Gordon Smith: Welcome back to Existential Tetherball. I'm Gordon Smith here with Rachel Fell and we are going on yet another journey today into a world or worlds within a word. How's it going, Rachel? Rachel: Yes. It is going, Gordon Smith. Nice to see you, my friend. It's been a minute. Gordon Smith: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate the ⁓ the spaciousness we've afforded ourselves. Rachel: Yeah, it's fantastic. It's great. And I'm very excited to dive into today's world of a word. Yes. Gordon Smith: Yeah, so if you're new here, ⁓ and you start to like what's going on here, go ahead and actually like it and subscribe to it and the hop into the comment thread. ⁓ we really appreciate all that and it allows for other folks to come be a part of these existential meanderings and investigations that we're doing. Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. And today we are meandering on the word, the world, the tether that is intelligence. ⁓ no big deal, just a real little one today. Not not. Yeah, yeah. So I'm super excited. We we reconnected and and said we'd start, you know, meaning, assumptions, definitions that this is a great place to start in any exploration like this, right? That embodied semantic. Gordon Smith: Intelligence. Rachel: portal dive into the dive into the words. So yeah, what comes yeah? Gordon Smith: Well, and d with a recognition that for the previous six episodes so far, this idea of intelligence has is something that has been central for you in each of the things that we've talked about, that it has this umbrella or foundational ⁓ character to it from your perspective. And and so ⁓ as far as like the why of doing this today, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, I think it was in our second ever episode when we explored existential, came to this like place of what is fundamental, what is meaningful, what's important for us to really understand at this juncture in space-time and in collective context. And for me, intelligence feels very ⁓ important, necessary. I, you know, I Hot take, right? We are not maybe our maps are incomplete at best of what intelligence is, partial and and downright incorrect at worst. You know, so so I think there's a real pragmatism. We're talking about AI, we're talking about artificial intelligence. Is that what does that even mean, right? Like it's like alien intelligence, natural intelligence, fractal intelligence. ⁓ You know, it's like animal intelligence, the body's intelligence, right? It just feels very ⁓ fundamental to consciousness, to being, to existing for me. That's it's this it's this important underpinning. It's like, well, how does this how does this thing work? Gordon Smith: And for myself sometimes it's like, is this thing on? ⁓ Yeah, and and for that's that's ⁓ that idea of like broadening it out there and getting out of all this reductive framing around intelligence and just being able to really just expand out and start from the place of we don't know yet. Rachel: Yeah. Well, or and yes, yes, and and and we don't know, you know. I are we in a certain sort of Copernican revolution where we're unlearning at the pace of learning. You know, I think a lot about intelligence and learning. There's learning to know, there's learning to be certain. And there are times and periods in history where it's like we learn things that challenge what we think we know. And so what I mean, that's a great place to start, maybe is like What do we think we know about intelligence? Or, you know, back when I said it's like it's it's incomplete at best. Like, you know, I'm curious, like, you know, when you were a kid, or like how you know, where do thoughts come from? You know, like Gordon Smith: Right. ⁓ yeah, yeah, w w no one who used the word intelligence with me also asked that question. ⁓ that when it was used it was that more reductive frame, ⁓ meaning he's good at complying in school and ⁓ and doing good there. ⁓ but as far as this broader piece of ⁓ you know, what is intelligence, it's it's n it's isn't something that came up for me as a kid. But in my experience as a kid. Rachel: Right, right. Yeah. Gordon Smith: I definitely was sensing my way through the world, and like emotionally feeling my way through the world. And those those things were not mentioned or discussed, but in retrospect, my intelligence manifested more so for me, from in my own experience, as ⁓ as yeah, as feeling my way through the world. And I I think that's still true for me. It's simply become Rachel: Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: ⁓ much more refined over the these fifty years. Rachel: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the measurement of, or you know, it's sort of like this missing map of like, you know, natural intelligence, planetary intelligence, the intelligence in nature. What is what is so logical about us exempting our own definition of human intelligence from the way that works? Because we know, right? We know that physiology. And the design of the species is is the basis of perception. And so this question of like learn these questions of like learning and perception, it's almost like, I don't know, but it's like this discomfort with the animal body, with the sensing body, with not knowing, with there's there's this coming back into a broader definition of intelligence, which includes you're talking about feeling, right? Sensing body before something hits conscious awareness, before something hits verbal. it renders in in language. It's like the intelligence of my physical body, my fascia transmits signals 200 times faster than the nervous system, you know, bites per second processed through scale in the physical body mind, you know, the biochemical electric cascade that creates sensations. Those render into emotions, energy and motion, those render into narratives, into stories, into meaning. When we hit that meaning line, how quickly does X become Y, become Z, become A, become B, become C? And now we have like a story on what all those sensations mean. You know, it's it's wild to think about it that way, but it's also not at all. I mean, it's just it's nature. Gordon Smith: Just to r to reflect back to you, ⁓ this idea that ⁓ that we have we're having some kind of raw experience that is as close to the present, ⁓ I don't want to dwell on that term, but ⁓ as we can get. and that that sensation is not in and of itself ⁓ necessarily picked up on. ⁓ it may, it may Rachel: Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: course through us, we may know it's there, and that sensing body may stop the process there. Or we may it may rise to a level of awareness. So there's something in the environment that, internal or external, that has us aware of what we're sensing. And now the once the awareness is there, we have these ⁓ organizational tools that show up to help us make what this anthro anthropocentric sense Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: of things ⁓ which can lead to that ⁓ really really oddly human-centric human supremacy ⁓ model of intelligence where we're smart everyone else is dumb and that's how that is ⁓ and then last but not least is is is the piece that flows from that organization which is adaptation ⁓ given this new information what do I do with this? Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well getting cletting as close to the real-time information as as one can learn how to do. And that's that, you know, when we talk about full body intelligence and the living process of full body intelligence, it is that sort of like, can I begin to or do I have a practice of cultivating relationship with sensation beneath meaning, with experiences beneath language? ⁓ and then if you couple that with a you know, the living learning piece and learning is the application of knowing or unknowing or the application of questions or the application of an intention, it's like, yeah, there's there's a stewardship that I think that we have on offer ⁓ in terms of our own relationship with our own unique individual and then collective human intelligence, that we're just we're not taking up that invitation collectively. Gordon Smith: Yeah, yeah. When you say stewardship, can you expand on that? Rachel: Yeah. ⁓ I'm not I'm not a scarlet-headed taninger and I'm not a dolphin, as best I can tell. I mean, I can imagine I could be that. humans have this meta awareness, this metacognition, which, you know, oftentimes one of the, you know, translations of that is I think therefore I am, and the identification with thoughts, we can learn to engage our inner world differently. And so that conditioning around convention and measurement and reductionism and achievement, all this stuff that comes from the very specific kind of conditioning that so many of us, I think, like experienced, there's actually just so much more on the table in terms of not just neuroflexibility, but like consciousness flexibility. Like you can play with your own intelligence and how you learn, what you learn. Gordon Smith: Mm. Rachel: You know, it is that development of meta awareness that is possible. You know, we can we can learn how to think convergently and we can learn how to think divergently. We can learn how to slow our thinking down and really meet that waterline of direct experience. These are all things we can learn. So that that becomes a really interesting question of like, okay, are we tending to our living learning? Or are we sort of these helpless passengers just along for the ride of what, you know. What we've been conditioned with. Gordon Smith: Yeah, so it gets very iterative that intelligence becomes the stewardship of itself. Rachel: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Or a Burroughs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, p in your work doing improv with people, you've, you know, new neural pathways, you know, challenging those those skills. I think we've talked about like certainty tolerance or untolerance, right? That sort of just like imaginational intelligence. You're you're doing that in your improv groups all the time. Gordon Smith: Huh. And that imaginational intelligence is a is discarding so much of the reductionism of ⁓ intellectual primacy and instead engaging this associative reasoning network ⁓ that allows for us to be drawing from lots of different contexts ⁓ because the application is play rather than utility. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And some body minds have easier access to that than others. You know, on the way, like you sign up for an improv class or whatever, it's like, or you, you know, you join a, you decide you want to paint, right? It's gonna challenge embedded sort of pathways of meaning and associations. So when we talk about growth or evolution, healing, right? It it is really the like real time play. With consciousness and the rendering of meaning that happens in the physical body. And so yeah, some people have like more comfort, more plasticity, more connection with that imaginational intelligence. And others are like, ⁓ that's dangerous. I can't open that. I don't my body doesn't know how to open up all that possibility. You know, I'm so used to a reductionist. I have to find the best, the right, the right offer for this this scene or whatever. Gordon Smith: It makes me think about the reflex ⁓ that so many people experience ⁓ that are simply evolutionary, kind of built into our species around ⁓ social acceptance and of course bodily autonomy. and that if if we can become more discerning in what is an actual threat ⁓ and what is not a threat. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gordon Smith: ⁓ then it offers opportunity for it that broader exploration of our own intelligence. Rachel: Absolutely. And now you're you're that's that's right in that wheelhouse. You you mentioned that there's this like underpinning sort of foundational nature to this exploration of intelligence in all of our explorations from my side. And I think that is definitely we are bioelectric beings. You know, it's like the material and energy like materiality and energy, matter and energy, two forms of the same thing. And so if I can Cultivate my meta awareness and my relationship with my sensing body, I can do the work of decoupling threat from arousal or energy from threat. And I can kind of reconfigure my threat schema. And we really live as in as humans with bloated, unnecessary threat schemas. ⁓ there's obviously like the threat schemas we learn in childhood and developmental context around belonging, and there's more or less sensitivity to that. ⁓ but there's also just this like unnecessary amount of scaffolding that a lot of us are carrying. And what happens when we can get into those spaces, notice them and shift them using nothing but our own living human technology? It's it's absolutely possible. And so yeah, it just makes life a lot freer, creativity a lot more accessible. Gordon Smith: Yeah. That sensing body that is having that immediacy of experience and maybe not even transmitting it to perception or awareness can be the part that shuts down whatever you're doing. That's where that reflex can lie. Sometimes it's a little later, sometimes it's later than that. ⁓ so this practice that you're describing, the stewardship of watching Rachel: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Gordon Smith: observing, utilizing metaconsciousness to notice where we're placing constraints on ourselves. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. And it requires new models and and definitions of what intelligence is. So back to the pragmatism of like, it's like, ⁓ philosophy. Yeah, you got yeah, yeah. Philosophy of what it what what does it mean for you? Like, how do you understand it? You know, it's sort of like, is it fixed? Is it Gordon Smith: Yeah. Rachel: disconnected from my body, can I ca is learning always possible? I was telling you the story of the polar bears in the Hudson Bay. Like right now they're learning to fish and hunt in the water, right? Because they have to. It's like this adaptive living learning. It's like, how are we any different? Gordon Smith: Yeah, so so you're asking this question, ⁓ is it fixed? which is, you know, rhetorical as fuck. and 'cause all we're talking about is process here. ⁓ that that there's this never-ending ⁓ flow of processes in this whatever we're gonna call it that we're inhabiting, I'll go with reality for now, ⁓ that Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. Yeah. Gordon Smith: ⁓ I I I'm losing track of myself. I I got a little too worked up. Rachel: You're doing great. ⁓ living processing of what we call reality. Yeah. Gordon Smith: Process. That's right. And so we are we are process. Everything is process. It's all process. ⁓ in and in a way that ⁓ the discrete nature of how of which types of ⁓ intelligence are valued and prized are the applied intelligence that go toward things that are conventional and orthodox and ⁓ Rachel: Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: Generative in a modern sense. ⁓ And that if we do away with that reductive nature of what intelligence is and how we can use it, and go instead into this broader process rather than into application, ⁓ yeah, there's not there's the directionality suddenly opens up in ways that it couldn't before. Rachel: Uh-huh. Right. And I love that so much, Gordon. And I love what you said about ⁓ going beyond application. Like that's a really interesting and useful place to co-explore for sure. And to kind of dissolve that a little bit to just kind of come into relationship to come back to it's sort of like, yeah, this gets stewardship of, you know, attention and intention individually and collectively. What is a threat? What matters, what renders as ⁓ important, ⁓ meaningful? How do I move and apply that information in the physical embodied world with in my corp, you know, with my doing body, right? You know, there this this sort of, ⁓ hey, like wow, okay, yeah, I guess I got this thing. So that that part seems really ⁓ really important, you know, and that is such a place where we could collectively coexplore. And I think we are more than ever. ⁓ but without this piece about exploring the nature of intelligence and leaving so much on the table, ⁓ and and our stewardship of our own, I feel like that's that's critical. Gordon Smith: Yeah. In in client in in client work when when I ask folks to you know they're in some narrative about something and I'll ask him to you know just kind of talk about another way of knowing that rather than through the narrative. ⁓ and so maybe that's ⁓ how does that feel? What's the emotional experience of that? What's the physical experience of of that? As soon as folks shift out of the narrative into this self-observation. Rachel: Living learning. Yeah. Sure. Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: The nature of reality changes. Rachel: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the doors of perception are the physical body, you know, it the the body, you know, almost I almost experience imagine it, imagine, you know, different sort of intelligence centers. But if we even just look at full body mind, intelligence and the primacy of the physiology, this German term Umwelt ⁓ is like perception is commensurate to the design of the creature. So like a bat, an echolocation. Gordon Smith: Mm. Rachel: And capacity of personar. like, how does a bat perceive? How does a bat learn there's a wall there? You know, how does a bat learn this is the edge of the cave? How does a human as as a social species with this, you know, orientation to safety, but also this orientation to belonging? And then we do seem to have this like orientation to like learning or exploring somehow. how do we perceive? ⁓ you know, and how do we make sense of? in a process orientation. And again, that's where like new models become really helpful. ⁓ bottom-up processing or this these terms, I learned them recently, afferent and efferent. So efferent processing is like exiting the body and afferent is like it is actively, I'm using an associative, it's actively affecting. So like emotions being afferent, you know, two thoughts. And sort of like, well, what's beneath, you know, name the emotion. Like, I don't know, it's like i energy and motion, sensation, right? Fear and excitement are neighbors. Can I access that place and watch, watch that move real time into the first part of a narrative, for example? Gordon Smith: Orientation to learning that you mentioned as far as being like maybe the third leg of the stool. what a spectrum of intensity that is. From people who are like curious enough to walk off a cliff ⁓ all the way over to people who are curious enough to figure out what I'm gonna eat for breakfast. And that, you know, it's kind of as far as I'm gonna get that day with with curiosity. And and yeah, and so I appreciate you like. Rachel: Yeah. Gordon Smith: raising that idea of, ⁓ I want to know more, I want to learn more. Because I believe that that can look really different across the spectrum. And these more applied intelligences that aren't necessarily doing the ⁓ Umwelt exploration, but are instead quite concrete in in what it is they're curious about, are in one place, whereas this kind of conversation is certainly in another. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. And that's you're naming, I mean, I feel like neurodiversity has to just jump on the back of the horse right here. Like if we're talking about intelligence, we have to be talking about neurodiversity because this there are new models, right? We can look at the physiology and see how movement of processing, literal afferent, afferent, top-down, bottom-up, processing an apple, processing the environment I'm swimming in, you know, ⁓ that sort of my skin. is taking in all sorts of information right now. That's not, you know, we're so ocular, right? But there's so much reality we can't see that is affecting us. ⁓ and that that's that's a little that's a pill to swallow, right? That's a little matrix-y, but it's we know this, you know, we know this. Gordon Smith: Well and and and for a just like ⁓ just for a moment, here we are, we're in this pretty heady place, we're talking fast, we're using all these big new vocabulary words, and we're talking about our skin. And so like as soon as you said it, I was like super conscious of how the air feels on my skin. ⁓ definitely conscious of this cup of tea that I just had, how it's vibrating me a little bit. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Right. That's all then it that's all you yeah. Gordon Smith: And so I want to invite anyone who's paying attention to this to also just tune into these felt senses right now that we'll just kind of bring them on board while we're also doing this other. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I remember when I first started consciously trying to connect with my sensing body. And that bridge of bringing mind into matter was very difficult. And it took some time because as an adaptive mechanism, I definitely was, you know, I think some of my fascination and and work here is obviously directly connected to my own experience of being neurodivergent and also just like not inhabiting or prioritizing or including my sensing body, not having these updated maps and then finding them and playing with them and being like, holy shit, no way you guys. You guys kind of trans Gordon Smith: Yeah, and so thanks for letting me take that little detour around because cause bringing it back to neurodiversity, subset of biodiversity, that idea that what your sensing body is you know, we're in ⁓ somewhat shared what we'll call reality. and that then our awarenesses are different from from one another, and then our meaning making and organizational Rachel: Uh-huh. Right. Right. Gordon Smith: functions are different from one another, and then the potential adaptations are different from one another. So we are in this state of a broad diversity of experience, of intelligence, ⁓ Rachel: Right. Gordon Smith: That that is it's it's just worth noticing and naming as far as the the the variations. Rachel: Yeah. And that this is like I think why neurodiversity absolutely, I'll go ahead and say has to. Like I could say should, ⁓ I'll say has to be a ride along finger. in this space because these updated models, like we need form and we need structure to make sense of things, right? So it's like, hey, your body's one big brain. Hey. Like you've got this sensing body, you've got this thinking body, there's verbal intelligence, there's nonverbal intelligence. It's a whole rabbit hole to go down. And you can create your own models, you can use other people's, but that inclusion of the physiology feels essential. Then there's this other next, number two, neurodiversity. It's like, yo, we're all the same, we're all different in these different ways, seen and unseen, and then we're all distinct. So it straight up anchors in non-duality. Like my eyes are like human, human sees this thing, thinks the same thing, thinks the same thing because we're the fancy monkeys. And it's like, you're experiencing it the way I'm experiencing it, right? It's like, no, you're not. ⁓ is that a threat? You know? So there is this like Yeah, it's like there is a common humanity at the same time that unseen differences of meaning association, cognitive Gordon Smith: Yeah. ⁓ Rachel: embodied intelligence, how that moves in people, scene differences, age, hair color, skin color, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then distinction. That one's a wild one. It's like separate but connected. It's like, I'm connected with Gordon. We're interconnected. We're jamming, but like I'm not in his experience. I'm in Rachel's experience. So neurodiversity anchors in this triadic model as opposed to the assumption of an either or Gordon Smith: Right. Rachel: Homogeneity or sort of heterogeneity? Wait, did I do that wrong? Those are the same thing. ⁓ either everybody's the same or it's only differences. Gordon Smith: Brilliant. Nailed it. No, it's good. It's really good stuff. And ⁓ the the other piece that I would tack on ⁓ is around experience. ⁓ there's an incredibly reductive tool that's used to measure intelligence called IQ testing. ⁓ which takes a snapshot of a person on a day Rachel: Yeah. Nail it. Yeah. ⁓ Gordon Smith: In regard to very specific ways of problem solving ⁓ and sensing. And if you give someone an IQ test and they get a score, it's pretty good, pretty high, and then they go through trauma. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Gordon Smith: They have however been given a whole bunch more to be afraid. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Fear, how how fear constricts the free flow and movement of energy and motion and processing through the body mind, back to threat arousal, the composting, unnecessary threat matrices, relationship with energy and energy and motion, with let's say adjusted threat matrices. But yeah, like full on yes, and ⁓ ravens, the wexler, like all these different, it's like. Gordon Smith: Yeah, yeah. Rachel: What are we measuring even, you know, and and how are we measuring it? And so what is the purpose of measuring and and what exactly are we measuring? If we wanted to have a more like transparent and truly logical conversation around IQ tests, we would be speaking about the context more openly and freely. You know, this is me associative, spatial, visual, you know, whatever it might be, right? This is specific in this regard, right? But as you start to zoom out, you know, a a farmer that has been working the land for 40 years and can smell truly, like literally smell or see or predict like that sort of human pattern recognition coupled with experience and an intimate relationship with the land can predict a weather pattern or an event, right? Like that is incredible intelligence applied. ⁓ we're not measuring that on an IQ test, are we? Gordon Smith: No, no, it's not it's not measurable with that kind of that kind of test. That test is is so strictly utilitarian ⁓ and you know built ⁓ in the early twentieth century, post industrial revolution, very much ⁓ around or within a capitalist context. Rachel: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not to say that that type of processing and cognition isn't valid. Like it's like we we we remove the need for a certain sort of like justification or measurement or positioning before coming back into a conversation about intelligence in the service of X, learning in the service of X, right? And again, there's that stewardship that we can kind of like come into relationship with our own living learning. And so that becomes really interesting, right? ⁓ cognition is embodied. Like ⁓ you know, somebody who scores really high on, you know, an on an IQ test, that is part of that's part of the human diversity of processing. There is there more available to them? Probably. Is there more available to all of us? Probably. Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Gordon Smith: Probably. Mm-hmm. Rachel: And that's not to say there aren't different neurotypes though, back to neurodiversity, right? Or or even if I don't say neurotypes, expressions of intelligence in the human collective, right? ⁓ there are these differences, these unseen differences, neurodevelopmental realities, innate, present at birth, acquired, the reciprocity between the two of them is almost inextricable. ⁓ because you know, what fires together wires together, and we are formed and shaped by our environment. ⁓ but yeah, neurodiversity is real and it's an extension of biodiversity. So not all humans have the same, you know, like we're not all wired the same. Gordon Smith: Yeah, and and and people see it every day. And anybody who works in groups of any sort, whether they be a friend group or a family or co-workers, recognize that there's some strengths present in others, or intelligences present in others that we can refer to and utilize within the group. ⁓ and so it's n and we don't have to say, Hey, you're intelligent in this way, can you do this thing? Rachel: Right. Gordon Smith: It just kinda ha ends up happening that way because they demonstrate that intelligence ⁓ with regularity and we with our own. And so here we are in this kind of ecosystem of intelligences ⁓ to varying levels of harmony. ⁓ and it it just it it liberates us even from neurotype, from anything other than just like being in that Rachel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: process and being in ⁓ a part of this collect. Rachel: Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. The the label language diagnoses of more of, you know, the medical or psychological model can be great and important starting points for understanding ourselves more deeply. We are mutable. We are a process of a process. We're just a process, right? So how my intelligence expresses at any given time in my life. ⁓ and how that can change and evolve. But there also is this like sort of orientation that this particular human has, right? And has always had. And if I can if I can slow down some of my narratives and stories, you know, and and you know, my grip on identity isn't super strong. ⁓ but like there is this sort of like, yeah, there are these through lines, there's these patterns, there's these interests, proclivities, strengths, also weaknesses, right? And to just kind of like, yeah, it's like, I'm probably not gonna be Gordon Smith: Ajá, ajá, ajá, ajá. Rachel: a good accountant. Like that's just not, but like it's a different kind of intelligence that has some of that. And now it becomes interesting, right? Because you can experience it and how somebody thinks, right? Attention to detail, ⁓ orientation to time, right? ⁓ specificity on rules. It's like, yeah, we need all different types of human intelligences in society. Gordon Smith: Beyond the human intelligence piece to see that unfold across our ecosystems with the various intelligences we encounter, you mentioned the bat and the bear earlier, that these intelligent beings are also a part of this. And if we've already expanded our potential understand understanding of potential to what's possible within humanity, we then get a whole other concentric circle as we move away from humanity into other ⁓ beings, creatures, ⁓ living things, or if you want to go full animist, everything. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Right. And that requiring a certain sort of like relationship with one's own intelligence, a suspension of assumptions, a willingness to listen, a capacity to the sensing body, just orientation as a word, that always comes up in my work with others and for myself. It's sort of like this question of where am I now? And it's like, how might it how would it feel to sit against this tree in the park for twenty minutes? And then notice if I go in with assumptions or if I go in with answers or if I it's it's sort of like can I it's that's like a great consciousness experiment. Just go sit at the base of a tree for a little while and see what you learn. See what you don't learn. That's okay too, you know. Notice, notice everything that comes up. Gordon Smith: Yeah, and and we know this from research is that that especially in familiar environments, we make so many assumptions that things can be wildly out of place and we don't even notice it, ⁓ because we're filling it in with these preconceived notions of what ought to be there. Rachel: Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's all these really interesting, yeah, like, you know, like immediately I'm thinking of seeing eye books, but yeah, it's these sort of like these illusion, you know, you got these illusion images or even like ⁓ like environments where it's like scale is messed up, or you assume this is running water, but it's actually, you know, a piece of paper that's being like it's and your brain fills in the fact that it's moving, right? And so we are experiencing reality. through the living lenses of perception, which is the physical body mind. And that's a trip. Like when we get to this place, some people are like, ⁓ my God, sign me up. This is so cool. And other people are like, what do you I'm not in control in the way that you think I am? Or this breaks certain associations and meanings. So back to like, yeah, that maybe this stuff isn't for everybody, but maybe, maybe it is. Like ⁓ I'm pretty liminal by nature. Gordon Smith: Yeah. Rachel: And sure, nurture too, I'm sure has a lot to do with that. ⁓ but yeah, I like the place where we slow down the assumptions. I've also consciously cultivated ⁓ a lot of time spent there with myself and with others. So that slow existential, that slow processing is like that's a type of intelligence I lean on a lot. Gordon Smith: Hmm. It lights up for me the ⁓ the emotional ⁓ way of knowing and way of ⁓ emotional intelligence. ⁓ and that idea of like s slow and fast intimacy. ⁓ you know, where there's ⁓ really intense connection available that can be really thrilling. Rachel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm, mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: ⁓ and burn itself right out. And then there's that slower intimacy that is building understanding over durations and and having a very different character. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that so much. And the intimacy of relationship with self and others and learning over time. That yeah, fast, slow, knowing, unknowing domains of experience, right? It's like that for me, I'm like, there's no one right way. It is more of just like a yeah, attention intention kind of thing. And if we cultivate a relationship with living learning, life's a lot better. I mean, I don't know about you, but like if we're like knowing everything is like, well what now? Cool. Great. Did I win did I win the ultimate gold star of humaning? Did I Gordon Smith: Right, right. You're suddenly Lestat, the very tired vampire who's seen it all. ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ and there's ⁓ as as as we arrive to this place, ⁓ I'm reminded of the etymology of the word, ⁓ intelligence. And back once you get back to that Proto-Indo-European route, it's to choose. Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Gordon Smith: ⁓ later in Latin it's discern. And so it ⁓ there's agency at the heart of intelligence. And so so much of what we've been talking about here today is like how is learning how to learn and ⁓ and how to be agents of our own intelligence. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm noticing myself want to go into a space that is a little even further out there. And I'm noticing myself like, can I, should I, is that okay? Gordon Smith: Let's take it for a spin, see how it drives. Rachel: Okay. so since I was a relatively young girl, I have been kind of ⁓ fixated. That's the word that's coming out, so we'll stay with it. Stuck. Curious about, oriented to this idea these ideas of fate and free will and choice. Gordon Smith: Mm. Rachel: And in the last number of years, through, you know, massive positive disintegration started in around 2018, you know, into this sort of like new chapter of relationship with my own living intelligence, this continuing fascination or fixation showing up. And f free will is the capacity for choice. And if I'm really zoomed out looking at space-time and the fractal, it's like Did this little organism that was Rachel Fell, once I'm gone, did she really have any choice in the greater scheme of how massive and through scale and like you know, the influences of reality? Did she have the capacity to influence? I believe so. And that's what we're talking about, the capacity to influence ourselves, each other, fractal reality, right? And if you zoom really far out, it might not look like this little vector in space-time had a lot of influence, but we do. And when you zoom in a little further, there is this how how do I notice how I'm being influenced is a fundamental question of intelligence. You call that fate. You call that the context of the environment, the chips and how they fall, and you know, where we're born and what we experience, right? How do I work with that and discern and choose and then influence my own trajectory from there? And I just think that's like a I don't know what it's like to be a dolphin or a bat ⁓ or a bear. But my experience of being humans, like we do have agency. We do have that capacity to discern. And that if that needs to change, if we're not actively using that, like what? Yeah. Gordon Smith: I I I was just reading Michael Singer's the surrender experiment. And what you're talking about is at the heart of that book, which is th this guy's recognition, like, I am barely in control of anything, but I'm acting like I can control everything. ⁓ and let me stop doing that. Let me go into full surrender mode. ⁓ Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: And the route that he takes to get full surrender mode is full of choice and free will. It is full of agency. It's like, ⁓ I'm gonna meditate. ⁓ I'm gonna get real ⁓ into my own metacognition and awareness. ⁓ I'm gonna notice those reflexes. ⁓ I'm gonna tame some of those reflexes. I'm gonna alter this, that, and the other. And so for someone who's surrendering because he doesn't have power in this vast universe. Rachel: Yeah. Gordon Smith: is also demonstrating enormous personal power. Rachel: Beautiful. Yeah, that agency of learning, that agency of intelligence and shifting one's own perception, cleansing the doors, composting the threat schema, noticing how we're influenced, right? That's yeah, absolutely. And it's paradoxical, right? Because yeah, I mean, we are quite influenced. And so I get that there's on a couple levels, like that's a hard pill to swallow, you know. But it's also liberatory. Is that a word? Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. Awesome. I thought so. yeah, I am influenced and influencing all the time. So how do I want to discern and choose? Right. And more than ever, right? It's like, well, okay, let's get political for a second towards the end here. Like, what have we been conditioned to believe? About intelligence and how it works, about, you know, I don't know a person who doesn't have some form of like educational trauma or just like relationship with learning. It's like, you know, what's your relationship with learning like? And ego shows up there pretty good, right? We live in a society where we really need to demonstrate competency. We're we're taught to demonstrate knowing. And there is a lot of like, it's like, no, I know, no, I know this supremacy of knowing that becomes very like. competitive and it fractures, right? It fractures our capacity to co-create and to co-explore. so even getting in touch with it's like, yeah, I don't have it all figured out Gordon Smith: Yeah, the the supremacy that you're describing, ⁓ these ⁓ control mechanisms, ⁓ is what they become ⁓ in that, ⁓ I I'm the one with the expertise. I'm the I'm now the gatekeeper of the types of whatever freedoms you're seeking, ⁓ or even acceptance that you're seeking. And so what we're talking about is like is like breaking that frame. I'm not gonna try to argue with that gatekeeper. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gordon Smith: about how we ought to get out of that gate and let people through. I'm just not I'm just gonna go around the gate being like it's not a real gate. I'm not going there. I'm not I'm not doing it. Rachel: It's not a real gate. It's not a real gate. Don't try to You made the gate. Well, they kind of inherited it too, which is like the part that I have, you know, the compassion for. When you said that I was like right back to the Matrix. I was like, don't try to bend the spoon, just realize there's no spoon. ⁓ but we we do inherit these gates, or we are given these gates, and I don't love that. Like it's sort of like we both work with a lot of gifted adults. Gordon Smith: You made it up. You made this gate up. Rachel: Right. And it's like, what messages do gifted adults get as kids when they're rewarded and praised for having all the answers or being the smartest person in the room, especially if their needs aren't met in other domains of lived experience? Right. It's like identity and ego, and you know, being the person that has all the answers or the smartest person in the room, that can be a very tangly little jungle there. You know, it's sort of like and you don't even have to be It doesn't even have to be connected to, you know, gifted or neurodivergence or you know autism or ADHD. It's like ideas of, you know, am I smart? Am I dumb? Am I enough? Am I too much? Am I not enough? Right? All that, all that good stuff, right? And so when you meet somebody who truly can be like rooted in themselves and like present and own their own intelligence without needing to kind of like do that thing, it's like, ⁓ okay, that's different. That's a different thing. Yeah. Gordon Smith: Yeah. I agree. That's how I felt when I met you. yeah, yeah. You're I mean, you have the unfortunate ⁓ reality that you are conspicuously weird and ⁓ and there's no getting around it. ⁓ and so I don't know when you chose to own it more. Rachel: Really? What you mean I don't blend in? You don't think I can't pass? You don't think I can pass? Come on. No? Gordon Smith: You are a scarlet tanager. ⁓ But that ⁓ that those and then over the course of all your various educational and traumas and social rejections ⁓ and and personal discovery went to the adaptation of Owen. Rachel: Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah. Discernment, stewardship, that kind of fun little energy there for sure. yeah, I got stuck for a while in diagnoses and assessment land for sure, but made my way out through. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a liminal person. I love the metaphysical. The metaphysical is the basis of real. I like to talk about wacky shit that a lot of people don't like to talk about that I find very pragmatic. Gordon Smith: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Rachel: ⁓ And ⁓ I'm convinced that other people could too if I just communicate it clearly enough. But all that being said, right, like back to like embrace embrace your unique flavor of neurodiversity. Humanity is neurodiverse. It's an extension of biodiversity. Get in where you fit in. And if you don't fit in anywhere, maybe you gotta reimagine some things or move out to a different plot of land and start building something new. Yeah, and maybe there's a I think there's a lot of us that feel that call. And and you know, We're the Canaries in the Coal mine, you know, I forget that book. ⁓ have you read it where it's it's this she talks about neurodivergence as ⁓ an adaptation to us living very out of our nature collectively. Gordon Smith: Mm, mm. ⁓ Rachel: Which I think is fascinating. Gordon Smith: Yeah, and another ⁓ manifestation of intelligence. ⁓ that you know, like that bear in at the Hudson Bay of like, ⁓ this isn't working. I'm gonna have to change my nature. Rachel: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like little, ⁓ I think of in a different space time, right? Like tribes where education is focused so much more on the unique, you know, sort of orientation of the kiddos, right? Like this one's got a proc proclivity for design and building, right? This one's awesome hunter. You know, that kind of thing. It's like how how things could be so different if we did operate from a neurodiversity first paradigm. Gordon Smith: True, which becomes ⁓ an intelligence ⁓ the generates the ability to perceive others' intelligence. Rachel: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Without needing to defend one's own or be in competition or be in some sort of scarcity of like the measurement. Yeah. Gordon Smith: Yeah, and so much of what we're talking about here is not new language. It's ever since the decolonization movements have been kicking up, this has been at the heart of things is to come out of the hierarchical supremacy models into something that acknowledges the the whole of reality. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. And that, you know, another conversation for another time about, you know, rooting out the oppressor within. And if the oppressor is competition, reduction, measurement, a homogenous standard control, ⁓ an over orientation to right and wrong as a sort of extension of the threat schema. ⁓ then we all have work to do, we could call it. And then from there, what's what's possible? Yeah. Gordon Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Rachel: Yeah, he said. Gordon Smith: Yeah, well I'm glad you took us down the fate free will road. It's led to some interesting places, so the answer. Rachel: Yeah. Thanks for letting me I was like, can I bring this in? And thanks also for naming, yeah, it's like what we're talking about is ⁓ very much, you know, so many things that are being explored now. You know, there's this noise signal ratio problem with social and digital life and ⁓ it's and ⁓ so much more information and but I do think that a lot of these curiosities, these explorations and and the desire to reconfigure together something healthier. It shows up in all these different ways. So like definitely come how do we come into a non-hierarchical, more like circular? Yes, we still have structure, but it's not, it's not this like oppressive, top-down sort of patriarchal structure, extractive. It's like, yeah, I think we have to start relating with our own intelligence. Gordon Smith: Yeah, inner and outer ecologies. Rachel: Yeah. Amen. Amen, Gordon Smith. Gordon Smith: A yeah, so it feels like we're kind of coming to a natural conclusion right now. And ⁓ this exploration of intelligence, I I love that ⁓ throughout it, ⁓ we weren't naming all the theoreticians around who decided what intelligence meant ⁓ in the past, ⁓ and instead just got to launch from where we are. Rachel: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Gordon Smith: And if you're still paying attention, that means that you like this stuff. ⁓ or you don't have access to a way to turn it off. I'm not sure exactly. so again, I'll reiterate my invitation to like and subscribe and share with friends and tell folks who ⁓ you feel like would resonate with what Rachel: Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And thank you for being on this journey with me, Gordon. And like I'm really excited for us to continue to explore and share these explorations with people, bring more guests on and just sort of, yeah, like, you know, I know we can't be the only sort of weirdo ⁓ liminal thinkers, curiosities around meaning and ⁓ co creative meaning out there. So yeah, excited to continue to see where this goes too. Gordon Smith: All right. Thanks Rachel and thanks for tuning into Existential Tetherball. Rachel: Thanks, bye.