First Person Plural: EI & Beyond
First Person Plural: EI & Beyond
Akhila Kolesar: The Decentralized Self
Today, on First Person Plural, therapist Akhila Kolesar shares her awareness of multiple self identities and how her understanding of them has grown throughout her life.
Kolesar is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma, relationship dynamics, identity development, anxiety and depression and difficult transitions. With a doctorate from the Institute of transpersonal psychology, she takes a whole person approach to psychotherapy, addressing the physical, mental, and spiritual self of each of her clients. She currently serves clients through her private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Daniel Goleman talks about his Emotional Intelligence Courses, available at danielgolemanemotionalintelligence.com
What do you know about yourself? I like to read a lot. And I like to draw and do valet. And I also like to do science experiments
Elizabeth Solomon:Welcome to first person plural emotional intelligence and beyond. I'm Elizabeth Solomon.
Daniel Goleman:And I'm Daniel Goleman. Our third host, Hanuman Goleman is way on a retreat. He'll be back next episode.
Elizabeth Solomon:So in today's episode on self awareness, and just to set the context for our listeners, this is a third interview in a three part series. So we started off this series on self awareness by talking to Dan Harris, the founder of 10%, happier looking at the philosophy of self awareness, if you will. And then we spoke to Leslie nips, who's a systemic constellate are looking at how awareness plays out in the system's level. And today, we're here talking about self awareness from a very first person experience.
Daniel Goleman:Self awareness generally means knowing what you're feeling, why you're feeling it, and what it leads you to do in terms of how it might shape your perceptions or your impulses. And one of the things that fascinates me about self awareness is blind spots are things that we don't allow ourselves to notice, or that aren't consensually allowed. And I think it's a very crucial part, because it means that we can know what we don't know or know what we can't say, instead of just turning away from it.
Elizabeth Solomon:Today, on first person plural, we are talking with Akela colas, our who is a clinical psychologist specializing in trauma, relationship dynamics, identity development, anxiety and depression and difficult transitions. With a doctorate from the Institute of transpersonal psychology, she takes a whole person approach to psychotherapy, addressing the physical, mental, and spiritual self and each of her clients. She currently serves clients through her private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Welcome Akela we're so happy to have you on the show. In a previous conversation that we had, I was telling a story to you about laying on my bed when I was about seven years old, and staring at the ceiling and having this kind of moment of like, what am I doing here on the planet? Who am I? What is this body? What is this thing we call life? Is this just a dream? And you responded to that story with a story of a kind of your own? First very young, existential moment, and I'd love to just have you share that with our listeners.
Akhila Kolesar:Yeah, it's funny how staring at the ceiling can be a real venue for self exploration as a kiddo. The story I told you then was I was probably about five, and I was visiting my grandma, which I periodically do for a little sleepover. And you know, the environment was not the warmest she was like this conservative, Polish Catholic, daughter of immigrants. Lady, you know, who had a what felt to me like a sterile home, pictures of Jesus and crucifixes everywhere and that sort of thing. Saints, you know, thrown in drawers because of the magical things that would do when they were in this or that drawer, that sort of thing. And it was time for bed. And I'm going into the guest room, which of course was like, the room that my dad slept in, when he was a kid, that bed was very high. And so it was a very strange bed to me. And she would tuck me in. And you know, there's a crucifix over my head and photos of my aunt and my uncle and my dad, all probably their senior photos. You know, they were teenagers, which also felt like I was kind of back in time. And we'd always pray before bed. One of the prayers referred to God as our Father, you know, and I kind of asked her like, well, how is God my father, if I already have a father, and she's like, Well, God's all of our fathers, God created everything. And there was an immensity or kind of in awe of that, that I really remember of, like remembering the kids tales of Genesis and things like that, that I had been exposed to as a kid raised Catholic and the Catholic school and all of that, and, you know, kind of sitting there with her and that that immensity of God creating everything of having this new thought to me as a kid, oh, going, Wait a minute, if God created everything who created God? And the mood just totally shifted? You know, you could just feel grandma kind of tighten up. This was not a question that was really welcomed that warmth or that openness that had been there just kind of got like sucked out of the room. And she's like, well, we don't, you know, we don't even have those don't have those thoughts. It was kind of just shut down my heart. And then she kind of tucked me in and left. And so here I'm left now terrified, in a sense by this whole beautiful image that was created, you know, of everything's in its place, creator and creation. And now I'm alone in this room with this creepy nightlight that kind of, you know, lit up the crucifix in this way going, Oh, my God, I bug guide quite literally, oh my god, right. Like, what's greater than the greatest thing that that we can imagine? And I don't remember at this point if I slept or not that night, but I did remember, she's not the one that I can talk to you about it. And, you know, eventually learned that I couldn't really talk to many people in the school or in the faith that I was raised in. I couldn't talk to many people about that question there. So I started looking elsewhere.
Elizabeth Solomon:I wanted to start with that story. Because I think, well, it might not seem so directly related to self awareness, right to be asking these kind of larger existential questions. I think the question that lies at the heart of self awareness is equally is existential right, which is who am I? And whether that's trying to figure out who am I in the context of what we know about religion or creation? Or who am I in the context of something more close, like a one on one relationship? But I want to hear a little bit about the many iterations of that question that you might have asked yourself over the years, and I hear coming through in this story that starting with this piece of who am I, in my surroundings? What is my religious identity, right, some of these questions about identity, that fold into self awareness.
Akhila Kolesar:See, identity is kind of a hard one. For me, I find that like, I can go back and fill in some of the gaps. But where I have now is that I feel like the older I get, and the more I'm on my own road of self discovery and discovery of what this thing is magical thing of life really is, the more my identities have kind of fallen away or fallen to the wayside, like I can grab them in conversation. You know, like the work I've done around racial identity, I can be like, Yes, I'm a white person. And this is what that means, you know, or Yes, I'm a woman or identified as a woman. And along the way, I feel like identity has been really useful for me to kind of get where I am now. And perhaps part of that path has been a search for what am I that's led me to this place of needing identity at this point or not? I don't know the language around it is not totally formed. But it's something that that when asked kind of who am I though, the words that come are more kind of descriptors of how I show up for how I try to show up for my values, as opposed to, you know, what we might think of as like, identity politics, like the the identities that others see us, as you know, or get reflected, you know, the social relationship. And so seeker would be one of those identities, early experiences, as a kid has really, you know, and I think probably part of my character was that I was probably born with was really to go out and seek the answers to these big questions that would just pop up inside. And nature was a huge place where I would explore that. And so being like an earth warrior was certainly an identity for a while, while I'm really trying to let go of that idea of warrior. Even, you know, as I come more into midlife, it was something really important to me, definitely, as a teen 20s, even 30s. And I'm asking myself, like, Is this getting me the result that that I want, or even we as a planet really need right now?
Elizabeth Solomon:I think you're speaking to something so beautiful that on this path of self awareness, like there's many levels to self awareness, right. So there's just like becoming aware of our bodies becoming aware of our emotions, which is part of the way that we talk about it and emotional intelligence. And then as we've kicked off this conversation, becoming aware of who we are in the world, and I resonate with what you're saying, because I think it's true that we're like, Okay, I'm discovering myself and looking at my feelings, right, I'm looking at how I show up in certain contexts. And there are these things, these titles that I can give to sort of talk about those things in a very concise way. And then eventually, sometimes those titles start to feel like narratives that we don't fit entirely into, right. And so, as we continue on the journey of sort of self awareness or self exploration, we realize, Oh, I'm much more vast than even that single identity or that group of identities. How that could describe me. I'm curious, when you think about self awareness, in the context of your own experience, what are the different ways that you think about self awareness or this capacity to become aware of yourself?
Akhila Kolesar:Wow, it's a great question. I mean, for me, I think of our nervous system as really being one way to think about a nervous system is kind of like our our gut reaction, our instinctual or gut reaction to the world. to know, that incorporates more than the nervous system explicitly, you know, the pulmonary system, the heart by cardiac, I know incorporates more, but what I mean by a nervous system is kind of pointing to that way that we kind of instinctually respond, that first hit we get, before we even identify a feeling as an emotion, what's the sensation that's there, and in my body, you know, and kids are really aware of this often, because they tend to act in the world from that place without, you know, all the layers of shame and, you know, thinking things through and anticipatory anxiety being layered on top of how they respond to, they tend to just react, particularly the human littler ones, you know, and it makes sense, evolutionarily for our brains and our nervous systems to learn in an environment and kind of entrained to it, you know, so that we respond fast to what our environments requiring of us, which makes a lot of sense, if we think about times, where maybe we were, I don't know, living with predators a lot closer nearby than, than we do now. And so, really understanding for myself, what are the things that tend to make me angry? You know, and how can how can I really explore those so that I don't feel so instinctually? Angry about them? Or what are the things that tend to get me feeling hopeless or Despairing or shame or whatever the reaction might be? You know, it's those negative feelings that tend to draw us to that question in the first place, I think we don't tend to ask the question, why does this make me so happy, we just tend to enjoy it, you know, but I am curious about particularly with coming into midlife and looking at my own relationship to sleep, and how that's changing, or my relationship to rest.
Elizabeth Solomon:Say more about that your relationship to rest, it just perked my ears up?
Akhila Kolesar:Well, there's something about like, having a successful business, doing all this work, particularly all those graduate work was in school for like 12 years, just something wild, you know, to kind of get all that done, and then creating a business and then doing all the steps from like, Okay, I've launched and now there's this other successful practice like this is great. And then realizing that part of maintaining a successful practice is being able to ON OFF time really take excellent care of myself. And what's so easy to do, particularly, I think, in the US, maybe particularly in the Bay Area, too, there's a kind of pace, so go, go go pace, it's really easy to kind of fill up that free time, with not only things to improve myself, or improve my business, you know, or to maximise on the potentiality of life, I think there's a way where we've become almost like addicted to this living life to its absolute most potential, which can create a lot of pressure, actually, you know, we don't tend to consider deep rest, as a critical part of life.
Elizabeth Solomon:They also think there's this piece around rest that I to experience as a business owner, where I'm like, if I want to really evolve my work in the world, however, I define that rest is part of that, too, because there are questions I only asked myself, or experiences of myself, or my psyche that I only have when there's a lot of space.
Akhila Kolesar:Exactly, absolutely, we can get creative when we're under pressure, thankfully, you know, that's in there too. Yet, what we can actually really design for ourselves, for our lives, the kind of conversations we can have with, say, with the universe with kind of everything within it totally changes when we don't have that do do pressure, which does have an effect on the nervous system. You know, we know that that can result in adrenal fatigue, you know, or it can result in these kind of chronic health conditions, you know, which tend to then bring to our bodies, we started by talking about body awareness. And it's by having that body awareness that I started to be able to realize, oh, gosh, okay, my body is actually going to stop me if I don't stop myself, you know, whether it's migraine difficulty sleeping, you know, some other symptoms that I've had, like, go into or not, you know, either way, but it's through these, what I would call even dramatic experiences of turning off or trying to provide the space to do to do the turning off that do do that this whole other arena opens up. And dream work is something we've talked a little bit about before.
Elizabeth Solomon:Yeah, I want to get into this a little bit, cuz I think you're starting to tease something out, which is that there's sort of two and there's many more, but there's two very clear ways into sort of self awareness or becoming aware of ourselves. And I think of one as being like a very cognitive conscious process. Right. So okay, I know rage is a great example. Even before I know I'm feeling rage, if I can really slow things down, I know that my body is already responding before I have the cognitive thought of I'm really mad, right? And so there's that level of self awareness that feels very like in the waking moment, right where I'm like, Okay, I'm going to slow down. I'm going to track how I'm feeling My body's tensing up up, I'm feeling rage, okay, I can like name an emotion, right? What we might call a kind of straightforward sort of form of emotional self awareness. But then there's this whole other realm of the subconscious that you're talking about when you're talking about dreams. And I just want to have you share with our listeners a little bit about of what is your relationship to dream work? What is your practice around? Dreams? How do you use dreams, as a tool for better understanding yourself and where you're at at any given moment?
Akhila Kolesar:There are so many traditions of of dream work, you know, I think the aborigines of Australia have probably developed dream practice better than any of us have. So mine's really coming from a Western lens here, United States and lens and a psychological lens because I can't tease that out for myself. But for me, when I think about dream work, it's really about intentionality. Like every single time I fall asleep, I have an opportunity to have a conversation with my unconscious. Thanks to Sara McLean Bicknell, who's my current dream teacher, and someone who's helped me bring more intentionality into my practice. Because of her I have started using my before bed time to bring in more questions where I will actually sometimes incubate a question before, before bed, do like a short meditation, kind of, you know, centering myself around this is my intention going in, it gives me a lens, then in the morning with which to look at the dream, or dreams, like a show me more about this item, and then having the dreams and then being really committed. Also wake up at 2am. Okay, gotta write it down, or record it in some way.
Elizabeth Solomon:Can you give us an example of a question, or an intention you might hold? Going into the dream space?
Akhila Kolesar:Yeah, recently, I incubated a question. That was, that was something like, show me what I need to know about my unique expression of leadership in this lifetime? That's a biggie. You know, I don't know if that in this lifetime was actually useful or not. But that's, you know, Dream questions, can you work in progress too. And so I did my little different things that I that I do before incubating. Sometimes having a particular stone that I just really love, I call it my dream stone, putting that beside my bed, and then having the notebook ready. And that particular night, I remember waking up to pee at 3am. And going, Okay, I have I have these dreams, you know, and so kind of finagling with the light to be able to scribble as, as I can at 3am handwriting getting everything down that I can remember, and then starting to fall asleep and remembering another piece and having to get up to write that piece down again. So that's the discipline part of it really being committed to writing down everything you can remember. And the next morning having another dream fragment that I added to it. And then as for analysis, going back to what I mentioned, about there being so many different approaches to dream work, you know, I have, I have studied in practice, the more analytic approach to dreams. Work with Jeremy Taylor, who I just love that really, practices like viewing the dream on all parts of the dream as parts of our very own selves. And I've let all that get a little bit looser, in my practice. Now, you know, given the guide of the teacher who I'm working with, and we tend to look at dreams in a more, I guess, in a more holistic or even more, she might say, more like an indigenous perspective of really trying to pay close attention to environment, plants and animals, any medicine that might be in the dream. And I'll put medicine with like air quotes around it, things that might actually be kind of antidotes for what we tend to suffer with, in our conscious waking life. So, so yeah, I mean, from for example, from the stream, I got to work it in a group, you know, which also feels like such a gift every time a group is available to do that for me, because the reflections I get back from other people when they were my dream, and look at it through the lens of my questions is always different than what I can see myself, I find that for me, it's essential to have other other people, other beings in my world to really understand myself. It just adds all the color it says if I my own self analysis of my dreams, creates a black and white image and having other people wear my dream, put all the color in.
Elizabeth Solomon:This brings me to something so important. And I think, you know, there's many ways we can talk about this. So if we're thinking about building self awareness of ourselves as leaders in a very corporate environment, right, we might talk about a 360 evaluation. Same thing, we step into our community and we say please help me understand myself. Right. And I hear you saying In this with the dream work to, it's not even that you're looking at these dreams in isolation, you're inviting other people into the process with you. And so I'm actually wonder if you could speak a little bit to that role of community or of other in helping us build self awareness, knowing that the very term self awareness, I think reinforces our kind of sense of individuality, right, there's an inclination to think like, this is me looking at myself, and this is something that kind of happens in isolation. And yet, we know that some of the most effective ways of building self awareness are not in isolation at all.
Akhila Kolesar:Absolutely, that's through my participation in a role and community that I've really learned about myself. And I've been able to receive those reflections and the honor really, from other people kind of honoring me up for what I, how I have served the community and vice versa, I've really been able to see myself as an important part of a beautiful hole. So it does reinforce my value, like my value of myself, my value of this life, my life, you know, the kind of preciousness of that life, and also how it's like the big Crayola box for something that's really joyous about having this, this beautiful interconnectivity of all of these different roles. Not that it's not without its drama, too, of course, at times, too, which is another way when we're supported in community that way that we get to learn about ourselves, you know, of having rupturing and repair with another person. I'm wondering
Elizabeth Solomon:if you have an example of that of something that you have learned about yourself through sort of showing up in the context of group work supporting another person,
Akhila Kolesar:I think about a community that I'm a part of now, where it's a learning environment, but we're also practicing together as a way to learn. And, you know, you join a group, and pretty quickly, this is true for me, I think, true for many of us that pretty quickly, we go, Oh, I like you, you and you, I do not like you, you know, and I, you really annoy me, and it's like everyone gets within the first hour, we decide who everyone is. And most of the time, the story is more complex than that. And when we have sudden community, that's usually where we all start. And when we have opportunities to really show up for another, then we get to have more of that full experience, and really a more full bodied experience. So in this learning community that I'm talking about, I kind of decided I don't really like this person, for all sorts of reasons, you know, they're, everything seems to be about them. And they kind of hug them like, and, you know, I've had kind of enough I want, I want them to be more contained, you know, and it's through really sitting next to them. Because that was the chair that was available during a particularly activating piece of the work for them activating for them, I think, emotional for all of us, but especially activating for them that I realized, Oh, they're really suffering here. You know, I got to see more of the complex trauma that they were coming with. And I've had such incredible privilege, you know, and such incredible opportunity to do a lot of healing, not like I'm done. But I'm aware that not all of us who've had access, and the way that I have, and with me being next to them once they softened, and I got to see more of what what their suffering was about. I was just incredibly moved to be support. And so here, I perhaps ironically, ended up being the one who was quite literally even holding a peer of mine, who was going through big suffering, that I was able to see in the moment. Oh, right. This was not her fault. This is something that she has carried. You know, and the motivation to kind of show to show up was just, I don't know, if I should even call it motivation. It was just instantaneous. There was an empathic resonance, and I was the one there and it's like, oh, come here. Right. And I could offer that support. Yeah. What does
Elizabeth Solomon:that teach you about yourself?
Akhila Kolesar:I mean, there's the there's the immediate part, which is, hey, don't be so quick to judge which, of course, our cognitive mind is gonna
Unknown:do that. You're like, gosh, you judge II know, whatever, you know, I'll judge myself for being so judgy.
Akhila Kolesar:Right, exactly. The double judge that's there. So there's some of that, of course, and you know, I don't know that we can ever slow down our judgments. I think it'll probably still be there automatic, but maybe don't catch it. Don't let it get rigid, not let it decide who people are. So there's, there's that piece of it. But there's also something that's really beautiful for me in being able to see. Thankfully, too. It's kind of reassuring to be able to see that the judge can fall away that there is a deeply loving, there's a part of me that will is so committed to just showing up. And it's such a strong value of mine. I'll talk But it was people like we get lost in our own despair. You know, it's not effective for the future of this world, we need to really be able and are willing to show up to make any sort of change. And so I'm so grateful that in that moment, you know, I wasn't held back by that judgment, and that I could, I guess, honor myself, and certainly, I mean, she expressed tons of gratitude to me later. And all of this as well, you know, about being really able to show up as the frame that we held after that is kind of like big sister. And I'm the youngest in my family. So I have not had the opportunity to be a big sister to many, and maybe a few friends or siblings or friends and things like that along the way. And so this was just such an instantaneous poll that I'm like, Okay, I could even as Big Sister, I can have my judgment sometimes. Right like that. Also, there's room for that. But when it comes down to it, I'm going to show up, and I'm going to be there.
Elizabeth Solomon:Yeah, I think you're also speaking a little bit about becoming aware, too, of how our intentions affect what part of ourselves we're able to sort of live into, right. And I think that example of stepping into a new group is amazing, right? Because there's a part of us that's like, Who here is safe? Who here is not? I like I'm in a new environment, everything's overwhelming. I need to categorize people instantaneously. So I can like make sense of my surroundings, right? And yet, the question that you arrive at, in this group experience with this person is how can I be of support? This brings me to actually a question about one thing I found really helpful in my own self awareness practice is a little bit of parts work, which goes by many different names, but being able to observe myself and different aspects of myself and being able to give them names and, and think about, you know, okay, I have the judge, okay, I have the person who has a lot of rage, oh, she's angry. Okay, I have this really other like, really joyful side, oh, I have the inner child, right. However, we want to name those parts and seeing them all as being a piece of us. And I'm wondering if that has been influential to your work at all, either for yourself or with clients, and how that helps sort of relieve the shame layer that often follows becoming aware of ourselves and our emotions and our behaviors?
Akhila Kolesar:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Deke Schwartz and internal family systems has really been the foundation of the parts work that that I've learned yet, even like I mentioned, Jeremy Taylor early and looking at dreams, through each of the different elements in the dream, including the house, including the clouds, you know, as being parts of our very own selves. And what I love about ifs internal family systems, is there's not just the focus on parts, but also this core focus on what we might call capital S self. Right, I have this kind of central what I think of as like the hub of the wheel, all the parts is being like spokes. But when I have orientation to that hub of the wheel, when I'm able to really kind of come back to center, come back to my back body really feel supported by the chair by the world, you know that I'm able to take one of those deep belly breaths and turn towards whatever the feeling is that's coming up whatever part is, has been activated, and respond to it so differently, you know, because then I get to be able to ask the question of myself, and this is true with with my clients to try to support them in parts, because I find it immensely useful, and helping us to build self compassion. Because when we're able to kind of sit in our back bodies, and really kind of find our center and not be so blended with a particular part that's up, then we get to ask, what are you working so hard to do right now? judgey part, you know, to your point from earlier, it's about safety. Well, if I can really understand when judgey part steps up, that I'm feeling scared, that I'm feeling unsafe, and I'm trying to identify, you know, who are my allies in the room, then there's so much more room there for compassion and understanding of that judgy part and I'm not necessarily ruled by it. Right, I get to lead myself through this new environment or this room of new people. And at the same time, kind of like be holding my judgy part, knowing that it's a protector for one that's actually really scared, which then may bring me into relationship. Ideally, hopefully, with that little one who's scared who's going, Oh, I was bullied as a kid. What are people seeing in me? are they judging me right now? Probably because I'm judging them. It's one that's really terrified. that I get to be with my little like, seven year old part while also being my, my current self, and also be with this. This bratty, perhaps adolescent part of me that's this judgy one that has snarky, witty things to say about everyone and everything. Yeah.
Unknown:In Dan Harris's interview for our first act, he shared a quote that said Self knowledge is always As bad news,
Akhila Kolesar:I think for me, my path around self awareness has always there's been something kind of magical about it. There's something that's gotten me excited inside, even those big questions, you know, like that first one of God created everything, what, who or what created God, like there was something really terrifying in that, but there was something that hooked me that was almost like, seductive about that question. However, you know, when I think about self awareness of our, of my inner judge, you know, or of the impact I've had on other people at times when I've let my even righteous rage, you know, control my actions, and I can relate more to that question of it being bad news. One story that comes to me as I reflect upon this is how I remember I think it was 11. I remember learning from a friend's mom, that in some places people eat dog. And I grew up with dogs. My first primary relationship was with a Giant Schnauzer, named Butch. Like, dogs are my peeps, you know, as a kid, especially. And it's hugely attached to animals, and really found great social safety with them as a youngster. And so I was appalled. When I learned this now, you know, cultural relativity and stuff. I'm putting that aside for for a moment, because I was 11 at the time and didn't really get those pieces. But I thought, wait a minute, people eat dogs. Oh, no, and then learn people eat horses and I rode horses are like, Oh, no, this is horrible. And then I'm like, wait a minute, how is this different than cows? How is this different than pigs? You know, like, I met cows and pigs on farms, or, you know, petting zoos, things like that. I'm thinking, Wait a minute, like, my family that stuff all the time. We mean, and so I couldn't eat meat anymore. At 11, I decided, okay, there's no different I know that there's no difference between a dog and a pig. I can't eat meat. We could argue about chickens or fish. But you know, I stopped eating all of them. Because I thought, well, they all have consciousness, they all have feelings, I understand the complex emotions that dogs can feel or thought I did, you know, as a kid. And so I couldn't eat meat anymore. And so that awareness, you know, really felt like bad news that I could then self organize around identities being vegetarian. Again, when I learned about factory farming and all of that at 16, I became vegan because I thought, Okay, this is just all bad. And wasn't, then until I left high school to do kind of like a back to the land thing. All I wanted to do was learn how to farm, I thought I just want to have no negative impact. So let me go out to California because I grew up in Cleveland, not a place that was super friendly to vegans at the time. And so I was like, let me go to California, I'm gonna, I'm going to practice farming, I'm going to learn how to do sustainable living so that I can opt out from this really harmful lifestyle that I've inherited, you know, as the United States in, and of course, I get to the farms, and they're killing animals is a way to protect the vegetables. Oh, my God, I couldn't get away from it. I mean, poor gophers. I don't know how many generations of gophers were killed, you know, and I'm being all righteous, like, I'm not going to set the gopher traps, which the farmer didn't carry, set it anyways. You know, I remember when ravens kept coming down to eat the seed that was laid out. And these are small scale farmers. These are not like the big rich agribusiness folks, you know, they're all organic in Northern California. And the Ravens were coming out to eat the seed. And so this one farmer shot a raven hung him up by his toes or something like that in the field. And I gotta tell you, like, the Raven stopped coming to eat the seeds. It was so sad, and it was so sick. And there was this way that I had to really like, accept that there was no way as a human being on this planet. Maybe as a sentient being, I'm not sure there's no way that I can truly opt out from having some degree of impact, we might call it harm on my environment. And with having to accept that like that creates its own kind of process, I think of self awareness of, of coming to accept some of these existential givens of I'm going to hurt things in people and of course, I can be mindful of the degree of harm and intentional harm and things like that. But this has really led to me now you know, I am no longer vegan. I'm no longer vegetarian, but I'm incredibly committed to eating local I have incredible privilege living in California to be able to eat local to be able to shop at farmer's markets that are year round. So I see you know, an immense amount of privilege in that you're getting to
Elizabeth Solomon:a question that I was going to ask you which is how the act of becoming aware of oneself one's emotions, one's impact, etc. how that changes your relationship to the world and what I'm hearing is that you identified very early on this value around no harm and had to go through like multiday. decades of reckoning with that right? From like the righteousness of I'm going to be one of those good people who causes no harm to the realization that part of living in a system or an ecosystem is that everything we do has an impact on some other part of the system. And we don't always know what that is. And it's certainly not always for good, right. But again, as your self awareness has expanded, any other things you can say about how your relationship to the world has changed, and that could just be very interpersonal, in terms of your relationships that are very close, or much larger?
Akhila Kolesar:That's a great question. This takes me in some ways back to the question around identity, and how, as my self awareness has grown, or changed over time, and impacted by the decades, like you said, there's a way that I've kind of more and more really seen myself as an Earthling. That might sound kind of silly, but being outside and particularly in wild spaces is a huge resource for me. And it's a place where self awareness feels very easy. So backpacking is something I try to do multiple times a year, because there's something about coming down to the simplicity, and not being impacted by media having an immediate break, literally carrying just the very simple things that I'm gonna have while I'm out there, just having voice, meaning, like, I don't really carry radio with me. So it's like our own song that we might create, or conversation or silence hearing. And it's not silent, hearing the natural world out there. I think more and more, I've really seen how incredibly connected I feel to this earth, in the sky, but also like this ecosystem, and more and more, try to even see myself as an animal as opposed to a human. To kind of just decentralize, to decentralize the idea of self, maybe, you know, with my clients, I'm kind of in there, and I'm very much a human being with them, you know, and my own self awareness allows me to own my mistakes, you know, or try to, like, when I noticed that they happen or when it's reflected to me by others, you know, that it's happened. And it's when I'm more self aware and willing to see again, this is in the context of harm, I guess how I harmed another how it impacted another, especially if it's unintentional harm, then the pathway to repair becomes evident, if it's possible, and so I can be in more intimate relationships the more self aware I am
