Sisterly Wisdom

My sister stops by the podcast to have a rich discussion about heritage, community, healing, and motherhood. 

Books and poets mentioned during this episode:
"I'm in Charge of Celebrations" by Byrd Baylor
Rumi
Hafez
RamDass
Allen Watts

All Beats provided by https://freebeats.io
Produced by White Hot

Transcript

Microphone (2- SteelSeries H Wireless) 0:00

this was a really special episode for me to record. And I just want to open this up, not with a quote as I usually do. But just this quick verbal note, since this is such a long episode, I had some technical difficulties with my microphone and I was experiencing some pretty severe feedback during the recording. Also, I think I was a little nervous. So at various points, it sounds a little bit like I'm struggling with my words and a promise that I was not intoxicated for this interview. But it was because I was basically hearing an echo of myself for the entire recording of this interview. But I'm really very happy with how it turned out and fortunate that my sister had the time to sit down with me and share some of her thoughts on life. So I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. Uh relistening to it. As I went through my edits.

squadcaster-hdc6_1_09-28-2023_114606 0:46

So I wanna say a very special welcome to Belen Ano, my sister, who is one of the most powerful, interesting, intelligent women that I know. So I'm really excited to have this conversation with you because when I talked to Raquel, we had such a rich discussion in sharing about our shared family experience, that I thought it would be even more interesting to have that insight from you, especially because I think Between the two of us, you have a much more well-developed ritual and spiritual life. Just sort of over the course of the past few years, you really have built in that aspect into your life. And so one of the things that I want to talk about today is how you built that and how you've integrated or accounted for your social identity in the creation of that spiritual practice. And we can talk about other things too, because you're an artist and a leader and a business person. But that was why I wanted to have you come and talk on the the podcast. Well, thank you. That's quite an intro. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Bernardette 2:17

So it might be helpful. I spent a lot of time in the first few episodes of my podcast kind of teeing up my personal identity and my personal struggles as somebody who's lighter skinned, maybe white passing woman of color, and what that means for me in terms of my social identity and my journey toward identifying more clearly and publicly with my indigenous heritage, with my Latin dad. And I know that you know, you've had a different experience in your life. And so maybe if you can talk a little bit about that social identity for yourself, what it means to you or not, and how you may be have constructed it or understand it to be now. Versus when you were younger?

Belen 3:15

Yeah, that's a good question. Okay. It's a good place to start. I consider myself Latina. I'm also fine with Chicana, Latinx. Mexican American is more of a stretch only because that's more of identification of like, I feel less of a cultural nuance and cultural identity and more of like a where am I from? Because I've often gotten the question, where are you from? I am I always think like, oh, if you got mom's skin coloring and dad's bone structure, I got dad's skin coloring and mom's bone structure. And so in California that equates very easily to being Mexicana or Latina or Mexican American. But as you go to other places around the world where that's less common, you get are you Persian? Are you Iranian if your hair is longer and straighter in the moment, or are you Indian if you happen to be traveling in Nepal? And so it, it kind of stretches. So I, I kind of have always gotten the question of like, where are you from? And what they mean is like, what is your kind of, what, what is your racial background and And so I always say like, oh, I'm like Mexican, German, Irish, African American, native American all mixed together and, and basically everything except Asian. And so if you, if you, yeah, look at 23 and me. It does show us as having some East Asian heritage. Oh, there you go. There you go. So you got, you can claim everything. There you go. Maybe Australian. Yeah. And Mongolian Yeah. Great. I was like, I, I think I was like, after me, my kids can't claim some things, you know, you know, there's this certain level of, of they wouldn't be able to get scholarships for certain things after me I always was like, I need to marry a, like a black Asian man to make sure my kids have everything. But, but so I, so when I say I'm Latina, to me that's like culturally more than anything that we grew up around dad's family, primarily, like lots of cousins in, in Gilroy, the city with lots of good traditional Mexican food being cooked at home because mom learned that from our grandparents on dad's side, and I. And we had, we made tamales and there was a mix of Spanish in the home. Both of our parents speak Spanish, even though mom learned that when she lived with, with dad. So I always feel very Latin that our, that our family structure was that way. So when I, when people ask me like, culturally, what do I identify as, I, I tend to e easily identify as Latina, even though I come from rich heritage and background. What's changed over, over the years is that kind of my my, my movement in the world has kind of shifted me out of just being from our small town of Gilroy where things seemed simplified. Like, you know our grandfather had the first Mexican restaurant and. I had friends that would go to quinceaneras and I had friends that were far, there's farming there So I switched from that to like traveling the world and having, I would say experiences and personal beliefs that stretched me far, far beyond kind of this identity of like how I operate. And then even today, my traditions and what I do on a daily basis don't always line up to kind of what I would say is my, like cultural upbringing. So I'm no longer Catholic. I don't really practice. I, I observe with people that practice, but I don't actively participate in any kind of traditional Christian holidays and feel more connected to Buddhism and Hinduism, which we explored as children and has maintained in my life. But Buddhism and Hinduism, and. New age practices and kind of new, yeah, a bunch of other different practices that like don't at all line up culturally. So growing up I felt very much Latina, Mexican American Chicana in Gilroy. It was like, that's how I identified, I, you know, I remember, you know, wearing baggy pants and crop tops and having friends that were loss or friends that weren't, that were in AP class. And I felt very fluid in both of those worlds. And then going to Princeton, I very much felt felt Mexican and Latina because it felt very other. So then going to a private Ivy League institution if you read Justice Soya Mayor's book about her experience at Princeton, I very much identify with her book. And I felt very other there and figuring out who am I in the midst of kind of high education and, and privilege, and where do I fit in the midst of that? So basically that's where I had a lot of questioning of who am I and what's my worth and what's my value? And, and had had a lot of struggles. And coming out of that and, having to find myself again, having to deeply search for myself and realize who I was, kind of launched me on a path of self-exploration that goes far beyond kind of whatever you consider your cultural heritage and into strange realms of new experiences, potential appropriation. Trial of basically anything kind of under the sun over the last 15 years of my life.

Bernardette 8:42

So what I'm hearing a lot is that, and forgive any change in the sound of my, my microphone'cause I'm playing around with the settings a little bit. I think it sounds a little bit better like this. So what I'm hearing a lot in is that when you were in Gilroy and we were growing up, you felt very much surrounded and contextualized in a way that like made, made sense, like you belonged and you were not, I mean, you had othering experiences like being followed around stores and having those kinds of experiences of, of institutional racism.

Belen 9:23

Yes.

Bernardette 9:24

But socially and family-wise, you felt secure in your context and your identity?

Belen 9:31

Yeah. Yeah. I felt like growing up in Gilroy, like we had the quintessential large Mexican family that would get together on holidays. I mean, I have memories of us being like Sunday we would be going to church at San Juan Batista, and afterward we would get our and Mexican hot chocolate and that has the cinnamon in it. Right. And we would go home, we would make that, and then dad or mom would put on some wailing Hernandez, like best of hits or something, and we would have hot chocolate and band. And I have memories of that being quite regular in our early time of, of Gilroy, before our family started kind of like. Falling apart and getting into arguments and doing all the things that like large struggling families do. And so that like, and then making tamales at Aunt Marina's house over the holidays and having all the women in the kitchen making tamales, tons of tamales. And then doing midnight mass. Yeah.

Bernardette 10:29

Gilroy was also heavily Latino. Everybody around you for the most part. You were Latin or was having similar experiences? Yeah.

Belen 10:39

You were Mexican or white? Primarily. I mean, there was a very small minority of African American or Asian population in the town. And then yes, there were differences of like, okay, how Mexican were you? When did your family get here? Did you grow up speaking Spanish as your first language? How dark is your skin? How dark is your skin? There were all those questions of identity where where I felt like, yeah, was I e chola? Did I shave my eyebrows and pencil them in or use my brown lip liner? Like not completely did I have friends that did that. Yes. You know, did I walk this edge of like to some degree get doing AP classes and, and getting all my grades done and being like the good, a good daughter with with kind of hanging out with the wrong crowd and, and. Going into parts where it mattered, what color you wore, red or blue, and being aware of kind of the, the struggle, having friends that like needed to work and asking my parents like, oh, can I get a job too? You know, you know, and they're like, no, your job is to get good grades. So like, I, I very much felt like part of those worlds, even though I wasn't with dad being a doctor and making good money, there was a level of class abstraction that kept me out of being fully integrated in that way. But but yeah, I feel like Gil Wright had that encapsulation of everything from people that had just kind of gone come here from Mexico and were seeking a better life and were working really hard and were usually working in kind of low entry wage positions and things like that, all the way up to people that had been there for multiple generations that had built wealth, that had built like local companies or local Careers and were kind of very well off and all that spectrum could be seen across the Mexican and Caucasian population. And within it, I, I felt very much Latina, very much me, kinda like, kind of in that mode and then getting out of it and going to a private institution on the east coast where there was no large group of Latinos, where basically if you were you know, black or Asian or Latin, you kind of could band together a bit. That was very different than there was like a very different sense of othering. It felt very, it felt very disorienting. It was very hard. Even dating was hard, and that was like never, never challenging for me growing up. And so my whole sense of self got kind of put into question in college in a different environment, which felt very alien and, and not, not at, not easeful.

Bernardette 13:28

So it's funny because I feel like we had sort of opposite experience, like Yeah. So for me, being at home and growing up was sort of a in between experience. I wouldn't say I felt othered because I felt kind of like both and neither mm-hmm. in Gilroy, like I was part of our family, but not visually, not fully, not enough. One thing. but then like also not the other thing. And then going to, to college, I did not have the strong othering experience you had, but I feel like I sort of drifted a little bit because also didn't really identify with like the rich white people either. And so floating in that middle, but I was definitely more comfortable than you were. I didn't experience the animosity and in your face racism that you did. Mm-hmm. I mean, I remember we had a, we had a fight like this is my graduation. Or your graduation, and we were talking about it and you told me you were like you, you didn't have these experiences. Like it was like real Animosity. Yeah. And it was, and it was, that was like kind of the first time that I was more aware of the challenges that you faced and that I felt this diversion and our experiences, even though we were related and were sisters, and I think at that time we had a good relationship. That was the first time where I was deeply aware of my white privilege. And I think it was a good experience for me. it was uncomfortable'cause like, it was like, oh, I wanna, I wanna share the experiences of my sister. But I couldn't,

Belen 15:23

there was like freshman year I went to a freshman year I went to like a, it was freshman year hang. And somebody did like a costume party and the thematic was like, Blood in, blood out bound by honor or something. And I went to like a party where everyone was dressed up as Jola and Vatos and Oh, really? At Princeton? Yeah. And it was with friends, like people that I Oh wow. Would still consider friends. But it was this odd, it was, it was, it was your freshman year, you're getting to know people and it was this odd experience of your culture as caricature. Well it makes me so emotional. I mean, I talked about it in therapy a long time ago and kind of went through the process of assimilating in that way of like having good time and showing up in good in good spirits to get to know people, but also recognizing that you're in a party that feels very familiar, but is a costume party, so, Things. That was kind of freshman year, I remember that stood out. I just remembered like, you know, giving advice on helping people dress up for it or showing up myself with it. And it was all in good humor, but it was but it was very much my real life being a costume. And I think also like that, that life, right, the cholos, what color to wear, how you did your eyebrows, like that came with real danger and emotional cost for the people for whom that was, that's their life. Yeah. Yeah. When it's a costume doesn't exist. Yeah. And, and, and, and like, and it's just like, okay, like, no, it doesn't exist. And like, even if it's, it's fun, it's not, it's just not fun, you know? It's just like, okay, that's my like A part of you just misses home and you're like, what a strange place I'm in that like would take something that's like home and make it kind of a fun, fun costy thing. It's just, it's just, it's an extremely disorienting sense, even outside of saying like, okay, there's real burden that comes with this. It's just saying like, okay, it's just strange. It's a familiar setting, but for people it's dress up. Yeah. It's like, oh, that's my, that's literally like, I could go next week and go see my friends and kind of be, and this would be normal, or I could be here and it's a game. So things like that or, you know, like that, that stuck out. I remember I had some therapy around that. And then the other one was like, you know, I had some good friends in physics class or calculus class, and I remember studying with somebody. quite late at night. And you know, we were up doing a problem set and I was teaching some stuff to them and you know, and then they had a realization like, oh gosh, you're actually smart. I thought everyone, you know, I thought you maybe got in here on affirmative action and you weren't that smart. And there was a vulnerability and the person telling me that that's what they thought and that they, I, I had revised their estimation of myself by doing homework with them, but yeah, but it's also hard'cause you're constantly proving yourself, I guess in a weird way. Or if one person says that, then you have in your head, well maybe there's other people that think the same thing and I need to prove it to them. Maybe it was just that one person, you know, but that, that, that vulnerability of being able to, and, you know, I, I thank them, thank you for telling me that's how you feel and I'm glad I could change your mind. That I'm not here by a mistake that I'm actually intelligent Yeah. Maybe in the future you will not think that about random brown people. Yeah. Other people So that, like, those, they're like, I think those are probably the two most prominent things that stick out in my head. And there's subtle things like, oh, like I am, you know, I, I was very much like going out and partying in my high school days and, you know, put on your high heels and wear your cute little black dress. And I realized, oh wow, there's a whole different culture here of like, wear your khakis and your sweaters and your pearl earrings. And there was a culture that I was not used to the ties for the weekends with the boys and the it was just totally foreign to me. And so there was a part of trying to catch up to that of like, okay, well how do I. Fit in here. And we had a kind of multicultural advisors, residential advisors that were like there to kind of support multicultural individuals. And I, I remember going to that person and being like, I, I, I don't know how to really operate in this world. They didn't have very many answers, but they did have somebody there to talk to, I guess, which is a positive to the school. Yes. They were like, yeah, that's hard. Yeah. They were said, you know, maybe you should join a sorority or, you know, to try to like find like a social niche which I hadn't considered before. I, I tried to get, to get you over to the The peace of unity and respect Yeah. Go, go, go to, go to, you know, or go to the one social club that's kind of more alternative, right. Terrace. So it's, it's interesting, but there were other personal things in my life going on. I left a very longstanding relationship, love relationship that provided a lot of stability back in Gilroy that ended up being a very difficult heartbreak during college. And so there were other things that kind of threw me off emotionally, but it was a lot of these smaller things year one that kind of di I didn't know how to deal with and frankly didn't deal with them very well. That I had to excavate later on in my twenties when I got out of college. When I like realized that like I had been kind of just. Taking these little things and piling them in my emotional psyche and ignoring them and moving on. And that you could see it in how I was treating my body and, and how happy I was and what I was doing to myself. So that, that was different. I think where I benefited from from a sister, you know, candidly is like growing up in Gilroy or always growing up behind an older sibling. You look at them and you see what are they doing and how are they getting around the world and how how can I get around the world differently? And I saw like an extreme intelligence and that you had in a way of really kind of voracious reading. And you were extremely articulate and you were super smart. And that wasn't always welcome. Kind of in the small town that we came from It's like, it was like when you got to Princeton, you were finally in a sea of people that were all kind of that way, that we're okay with kind of. being, being nerds, quote unquote. And there was like a freedom in that that didn't exist in small town of like how you're cool in a small town. And I do like the saying of like, never try to be cool in a small town. Don't worry. Things always get better when you go to college.'cause I do, I do believe that actually. And so I think I learned from that. And like, so in a small town environment, my reaction to that as a younger sister was like, cool, I'll be smart and intelligent, all this stuff, I'll just keep it on the down low and know how to chameleon a little bit and flex that out. And so going into Princeton it was like, I was like, oh yeah, I can do all this smart stuff, but it didn't feel and I didn't feel that liberating and the, the chameleon was harder. It was harder to reverse the other way. And I had to do it the other way. And probably I benefit from actually doing it both ways now. I mean, candidly, I think, I think now there's a really good term called code switching that probably many people on your podcast have heard about. And I consider myself kind of an expert code switcher. Raquel and I were talking about talking about this,'cause we were talking about how like, when we get together, like we went heavy into the, into the Gilroy accent. Mm-hmm. you know, like I notice when I get around our cousins, I get more of that accent I do it to like bring out and be like, look, you know, like I have this accent, which does not exist if I'm talking to primarily white people. And so it just, it just, I just flip into it. If I watch I'm watching a show called That's some, some British TV show. If I watch a British TV foot show for too long and I talk to my partner Dave, like I'll, I'll have a British accent. And he thinks it's hilarious,

Bernardette 24:01

dude. And that's the worst if I,'cause I was actually interviewing this Puerto Rican guy from my, from my podcast and I found myself copying his intonation and his rhythm. I was the same verbal ticks were showing up. Yeah. And I was like, this is just confusing for my listeners because like, who is Bernadette? Which one is she? Is she the interviewer or the interviewee?

Belen 24:26

Yeah. Or I'll have a southern drawl. Or when I go to Arkansas for my visits to to Bentonville for Walmart, I'll have. I'll listen to some country music and then y'alls will show up my text. So like, and part of, part of code switching isn't just an accent that you kind of evoke. It's also like the things you mentioned. So very fluidly if you're in certain contexts, I might mention my travel abroad or I might mention family values or community values, which when you get to the actuality of how the different experiences that I had in my life, like that might show up differently than somebody who's thinking normative traditional Christian values. But when I say I really value community and connection with individuals and spirituality, which is real, I lived for five years and I've been involved for 10 years in in a collective in San Francisco that focuses on consciousness and transformation of society with 20 other people. That. The, when I frame it as I believe deeply in community values and, and spirituality, it's authentic and it can speak to people across a lot of different walks of life. Even those who think of that in terms of kind of traditional Christian, Christian experiences. And so code switching is also that to me is like one to say different things. You know, do you ski? Oh, have you done international skiing? Do you go to bar loche? Do you go to the Alps? You know, like knowing to ask those things indicates a certain level of worldliness saying, well, last, last time I was in Whistler. Yeah, Exactly. So there's like, that's also code switching is like, kind of, and you only know those things by being in different cultures and different environments. And being able to signal, okay, I've been in these different cultural environments. Don't, don't put me in the box that you normally put people in the box of So I, I, you know, as I've gotten older, I had this fun nickname at one of my old jobs that was the do dosis woman, you know, the most interesting woman in the world. cause I always thought it's very true, something different that I was kind of doing and, and would talk to folks about. So yeah, code switching is, it is linguistic and then it's also cultural. I do,

Bernardette 26:43

I'm kind of curious, just stepping back and looking back at college when you were there. A lot of times I think when people are going through that kind of identity crisis, they hold very tightly onto their church or their faith community and that kind of gives them a through line and an identity to hold on to so that that transformational experience of college isn't. Quite so shattering. And so I know, you know, we grew up kind of nominally Catholic and then right around high school, mom started to explore Buddhism more deeply and dad sort of started to explore Azteca. Sorry, I'm getting feedback. So I'm trying, trying to time my comments so it comes out thoughtfully. And so I know when I went to college, I started to do a little bit of spiritual discovery. You know, I went to one of the I think it was mostly African American students who had like a Baptist, or like more charismatic prayer session and they did a prayer with me for grandma when grandma was really sick before she died or maybe she was just very sick. And that was one experience. I had started to go kind of more regularly, regularly and pray at one point. But, and then I did like meditation, but nothing was ever really like, like stuck. Mm-hmm. I didn't go to a Catholic service. And so I'm just wondering if you considered a spiritual practice when you were in college and if you think that that either would've provided some stability or you were also kind of undergoing a little bit of a Spiritual trans transformation. God, this feedback is killing me. It doesn't, I can't hear it. If it's helpful, I don't, this must be horrible to hear yourself as long as it makes me sound thoughtful and not crazy. Yeah, I can hear anything. So. Alright. So, so I have a distinct memory being like pre fr the summer before at, at Princeton and, you know, lighting a small sage candle and meditating on the candle. And I had been doing Rodney ye's yoga DVDs back at the house in Gilroy. And I must have had some kind of meditation practice because I do have this like, very distinct memory of kind of doing like a flame meditation where you stare at the flame and you meditate and you're just observing the flame and clearing your mind. And I remember doing that even pre thrush, like the summer before classes started. And then as I had various experiences and my self-esteem started dropping and and I, and I was losing kind of who am I? And I went through that extreme heartbreak and, and an emotional trauma of, of, of a pretty bad, bad breakup. I mean, I had like a, and I did summer internships away from home. And I was doing, like, I was pushing myself to get all these experiences and at the same time I was struggling to integrate all these experiences. I, I do remember going to some meditation circles around that time. I never went to a church'cause I think I'd already moved past the sense that there, there was, you know, our family had a very robust conversation probably when I was like 15 or 16, around the gnostic gospels and the history of the Catholic church and the, the divide between Jesus's teachings and the institution. A manmade institution governed by men in robes and the rewriting of history. And so there was, there was already a part of me that was like, didn't feel refuge in any kind of leaning on Catholic faith or Christian faith. There was inklings in beginnings of Buddhism,'cause mom had taken her Buddhist robes and we would go up and sit with the Vietnamese. Monastery monks and kind of experienced the calmness and peace that pervaded that space in the Santa Cruz mountains. So I think I had an inkling then that that seemed to make more sense to me than institutionalized religion and traditional sense this contemplative practice. But at the same time, I was so young and there was nothing calm about my mind, and, and I didn't have like a people I could kind of lean on. So I, I did lean on creativity and poetry quite a bit and wrote some poems that probably represent kind of how I felt coming out of there. I felt completely unworthy coming out of that experience of college. But but I didn't have any, like, I, I didn't at that point think I went to any Catholic or Christian or faith-based, or even that much meditation. I think I, in some ways I had kind of lost. I would go to meditation, but I would kind of lose it. So creativity was really, poetry and creativity were things that I kind of leaned on on to express and get my emotions out. And even so after I graduated, I had a startup that I was doing, and I was living in New York City and I continued to like kind of vacillate between being quote unquote successful post undergrad and have, and then severely abusing kind of self-medicating to the point of like ignoring how unhappy I was. That like, yeah, that, that I had a cri I would say a crisis of self, not a crisis of faith where I looked in a mirror one day and was like, I don't, I don't recognize this person. I dunno who this person is. And I had to stop everything. Had to kind of pause everything in my life and be like, okay, I can't. And I was doing various things. I was doing a startup and I was volunteering time and I was working with youth and I was doing programming and I had this like, parts of my life that were really on fire. But I had a big kind of existential crisis as I looked in the mirror and it was like, I don't know, kind of who's inside the shell that's like operating this like cool life to, so to all outward perspectives, really cool, successful life. And so I had to like pause and none of that actually came back to like faith or organized religion or anything like that, or groups. It felt very like much like a kind of a solitary con, solitary conquest. Now, I'm not actually never took the hero's journey and I don't know about that, but it felt very kind of like going into a pit alone since then, like I've learned the power of community and connection and friendship and asking for help. And I had a very good friend who said to me, do you have family? Just ask them for help. Just go home and regroup. Like you're not actually alone. And that was the best advice I ever got. Like coming at like 24 or whatever, 23, 24 was like, oh, just call your, call your family and say, Hey, I need to come home. I need to regroup. Things aren't going well. And I did that and that provided the space to kind of, to kind of explore from when did I reach into kind of, I would say the spiritual side of things. So I think in my twenties I leveraged a lot of, I would say traditional traditional psychoanalytic support to put myself back together as I was kind of rebuilding my career, it was also putting together identities of myself. And, and all of this happens, and this is the kind of insanity of, life is that all this generally happens, pretty obscurely behind the scenes for many people. I changed careers and I, I had another good job and I did a great job and I got good reviews in my job. And all this is behind the scenes of actually being a successfully functioning, high performing part of society. But I didn't get into deep religious practice again until my late twenties and probably through yoga. And so I was doing a lot of yoga. I had gotten through therapy. I had a successful career again, I was going to business school and and I was, I was doing yoga quite frequently, like three times a week and doing like an LA style yoga. It's a little bit more physical focus than spiritual focus, but it's it's a great yoga community. After grad school, I was gonna move up to San Francisco and somebody said, oh, you're gonna really love the yoga community up there. It's totally different. It has this entire kind of spiritual side of it. It has BTI flow and chanting and all these other components to it that you don't kind of get on a regular basis. And in the la yoga scene, and so I was like, oh, interesting. I mean, I love yoga and I moved up to San Francisco and I took a Rusty Wells yoga class, and Rusty's a great teacher who still teaches online and it was a Bhati chanting class. And there was Did you take Drumm? Did B Yeah. Did you take Rusty? Did you take me to Rusty first or did I take you? I, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it could be either way, but I went to Rusty a little. Well, well the funny thing is,'cause like before you were in LA that's when I was in DC and I was doing yoga like five times a week, like an hour and a half each time, and like deep into the spiritual side of the yoga and the chanting and everything. So it's interesting that we had that similar asynchronous kind of experience. I think we've always, we, we both have come together around the yoga experience. Yeah, I, so I think in LA I learned the power of the song Ha, which is the community or practicing yoga with other people because in co pre-college in high school and then in college it was usually doing yoga off videos, recorded videos of Rodney y by yourself in your living room or something to that effect. And it wasn't until I got to la with grad school where I was starting to do it regularly in classes with other people. that was kind of eye-opening, kind of the level of contentment you had in group practice and in community through that. And friendships through going to yoga together. And so then that, you know, moving to San Francisco, being of good body and sound mind and having put all the traditional practices of psycholytic and psychotherapy in my tool bag already, it was like, oh, okay. I feel very solid in who I am and now I can, how do I begin playing safely with growing again? Because once you've broken apart as a human being and you put yourself back together and you feel very solid the most solid things are flexible. And so you're like, okay, how do I get back to this idea of growth again? And spiritual practice was a way to kind of, for me to do that, to do that stretching again. I'm wondering, You know, you explored Yoga Hinduism, kind of Buddhism. I know that's really still important to you. And did you ever consider or look into the dance Azteca, or I know for a brief while there was the guy coming through that was more like Lakota focused and sort of the whole movement toward indigenous spirituality, which I know is problematic for a lot of people and very rife with appropriation. But I'm just wondering, you know, did you feel any calling or impulse to explore that? Yeah, I mean, I think I, you kind of, it's like what do you have access. Two. So, I mean, this is kind of funny, but I was introduced to Naco Bear by somebody, and Naco is a singer from Hawaii who's deeply connected into native peoples native indigenous peoples struggle. And voicing that and goes on tours and kind of connects in with Indi indigenous people that at the community that I, that I connected with, lived with and then eventually ran and owned. We had various people come through from indigenous backgrounds providing drum ceremony or other, other avenues in. And so I explored that and I, I explored those, which I, I felt connected to, and. in some ways they haven't been as adopted. This is like an interesting kind of comment on appropriation. They ha they remain very connected to the indigenous tribe tribes and very authentic. Whereas like yoga and yogic practice has had to travel across the ocean from India and there's a some room of flexibility, which many I'm sure. Indian people will say is rife with appropriation. Right. like most of my yoga instructors are not actually Indian. And I took, I took yoga in India, or actually not in India. I in Nepal. When I went hiking in the Himalayas, I took a yoga class in the morning at 5:00 AM and it's, it was like a different experience. It was a little less spiritual, a little bit more exercise. like stretches and breathing Yeah. They have like, it's like the yoga Olympics in India. It was the dude in his pants, you know, his sweatpants in the morning being like, stretch here, breathe there, do this. It wasn't like, oh, you know, I'm finding the next light. Well it's also kind of like how Buddhism came to the United States. You know, like Zen Buddhism here is way more available to non monks Yeah. Than it is in Sage Japan. Yeah. You know, it's a much more popular as a lay Lay practice. It was a lay experience. Yeah, yeah. Lay experience. So in some ways, like that was, it was more prevalent and, and popular and available, I guess these eastern practices that had had time to kind of, I would say, be appropriate and adopted into American culture than indigenous. And then at the same time, do you think that's some of the complexity, like it's, it's easy to sort of exoticize something that's from like far away over there, but then like you're like, oh, we tried to exterminate this and so I think it's harder. We can't exoticize this because we tried to exterminate these people. I think it's harder because there's co there's like communities and culture attached to it where, hey, like, is it really o like, is it really open? Like, are, do we have enough people actually from the Lakota tradition or from a different indigenous tribe in the us? Like do they, do they want to bring other. Non-indigenous people regularly into a room and, and practice these ceremonies? Or are they trying to maintain their own culture and their own tribes, like alive, like people like culture? Yeah, it, well, to that point, do you, and have you felt like you can identify as an indigenous woman or for you, is that identification, like you have to know and have a connection to the culture of an indigenous tribe in the United States to kind of claim that identity for yourself? Yeah. I feel like for, for me, I, I don't, I have less of a direct identity. Like it's easier for me to say I culture identify as Latina, which is this Mexican American kind of blend than as an indigenous woman. Like I, I would want to have much more exposure and experience with Indigenous culture directly. We would go to powwows growing up as kids, and we would have some of that exposure. I will say like even so, like probably I've had more exposure to like Peruvian indigenous culture through medicine circles that I've sat in in the last five years than I have had as an adult with native native indigenous circles. So growing up in New Mexico, you and I went to some powwows with mom and dad and would go and be in Santa Fe and connect with some of the native peoples there. And I know we have some cousins that live up in Redding and you know, Carly or you know, Raquel that you were talking to, that they've married into tribe and have very authentic kind of experiences of tribe alive and active in today's world. You know, and I think as an adult I've had less exposure to that actively that active tribe. I have had exposure to indigenous peoples when I, when I've traveled and done medicine circles. And the interesting thing there is I've also had an appreciation for having a guide or somebody guiding me through medicine experiences that is from my own culture and can speak my own language. So like it is one thing to kind of be in the jungles of the Amazon and receive a plant medicine from a extremely authentic local practitioner who's very talented and a group of people who are very talented. And that's a wonderful experience. And I've had probably deep, deep experiences that are much more easily easy for me to kind of digest and integrate from teachers who are of both worlds and like grew up. In the United States as well as our walking in this kind of alternative world. And the Did you do, did you ever do a, a sweat with our cousin? I've never done a sweat with our cousins. And part of this is like, yeah, see I've been wanting to, but like, I'm like, At the point that I get my shit together to do it. Like Freddy's gonna be 90 years old. I, the part, part is like, I don't know why it's such a, like, part of it is an, an invitation, right? Like I found many more invitations to go do Ki Dun chanting with I found many more, you know, if you wanna do BTI Fest in, in, down in Joshua Tree, it's pretty easy. It's a festival that you can go to every year, right? Like, and, and you're right, like a lot of indigenous practices in the United States are closed. They're not just open for anybody. I think that there's starting to be a few more like that, like that are like pan indigenous open gatherings, but I think they're pretty rare. Yeah. And I think that you get like a really wide range of reaction to them all the way from like what the. Fuck, those people doing like, they have no business talking about all of this all the way to like, this is great. We have, we should share, you know, we, we can only improve our community and our country and our world by coming together and sharing wisdom. All of that. So I think there's like a wide range in between those two. And it, and, and obviously indigenous communities are so they're so diverse. Yes. That like, you're going to, you're gonna have, there's no like, there's no like indigenous council that is like, yes, this is fine, and these other things are not Yeah. I mean, I did, you know, when I, when I took my yoga teacher training, I trained with Pete Guso and he follows Anna Forest who has a great book called Fierce Medicine, which is about Anna's journey of yoga and becoming a great teacher of yoga. And she actually is connected to Eastern Wisdom and Native American profound Native American ceremony. And explains how it helped heal quite a bit in her life. And she was gifted certain songs by the tribes that she engaged with. And so I did feel actually through through Forest Yoga, a deep connection to native indigenous practices in the us more so probably than any other avenue. Which is odd because it's not through a Native American person per se, but through someone that was led into a circle of healing. And so I think it's all about invitation, you know, and I don't know even, it's interesting, right? Even in our family to have people that are in. Walking in those circles and, and I don't know if you've been invited to sit and sweat and haven't taken him up on it, but I haven't directly gotten an invite. so Freddy has invited me. He has invited me. Great. I think I also did participate in a sweat when it my kind of like official capacity. I was part of a congressional delegation to the Lakota nation to the, to one of the reservations there. And so a part of that was a sweat ceremony that was intended to be like a meeting of people. Yeah. And we can't really talk about it. Right. You're not really supposed to talk about it. So, so that's the, that is like the one experience I have had, but I haven't had it. as like a personal spiritual experience. And I think the closest I've had was I did go see a RA in San Francisco a few years ago, and that's probably the closest I've gotten to like an indigenous Mexican ceremony. And that was just one person. I haven't, I also haven't, well we've gone to Dance Azteca, but mm-hmm. I think I never felt super comfortable there because I was not one of the dancers. And it lived for a long time in this funky nexus of cultural activity and potential religious activity, but like, kind of not really. Hmm. So like now I think there's a lot more active PUIs that are making it a. Religious ceremony and that are trying to revive and regularly practice Aztec ceremony. Yeah. But when we were growing up and we went, it was kind of like cultural activity in the same way that Pico or Tyco drumming, like you go, you see it, it's a demonstration. It's not like a spiritual practice. Y yeah. I mean my most authentic indigenous experiences have been through plant medicine, which is currently connected to live traditions in the Peruvian rainforest or folks peoples that are indigenous to the Peruvian rainforest region. That's been my, I would say, most authentic experience and traveling down there and being able to experience that with. With actual elders and in a, in a community that I feel was mutually beneficial to the local community as well, and was giving back and kind of providing benefit to, to plant tourism. But that also is, you know, it's, you know, it has its own set of critique of like, you know, is it taking advantage of the local population? Is it exporting something that isn't, isn't to be there? And this goes all the way back to like, you know Elvis Huxley and and it goes back to like peyote, right? Peyote. They went down, they had the experience, and then they published it in Life Magazine and blew up Northern Mexico. Yeah, and a lot of it, it would say is really well explained in the documentary, how To Change Your Mind by apo, Michael Poland, who, which is like on Netflix now and, and has a good, great book, but a lot of that kind of, it's a good book. The, it's a great book. It's in a great also Netflix series that talks about kind of the inherent challenges and benefits of kind of those, those ways of self-exploration. And so like there's, I would say for me, the journey to kind of spirituality, like I, I haven't had doors open or access or connection through a directly kind of native Native North American Indigenous group. It's come through Eastern philosophy that has many avenues, right? Like even this two weeks ago I went to a meditation in in the mission here in San Francisco, a Buddhist meditation group. And was able to sit and meditate with them. And so like, it, it's mostly come through kind of, I would say eastern eastern philosophies being kind of brought to the us and brought to the general population, which is inherently white I guess. But but you know, I feel very, I feel like I've had very transcendent experiences there. I have over the past 10 years explored many, many things, whether it's holotropic breath work, which is a specific type of breathing to, oh, I did that with Jesse. Yep. I had a, that is some pretty trippy stuff. I did like a three hour morning yoga practice followed by holo tropic breath work. After two days of doing ecstatic dance and platonic group platonic, group cuddling and had a, an out of body experience that was quite impactful and opened up some stuff from my childhood, which was, which actually opened up stuff all the way to when we visited when we had Graciela come in as a when I was a kid, which was phenomen. Dude, here's the thing, like that experience with her, I missed out completely on, like, I, I don't know if people thought I didn't have problems, and so they just kept me out of it. But I never participated in the cures and the uras. I never participated in the ceremonies. I remember seeing her kind of like here and there, but, so I don't think like Raquel also, So felt like she had like a really significant connection to Graciela. And I just remember feeling like I just sort of like wasn't a part of all of this, so I didn't, so I had three, I have three distinct memories of Graciela coming up. And I don't think our parents utilized her the same as some of our aunts and uncles to be honest. I know I have one memory of Graciela coming up to assist with Raquel's brother and to do a cleansing ceremony for that family that I, that I don't have a lot of insight into kindly and probably can't speak accurately about, but I have a memory of mom going to assist and coming back to our house full of energy and us needing to like douse her head with water. I. And her having had an ecstatic experience at, at their house and the specific focus of that trip being somebody in their household needing, needing support. I also have a distinct memory of being physically at the house of Aunt Lupe who was utilizing the services Gracie as well. And some byproduct of physically being there. It was like, oh, why don't you get a reading too? It wasn't like a, it wasn't like a well supported, I would say, experience of ceremony. Now that I've done ceremony as an adult. It was more like, oh, you're here too. Why don't you spend some time with Graciela? And she did. She kind of looked at me and said something about LA Blanca. And it wasn't translated for me and it wasn't explained to me. And frankly, I, I took away a deep, deep fear that I had was somehow touched by like the Lady of death. Oh, I could see, I could see how that would be a little bit destabilizing. Yeah. And then I think the last experience with Graciela, there was one more. It was just my dad's. I think dad had stories about being assisted by whether it was gonna hill or somebody else. Was it at Aunt Rachel's house? N I just, not just story, him telling stories of like when he was in football and needing to be healed and how these alternative healers would, would help do chiropractic work and massage work and put him back together when traditional medicine didn't. So like, those are like the three Instances I have, like in my head, I don't actually, other than that I don't have a memory of being invited into ceremony or going to, I just remember she would come up and frequent some of our aunts and uncle's houses. And so, and that mom would sometimes go to those ceremonies aside from that one instance where she talked about the Muha Blanca. And so what came up for me when I was doing this holotropic breath work, which was quite interesting, is that I had an out-of-body experience where I went outta my body and I floated up and I was being held by three women in white and they were covered in shrouds. And one of'em had my feet and one of'em had my head and one of'em had my knees. And I had an extreme sense of peace. Everything felt wonderful. And I didn't wanna go back to my body. Everything was fine. And they were kind of like, you know, you've gotta go back to your body, you've gotta get back down there. And I came out of it with this, with three women in white, kind of just in my head. And it made me think of this memory from ages ago where I asked mom finally I said, Hey, do you have this memory? I was with Graciela and Aunt Lupes and she said something like La Blanca. And Mom explained, oh yeah, that's like her guide. And it's like a positive imagery and it's like a good thing or something to that effect. Mom was basically like, oh yeah, yeah. It was like a really good thing to show up. And I was like, oh, well thanks for telling me that, you know, 40 years later, thanks for contextualizing it 30 years later, whatever this like white woman is in Spanish, I don't speak. And you know, maybe they did, you know, as who knows as a kid what you like, hold on to. It was so odd. So it is quite interesting. I do think, like I, I. I think we didn't actually have a lot of ceremony growing up. We had exposure to the concept of it and this idea that somebody was coming through. But I don't remember us ever hosting a ceremony in our home or hosting in our home. I remember mom having certain experiences when she went and participated and then bringing those narratives back. Yeah, and I think, part of the reason why I am struggling so much as an adult with ceremony is I think because I didn't have a good context for it growing up, I wanna build that into my life and into my family life for my children, so that they have, I think, I think ceremony's really important. You know, it's a community event. It's even if it's a small community even it's if it's a small group of people, I think it's an opportunity to come together and kind of collectively cont collectively anchor yourself in common values. And church. I think the Christian Church has tried to take on that role and been like, you come here every Sunday and we anchor ourselves in these values, right? Yeah. But like that role just never worked for me. The Christian value system and the Christian explanation of the world is to me, I mean, I had this idea when I was in my twenties. I went to a Catholic ceremony. I went to a Catholic church and I was like, this is basically just a funeral every single fucking Sunday It's a funeral and like it doesn't tell me anything about my life now. It doesn't help me with any of my problems. It's just talking about how. Humanity is terrible and there's this person who died for you, so you should be grateful and let's talk about his death every single week. And I just was like, Nope, I'm not going back. I'm not doing it again like that. I moved beyond it. It's okay. I don't need this in my life anymore. And so I think that's why it's so hard to build it back is that we didn't have that model growing up of like a generative giving, participatory ceremony that was aimed at growth and aimed at health. Right. Our cultural context was this funeral. Yeah. Every Sunday about death and suffering and how you can like better yourself through suffering, not about connection and growth and honoring creation and the self. Yeah. I think, I think to some degree what church offers is community. In structure. So there's, there is the idea of repetition, of going back to the same place of seeing the same people. So it's almost like, I mean, I'll, I'll say it's almost like whatever you say in the middle of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, with the priest, then you leave. And what do you have? You have a bunch of people that you've seen for the last, like bazillion Sundays getting together and seeing each other and exchanging like what's happening in their life and helping each other out if they need help and going away. So like the magic I would say of organized religion is probably more, in my opinion, on the community side rather than on the scripture side. And unfortunately the scripture side is like, you know, a lot about, well, only certain people can speak to God and then only a certain And it's a God and not a goddess, and oh, it's only just one instead of 15, and they have all these rules for you, opens up sky and for you after you die, like all these things. So you're a bad person and you go to the flame place and, and you know, I don't know. So, so, but you know all that to some degree, no one knows who's gonna be right until they actually die, which is, makes it all kind of moot anyway. So you're left with kind of the community. So like I, I, I can see a world in which certain people feel very comforted by just the, the community provided through the practice of faith, whatever the faith is. And then there is an element of my own intellectual curiosity and my own self that's not satisfied with that, that wants to actually explore. And that's where Eastern philosophy for me, carries so much more weight. This idea that people, that the, the, the doctrine is essentially asking you to meditate and explore for yourself. And check in on various things that people have surfaced through lots and lots of years of self-exploration. So I, I think I like that. I also, I also don't believe, you know, to some degree that there is any specific one way to have like a god or goddess relationship or gods or goddesses relationship. And so in that way it's almost like physics is physics and science are kind of really the reality. And then how you interpret and contextualize that physical reality is gonna be very personal. I always liked the book. I'm in charge of celebrations, which we had as a kid growing up. We have it. Mom guys burn. Yeah. Yeah. I always liked this book because I felt like, oh, I wanna be like that person. I want to be in charge of my celebrations. I wanna be able to pick out what's sacred, you know, and what needs marking and passages of time, and when do we bring community together to do that. With my, you know, becoming a mother, that was like a big thing of wanting to kind of mark that with my community and to host ceremony around it. And so having a parenthood ceremony, having a women's circle, having a parenthood party, all these things were much more important to me than baby showers and poopy diapers for me. And so so like the I, that book I'm in charge of celebrations is just this gorgeous, it's set in the Southwest. It has this like hearkening back to like the American, Southwest or indigenous spaces in places. I think. I, I don't think the novelist is actually, I, I actually don't know who, who wrote it and if she's actually native at all. I think it's a man and I don't think he is. No, it's Bird Baylor. It's a woman. It's a woman. It's a woman and she's from Arizona. I just dunno what her background is. And I'll look it up for the show notes. I'll put in because I try and put the books that are mentioned during our conversations. Okay. I try and put them in the notes so that people can find them. But I, I always liked that. I felt like we got that a little bit from mom where, you know, we practiced growing up. Like, I, I feel very connected to Jewish faith because we practiced Passover growing up. And the reason we practiced Passover was because mom believed in the message behind that remembrance that like you know, people in bondage is incorrect and people should not be bonded and should not be slaves. And freedom is a basic human right. And that is the exodus of this, of, you know, the exodus from the Pharaohs. That whole Passover celebration is around that idea of regaining freedom. And so I have surprised so many Jewish friends by saying that my family used to practice Passover and we'd cook all the food and do the prayers. And my friends were like, what? Which, which, it was so weird. Yeah. Which I, which, which is, but it's, it's, it is such a beautifully and powerful, weird, but also, I mean like, they were also. Like happy about that. Like that's, that's really cool. That's a nice honoring of the tradition. Yeah. Yeah. I've had that. And then there were times when I rejected it as a kid with mom, like, she'd be like, let's do Kwanza. You know, let's have Hanukkah and Christmas and Kwanzaa. And I'd be like, I'm on, I'm on celebration overload. Like, let's not do that. Chris Mohan, Kika, let's pick, let's pick a few, you know? And so I would like kind of push back on like, why do we have to have like five in, within two months? So I, I like the book. I'm in charge of celebrations because I think. That's how I feel about life that a sacred life, you kind of figure out which celebrations you wanna have and how you wanna honor different things. And I, and I actually believe becoming a mom, and I think you've done this beautifully, you start questioning like, okay, what am I passing on to my kids and how am I passing it on? And like, where can I find community that represents values that I believe in? And where's the doctrine that's being taught in those communities, beneficial versus harmful? And how do I, how do I teach moral messages? Yeah. So that actually perfectly tees up the question I was formulating, which is, you know, have you thought more intensely about this as the time comes closer, that you are going to become like, well, you're already a mom, but that you're going to have a baby. and that you're gonna be moving into a different phase of life. And so you don't have to, if that's like too intensive of a question, but, you know, how do, how do you anticipate that changing your personal, spiritual practice? Or are there things that you wanna bring into your life and into your spiritual practice with a child? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one thing is I was like, okay, what is, what is a regular practice that I would like my child to be part of? And I kind of came back to Buddhism as something that I would like to be somehow part of their regular practice. And it's why I kind of went to, and it's, and, and of one, I finally made my way back to the The, this kapa Meditation Center in San Francisco and the mission which practices a modern Buddhism and this new Kapa tradition. So now do I know all the history behind it? No, but, but it's, but it's close by and it's something I can get to regularly for my house and hopefully take my kid there and have them have like a memory of a regular visit to a space that is contemplative and reflective and talks about things like compassion and wisdom and how to be compassionate and how how to have right thought and right intention and right speech and right action. So that, that has surfaced up as something I've looked for more community-based places, like where would there be a lot of kids, all learning Buddhist background and Budhist tradition. you do have to go a bit farther outta San Francisco into the North, north Bay, or into the South Bay. It's harder to get there to find like weekend schools because I'm like, is it enough for this person just to dabble? Do they need more structured background? Would they benefit from more actual contextualization of the religion and culture behind it versus just kind of dabbling on a spiritual sense. That seems harder for me to provide, frankly, where I'm at. But I've kind of thought around that. Like, and then there's part of me that's like, it's great to do Buddhism, but it's not quite as fulfilling as when you go do like ecstatic dance or when you participate in chanting exercises, which is just music, movement, harmony. All these things are so important to being an embodied human being and to feeling things being able to feel emotions and let them go and let them flow through you. And so, I still haven't figured out how to incorporate kind of an ecstatic dance is something people should look up. What is ecstatic dance? It's, it's a spiritual practice of some sort of consistently moving your body until you move into ecstatic states which kids could participate in ecstatic dance, like there's no reason they can't. So I, I think I'll be still figuring it out, but thinking through how can I give my child the experience of connection to their body, to their mind, to their soul on a regular basis. And in a way that if they do go through like a darker period in their life, they can fall back on some of these practices or belief systems. Or I would say capacity to kind of explore and find wonder. So, That, that's stuff I've thought about It did make me go back to meditation for the first time in a long time. Structured meditation for the first time in a long time. Well, I think if nothing else, that's going to help you through years two, three, and four'cause really what's important dealing with toddlers is being able to manage your own emotions because you can't control theirs. And so the only thing you can really control is your own reaction. And it's really hard. So you're building that, that practice is really good and important. And not managing, but like, you know, not becoming overwhelmed. Yeah. By your emotions. And your reactions to them is, is I think, really important. And one, and one thing actually that you bring up, you brought up when you talk about kind of moving in and out of the different spiritual practices that our parents explored when we were growing up, you know, it's instructive for me to remember that like, I put so much care and thought and, and, and intensity into like, what does this mean and how can I give my kids this and structure this for them? And then I have to remember that they're going to move in and out of this is gonna be like the, like, sometimes it'll be important and cool. Like you and I both really liked going to the meditation center, right? Yep. Just like seven, 16 year olds waking up at like four o'clock in the morning to go up and pitch dark and meditate in a dark room. Like, it was pretty interesting. But like, I think. you know, like so much of parenthood, it's do it for yourself, practice for yourself, focus on yourself. I mean, you're focusing on them, but like you can't make them enjoy the thing. You can't make them experience wonder, but you can provide opportunities in which they might experience wonder. And so it's creating the environment for them, but then retaining the wisdom to know that they're gonna move in and out of their appreciation and participation of the environment that we make for them. Yeah, everyone's on their own journey. It's gonna be interesting. Like one thing we haven't talked about, which is instrumental probably, and I would say my last 10 years of spiritual exploration, which comes up when I talk about things like aesthetic dance or plant medicine or things like that, is what I would call the spiritual movement of the sixties. And this is funny'cause I was thinking about this. There's You know, I, and there's like, which is, which is not connected to, I would say, like Indi indigenous background or things like that, but is very much no, actually something that I can tell you what it's connected to that I, after your thought. Okay. That I'm influenced in and part of my last 10 years and a lot of the somatic therapy, somatic movement, ecstatic dance osha, osha, ramdas, like these different kind of ex explore like different things that come up when you start exploring the sixties and the sixties movement. Is that like, I, I like, loved this. I'm like, oh my gosh, if I were born in the sixties in my head, like I'd be a flower child, I'd be off on this flower child journey, but it's also the time of civil rights. And so for, so for a lot of, when, when I share this with people, I say, you know, when's privilege in being able to participate in the sixties on one end of the spectrum versus having to be kind of On the civil rights end of the spectrum and be fighting for civil rights. And so I have very much enjoyed delving into what I would call the new age. That's based a lot around kind of the sixties exploration of normalizing psychedelic experience and identifying like ecstatic experiences through, through body, through movement, through meditation, through cultural appropriation and, and, and creation. That's still alive today in a much more kind of, I would call it, aware and woke and like conscious way that certain things are not okay and certain things are. But I I have very much appreciated kind of delving into that. Another shout out to like a good recent movie is like Rom Doss going Home, which was a. A really good book or a really good documentary about rom doss kind of in his twilight time of dying. And he was kind of a countercultural figure contemplative and also practicing kind of Easter meditator towards the end of his life. And that movie's very good. So I, I think that that's a huge portion of what I would call my spirituality or my search on spirituality has also come from this like roots of the sixties. Yeah. So I think you're right. There's a lot of really good exploration in the sixties, but this is kind of a tangent. I was listening to this podcast called Tales from Lanis, which is a fantastic podcast put together by two Latino scholars, and they kind of explore myths and pseudo histories that crop up within Chicano culture and Latino culture around various things. But one of the things that they talked about was the origin of kind of the, back to the Land sixties movement had its roots in German fascism. Hmm. Because like in the, the part of the German fascist movement, like in the, you know, thirties, twenties, and thirties was like, maybe it was earlier, but it, it basically was like we are being, we're, we're disconnected from the land. And so, you know strong people are built on the farms and in the forests and kind of like it was linked to German nationalism, and like racism. Like, so I think that as somebody who's been sucked in quite a bit to kind of the homesteading movement, Grow your own food, make your own food kind of subculture. You know, there's, there's a similar echo to today where you have kind of these echoes of the sixties where you have people homesteading and you have people making sourdough bread, and you have people exploring psychedelics. Right? And then you also have on the, like far end of the homesteading, you know, homeo, like homeopathic medicine, you have a connection to fascism in the far right and white nationalism. So like the crunchy movement has is in, its at its fringes, this overlap with white nationalism and this idea of kind of like traditional home values and connections to the land. So it's really interesting to kind of see this connection in the sixties and then see kind of like this cyclical return to that. Those ideas kind of on both sides of the spectrum on the left progressive side and on, on the like alt-right nationalist side. Yeah. There's echoes of that now. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting'cause a lot of where yeah, a lot of where, I mean, I do think there's this important thing if you're gonna build a different world, you can't be participating in the world. It's very hard to be active in political action and political thought and be building a completely different world. It's something I've learned, like it's almost attracts like, you get bogged down in like the realities of today when you're building a kind of a different sense of who you are in body and mind and soul and who your community can be. And then at the same time, if you get too divorced from reality, then the world you're building isn't really relevant or there's no bridges back to like pull people across. So what I love about the kind of, I would say, sixties movement or this idea of like, I would call it dabbling in the sixties, just as much as you dabble in eastern thought or dabble in things and pulling out what's meaningful to you is it's this idea of like really redefining your world engagement around love and connection as like a primary motivating force. So wherever this came from, to me that's like the most important. It's like, how do I redefine my internal compass such that like love and connection are the primary motivating force that like is a massive mental shift. And the sense that like I am infinitely connected to the natural environment. And I don't know, to me that has nothing to do with like wherever. I don't know. The tangent of wherever these ideas come from. But when I think about people that, I find books that I find like, I don't know whether it's rom Doss musings or writings and, and his contemplation, or whether it's what's, what's his name? Who does the fruiting tree? Do you know? He says like, we're just a, we're, we are an app. We're like, basically we're all just apples on this fruiting tree. Oh dude, did I ever tell you about my dream? Well, what did mom, mom sends these. This is why I love mom. She sends me these fricking people to listen to and they're great. Hold on. Well, I had, I had sort of a depressing dream one time that kind of goes to this point. I had a dream that I was sitting and there was this like tree that was covered in ripe fruit. There were figs. And each fruit was like a potential thing. I could do a path, I could take a a, a person, I could be, and they were all ripe. And I but I had to pick one and I couldn't. And I was like watching them. And as I was wa as I was trying to figure out which one to pick, they started to rot and fall off the branches And I just remember like freaking out in the dream, like I'm watching them all rot around me and I can't pick one. Which now I know is probably a really deep anxiety dream, but like goes to this point of like, pick, pick a direction. They're all rich, they're all beautiful. They all have these things. And like, like pick the fruit in your life. Move forward. Right. Well, well, Alan Watt. Okay. It's Alan Watt. Alan Watts, who's another, like, I would call it sixties conscious expansion philosopher who's phenomenal to read but has this description of us as like, you know, when you come to the realization that you are a tree, like you are the same as a tree growing the, and you're not just the tree, you're like the blossom on the apple tree, and you're not just the blossom on the apple tree, you're the fruit that's like growing and similar to the fruit, like you're, that you're the dying fruit, the fruit that falls off onto the ground and like degrades into the ground and then you replant those seeds like into the ground and you become the tree again. And you are all these things simultaneously at once and you are the universe as a blossoming apple tree continually cycling through this, this experience. He does it better justice. But and then his mom and I would say, and then you have to get up and put your pants on Yeah. Or, or you, or you like some people, you know, like who's her Indian philosopher that she follows around. Yeah, yeah. The silent guy. What's his name? His ecstatic experience with his big eyes and like, didn't speak for like 60 years. Yeah. He just sat there. He is like, I'm gonna let the worms eat me. You know, I'm just gonna be under this temple and I'm just gonna let the worms eat me because I'm fully in bliss and now I can let leave my body behind. But like, you know, whether it's Alan Watts, like these, these thinkers like to me embody best better than any spiritual scripture. I've come across the actual experience I have of unification and connection to spirit. And short of that, it's probably poets and artists. So, Khalil Giran. right. Lebanese poet. But he, you know, you, you'd have to read the Prophet, right? And it's, it's a beautiful rendition of kind of how you live or the Sufi text and the Sufi poets you know, you've got Rumi and you've also got Hafi and Hafe or Ha Hafez is like the best at kind of embodying that sense of like the unknowingness of life, of the immensity of life, as well as the knowingness and specificity of life all in one. Those things are so much better captured in, in my experience, by some of these more, I would call it sixties esque, transcendent, or maybe longer. You know, Sufism is a huge history, but some of these more. Ecstatic ec transcendent cultures and ex and philosophers than any kind of quote unquote organized religion. Well unfortunately I have to say our time is up'cause I have to move on with my afternoon, but I'm gonna leave it there because I think there was a lot in that last, well, there's a lot in the last half but this is why I love talking with you, dude. And hopefully all of my technology worked and all of our conversation got captured and all seven people who listen to my podcast will be able to share in the wisdom that you express today. But thank you. This was really nice and I'm so glad that we got together and talk about this. Well, I love you and I can't wait to see what, what you do with it. So have a wonderful day and you're always such, such a wonderful example for me. I love having you as my older sister. Thanks, dude. I like collaborating together on life. You inspire me. Also, love you. You know, you really live your whole self and it's been really beautiful to watch you grow into that kind of solidity of self and you share so much with everybody. Thank you. So I love you. Love you. I'll talk to you later. Okay. Bye. Okay, bye.

1:23:59

Love yous!