. There's so many ways to do it too.

Charla Pitre (01:12:47.344)
My my b basically you could say it's really funny. I I can laugh about it now. It's been about a month since it happened. But my family is very dogmatically religious. Very, very much so. and because of how I see the world because I don't see it through their world view. my birth family

George (01:12:51.521)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:13:18.044)
who I'd went to go and try to assist my grandparents through a hard time. Well, they decided that I was an evil Leviathan spirit. Mm-hmm. So I ended up pretty much you could say homeless. because I'd packed up, left Texas and went to Washington State.

George (01:13:29.983)
Whoa.

Charla Pitre (01:13:47.844)
G got rid of everything I had and

Yeah. Ended up dealing with that. Thankfully the universe always provides. And a good friend from high school showed up for me. a friend here found out about my situation and was like, Look, I have a spare room. If you can get here you can you can have it. So

George (01:14:01.301)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:14:17.35)
figured out a way here and got here. And that's why I r I really do say that the universe just plopped me here. but I also believe in this could very well very well be my human meaning making, you know, put it coming into play.

George (01:14:24.833)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:14:39.652)
that it's because I did not self abandon and I stayed in coherence. Instead of def rushing to defend myself or fight back when everything was happening with my family, I chose coherence. I chose to stay in alignment with my truth.

And I was only able to do that because I did not self-abandon. Because I stayed there and consciously every moment made that choice. Now, it could just be that everything that this was a coincidence that all of this stuff ended up lining up. I personally don't think so. Can I prove it? No, I can't prove it. But

George (01:15:31.863)
Yeah. I don't I don't believe in coincidences. I think a coincidence is what you get when you apply a bad theory.

Charla Pitre (01:15:38.599)
Yeah.

George (01:15:43.758)
I guess that that's a good segue into the spirituality lens, you know. That must be that must be an interesting lens that you developed considering everything that you just told me, coming from a family that is hyper dogmatic in religion.

Charla Pitre (01:15:59.059)
What one second, I can't hear y'all.

George (01:16:02.369)
Yeah, no worries.

Charla Pitre (01:16:05.476)
no, it's a garbage truck.

George (01:16:07.853)
Mm.

I see him over there. yeah. Waste management. Shout out. Got underneath the freeway right there.

Charla Pitre (01:16:11.536)
The rubbish.

Charla Pitre (01:16:16.342)
yeah.

George (01:16:21.335)
Super reliable though.

Charla Pitre (01:16:26.168)
Every day. Well, not every day. There's rubbish and then there's recycling and then they also p have cans for like

George (01:16:27.895)
Yeah.

George (01:16:34.369)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:16:40.988)
goodness like shrub like shrubs if you like cleaning up your yard and stuff they have separate bins for that too. So okay, they're gone.

George (01:16:44.482)
Yeah.

George (01:16:48.545)
Yeah.

George (01:16:53.075)
It's I guess the next lens is the spirituality lens, the seeing meaning and connection, which we kinda segueed into pretty without a coincidence, I guess.

Charla Pitre (01:17:06.802)
Yeah, my spiritual belief is very, very simple. I believe that we are all extensions of source. And when you center in yourself, you're actually connecting yourself to source, to where we all come from, where all of our consciousness, our souls extend from.

So for me that that is my belief. You can call you can call Source God. You can place whatever name you want. The universe, the cosmos, you know, the Almighty. You can c whatever. Whatever floats your boat. I like to say Source or the universe. Just

because, you know, spiritual d dogma has kind of ruined the title of God to for me personally. and that's something I'm working on myself with, but it's

it leads to the interconnectedness of the universe, of everything, and it brings the

the nested systems theory of the universe kind of a more into focus because you see how everything is connected. And when you apply the spiritual lens, that's where you get to see the connective tissue between everything. For me, that's where that's where it all lies. And

Charla Pitre (01:18:58.15)
When you look at life with that kind of meaning, that everything you touch, every moment that you're interacting with a person or a place, a thing.

It takes away the religious aspect and it takes away the meaningless it's an empty machine. and it brings life and love back in.

Charla Pitre (01:19:33.564)
So for me that's part of that's part of what drives me. And I don't quite understand it fully. And I may never, but I am not gonna give up looking.

George (01:19:41.085)
Mm.

Charla Pitre (01:19:47.908)
in trying to understand how how it all works.

George (01:19:57.344)
It's so interesting to hear about the connection of all things and source. And behind you there's this incredible tree that I feel like is talking to me, with its branches just like deep into the ground and then coming right back over like that. And you know, I can't help

Charla Pitre (01:20:13.36)
Yeah. yeah, I love I love these.

It's like an umbrella that that the land gave you to protect you from the UV rays here.

George (01:20:21.142)
Yeah.

George (01:20:25.803)
Yeah. Yeah. They're so magnificent. But it it makes me think of source. It makes me think of everything's connected from the root system to the leaves that fall on the ground and then sort of create a rich compost for another ecosystem to evolve. And it's just it's interesting that you say that. Boom, there's a b example like right there. Right there. I don't think it's a coincidence. Yeah. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:20:48.154)
All the way from the micro to the macro, from the tiniest ant to the bit to the cosmos. It's all interconnected. It all influences influences each other. All of it.

George (01:21:04.695)
Yeah, I like that. I think it was Alan Watts who said, you don't come into this world, you come out of it. You know, like I that's always just I just always held on to that. Like it's such a brilliant idea that like you're part of this whole magnificent creation. You're part of Charla and George and the tree behind you and the world. And like you are part of it. You are part and you are an important part of this ecosystem. Like all of us. We all have.

Charla Pitre (01:21:30.126)
We all we we all are so important and when you look at it that way and this could just be, you know, b romanticizing the idea, but one thing I love to think about is just how beautiful it would be if everybody would show up with that

Self awareness and self responsibility.

And just how much more intentional every interaction would be.

Charla Pitre (01:22:12.722)
I think it would do it the radical changes that would happen.

Charla Pitre (01:22:23.598)
One thing I've learned about coherence is that coherence begets coherence. So it coherence one coherent person acts as a tuning fork. So other people will naturally either be drawn up to become coherent, up to that frequency that that coherent person is at.

Or they can't be there and they go they just go wait.

Charla Pitre (01:23:07.495)
So

George (01:23:09.889)
I love that analogy. And the idea of a tuning fork and there earlier you had mentioned about the the vibrations in which we can sense from each other. I think that pairs nicely with the idea of the tuning fork about you know, which you put out you're attracting back in and and vice versa.

Charla Pitre (01:23:10.906)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:23:28.336)
Yeah. And if we we show up that way, if you think about how fast

we influence each other like the example we talked about with the UPS guy. think about that kind of a situation but reverse.

George (01:23:40.813)
Yeah. Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:23:51.421)
Think about people showing up intentionally, positively, with full self-accountability and self awareness.

Even the systems that we live in, the man made systems specifically is what I'm talking about. All of the different ones that we have would be completely remodeled. Because once people

Charla Pitre (01:24:28.794)
Again, this is a d a dream of mine is that people actually become this way. It becomes a at least at least for half or the a part of us, we would influence others.

Charla Pitre (01:24:47.77)
And then the systems are rewritten.

Charla Pitre (01:24:52.4)
Humanity is brought back to people again and extended.

Charla Pitre (01:25:03.654)
Something I think about a lot. And one thing I can say is for the most part they do live Aloha here, which is the closest thing that we have on this planet. Really to the vision I have. And of course even here in Paradise you have, you know

George (01:25:12.363)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:25:32.358)
You have racism, you have

violence, you have death, the place the place that I just started working, they there was a guy that was stabbed two weeks ago right outside the store. Right outside the store. Died.

Charla Pitre (01:25:57.254)
So even in paradise there's

There's things that aren't so great. But I unfortunately we do have to have balance, okay? 'Cause you don't know something's good if you've never experienced something bad, right?

George (01:26:17.453)
Yeah.

George (01:26:20.983)
True.

Charla Pitre (01:26:21.722)
something I'm still trying to come to terms with, okay? I want it all to be hunky dory all the time. But it's just not the way the world works.

George (01:26:27.52)
I know.

George (01:26:32.193)
Yeah. Yeah. I struggle with with balance too. You know, sometimes my head is so far in the clouds and I just see the beauty in everything. And other times I'm way down on the floor like this is out of control. But maybe the idea of balance isn't in the short term. Maybe the idea of balance comes later in life when you get to look back at the entire picture and you're like

this it was balanced. It just seemed like up and down at the moment, but if I look at it over the course of a lifetime, there was balance in there. Maybe it's learning to balance. Like I think we all struggle with that on some aspect. You know, the idea one thing that ho that I learned in Hawaii is like the idea of being humbled. Like there was so many times where I really learned a lot about myself. And a lot of the time that came from the ocean.

Like just being out in the ocean and just being humbled, like being held underwater for long periods where I didn't think I was gonna be able to get back up or getting caught in a riptide with my daughter and being swept out to sea and trying to figure like trying and for a moment it's like this could be it right here. Like d you could be swept out right here. But I don't know, I always equate Hawaii with teaching me lessons in humility. I'm I'm grateful for

That brings us to number seven, Charla, the relational lens, the connective tissue. I think we've spoken a little bit about it, but how do you how else would you break that down?

Charla Pitre (01:28:09.51)
So that for me is not just seeing

Charla Pitre (01:28:19.334)
not just seeing what I'm looking at, okay. So whether it is a situation or look at

Charla Pitre (01:28:33.39)
everything that they're connected to. But not just what they're connected to, how they're connected to it. So the energy that is in between, so to speak. when you're able w when when you get good at reading people and people's energies, you can start kind of picking apart.

what is really theirs and what was put there by society, by another person, by trauma. You can start and that's how you end up seeing and knowing how to respond to other people in a way that doesn't

Charla Pitre (01:29:30.438)
doesn't trigger them in a sense. So instead of speaking to their trauma or

there's just their culture in a sense. Even though cult culture is a very big part, but you get to actually speak to the person, the actual person that is there underneath.

So for me, when I talk to because I I have friends that like every time they're going through something, they're calling. Charla, this is what's going on. What do I do? What's going on? It's like, yeah. even I even people that I don't even know, they could they come and they're like, look, this is what's this is what I'm dealing with. And it's sometimes it's not even something bad. It's just like they're trying to figure something out. And

George (01:30:12.077)
Of course. Of course.

Charla Pitre (01:30:32.686)
even like meeting new people, you know. It's it's so intuitive. It's it's hard to explain that you just know. But I don't just know because it's these lenses that are used in such a way by my system that I'm able to

Separate the person from their pain from their hurt, and I can actually see who they are. And what even when they're acting out, like with my family, what what happened with my family, I couldn't even be upset with them. I could not bring it upon myself to even say something remotely defensive or

aggressive towards them, I could only say I love you and walk away. Because I saw why and how they were like they were responding. I could see what they were seeing through their own lenses. But I also saw that they had they had some glasses on. They weren't using their own eyes.

George (01:31:52.812)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:31:57.587)
So then it didn't become a personal attack on me. It's just what that person is dealing with. And that's just a kind of an example of the connection. You have to look at how things are connected to a person or a place in order to be able to know how it works. What healing needs to be done.

how to appropriately respond without causing more damage, but also not feeding into their delusions as well.

That makes sense. I don't know if it does. Sometimes I think I just go in circles.

George (01:32:44.021)
Yeah. Yeah

George (01:32:49.257)
No, I think it's a it's an incredible way and present way to respond to something like that. That takes a lot of

George (01:33:01.751)
First off, patience. And second off, separating yourself from all the emotions that are flying to the room at that moment to see the signal through the noise. Like, I'm not talking to Geor I'm not talking to Charla now. I'm talking to Charla's anger. I'm not talking to George right now. I'm talking to George's anxiety. I'm talking to George's inner child over here. How do I break through that noise and get to the person? It it

It I've written down some notes. Like it for one I wrote down was maybe in a conversation you could say something like, Look, I I want to talk to George. Not George's anger, not George's insecurities. I want to talk to George. And if I if someone said that to me, that would help alleviate, that would almost help me put on those glasses of like, okay, let me take off the anger glass. Let me take off the this insecurity glass. Okay, now I'm here. Now I'm present. But it makes sense.

Charla Pitre (01:33:54.17)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:33:57.892)
And that's that's a way of being a tuning fork for another person.

George (01:34:02.068)
Yes.

Charla Pitre (01:34:05.05)
And it's done in such a loving way. It breaks down the defenses. And it creates a safe space for George to show up without the ego, without the trauma, without the anger.

George (01:34:07.991)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:34:28.442)
And when George shows up at as George or Charla shows up as as Sharla, we can even articulate and see our own anger and see where it's coming from.

Charla Pitre (01:34:46.758)
People don't grow in isolation. They grow by having other people coherent mirrors.

George (01:35:09.357)
It's interesting to think that you could be surrounded by people you love and still be isolated.

George (01:35:20.257)
Not at home for me.

And many times it's self isolation, maybe abandoning yourself like you s you had mentioned earlier. It's easy. It's easy to not be present. It takes work to be in the moment with someone you love, talking about something meaningful.

Charla Pitre (01:35:40.412)
Yeah. It's very easy, but it's very, very costly at the end of the day.

George (01:35:46.965)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:35:51.409)
The work itself that you have to do with yourself. It's not easy or pleasant initially. And to be honest, you're never done doing it. It's a constant. It is an a choice that you have to make in every moment.

It's not something that you just do this day and then, tomorrow I'm healed, I ain't gotta do it no more. No. No. You still have to show up. You still have to be present and you still have to hold yourself accountable and you still have to take self responsibility.

If you don't, then you just had one really good day. But that doesn't and that doesn't retrain the nervous system. It doesn't rewire the networks.

Charla Pitre (01:36:51.578)
I like to think of

Charla Pitre (01:37:02.448)
I like to think that when I show up in that way, no matter what I'm doing, if I'm showing up as at work or with my children or my friends or even my roommates here, even with my family, I

I like to think that even if they can't see it now, that I've given them a presence and an energy that they can reflect back on later. And I like to think that there's a lot of other people out there that are doing the same thing. And I like to think that just like with how we influence each other in negative ways.

I like to think that it's gonna make an impact, paying it forward energetically, so to speak.

George (01:38:15.629)
I think that's how it's done.

I want to get to I got a couple of people here that want to chime in over here, Charla. Let's get down and see what the chat is saying over here. I got Mike from Austin, Texas. He says, at what point does metaphor become science? I think he's speaking to the idea that both you and I have been using different metaphors to explain things. But maybe he's speaking to the idea of spirituality and science. But I'll just put the question to you: at what point does metaphor become science?

Charla Pitre (01:38:55.622)
They're all it's all it's all connected, really, is how I see it. So different languages. science is one way, it's the exploration and the study of life itself. Metaphor is a way that we use to talk about or explain something else.

So while science is very factual, it is also very far behind. and

It is what's the right word for it?

Charla Pitre (01:39:47.142)
Very restricted.

by those man made boxes that I talked about in the beginning.

Charla Pitre (01:39:59.229)
So whether they are eg the same or whether it's just your lived experience.

Charla Pitre (01:40:12.506)
I know one thing for me personally, and this is doesn't always apply to everybody, but for me, my lived experience tells me a lot more and I've learned a lot more from that than by what

Science says, well we don't know. Lived experience will tell you. Especially if you look through the lenses.

Mm.

George (01:40:46.891)
Yeah, I if I was gonna speak to that mic, I would say that like science is

You can't do it on analytics alone. You can't take the numbers and it works great for some things, but it leaves out so many unknown variables that can't be measured. Like it's sort of looking through a blurry lens. And even though you get it right sometimes, the science has done some amazing things for us, but I think it I think it leaves out. Of course, of course. Of course. Next up is I got Jessica.

Charla Pitre (01:41:19.794)
And they're making great discoveries.

George (01:41:27.893)
Jessica coming to us from Phoenix, Arizona. She says, I've watched hundreds of people die. Where does your model fit into what happens in those final moments?

Charla Pitre (01:41:39.632)
Ooh, Jessica, that is a tough one. Okay.

That's not

Charla Pitre (01:41:55.942)
With those final moments with people, now that depends are if we're speaking on the person that's passing, the person that is watching a person passing, it goes into the observer and the observed. So to adequately answer, I would really need to know which part I am addressing.

George (01:42:22.551)
She says she's a nurse.

Charla Pitre (01:42:24.43)
A nurse. Okay. Well, thank you so much for what you do because we definitely need amazing nurses out there. Very much vital.

George (01:42:32.141)
Thank you, Jessica.

Charla Pitre (01:42:37.98)
So f what I would say to you as a nurse is that your presence at the end for these people, okay? And I know not all of them are quiet. A lot of them can be very violent and gruesome. And that that hurts me.

to think about and I know it probably hurts you so much to w have to witness and watch, especially over and over again. But your presence there

Charla Pitre (01:43:24.878)
Is

It's teaching you.

Charla Pitre (01:43:40.22)
How to show up.

Charla Pitre (01:43:44.58)
If you can show up and you can hold that coherent energy, I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, but if you can hold whatever coherent energy for whatever your spiritual beliefs are for that person.

Charla Pitre (01:44:06.2)
It changes the transition for them.

Charla Pitre (01:44:12.656)
Because we're we're not our body. The body dies but for me the energetic body is some it feels everything even after the physical body's gone.

and being able to transition

with a coherent presence around changes that.

From what I the things that I know, of course I don't know everything and I'm not I'm not claiming to at all.

But I would what I would say is show up, coherent. Allow yourself to feel the pain, but do not take on the pain and live in it.

George (01:45:10.615)
Here's one coming from Chris. Chris says, I'm raising three kids. If I believed your model, what's one thing I'd do differently as a father?

Charla Pitre (01:45:28.05)
If you believed my model, to show up differently as a father

I would say is to stay present.

And always look at

not just the current situation with your children.

But also how what you say, what you do, how that is going to influence their systems, their nervous system, their heart, their brain for their future.

George (01:46:16.749)
That's good advice. Thank you, Chris, for chiming in over there.

Who James over here. He says James from North Carolina. He says, Can trauma permanently change someone's baseline frequency or only the overlay?

Charla Pitre (01:46:36.088)
Okay, so it changes the overlay.

Now the overlay can become so noisy and so full of static that it is hard to ever find the core frequency. That is why doing the work to heal is so important. So that way you can

you can operate from your core. Your core frequency will shine. The noise will dissipate. It becomes less very much less prominent in your life. And in how people perceive you.

George (01:47:30.637)
Nice. Who I got over here? Let me see I can get to

George (01:47:39.157)
Hm. Here's an entrepreneur coming from Miami. They say, Can this framework actually help someone build a company? Or is it mostly about spirituality?

Charla Pitre (01:47:55.27)
The the fun answer is yes, it can.

George (01:47:58.958)
A conscious company.

Charla Pitre (01:48:01.521)
Yes, yes, a a human centered that focuses on

Charla Pitre (01:48:13.444)
the humans that it depends on for it to exist.

Yes. A good comp you can. I would have to s sit back and play with play with it for a minute, but I could figure out exactly how to scale it in that way. Yes.

George (01:48:34.069)
I I hope there's more people out there that are trying to build something not only for themselves and to become wealthy, but to understand that the real wealth comes from enriching everyone around you, building something that provides value not only for the community, but self worth for the individual and something more than money.

Charla Pitre (01:48:55.756)
I I love that that yeah, I love that you had that question too because it it shows that there's people that want to see. Is this scalable? Is it possible? Can we do it? And that that's how change starts is right there by somebody just thinking, well can we do it? Can we make it apply here?

George (01:49:04.524)
Yeah.

George (01:49:17.282)
Yeah.

Charla Pitre (01:49:23.492)
and trying, seeing if it will work. Obviously what we're doing needs to be fixed currently. So that that's encouraging. Thank you for asking that.

George (01:49:38.517)
Nice. My last question that I got for you, Charla, is imagine someone is listening to this conversation while sitting in their car. They're exhausted, maybe they're grieving, they're questioning who they are and whether life has meaning. What's the one thing you'd want them to know before they turn the car engine off?

Charla Pitre (01:50:01.744)
Be kind to yourself. If you're having those feelings, I want you to sit with yourself and ask yourself and give yourself room for total honesty without shame, because we shame ourselves too much. Ask yourself why.

What brought this on? Where is it coming from?

Charla Pitre (01:50:34.788)
And what you can do and to change it. And if it is just you're exhausted.

Allow yourself to rest.

Charla Pitre (01:50:50.414)
If it's anger or betrayal, allow yourself to feel it.

Just don't stay there.

Charla Pitre (01:51:04.26)
you would then

Charla Pitre (01:51:11.76)
Remind yourself after you've let the tears out, let out the anger, scream and cry if you need to. It's healthy. It gets gets it out of the body. Otherwise it gets stuck in your physical body. So get it out.

But remember that it's just a moment.

Charla Pitre (01:51:38.686)
And you can change it, and only you can.

George (01:51:48.174)
Charla, let's say people are hungry for more. They're like, I wanna Charla's awesome. I wanna I wanna talk to her. I wanna read more of her writings. I have the charla petree dot substack dot com down there for the people that are watching. But is that the main place people can find you? Where can they where can they read more of your work and reach out to you if they wanna say hello?

Charla Pitre (01:52:11.174)
Well, I most of my work, well, all of it, more than what's on Substack, everything is on LinkedIn. So posts, articles are all there. It's easy to get in touch with me there. if I don't respond right away, kinda forgetful, just bug me again. Okay.

'Cause I am in my own in the middle of my own life transition, which has been fun, but it's also keeping me very much on my toes. But it is it's pretty easy to get in touch with me. I love talking about this kind of stuff. So if you have a viewpoint that you think I should hear

George (01:52:44.397)
Totally.

Charla Pitre (01:53:01.03)
Give it to me. I want to hear it. I want to see if it if I feel that internal click of coherence when I when I hear it. Dude. And I'm I am open. This is one of my favorite parts about myself, is I am open to being wrong and having to pivot if I feel it's needed. But I I love being open to that possibility. So

And I I love learning. I love learning new things. I love exploring life and all of its little intrinsic details. So reach out to me on LinkedIn. Substack. Those are the two main places.

George (01:53:50.785)
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful day. That's all we got for today. Charlotte, hang on briefly afterwards to everybody else within the sound of my voice. Go to Substack. Check out Charlotte Petrie at Substack.com. You can scan the QR code or check her out on LinkedIn and all those will be in the show notes. Of course, have a beautiful day, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.