Gor/don: Welcome back to Existential Tetherball. I'm Gordon. I'm here with Rachel. And we are about to ⁓ record our tenth episode of the of the podcast slash series of conversations. and and and for this for the purposes of ⁓ of this likely 50 minutes you're gonna spend with us, ⁓ we invite you to be thinking your own thoughts and dreaming your own dreams and having your own feelings and really paying attention to what's going on in you. And if you're so moved, we would love for you to share that. ⁓ we'd we love it when people like and subscribe and follow and all that. And we really appreciate any feedback that you've got for us or any just kind of thoughts. We're we're we're doing this in order to be catalysts ⁓ for broader conversations, and so that that invitation is out there. And Rachel: Yeah, but Gor/don: Today's topic Rachel: Process information. Get it? Information, information. less a noun, more a verb. ⁓ thanks for that intro, Gordon. And yeah, like ⁓ definitely want to encourage people to yeah, engage with this stuff. Think for yourself, consider play around with these ideas. ⁓ this is an existential playground of sorts, and I'm so glad that we're here and that we're ha on our 10th episode. ⁓ Yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't like have we haven't settled on a title, like process, you know, information. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so often we look at the etymology of a word or we look externally to start. And I have just always loved this sort of linguistic, sort of embedded cleverness that lives in the ⁓ English word information, right? It's like if we look at it as a noun. Gor/don: Information Rachel: It's, you know, it it's information, it's an outcome, it's a product, right? ⁓ but if we look at it as a verb and just break it up with that nice little space, information, as a process that leads us to either synthesis or maybe divergence, maybe disintegration, who can say? Gor/don: Mm, mm-hmm. Yeah, makes me wonder about like an X formation. ⁓ mm-hmm. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah! That's actually it's so funny that you say that. So on my website right now I've like I have a latent blog that hasn't like really gone anywhere and I called it Exformation and Wanderings because it is just like breaking things apart was the idea. Gor/don: Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a fascinating concept. It's not gonna help with your SEO a bit, but it's gonna be fabulous ⁓ to to look at. Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. It's just word salad, it's only SEO. Gor/don: Well and within so within X formation, information is form. And and and so form and formless. And so when we're talking about this information, Rachel, what's your like elevator pitch for this idea? Rachel: Right. Right. Yeah, beautiful. ⁓ the meaning of process and process as applied to what or what meaning? What meaning. So I think like we can start there and just kind of like sit with that a little bit, you know. Like I know you're a big process guy. you know, we've talked about it in terms of like process versus outcome, but really like an outcome is part of a process. And, you know, do we have ideas about what that outcome should look like? ⁓ process as learning, you know. So so really starting with like the meaning of process and what does it mean to you, ⁓ GDS to, you know, live in a process oriented way. Gor/don: Yeah, process versus outcome is is unhelpful, but ⁓ process eventually leads to outcome, ⁓ outcome after outcome, ⁓ embedded within any given process. ⁓ yeah, if if I if I want to go to see the Pacific Ocean, I don't have to teleport there. I do need to traverse the space between me and that though. And through a process of driving through Oklahoma. and d and driving through all the all the western states, I can begin to approach an outcome. And if I keep going, I get there. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Right, right. ⁓ and if you, you know, hit a couple detours, ⁓ or if something happens on the Pacific Ocean and you're not able to get to your destination, your outcome's gonna look different, right? Like the process. Yes, yes, yes. Fantastic. Have you seen the weird Christmas one with Joan Kingsack? Did we talk about this? I had no idea this existed until last year. Gor/don: Mm. That's right. Yeah, I watched the Muppet movie. I've seen this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I really like it. But to return to process, ⁓ what that is, what is a process orientation, it's it's taking a perspective that ⁓ everything that's happening is a process or in process, that nothing is static, that all is dynamic. and that ⁓ within those Rachel: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Gor/don: dynamics is a broad web of interrelatedness ⁓ that informs our own experience. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful informs our own experience. There it is. ⁓ in my little sort of like ⁓ just like existential little like ⁓ notes app dump here I wrote a place where things come together and come apart, converging, diverging, causality cascade. So, you know, I think that's so interesting. Like if you slow time down in a process, Do processes only go one direction? ⁓ mutual influence as opposed to single-pointed causality, A to B, if A then B. ⁓ how complex ⁓ is a process? And I am immediately, you know, in my work, this is such a really big focus in my work with clients and and in my work is this sort of relationship with that, like processing at that intrapersonal level. Gor/don: Hm. Rachel: So that's sort of like the process that is my experience, my living experience, ⁓ my living perception. And yeah, that's just such a fascinating space to apply some of these ideas to, like for me, super foundational. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. And and paradigm shattering to you know most of modernity around you know who am I? ⁓ this like sense of aestheticness or ⁓ capital T truths available or certainty available or endings even available. ⁓ that when we instead see what's what our own internal embodied subjective experience as process. that's not may or may not have its own idea of where it needs to be, or maybe it does have that intellige and does that. it shifts how we move through the world, I think. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Process, meaning as applied to the self. I'm doing the air quotes. The self. Bringing Chris Farley back. We talked about him last time. And do you remember that character? He's always doing this. ⁓ yeah, but like process, meaning as applied to Rachel, as applied to Gordon, as applied to the human self, the human identity, the human sense of self. Gor/don: So Yeah, and it and so it takes it out of that that rationalist linearity into this more ecological rational of of an interrelatedness so complex that it's difficult to conceive of and certainly difficult to perceive in its entirety. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Is it possible? You know, you ⁓ when we were kind of sharing just ideas, you know, riffing on this topic in advance, trading trading notes and little vignettes, I think you shared ⁓ mystery and wilderness as part of and really like the mystery and wilderness of the living human technology. ⁓ physiology is like such a difficult subject. It br it breaks It breaks down, you know, this sort of reductionist approach to understanding things. The human body mind is so complex, and we don't have instruments to measure things that we can't see or can't capture, you know? A snapshot is an outcome, a snapshot is a moment in time, right? And so a process orientation would acknowledge this like living process that is the human body mind. ⁓ and for me, perception. Seems it it seems I'll stand in this one pretty strongly, nothing certain, but like perception seems quite inextricable from this, you know, the corporeal human form. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Rachel: Tethered maybe. Gor/don: Yeah, in the absence of perception it's yeah, that's hard to that's hard to conceive of. Yeah. And Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. I know we're in kind of wild territory here, but it's I think it's a spot that's missing on the map, you know, it's sort of like this this collective, you know, meaning as applied to what is a self. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What is a self? Mm-hmm. What is a self? And and in talking about perception, ⁓ it it goes to another term that you've used, ⁓ which is the sensing body. Rachel: Is itself. How does it work? What is itself? How does it work? Hm. Yeah. Gor/don: And you say sensing body and I wonder is that like what which which other kind of bodies do we got? Rachel: ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ how do we understand self as process? ⁓ what is how is process different from intelligence if we're talking about a hum a living human being? ⁓ we talk a lot about differences in processing, neurodivergence. Okay. Processing what? Information. Gor/don: Hm. Rachel: the process of information, synthesis, how my body metabolizes and uses B12. ⁓ how my body responds to ⁓ seeing a dog. ⁓ maybe I was bitten by a dog when I was a little kid and I forgot. But I notice, you know, if if I have a sort of relationship with that awareness and and you know kind of jumping ahead here, but that sort of like Gor/don: Yeah, yeah. Rachel: Noticing thoughts, noticing your own activation, being able to like witness your own information, ⁓ your body may have a a response that remembers being attacked by a dog when you were a kid. Gor/don: Huh. Yeah, and and knowing where that response might be coming from is its own it's his own process. ⁓ how how do I know this? ⁓ you you I I skipped over your you you mentioned that I talked about wilderness and mystery and liminality and all that stuff. I skipped over. I'm gonna go ahead and wedge it in here. that ⁓ your B12 thing. Rachel: Yes. Gor/don: ⁓ point A is I take B twelve. ⁓ point B is I feel more alive. and and and so this from here to here, from A to B, the then of it is this ⁓ this this place between places, the liminality, the wilderness, ⁓ the the the mysterious nature of of one thing becoming another. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gor/don: Or one thing being understood. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I I think of ⁓ you know, language is so powerful and even our relationship and awareness of the language we use. ⁓ I think of ⁓ Nora Bateson, ⁓ we both attended that Warm Data conference last year and you know, I'm going to the store for bread. I'm going to the store with you. We are going to the store to get bread and see what happens. ⁓ how narrow is that sort of like witness vision? So much of this for me, it gets very like ⁓ physical in terms of directionality, scale, reciprocal influence, you know. ⁓ you go to the grocery store and somebody smiles at you in the aisle and you're able to receive that warmth, how might that shift your day? Gor/don: Versus looking past it to find the bread. Rachel: Exactly. Exactly. So so really, you know, I think the TLDR here is like, yeah, there is a process and intelligence moving through us. And, you know, presupposing control, or if we, you know, causality, tunnel vision, right? But that sort of having a relationship with process, having a relationship with perception, ⁓ that intrapersonal engagement of information. I really believe that we can deepen, expand, and become, ⁓ yeah, I don't even know what language to use, ⁓ more subtle, more nuanced. This was these were some of your words that you sent over as well, right? Quietness, stillness, subtleness, it's like a fine grain comb. The deeper you get, the less you need to know or have like a certain sort of like ⁓ outcome, the more information is available to you. Gor/don: Yeah, the idea of with so much going on, there's these numbers get thrown around. We're receiving three million bits of information every moment. ⁓ and we're only processing 50, ⁓ in a conscious way. And that ⁓ the these things get thrown around, ⁓ but ⁓ but to just name it, we're talking about where is your attention. And Rachel: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gor/don: ⁓ as people as I like choose where to put my attention ⁓ in a conscious, intentional way, I am more likely to be able to get to that quieter place where I can perceive more of my own sensing body, I can perceive more of my own process. ⁓ there's ⁓ it's coming it's coming to a conscious calm in the face Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gor/don: of a vastness of process that we can't ever wrap our arms around. Rachel: Right. Yeah. And I'm just gonna go ahead and go for it and say, like I watched you drop and like I watched you talk about becoming self centered. Yeah. Gor/don: Self centered. You say I'm conceited. Rachel: Absolutely not. Whether intentional or otherwise, self-centered to to develop the capacity to become self-centered is really, I think, in a lot of ways what we're talking about. And, you know, this sort of like ⁓ all of the information that we're swimming in all the time. You know, you're what ⁓ that whatever archetype or whatever character just showed up, it was like the carnival, 50 minutes per second, 30. ⁓ what if what if that relationship is a mutable one? Gor/don: Yeah. Rachel: Where we can increase our relationship with our sensitivity and with our capacity to be with more information. You know, and this gets us into really wild territory of like, again, the sensing body not being maybe part of our like ⁓ sort of more mainstream collective map of intelligence or of process or of a self or of our own experience. Now we're back in, you know, the the Cartesian divide. I think therefore I am. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Rachel: And to be able to even engage with one's sensing body, you have to be able to kind of like unwind metacognition from the thinking itself. And it's like, can I observe my narratives? Can I observe my stories? Can I observe my thoughts? ⁓ if something's coming through in the form of words, ⁓ how can I observe my need for certainty? Can I observe my desire for attribution, single pointed attribution, right? There's also the capacity to observe state. And I think this is what, you know, in a lot of ways is so important and so profoundly like underserved. ⁓ because it is beneath reason, rationale, sort of causality narrative, right? My my access to state had to come by virtue of sort of like connecting with ⁓ the sensing body in really sort of creative ways. Gor/don: What do you mean when you say state? Rachel: State, ⁓ the state of my sensing body, the somatic experience, ⁓ the direct experience that lives beneath language. I may render it to myself in language, but how do I connect with that and deepen my capacity to simply be with it or feel with it when it may not be part of my experience? Or, you know, it's like we talk about how much this varies ⁓ with folks, you know, neurodivergence, trauma. Just in general, right? In a very in a collective and in a you know, representational to intelligence. ⁓ the ways that we engage process, you know, the educational system. I could go on and on, right? Yeah, yeah. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Alright. So here we are. We're in the soup. We're in the soup of it. and so, yeah, if any of y'all listening are also feeling like we're a little soupy saucy, that's correct. We are in a process right now. ⁓ we don't have an identified outcome in mind other than the conversation itself. Rachel: Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm. Gor/don: Sensing body has raw experience, ⁓ can ⁓ well has awareness of some of that experience and can nurture awareness, grow awareness. From there we move to organization and meaning making of those awarenesses ⁓ into then like ⁓ something adaptive or Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gor/don: ⁓ choices ⁓ to to simplify it. And the process happens at every step along the thing. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. ⁓ coming back to attention, you know, observing your own attention, observing the qualit observe the observer, right? We've all heard that one before. And so Putting on the spot a little bit if that's okay. Gor/don: We'll say. Rachel: Okay. Like if you were to observe your state in this moment, what w what might what might come up and come out? Gor/don: You'll be glad to know I was way out in front of you, Rachel. Like we were ⁓ we're we're drinking from the same cup here. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. I was actually just before you started that query, ⁓ was like getting all meta with myself and like I was kind of ⁓ back here over my own right shoulder, ⁓ observing this. And so there was an imaginational creative ⁓ choice to differentiate my perspective ⁓ and bifurcate it. And so I'm present, I'm hearing you, ⁓ and I'm ⁓ everything else is still going on and I'm doing this other thing. My state is generally relaxed. I got a little pinch behind my left shoulder blade where I did something weird yesterday. I'm pretty like hyped. ⁓ I've got a lot of energy as we engage in this way. Rachel: Right. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah, yeah. Gor/don: ⁓ I feel ⁓ pretty focused and alive. Rachel: Hyped and relaxed, cool at once. If you were locked into some sort of ⁓ those two flavors can't go together, would you be able to self report both of these things? Like Gor/don: Yeah. Well then you would never have a flavor flav to go with Chuck D. Like, that's it. Rachel: That's innovation. Well, and you're d scope, right? Like artificial exclusion, right? This not that. How are you, right? ⁓ you know, in Finland, don't ask somebody how are you unless you really mean it. You know? And so again, this just sort of like attention, you know, in in a you know, we asked as like fine, move on, right? But it's like in in when you're really earnestly asking that question, better be ready for like a full, you know, response. And the dimensionality of that, right? I love that you're relaxed and hype. You know. Yeah. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and so for everyone paying attention to this right now, I'll invite you to go ahead and engage that metaconsciousness just right now. Just observing yourself listening to this voice, maybe watching my hands flap around like this. ⁓ and and just and just noticing. There's nothing that needs to come of it. It's it r it is simply just like looking. ⁓ Rachel: Yeah. Hm. Right. Gor/don: Use the term witness. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. This is definitely one of those places that's so fascinating to me and really it it does feel to me like metacognition can kind of get sucked up into the left brain sort of thinking computational, you know, reductionist. And then if you add heightened nervous system, if you add an allostatic load, if you a ⁓ you know, it's like sort of that, ⁓ when does metacognition actually like whip us up? Do I know where my metacognition is and how it's functioning? You know, the it it's just in some ways like it's witness. It's witness consciousness. It's it's it's the quality of your awareness. And so, There is, you know, as you were describing that, like sort of back and back and back. I'm thinking of that meme and it's like the earth and it's like, it's always been this. It's like it's always been this, right? You know the meme I'm talking about that goes three layers back, right? It's like there is this, like, yeah, the quality of the witness and developing, practicing a capacity to witness your own thoughts without judgment, just to under they are good warm data. ⁓ they're good fodder for helping you understand. where you are in your process, maybe to have a sense of what is alive or what is significant in your process. But there is like a depth to that that asks us to really cultivate a certain sort of like neutrality, acceptance, compassion, but like honesty too. It's like Gor/don: Neutrality is a is a really fine term for it because it it it pushes all the the judgment self and other away ⁓ into yeah something that feels ⁓ has had the essence of it. The essence of that wit that type of witnessing. Neutrality. Yeah, I'm gonna I may I may steal that one, Rachel. Yeah. With with clients a lot, I'll talk about ⁓ like Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you use it all you want. Gor/don: ⁓ emotions as information, as the somatics as information. ⁓ because our nervous systems can be so reactive to difference ⁓ that cultivating this calm witness allows us to ⁓ just not be as reactive to just be able to notice. if yeah, if if if I I see a snake Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Gor/don: Cross the street right in front of me, and I my nervous system says that snakes are scary and this was unexpected. I may leap into the air and curse the snake. ⁓ or I may simply see it cross the road and notice how that feels, and maybe there is a little bit of like, what kind of snake is that? Is it trying to get me? ⁓ but also like, ooh, snakes are cool. ⁓ look at that thing go. Rachel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Gor/don: ⁓ that's in there as well, if we can get to that neutrality place. Rachel: Right. And now we're talking about, you know, something I knocks glasses off head. ⁓ such nerdy, like private language I've developed with myself, like the emotional interface, you know, you're speaking about a conscious, you're you're experiencing fear. You're experiencing activation somatically. If we get down to it and we don't judge it and we don't go you're you're working the narrative back to this place where you experience multiple like emotions at once. And then beneath that, it's like there is an activation here. There's like a fear here. there's a survival instinct that has been flipped. How do I want to engage consciously at this more sort of place of primary intelligence? And that is part of the self. It is part of the sensing body, back to like the maps and the meaning and the sort of like philosophy of self. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Rachel: embodied. We are a process, right? And so you're choosing, you're honoring the fear. You're gonna step back if the snake comes at you, but you're not gonna you're you're also like able to contextualize the situation. There's a skunk in my yard last night. I was sitting outside on my porch. Like kinda same. It was cute. They're so cute. They are so cute. Skunks are so cute. And like Gor/don: ⁓ How big was the skunk? ⁓ Rachel: You can feel the sense. It's like, gotta get out of here. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Come and couldn't see maybe the lights in the house were on. So it like moving towards the porch and I'm like, ⁓ okay, I guess I'm gonna go inside now. Party's over. Gor/don: Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, that that Gotcha, and you observed yourself like being like, ⁓ skunks are cute and ⁓ no, I gotta leave. Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Calibrating that fear response consciously. You know, at some level, the sensing body is, you know, primary. ⁓ this gets into natural intelligence, human intelligence, the living nature of intelligence, human exceptionalism, you know, how do we engage with our own intelligence? And we do have this wild thing called metacognition that you can develop and deepen your relationship with to consciously choose how to react, respond, move through the world. Like is this the seat of, you know, free will and thus agency? I don't know, maybe. You know, some sort of something of this altogether, right? Gor/don: Yeah, so So I want to press pause at metacognition. the tur this is we're using it because it's ⁓ it's it's the term that's most often used to describe the phenomenon that we're that we're talking about. ⁓ however, the cog part of it can be misleading. ⁓ that it's not all a thinking process, that a a meta a meta a metacognitive awareness is a meta awareness. ⁓ Rachel: Mm-hmm. Right, total. Right. Yes. ⁓ Gor/don: And so metacognitive is a bit reductive, meta awareness is the bigger umbrella. Rachel: I can't tell you how many times I've gotten like jamming on this stuff with clients. And then people, you know, me suspending like, well, I understand cognition is embodied now. And it's like, so I can use I feel like I can use metacognition because I've liberated it from this old definition of thinking, but that's exactly what you're pointing to. Like it would say thinking about thinking, I guess is what metacognition would translate to, right? But what we're talking about is actually. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. That's right. Thinking about thinking. Mm-hmm. Rachel: Expanding, like kind of breaking and disintegrating that form down, taking that form of meaning of metacognition, plunging it into the bubbling primordial waters and bringing it back up and saying, ⁓ here's a new formation of meaning around this word. We can do that with any word, ⁓ which is pretty wild. Like, you know, words are subjective forms of meaning. So when people talk about semantics, you know. Gor/don: Uhhuh. Rachel: embodied semantics like we we explore here, very, very ⁓ powerful portal for exploring depth meaning, the process, you know, and and I come from a position that the body definitely holds meaning, that there's meaning and association in our sensing bodies that we can learn to access. And you know, we can get into those middle realms or we can go to right to the fear and say like, okay, snake, cross the road, cool. I'm cool. Yeah. Yeah. Gor/don: We so far have been just talking about kind of our ⁓ intra or internal experience as we're talking about all of this sensation and processing and processing, the process of processing. Rachel: Observing your state, observing your story, observing your observer, witnessing yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. Gor/don: Yeah, a procession. ⁓ And and so to now extend it out into the relationality, when I see the snake, the snake also saw me. And the snake made some choices. It chose to shoot across the road not to come at me. It's just trying to get across the road. Why the snake crossed the road? I don't know. ⁓ but there there it goes. And it encountered me as well. Yeah. Rachel: Well. Yes. Yeah. Reciprocal influence. That snake trusted its process to stay on its header. That skunk that maybe couldn't see me because the lights were on behind my kitchen window, like blaring out of my kitchen window. It's like trusting its process to right walk right at me. You know, it's like, right. So that relationality of like, okay, so why, why deepen? ⁓ our relationship with our sensing body. Why actively cultivate ⁓ a relationship with our full body intelligence and our processing, our self as process, our informational process? Well, c we're relating all the time. Right? You know, we're relating all the time. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. When aren't you relating, Rachel? Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Never not, never not. Intra is like body is memory, all that stuff, right? It's like the sensing body relating with my own processing. Inter, you know, just to kind of they're not clean, but let's just go inner outer and the flow and the process of that is that, you know, reaction, response. yeah, relating with animals, relating with people, relating with the environment. Making choices. ⁓ yeah, so we do that. Gor/don: Mm. Rachel: Well, I mean, maybe just 'cause that's learning and action, but you know, if one end for it would be, you know, ⁓ to deepen our quality of relating with with life. Gor/don: Hm. Yeah, so so right now you and I are relating. ⁓ we're also relating to the unseen future viewers of all of this or listeners. ⁓ we're relating with this interface that we're on that's doing the recording. I'm relating to this chair that's underneath me right now and the air that I can feel in my skin. ⁓ relating to my little glass of water over here, ⁓ that's calling my name, but I'm too busy talking to drink. ⁓ Rachel: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gor/don: that there and so that's a that's to name five of what is an unknowable number of things that I'm interrelated with directly or indirectly, right? Rachel: Yeah. So interesting. Not to name it, but like and say this is what it is, but you I almost feel like you're like you're mapping, you know, you're like ⁓ mapping touch points of connection with the outside of you world. ⁓ it's like shapes and forms, right? You just created a shape when you I'm connected to this, I'm connected, right? So you're you're mapping what you're be you're aware of. ⁓ and that is just fascinating. Gor/don: Yeah. Rachel: Like as you were doing that, I was watching myself like relate with this weird like body oil I use that's supposed to be like an effective lotion, but like it feels weird on my skin. And like I'm listening to you relate with your map, but I'm like, ew, weird sensory thing. Here's a point of relation. Same time, right? My attention is definitely split when I do that. ⁓ am I still present? Yes. Now more. Cause like that self-centeredness or that bring it back, right? It's almost like the more points of connection in the external, you are kind of fracturing or sort of, you know, you have this beam of light, this beam of witness. It's like, ⁓ okay, I can call it back. But we're on our way out. So I don't want to call us back. We're already in the inner. ⁓ yeah, just naming that. That's super interesting, right? These touch points. Gor/don: Yeah. Yeah, and the the interrelatedness with the the what we would call the things. Thank you, Chris Farley, for the air quotes, is is something that we curate pretty highly. Like I decide what's gonna come in my house. ⁓ I d I decide what I'm gonna have for dinner. ⁓ I decide what I'm going to interact with in so many ways. And in the same vein, I end up in relationships. And some of those are circumstantial, some are quite volitional, ⁓ and some are incidental, ⁓ but all of them are meaningful. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. I'm willing to bet a lot of people that are listening have had the experience of having like ⁓ more or less relationship with that like awareness and choice or even choice bandwidth. You're like, I'm intentional, a relationship for what I eat for dinner. You know? It's like an awareness of not having the bandwidth choose, a long day. Let's say cognitive overwhelm, swimming in a lot of information. ⁓ nervous system has a having a hard time parsing body-mind, right? We talk about neurodivergence and neurocomplexity. And it's like that sort of just like overwhelm of a body mind that may be taking in more information in various ways. And then you get to, you know, you get to dinner time. Yeah, you don't have a something planned or prepped. And it's like, ⁓ so even just naming that, like noticing that in yourself, what does that mean to me when I have the like volition or the energy? to like really be intentional and choose or plan. And then, you know, what does it mean to me when I come upon, you know, 6 PM and I'm like, ⁓ gotta figure this out. ⁓ Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Touch points, touch points. What's in the fridge? Am I cooking for just me or other people? Like what is the, you know, purp. So that even of itself, right? I'm an informational process, a banal sort of like everyday thing, which is grateful to have the capacity to make dinner. And, you know, can I just choose? Like, can I notice the overwhelm? Can I just, okay, cut through the bullshit, just grab this or like it's too much, you know, I'm gonna order out. Gor/don: Well and and you cut cut through the overwhelm, you said, and and that you know that that brings us back to a meta place like, ⁓ I'm overwhelmed. ⁓ look at me go. ⁓ I how will I ⁓ relate to my s internal state right now while I'm trying to figure out if there's enough celery for chicken soup? ⁓ and within that that noticing the awareness of the overwhelm. Rachel: Right. Gor/don: In the absence of neutrality about that, then we will be judging it. And we will be accepting our overwhelm, that is to say, working with it, or rejecting our overwhelm, which tends tends to make things worse. Rachel: To make things worse. And here we go into very real, the very real benefits of you know moving into self as process definition. And the the the ripple effects and the sort of like benefits of that at these various strata, cognitive, existential thinking, maps, terrain, embodied practice. It's like if I'm overwhelmed again, I can't figure it out again, versus I accept the overwhelm, this is where I am. This is what I got and this is what we're gonna do. Right. It's like one of these adds to the you know, the sort of like net overwhelm, ⁓ the net allostatic load and like the just ⁓ you know, another problem to sort out, another place I have failed. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You said it tw You y you've said allostatic load twice, will you define it? Rachel: ⁓ I mean, I think the simplest way that I think about this is just like the amount of like sort of unorganized information that your body is carrying, which also would include like stress, ⁓ which would include like the stress, ⁓ it can it can be as something as simple as like stress from working out, which you've chosen, or it can be stress from a hard day at work. You know, it's sort of like compounding interest on where your nervous system is at any given time is sort of how I think about it. And I may be off a little bit. Gor/don: Yeah, yeah. Unprocessed emotions, unnoticed ⁓ physical pain or tension. ⁓ Rachel: loops that aren't closed, but it's not about closing them in a problem solving way. It's about like acknowledging, contextualizing, sort of and and when you're swimming in a lot of information and again, this, you know, this sort of ⁓ very strong hypothesis that there are some of us that are more open, more sensitive. And I mean that at the sensing body level, synaptic pruning. If you've got more synapses going on, you've got more consciousness, more neuronal activity traversing a lot of different sort of ⁓ my cilial pathways, right? And so if I can become aware of that and it's like, okay, we're just gonna get burritos from Cafe Corazone because that's the easiest thing right now. And I don't I'm not gonna blame myself for that. You know? Gor/don: Hm. Yes. Rachel: A lot of lot of self judgment wrapped up in that witness. Witness the witness. Yeah. Gor/don: I'm just still relishing neuronal and mycelial being just like woven together so beautifully right there. ⁓ and then it goes to you going to get a sandwich somewhere. ⁓ that's beautiful. Rachel: you friend. Well that's you know the lee patterns, right? You see ⁓ in the the you know, the veins and the you know, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Gor/don: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And and so ⁓ this this you know this all these processes we're describing, they're all going on all the time. And ⁓ we get to decide how much skill building to do around awareness raising and how much skill building to do around ⁓ a witnessing mind. ⁓ and all of that is really frickin' messy and often uncomfortable, and especially uncomfortable. in relationship to others who maybe go who are going through their own process, ⁓ perhaps with you. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, it can definitely be all of those things. And back to, you know, the wilderness ⁓ metaphor and like really backcountry camping in Alaska is my favorite, you know. ⁓ there is this, you know, what is new is novel. And, you know, for those of us that have any sort of relationship to the DHD part of things. You know, there is a desire for new terrain and and wilderness and mystery. ⁓ maybe all humans have that to some degree. Growth, learning, right? ⁓ at first that can be scary, but it can also be exciting. It can all back to your, you know, can I be relaxed and hype? And this gets us into relationship with fear and fear and excitement and and awe and wonder, those are kind of close together for me. ⁓ you know, to ⁓ Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Rachel: live in those liminal places where many things can be true at once, right? And that is that like choosing to show up a different way, choosing to, you know, let go of some of the self judgment, choosing a different twist the prism. Choose a different vantage point. Choose a different expression. Yeah. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, excitement and awe and fear. I mean, they were conflated in like the Old Testament description of the divinity, right? You've you will fear the your God. And that wasn't like, ⁓ he's got he's about to hit you with a stick. It's like, look at the size of this thing. Like, this is a lot. and that's and that's the fear. ⁓ Rachel: Right. Total. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. What we don't understand. You know, what threatens our survival. But is it like our physical survival? Is it like identity survival? Is it meaning survival? Sometimes learning breaks apart what we conceive of as information. And I think we're really in this really interesting, you know, another Copernican revolution right now. And when you add the digital and when you add, you know, these old scripts of what information is and technology and never before has like metacognitive sovereignty or meta awareness development been more important in order to actually stay connected with like the physical world and with your sort of capacity to navigate an increasingly fracturing reality, essentially. But yeah, sometimes like meaning gets sublimated or meaning gets like put into the alchemical soup and comes out something else, you know. And there's your uncertainty tolerance. Yeah. Gor/don: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the w the why you went to the Alaskan wilderness was not the why you came back. Rachel: No, never, never, never, it's never. And there's our pilgrimage, right? Like, yeah, hey, hey. Gor/don: Sure. ⁓ ⁓ yeah, and and so within that is like I think everyone could relate to ⁓ having an experience of courage, ⁓ of feeling afraid and doing a thing anyway, no matter how small or large that was for you. and that what that courage requires is like a noticing that everything in me is saying to not jump off this bridge attached to a bungee cord. and I'm going to override those systems as I witness them and leap. and and so that in internal process that went on that told you not to jump, and then these all these choices and external ⁓ relationships that you're having with the bridge and with the bungee and with the people who brought you there, ⁓ allow you to Rachel: Right. Gor/don: to make the leap. ⁓ and why you went there may not have been, you know, you thought, ⁓ this will be very fun. And what it is is terrifying and courageous. ⁓ yeah, I I I d Rachel: Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gor/don: As we've been talking that that concept, that like concretion of process into something as common as people doing stuff they don't wanna do. Rachel: Right, right, right. You know, the mechanics of discipline, but like the kind of disciple or devotion or commitment. It's like I want this thing and I notice resistance to it and I'm gonna move towards it anyways, right? Like so many, you know, so many of my clients are, you know, working with this like, you know the capacity for nuance and complexity renders us perfectionism and the drive for precision, you know, ends up in a different place than maybe it it could live differently. It could live through them differently, right? And so, yeah, I mean, I think there really is this place where we have choice and you know, that agency required to say, like, I'm going to do it anyways. There's also an intelligence in saying, like, I'm not going to do it, you know, and to be, you know, you still miss subtlety, is there a right choice? Is there simply choice? We do the best with the amount of information we have a real living relationship with and we move from it and we move from it and we move from it. It's like I'm out in the backcountry and there's a swollen river and crossing rivers is more dangerous than running into a bear you know it's like okay I'm gonna alter my course and cross the river in a place that it's less dangerous. That's a good choice. I'm still going that way. I'm just gonna iterate I'm just gonna do it a little differently, right? When it's just us, you know, choices, right? But that choices is choices, expression, basis of relating. So, you know, ri I know we're kind of moving towards our, you know, sort of it's not a guarantee. ⁓ but when we, you know, have this relationship with intentions and goals, the relational dynamics that come with like choice and expression, it's like, you know. Gor/don: It wasn't a guaranteed fifty minutes. We can go as long as we need to. Rachel: We're doing something together. We're moving in this direction together. We are a process together. these capacities at the intrapersonal level, when we're talking about, you know, healthy individuation, embodied meta awareness, become so integral to actually being able to co create in the realist sense of the term that I can access in my body, because it's like. Gor/don: Mm. Rachel: Yeah, like intensons philosophy, you know, it's like you may want to get to the end as quickly as possible and I may want to mitigate as much risk as possible. And now we have two different competing, you know, sort of ⁓ priorities, right? There's a word, priorities. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's wild how deep Gor/don: Yeah, or style. Mm-hmm. Style board of priorities. Yeah. Rachel: this stuff can go and how like much is available to us, I feel like, in terms of relating with our own process. Gor/don: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and you name this just beautiful part of it, which is if we are relating and we are each like coming in with the intention of ⁓ fairly high awareness, self awareness, ⁓ then when or if friction arises, we have the capacity to fall back to be like, what's going on in here? What's got me so uptight? ⁓ what's actually happening? Rachel: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Gor/don: Let me understand this. ⁓ now we're in a process with someone rather than against someone. Rachel: Yep. And we talk, you know, a lot about, you know, conscious relating, ⁓ difficulties in relating different social norms and conventions, but the the capacity to develop that intrapersonal embodied awareness so that you can be real about, you know, intentions, goals, stopping to kind of get into that like, you know, awareness space. And it's like, ⁓ yeah, like Gordon wants to get get to the end as fast as possible. And Rachel's really, really, you know, hi So how do we blend? You know, if we're in the backcountry together, how do we blend? How do we move forward? Now we're talking about, you know, I think I wrote down power and control and nourishment and collaboration, right? These things is like who how do we decide together how to blend these two intentions, goals, things that maybe seem competing or disparate, but can they actually come together in a shape or a form? Gor/don: as we're prioritizing our connection over and above whatever it is we're talking about. Rachel: Exactly. And that in of itself now you're at another level, right? It's like that's like we secure attachment and we can navigate difference of opinion, difference of intention, difference of you know, goal, let's say. Yeah. It's crazy stuff because the reality of it is like we're doing it all the time anyways. All the time. But in my own experience of like Gor/don: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. All the time. Rachel: positive disintegration and nervous burnout and nervous system reorganization and all this like identity meaning, you know, meta awareness exploration and development. it really does, there's so much available. There's so much that wasn't on the map before. And in the terrain. And there's always. Gor/don: There and there's always more. There's always more. We don't get to cross any finish lines with this stuff. It reminds me of when I before I sit before I tell that story, one end of like therapeutic stuff is behaviorism, which is very kind of outcome-oriented. Like do things a way. And then on the other side was me six years ago ⁓ engaging an art therapist. Rachel: Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Gor/don: who ⁓ just gave me very little prompting or guidance, just kind of put stuff out in front of me, didn't even tell me to monitor my own process, and simply stood and observed me. And so was modeling the metaconsciousness that I quite naturally fell into as I'm doing things. I'm like, ⁓ that's interesting. Why am I doing that? ⁓ look, ⁓ I feel like doing that. What's that about? ⁓ into doing art at home and not having an idea of like, I have a I'm gonna draw a cat climbing a tree. It's instead just like, ⁓ I'm just gonna let myself draw and see and be in this witness state and see what arises. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Right. Gor/don: And and this is where this liminality in wilderness and mystery comes in for me as far as the metaphor for information is that through processes that I couldn't see. I would catch feelings of it happening. I would catch glimpses. ⁓ but what I knew was that something was being reorganized through my simply engaging this process. And I didn't quite understand what was happening. and ⁓ I trusted Alexis Di Cassimo and ⁓ just kept going. And a little shout out Alexis. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Gor/don: And came to a place where so much of why I'd shown up there in the first place that I'd arrived at an entirely different perspective on it through a process that was not cognizant. Rachel: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Right. Well, cognitive in that sort of conscious thinking reductionist. Yeah. Behave outcome orientation. Yeah. Mm, I love that so much. Your witness got buttressed. Gor/don: Was that behavioral? Yeah. Right. Right. Talking dirty. Rachel: ⁓ See, I remember doing that, but not having like I couldn't let s now I can see it in the hinds in hindsight, like not letting, you know, that ha be the case by another human being. It's like I always had so when we talk about, you know, and this is a whole other over here I'm knocking on something, but like, you know, neurodivergence, neurocomplexity, innate or acquired, it's like How does, you know, meta thinking, metacognitive, and you know, these kinds of capacities come online? It's like, well, vigilance, you know, and sort of like developing awareness in childhood, you know, who can say? Who can say how that works? But allowing somebody else to act as that witness, I remember doing art therapy on my own and getting stuck at that spot of like, what am I painting? What am I painting? What am I painting? What am I painting? And it's like, why are you fixated on what, Rachel? Why are you fixated on what? Why? Why is it so hard to get your body to move? Why okay, ⁓ you know, and then I would follow that why, because of the intellectual horsepower and excitability and like natural proclivities to kind of like go there. And then eventually started doing these color studies and had to just drop all of the meta and just let it happen. It's like I like it there, like it's like just letting it, you know. So same but different, right? Like watching myself watch myself. Gor/don: Well new. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Rachel: And then eventually just putting it all down and having the direct experience of like giving myself permission to just like, well, whatever comes up comes out Gor/don: And through that process you came to trust yourself more deeply and to trust your own process more deeply. Even the mysterious stuff, the stuff I'm not necessarily in control of. I I I I know that whatever's going on down there probably has my best interest in our. Rachel: Yes, you have. Right. Yeah, yeah. And so like and for me, you know, being and and I'm ⁓ you know, I'm willing to bet a handful of our listeners would agree is like having some of that like why at the meta level or the physiologic level, it's like, ⁓ your nervous system has been in functional freeze for a while and like deactivation requires, you know, creativity. What does creativity mean? Giving yourself permission to do things in ways that aren't outcome oriented. you know, as sort of like having a painting aw picture or a form. It's like just give yourself permission to do abstract. Like that would have been really helpful for me to like have a little bit of that. It was also great that I like had that embodied experience of like figuring it out myself, you know? ⁓ Ridiculous. It's got practical applications too though. Like I, you know, I was sharing with you before we hopped on, like, the development of this meta awareness, I've been able to like s like walk with myself through a panic attack. And that's that, you know, that was wild, wild. Observing increasing thoughts of like sort of like vigilance and delusion and fear of like violence enacted upon me. You know, these thoughts that are not, you know, and this was a long this was a while ago. But like, you know, it Gor/don: Well, what was that like? Rachel: the capacity to and then to like, you know, sort of like, okay, Rachel, you can breathe. Like you're having an this is like an activation. This is like extreme nervous system response. You're actively capital T triggered. Like breathe, you know, like rub rub your sturdum. You know, I always kind of like rub my neck and my chest to like calm myself down or sort of like, you know My own hair, right? It's like noticing and then so doing that and then watching the thoughts and saying, like, Rachel, the thoughts are a reflection of the thing, right? So it's like being in three places at once. And the witness would toggle to like tending to the sensing body or the body, and then tending to and witnessing and then actually responding to my own thoughts that were emerging in my in my body mind. And my I was so activated in that moment. ⁓ that the practice of developing meta awareness and that sort of I call it triadic consciousness, like your observer, your story, and your state, they can all kind of relate. ⁓ yeah, I was so glad that I had some baseline of that at that time, you know? So I didn't do something rash, you know, that fear was not that fear was not proportionate. Gor/don: Yeah. Rachel: Yeah. Gor/don: Well, now I I wanna go down the triadic consciousness road, but that might be its own episode. Rachel: might be. It might be. Yeah. Yeah, I love this stuff. Thanks for being down to ⁓ jam on process and information. I know, you know, you're you're a big process orientation guy and it's always fascinating to yeah, just like explore what that means to people. Gor/don: Yeah. Yeah, and and the you know, the simple linguistic device that you use to break that word into a verb from from a noun to a verb, is just a real simple tactic that folks can adopt ⁓ to to bring 'cause the the simple adoption of that of that linguistic device moves you closer to process orientation. Rachel: There we go. I got my I got my I added it. You were like, Do you have any like clever thing to put in the box today? And I was like, No, but like verb, yeah. Every noun's a verb. ⁓ this was fun, Gordon. And I hope those that have joined us and been with us for the hour have gotten ⁓ some some interesting little insights or ideas or nuggets or questions or yeah, ⁓ spurred. Gor/don: Verb. Rachel: Spurred your own exploration of process. Gor/don: Yeah, thanks for being in on the playground and playing tetherball. Rachel: Anytime, any time.