Intuitive Choices

How Love Brings Order to Chaos with Tim Wragg

• Kimberley Dobbs and Jacob Miller • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Tim Wragg has worn many hats in life; Teacher, barista, professional counselor, and now a land manager at Snipes Farm in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Throughout a series upheavals, Tim has managed to not only adapt but thrive. In this uncharted exploration, we journey through Tim's life, understanding how he has cultivated resilience and adaptability in the face of drastic challenges. Tim sees his life story as a battle between meaning and nihilism. Love and meaninglessness. If you have ever felt shame because you don't think you are "on pace" with where you feel you should be in life, Tim helps us learn how to find self compassion and get on track with who we want to be in life.

Snipe's Farm
https://www.snipesfarm.org/welcome.html

Snipe's Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/snipes_farm/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==


Transitions and Land Management in Farming

Speaker 1

Hey, everybody would like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices. Today I am so excited to have an old colleague I should say great friend, Tim Ragh. He is a person that I met because he was, I'm like, looking right at you, right Because he was going for his license as a professional counselor and you needed some supervision, right?

Speaker 3

That's right, so you went on to psych today. Uh huh, little therapist finder. Yup, as she was with Ursula. Oh no, yeah.

Speaker 1

And you reached out to me for some supervision for your hours. And we got on the phone and that's pretty typical, right To kind of like am I a good fit for you as a supervisor? Vice versa, and I distinctly remember you were using a lot of big academic types of words that, quite honestly, I didn't know what a lot of it meant and I had a lot of uh, huh, yeah, great. And we get to the end of the conversation and in my mind I'm like, well, this isn't a fit. I said, well, it was really nice to speak with you and, like you know, take some time, think about it. And you didn't take any time, you just said, no, this sounds great. And we scheduled, we scheduled supervision together. And, um, and we probably will we'll talk about it later as to like why you went with me as your supervisor, right, what that was. But but it was um, so we, you did that.

Speaker 1

Then, um, you did get your license and in the midst of all of it, the pandemic happened. And my end of that, of that pandemic story, is that I had to have an office suite in Philadelphia and I did. It was just me. In my practice, I was a single practitioner and I just was renting out my offices to other therapists and, uh, then the pandemic happens nobody's going to an office. And so, ultimately, I was like this is the time I'm going to try to expand, and I asked you if you would be my guinea pig and you, um, it's um, it's much more simple. I'm making this much more simple than the decision actually was for you.

Speaker 4

But you said yes, and we lived happily ever after.

Speaker 1

No, so and uh. But here we are, because you, oh and and a critical piece to this story is you, single-handedly are responsible for me and for Jacob and I connecting.

Speaker 3

That's correct, that's right.

Speaker 4

You know, temple connection, temple university, yeah, yeah, we graduated from the same program Not at the same time, luckily and I was doing one of my courses advanced counseling techniques.

Speaker 3

Uh-huh.

Speaker 4

We came in to give a little presentation about your work, your background and it very much resonated with myself and uh, dr Heidi Hutman gave me your, your information, put us in touch and then, when it came time to look for a job after I did not get any success, uh, reaching out to people on psych today, uh, you said you were making uh, yet another life transition, yep, and um, we did a little warm handoff and I kind of like shark teeth, yep.

Speaker 3

That's right. That's right. It worked out perfectly.

Speaker 4

Oh, this is another like really weird, philosophically inclined verbose uh eloquent, uh young male clinician and we're just going to put you in.

Speaker 1

You know what's so funny? I do, I think this is a funny story to tell, is um? Dr Hutman, heidi, uh, dear friend, now again, thanks to both of you has become a very dear friend of mine. But uh, when we were talking I was like I was like she's like look, but here's the thing, they're like there's there's some overlap in these guys but like you can't just do a switch out?

Speaker 4

Like it's like they're not very different.

Speaker 1

You know, in her own, like Heidi like but, that was why I took her to the. I was like no, no, no, totally, totally. In my mind I'm like, oh, this is going to be great. I just have to remember to call Jacob Jacob and not Tim.

Speaker 3

But you did very well. Yeah, I'm happy to hear that.

Speaker 1

Better than my first boss.

Speaker 3

Yeah, good, good, good, oh, gosh and gosh. What a shout out to Heidi. Oh seriously, I love so much love for.

Speaker 4

Heidi, yeah, I friend Tim, yeah, we mentioned briefly and kind of hopefully, like veiled it appropriately, that you've been through some transitions in your life, which part of the reason I want to bring you on as an individual, who who can be a little bit of a case study as our guest that we like to have about how do you move from one place in life to another. So without further ado. Welcome to intuitive choices.

Speaker 3

Thank you, gosh, I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

This is really great. Yeah, I mean gosh. I mean when you say that just my mind just goes nuts with all the different things that you know, the transitions and everything. But you know, I think what you're getting at there is that what I do now, which is distinctly not therapy, is farming. I live at a farm, I work at a farm.

Speaker 1

Literally.

Speaker 3

I work at a farm now.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I'm gosh, what a departure.

Speaker 4

An arrival. Just yes, oh, precisely yeah. Both hands, we might you might even say yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

Distinctly different from being in a little drywall box counseling people one at a time. Hey, hey, yeah.

Speaker 1

Don't knock it yeah.

Speaker 3

That's right. No, it's really important work, important work.

Speaker 4

What type of hats have you worn throughout your life?

Speaker 1

Oh, that's a great question.

Speaker 3

That's a good question. I'm a doctor right.

Speaker 3

Therapist oh, let's not forget. Coffee master oh, black apron at Starbucks. Worked at Starbucks for four years, earned that black apron coffee master, that was a role you know. Work to Trader Joe's for four years, that was sort of a college gig. But in terms of roles, in terms of like hats, like the thing I'm doing now right isn't so much actually direct production of food, it's farm related. I mean, it's part of a farm operation. But really what I'm doing now in the hat that I'm wearing, that I'm so, so, so excited about, that I think has so much potential for the world is land manager. Oh, that's fantastic, Right?

Speaker 3

So I'm really sort of like property management, land management.

Speaker 4

So open up land management a little bit. What is it? Because that's not just like. That sounds so much more than being a farmer, it's really like on another level. Yeah, I didn't realize you were doing that, that's great, that's right.

Speaker 3

That's right. So I think probably this is like let's just start talking about permaculture. Now you know this is You're going to have to define a lot of terms.

Speaker 4

Yeah, it's permaculture.

Speaker 1

You don't have a and everybody you don't have an agricultural-based audience. So we got to that's right. We're going to do some fast-mattering. Everybody understands with your big words.

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1

More big words. Yeah, it's very unbranded for you, tim. Okay.

Permaculture

Speaker 3

So I mean, you know, everyone's got their own little elevator pitch. Permaculture is a whole systems design and decision-making philosophy that is used to design systems that meet human needs without ecological cost. So really meeting human needs, yes Like actually yeah.

Speaker 1

I was going to say like all of that, like accidentally, wow yeah.

Speaker 3

So permaculture says like, look, oh my God, look at. You know, the permaculture view of the modern world is like oh my God, look at everything that we've not accounted for. You know, I need not invoke much more than the fact that we're all full of microplastics to illustrate that. Like, look at what we haven't accounted for in a way that we've been trying to meet our needs, you know, and so you know, here's a little bit of what I've actually been doing at the farm this year.

Speaker 3

We had and so you know I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here Snipes Farm is where I am right, and so we're in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, we're just north of Philadelphia, so we have this terrific program that just started this year and it's a connection with a school that's nearby, called George School. George School is now coming to Snipes Farm and it's really exciting. It's just a religion program, right? So all of the freshmen at George School now every year come to Snipes Farm for six weeks and it's a service program, right? And so I was one of the people who was on this. I've got a background in teaching, and we'll talk about that a little bit, and, you know, obviously got a background in therapy.

Speaker 3

People is what I do right and so I was there for the first session for these kids arriving at the farm for each of the cohorts Because it's a different cohort, monday through Thursday and you know the way that I framed it for them was like you are here to help us because we are in earnest trying to solve the question of agriculture. If you think about it from the scale of global civilization, we've not figured out how to meet our needs in such a way that we're not also wrecking our habitat and or exacting incredible cruelty upon one another. Right.

Speaker 3

Thinking about prisoners that are put to farm, thinking about slaves and servants and indentured servitude, and we've really not figured it out right. And so what I said to them is don't let the full supermarkets fool you. And so that really probably is the best encapsulation that I can give a permanent culture Do not let the full supermarkets fool you. And at the same time.

Speaker 4

we know that there is theoretically enough nutrients on the planet to feed the planet, we don't know how to get it to the people.

Speaker 3

That's right. That's right, that's right, without wrecking the top soil. And there's actually. I mean, you can find this stuff there's. You know, I've read once a pamphlet that was in circulation in the Senate in the 1890s and it was all about the crisis of diminishing top soil and people were, you know, posing in this pamphlet that it was a real crisis because there wasn't going to be nutrients in the food that we were eating in short order.

Speaker 3

That was 1890s, so, anyway. So permaculture is this way of getting at. How do we meet human needs across all different types of human needs, but doing it in such a way that we're not, you know, wrecking our habitat or exploiting one another, or accepting incredible cruelty, and you're doing this at your farm.

Speaker 3

That's right. That's right and really, you know it's big, broad strokes, right. So permaculture there's a permaculture perspective for thinking about a farm such as the farm that I'm at now is what is this here to do in terms of the region and the world? Right and so? We're thinking about that from first principles what functions do we want this farm to play, both in the local community and in the wider region of the world.

Speaker 4

It's not just it's not. It's not as simple as to say is we want, is what is the land capable of and what can we exactly? Yeah.

Speaker 3

And so there's this intricate matching process. You take a really deep ecological site assessment, you figure out exactly what is going on where you are in terms of the nature that's there and what is. You know what, what you're capable of doing in an ecology like that and a natural setting like that, and then you secondarily take a look at what the human needs are, and then you sort it out.

Speaker 4

I had no idea this is where we're going to go today, but I was just reading this, like before I came in this morning. But we, just so like the Jewish people over the world, just began rebegan the cycle of reading the Torah, which is like an year long cycle.

Speaker 4

And this is the first week. Okay, so we're starting this week and so first story in the Torah, story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And when God puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he says this is the, you should be in the garden. It's crazy to think people in the Garden of Eden like was there work to do? Yeah, god put Adam and Eve in the Garden to work, which is we'll put that aside. He says to work in the Garden and to keep the Garden.

Speaker 4

And then part of the exile from Paradise was they still have to work and preserve and keep the land. But now it says by the sweat of your brow. So there's like another level of effort and difficulty that's going to be involved in that, but not exempting them from the obligation of working while preserving the land. So this is a regardless of if you're Jewish or if you're in an Abrahamic faith at all, or even if you're religious, to appreciate that this is a foundational text of Western civilization and parts of Eastern civilization.

Speaker 4

And the first story says you have to work your whole life and it's not enough to just extract nutrients from the world around you. It's paramount, as a foundational base of civilization, to preserve the land as well.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and from our perspective at the farm, you know, the family is Quaker right, and so one of the six core values is stewardship. Yeah, that's exactly what you're talking about right it is stewardship of something rather than extraction from it.

Speaker 4

And the to be a steward is the combination of both work and service to the work. That's right, yeah. So, how did you become a farmer?

Speaker 1

Yeah, you are not a farmer, I'm a steward of the work, like.

Speaker 2

I'm sitting here and I'm like God. This is all really interesting.

Speaker 1

Like this is so interesting. It's actually like a level that I didn't even know right, yeah, I'm just like like yeah, you went from therapy to this world and like I do think this is like a good time to kind of segue into like I wrapping my mind around like how did you go from one to the other? You know?

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's right. It was about four, five years ago where it became clear that that was the direction that my wife and I were going, so sure that my wife is the seventh generation of the folks in this family that have stewarded Snipes Farm where it is.

Speaker 1

She happens to be the 11th generation in the county. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 3

But you know, she's the seventh generation at this farm, which was originally purchased. I think I'm right in saying it was 1848.

Speaker 4

So it sounds like real Pennsylvania Quakers yeah yeah, like all the way you know before Like original yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah, because before they were the Snipes they were the Moons, right, and there's books on books, on books about the Moons that you know were part of the first wave of Quakers that came to Pennsylvania. You know 1630s et cetera.

Speaker 1

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing legacy to be a part of. Yeah, you know, one of the cool things about the farm is that it was a nursery for a very long time, right, and so, you know, I sometimes stop and just wonder in awe of how many trees in the Philadelphia region you know, started life at Snipes Farm.

Speaker 4

Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And so it makes it a natural fit, A nursery being a place that would like foster saplings and then be used to put it in the woods.

Speaker 3

You know, sometimes it was a tree farm right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, and so you know that legacy is there and that's one of the things that makes us, you know, so excited about permaculture. You know, because that has a real emphasis on, you know, perennial crops, right. Tree crops right Things like chestnuts and hazelnuts, and you know, even acorns. You're foraging for white oak acorns. I mean, people forget that you need this stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Right and you don't have to plow the ground up to get it Right. So, as you say, it's this you know you're meeting your needs through doing it, but whilst you're doing it, you're caring for it right and lo and behold, that is just being in a much better balance with everything else around you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, but did you think that it would be like that? You would be this? I don't. I think it's like a bigger word than commit it Like, it's like, you're really it's like it's it's like you're one with it, versus like when you're talking about four or five years ago. This was sort of like always on the agenda that you and Charlotte would, you know, move on to the farm and begin farming. But you went to school for a master's in counseling right. So there's like two very like different, different things here.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And so, to complete the thought, right, it was like when we realized that we were heading that direction it was sort of like well, you know, what does one do with a farm? You know, and thank goodness, I fell down the rabbit hole of permaculture. You know, thank you YouTube. Yeah, you know, really truly, it was like just just starting to search for key terms and then, you know, sort of fell on that it's not everyone that takes up a more difficult form of farming.

Speaker 4

Like it's, it's difficult enough to be a farmer. That's why so many people move to cities, you know. So what is it within yourself that was like? Permaculture is an authentic way for me to be a farmer.

Speaker 3

So two things, and there's really rich connections for me. You know there's a whole other conversation about Joanna. Macy and Buddhism and general systems theory, and all of that literally, and you know I'm not kidding you. That all plays into why. You know I it's not some. You know, I feel that it's not so much that I found permaculture as I recognized it of course right. And you know I think about Tick Naut Hanh talking about engaged Buddhism. You know, I would argue that that's what permaculture is. In many ways it's engaged.

Speaker 4

Buddhism. For people who don't know any of those words that you just said, absolutely Via describing your work on the farm, can you give us a taste of engaged Buddhism? Sure, yeah.

Speaker 1

That'll be helpful for me especially as a mother. We do.

Speaker 3

Permaculture is wonderful because you can sort of take it from the nuts and bolts and it's like well, what would be the right place to put this tree Right? That's the question that you can ask with permaculture. But also because it's got such an incredible emphasis on people care and that balance between earth care and people care.

Speaker 3

It's inherently a very powerful social organizing tool, right and so a lot of what I'm doing is actually using the clinical skills that I was using as a therapist, that I was taught in grad school, that I honed in practice, to get people to communicate with one another, so that we fix the systems such that they are doing what they purport to do. And so what I'm? Finding is that there's this like and I'm still sort of bowled over by it, but it really feels to me like the clinical skills that I have are just like it's like this is what the world needs, right.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And we need more therapists right. But there is a part of me that's like gosh, I hope there's a bunch more of us. So it's kind of like spring forth from the therapy room to sort of put things to rights, put things to rights in nonprofits and put things to rights at farms and all sorts of social services.

Speaker 4

I feel how the things you're saying are connected. But, I don't know if other people will know how they are connected. So can we put some more words to the feelings, and I think I'm gonna go, maybe really big picture. This is not usually where we go with on the podcast, but it sounds like you have an inherent world view. Yes, both how the world is inherently and how you'd like to see it revealed and manifest.

Speaker 3

Yes, yes, well put.

Speaker 4

Let's try to describe the worldview and then see how that is applied to different areas of your life at different times. What's the worldview.

Speaker 3

So the worldview, yeah, the worldview. And I sort of pointed to this a little bit earlier, talking about John Amacy and Buddhism, right, so at some point in my life, I suppose in the early 20s, I sort of realized the extent to which I'm suffering, and from that began this sort of long meditation on the nature of suffering and that quite swiftly brought me to Buddhism All about suffering.

Speaker 4

What's the connection to Buddhism? How do people like what is suffering, People who know literally yeah, that's right About Buddhism what to do about suffering?

Speaker 3

Perhaps this is the best way to put that. Oh, it turns out you're suffering.

Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory, and Suffering

Speaker 3

We can tell you why that is and how to become skillful in the face of it is such that, yes, ultimately you're gonna reconcile yourself to the fact that, inevitably, you're gonna suffer, but whilst doing it, there's immense good that you can do. And so I think that that's what shows up for me when I think about Buddhism and that part of it, so anyway. So I think it also bears mentioning that at the same time that I was getting really into Buddhism, I was actually also getting into chaos theory. Not only chaos theory, but stuff like complexity theory and modern general systems theory. What's chaos theory?

Speaker 3

Chaos theory is this branch of math that comes around in sort of the 80s right, and it's sort of like. As I understand it, it's like this one sort of eccentric professor in each math department of universities across the country, and it's early internet and they start sharing formula with one another, and we've got computers at that time, and so they're doing all sorts of really cool imaging based on really intricate math. Basically, chaos theory says listen, everything in the world is connected and everything operates in a nonlinear manner, and so there is order, but it's not where you imagined it would be.

Speaker 3

And if you want to get at the order and you want to learn to skillfully work with order. To bring order into being, for example, you need to acknowledge first that everything is connected right and that everything inherently behaves in this very nonlinear way.

Speaker 4

So it's intimately related to the idea of the fractal nature of existence that there are like root patterns in the world both physical and spiritual Tendencies.

Speaker 3

I often say root tendencies.

Speaker 4

That manifest themselves in complex yet identifiable ways at every level of existence.

Speaker 3

Yes, that's right. That's right. And complexity theory says that everything is self-organized. Yeah right.

Speaker 4

And so you're tapping in to those macro ideas in harmony with your understanding of suffering and Buddhism. Yeah, that's right and that is embedding itself at the core of your worldview, and you're seeing your understanding of the pattern of existence unfolding in different ways again and again and again.

Speaker 1

Yes, Okay, guys.

Speaker 4

Okay.

Speaker 1

I'm gonna ask you a question, Tim.

Speaker 3

I'm ready.

Speaker 1

How did you know you were suffering?

Speaker 3

What did it feel?

Speaker 1

like.

Speaker 3

Good yeah, thank you, you're welcome, that's why.

Speaker 1

Tim and I need Kim.

Speaker 4

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I was like look, if I hear one more term that I don't know the definition of, yeah, good.

Speaker 3

Grounding.

Speaker 1

Grounding is occurring.

Speaker 3

Ground control to major Tim Okay.

Speaker 1

So but all to exercise like look, you know, tim, what I you know. It's so easy for us to and I speak like like for humans to intellectualize, or like use our thoughts to help logic through and like create understanding about the world around us. Right, but you were like, and kudos to you for taking those steps right, you do a lot of reading, you turn to YouTube. You I mean I know this personally about you that you, like, went to a Buddhist monastery for six weeks. All those things are great. And also, what does it feel like to suffer? And how did you know?

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, a Judith Herman comes to mind, the psychiatrist who wrote Traum and. Recovery.

Speaker 1

Uh-huh, yeah great.

Speaker 3

Dismemberment. Okay, right, to be alone, that's how I knew I was suffering, I was alone.

Speaker 4

I was alone. But then you see the synonym. So how do you know you're?

Speaker 3

alone.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Well, I mean, you know, I think there's another part of the story, right that I move here from England when I'm 12 in 1997. And so you know, literally, there are ways in which I, at that time, I was alienated profoundly. Whoa, okay, wait, wait, yes, so you moved from England at 12 years old, let's also talk about like any.

Speaker 1

when you do a big move Jacob, you and I have talked about this. I think doing a big move, like where you're like uprooted from your hometown, move someplace different, even if it's just like a school change right in a different city, like that I see it time and time again could actually be like a pretty traumatizing experience. Not to assume that yours was traumatizing, but to then I mean we're talking about from one country to another, yeah, and it was right. Yeah, I'll just say it. What traumatizing? Yeah it was traumatizing.

Speaker 3

You know, I think we're. You know bold statement, but you know, I think we're supposed, roughly speaking. I think we're supposed to be creatures of place. Certainly we're supposed to be creatures of tribe.

Speaker 1

Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 3

I mean goodness. I mean, you know, the expectation that you're supposed to be able to thrive in. These atomized immediate family units that have been, sort of like, plucked apart and almost purposefully alienated over a period of decades consume more you know, refer to as the atomization project.

Speaker 3

You know we're not, you know so anyway. So you know, yeah, traumatizing in a very much field. Like I was uprooted and I felt that it was later on in life that I'd read trauma and recovery. If I Judith Herman, where she first proposes this idea to the world, that there is such a thing as complex trauma.

Speaker 1

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4

Chronic trauma. Right, this is where this comes from. And the added, one of the added complexes I was imagined is the uncanniness of moving from one English-speaking country to another English-speaking country and you're like why, like you're speaking my language, I am English, you're speaking English and I have no idea what you're saying, or the cultural cues, or even that you were your accent right.

Speaker 1

I can remember like I grew up on Long Island until I was nine and moved to Florida and I mean just made fun of endlessly for the way that. I talked right, even though, like we're all American, we all speak English. So for you, like you said, scrutinized. So there's like this, like aloneness that you felt.

Speaker 3

And objectification. I think through that, you know, because I try to express something, I try to be heard by somebody, and they would just sort of marvel at the way that my voice sounded and perhaps even on the heels of me, having said something quite serious in earnest would say say something about the queen.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you know and that's objectifying as well, right so alienated and objectified to some degree, and I think that that's right. The point about the language two countries separated by a common language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's no big deal so like.

Speaker 1

but suffering, you know, like, is a feeling, right, it's like, it's a feeling you have in your body.

Speaker 3

You know, I think, what comes to mind in this moment? It's desolate. There's a desolation of spirit. You know, I felt an emptiness in my heart, a desolation of spirit, like a complete lack of orientedness to what I was supposed to be doing. Right, because that's the other thing you don't realize. You know, it's one of the subtler effects of moving from one place to another it's, all of a sudden, the scripts have changed on you. What am I supposed to be here? What are even the scripts? I've not been in this collective consciousness before.

Speaker 3

I'm not even like this operating system and yeah, I'm supposed to orient, lonely as I was, alone as I was.

Speaker 4

The sense of suffering set in. Or I'll say at what point did the sense of suffering set?

Speaker 3

in as I started to drift back down out of dissociation.

Speaker 4

When did dissociation begin? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

You know 14. So I moved here when I'm 12. By the time I'm 14, my granddad's died, my brother's been hospitalized for the first time for a suicide attempt, and you know that's you know Was he older than you. No 18 months younger than I am.

Speaker 1

Wow.

Speaker 3

And he's, you know he's with us. Still, I don't have a relationship with him, but you know he's got schizophrenia right. We didn't know it at that time, when, you know, he was 13 and I was 14 and he was being hospitalized for the first time. Oh my.

Speaker 3

God. But you know, and then my dad left, yeah, my dad, we were in this wrong country, and my dad left, and so, you know, it was me and mum and my two siblings, and, yeah, you know, and so I didn't even realize, I had no appreciation for how numb I was, for how dissociated I was. And you know, and I look back now and I see a little bit of derealization, I see, you know, depersonalization at times, and so it's that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, people don't know what those things mean. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 3

So I just sort of feel not real. So, to feel, like me, is not even real, like the subject of the experience, isn't even real. And then, so you know, to answer the question, the suffering sets in when you start to. You know you float back down out of the dissociation and thank goodness for dissociation right. It's a sort of the breaker on the fuse box so to speak.

Speaker 1

Say that all the time it sort of gets you out of trouble.

Speaker 3

It's a great short-term solution.

Speaker 4

It comes at long-term costs and in many ways, thank God for the dissociation it's necessary to survive. Thank. God for the ability to perceive that you're suffering. Yes, truly truly, truly.

Speaker 3

Skillfulness begins there. Yeah Right, I am suffering. This is not what I want from me, and so skillfulness begins there, but so does self-compassion, doesn't it?

Speaker 1

Well did it for you. Well, hopefully it does. I mean that's unnecessary.

Speaker 4

You guys, I know you know the pain of suffering, and then I think self-compassion could be one of the last things I was just about to say.

Speaker 1

I'm gonna shoot from the hip here and say I don't think that self-compassion started. I actually think you're here today having this conversation because you think that you now have self-compassion.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1

But I would argue that your process to get there, all the choices you've made, right Decisions you've made, things that didn't go well, things that did go well, I think all have everything to do with you learning that.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and I think it makes sense of the intellectualization too.

Speaker 1

You know when I say the beginning of self-compassion.

Speaker 3

I look back and I actually see this sort of just a flailing attempt to solve the problem, you know, and I sort of articulate compassion as like a desire for suffering to cease right, and so in some sense, Say one more time A desire for suffering to cease.

Speaker 4

What is it? Compassion?

Speaker 3

okay, that's how I sort of and roughly a Buddhist conception of compassion, where compassion itself is a desire for another being to not be suffering in the way that they're suffering. Just suppose against empathy, which I would just say is the ability to imagine as though you were seeing out from their perspective.

Speaker 1

How did you know you wanted to be a therapist?

Speaker 3

It was a very natural consequence. Thank you very much of trying to do something with how much I was suffering and I had. You know. I just hard to know at this point there's an argument to be made that I just got accustomed to that sort of social problem solving. Let's say you know, and sort of just being on hand at 14, being too old, too young sort of thing you know. I think that that's a lot of it.

Speaker 4

What type of problem solving did you see yourself engaging in?

Speaker 3

Just like deep, constant attunement with my mom. I was gonna say it was your mom, right With my mom who was thank goodness I mean thank goodness we had each other, but she was the thing right when I was 14 and in the wrong country.

Speaker 1

I think it's so funny that you keep saying it that way.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, 14 in the wrong country and it's sort of like, okay, yeah, I gotta prop you up.

Speaker 3

Gotta make sure you're okay and nobody was propping you up, yeah well yeah, yeah, but you know, I sometimes refer to this when I was doing therapy. I'd sometimes refer to this as cutting out the middleman. You know, because there I was as a teenager, right, and I'm propping up mom instead of propping myself up. Yeah. Right, and you know there are times where that's perfectly appropriate. But if that becomes a pattern that you're no longer aware of and you're constantly seeking to make things better for yourself by manipulating people around you, well, as a 14 year old you have limited access to resources.

Speaker 4

Exactly the gut reaction for so many children in a position like that is by strengthening the caregiver, then the individual can receive more care.

Speaker 3

And you know I was a Boy Scout. A scout is helpful, yeah, Right.

Speaker 4

I was being helpful. Yeah, idealistic, visionary, capable, intelligent, but 14.

Speaker 3

But 14,. Yep, that's right.

Speaker 1

And so, in some ways, was it a natural. What did it feel natural for you to become a therapist?

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, and I was aghast. I mean, being in a cohort in grad school was a real eye-opener to me, because I realized just how much I'd been doing it, and how skillful I'd become, and so for me, the formal learning of it was more a matter of mapping the formal concepts into what I already knew.

Navigating Career Changes and Authenticity

Speaker 1

So that's really interesting. I wanna ask you why he's laughing. But I also wanna be like did you really want to? Did you really wanna be a therapist?

Speaker 3

No.

Speaker 1

Okay, I'm like.

Speaker 3

He was a therapist.

Speaker 4

It's not he was a therapist and he needed the degree to get paid for it. No, but what I mean is I don't wanna speak to you.

Speaker 1

No, no, no but, yes, but also like I think that it was so natural for you to, because you were already doing that work, and I think your motive to want to like make it official, so to speak, is all real. But when I think about like doing therapy, like I'm just. That's why I'm asking Like do you? Really actually want to do that.

Speaker 3

Right, I mean I'm down to that Want to be that right Like not yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, part of it is growing up in therapy, okay, and having had really bad experiences of therapy but also having those really good experiences of therapy, right, and so it was something, and that was when I got to grad school and it's just like wait, I'm like one of two people in my cohort who's been in therapy myself as a client. That's incredible to me. Yes, I mean that was definitely part of it. But yeah, I think you're hitting the nail on the head, kim, because certainly this was more true when I was in school for my undergraduate degree, for early childhood education, and I encountered plenty of people who'd known that they were gonna be a teacher since they were in kindergarten and had like a very fleshed out image of that in their mind of them, an image that they were identified with, right, it was an image of themselves doing the thing that they were working toward that they'd identified with.

Speaker 3

That definitely wasn't true for me. It was more okay, teaching doesn't quite feel like the right fit and so perhaps I can do something just adjacent and oh huh, if I really look at this from the perspective of what are the skills that I have and what does the economy need, I could make money working as a therapist. Okay, so it really was. I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3

I think it was much less image driven.

Speaker 1

Wow, but then I'm thinking about the evolution of your life so far as you've lived it and I'm just like it's almost like you had to go through all of you went through all of that to learn, to kind of keep nudging you in a direction that was ultimately going to allow you to do something in your life that felt more aligned. Yeah. Does that feel true?

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. There is without doubt something drawing me forward into form. Yeah.

Speaker 4

The vocation yes what. The word vocation comes from the root vocal like a call, and so when I heard what Tim was saying, that talks about being drawn forth, it's actually being the calling. It's what we say is a calling.

Speaker 1

We talk about the calling all the time, but that's what he was saying.

Speaker 4

I know and I'm reading a lot of call young right now.

Speaker 1

So I said I said but it's like you blurted it out, Like I was just like, did somebody say that? I'm going to be totally honest it?

Speaker 4

is not so common. I get to sit in a room with someone who I just know it's going to like be there.

Speaker 2

I'm so glad that you have this right now. Thank you.

Speaker 1

I actually was like all morning I was like I cannot wait. I've even like told a couple of people I was like cannot wait to get Jacob and Tim in the room together. Like I just feel like magic is going to happen. I don't know if it's going to translate.

Speaker 4

No, we're going to have various etheric conversations. I got to edit out because now I'm going to like, even if they could theoretically be interested, if we like, explained every term is like not what they're going for in this.

Speaker 3

You need like a little jingle or something right now A little etymological moment with Jacob.

Speaker 4

Ethymological side. I think my wife wishes there was one also at home.

Speaker 3

Just turn to look directly into the camera. Break the fourth wall. Ethymological moment. No, seriously, you know, the best psychologist I ever saw was so heavy on the etymology, oh really Like slowing me down. Wait, slow down. Let's think about that word that you just use. It's powerful. Every time you speak, you cast the spell.

Speaker 4

Slow down. You know, he's really great, yeah, yeah. Okay. How do you know when you're being called toward something authentic, as opposed to a distraction or an illusion or yeah, as far as I can tell, the best rule of thumb at this point is that it hurts. So for you, what kind of hurts? It doesn't sound like it's suffering hurt you were just talking about it opposed to a distraction.

Speaker 1

No wait, it didn't hurt. This is like Suffering didn't hurt.

Speaker 3

This is like tension hurt. No, you're saying it's a different type of hurt, different type.

Speaker 4

Okay, yeah, as opposed to the desolation of the suffering that I was referring to before.

Speaker 3

This is much more of like an agitated, restless, tense tornness.

Speaker 4

Okay, staring at a profound truth and not inherently wanting it to be true.

Speaker 3

Yes, and mustering my courage to not be a coward about what I've seen what. I've glimpsed that needs to happen next. Oh my God, yeah.

Speaker 1

Did you feel that way when you decided to leave intuitive counseling?

Speaker 3

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1

Describe that experience for you, because we never talked about it. It would be cool to do it like on the air.

Speaker 3

I was on my last legs. It really had been sort of out of the frying pan into the fire from the community. Mental health facility that you're in From grad school, no, from grad school into that, okay, and so this really was a safe place to sort of land, but really not terribly resourced, yeah. But you know, loved working here, loved the folks that I worked with, of course, but yeah it was. It was really difficult and I felt very lost and I knew as much that it was a logical stopping point that I was moving physically to a different place.

Speaker 3

There was a thing that was happening with my family. My fiance then, as she was at the time, and I were moving to the farm, moving to her family's farm.

Speaker 1

Which is something that you had always known was going to happen. Right, that was a part of the.

Speaker 3

Had been for four or five years.

Speaker 1

Yeah, exactly, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3

Friends of mine have actually joked in the past that my sort of storyline is somewhat, like you know, 19th century Jane Austen novelism.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is a little bit.

Speaker 3

Packing up and we're off to the home farm, back up to the home farm or whatever. But yeah, you know, when I moved, you know I knew that I needed to rest and my basic vision was like well, you know, at the very least I'll give myself three months. And.

Speaker 3

I'll see about finding a practice in lower Bucks County, somewhere you know where it can be a part of a group practice, Because you know we really didn't appreciate at that time just how swiftly we would become so central to the operation at Snipes Farm. And so at that time, you know it really was, and everybody and you know, and Charlotte's family, was expecting for me to continue to do therapy and then, like, on a much slower basis, on a much longer time frame, we'd slide into the operation and the management and everything that didn't happen. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And when I was leaving it was yeah, it was. It was really difficult. Yeah.

Speaker 3

And I was very, very torn. And you know, of course you know. The other thing to talk about there is that part of the context is just financial fear and anxiety, you know not exactly a safety net here to speak of, I mean especially coming from a European perspective you know it feels dangerous. You know, life here just sort of feels like you're on a high wire all of the time and there's no net below you. No, but yeah, no, it was a time of consternation.

Speaker 4

It was a time of inner conflict.

Speaker 3

It was a time of deep fear.

Speaker 4

What's the?

Speaker 3

conflict. You know it was the best compromise that I'd come up with at that point was that maybe I could get away with doing something like three days of therapy a week and then I'd spend the other days, plus the weekend, you know, growing shiitake mushrooms and having a couple of like small scale farming integrations that over time I could sort of slide into the main operation.

Speaker 1

That's nice farm.

Speaker 3

But mostly what I had in my imagination was that you know, I'd find a group practice to be and then the you know sort of homestead on the side, and that we'd. You know we'd slowly become integrated, but I didn't want to do it, you know.

Speaker 4

I didn't want to do the slow integration or the split self therapy. Yeah, I didn't want to do therapy.

Speaker 3

And then I knew it and it's not because I didn't want to do it, and you know, this is where I'm going to begin to get a little bit more halting right, because we're dealing with hyperobjects and gestalts and things that actually cannot quite be articulated into English.

Speaker 3

It's really hard to put these feelings into words, but I just knew that there was something else that I had to do. There was more, and, you know, important context here, I think, is to talk a little bit about climate change and our moment, and so that's what I'm referring to quite specifically when I felt like there's more that I can do, there's more that I can do and especially here, right, because it's sort of you know what are the rough heuristics Do the most that you can with your gifts and with your assets, roughly speaking, something like that. And it was like oh, okay, so, oh, it's so, it's going to be us, out of all of the cousins that are like moving to Snipes Farm, that are going to be the next generation. Like I was talking about earlier with permaculture, what does one do with a farm? Well, you know, that question is being asked in the context of like what are the farm produce?

Speaker 3

Organic vegetables right.

Speaker 4

Broad speaking.

Speaker 3

Yeah, organic vegetables. And it's also an education center. So there's a terrific summer camp that operates at Snipes Farm and Education Center. You know there's an afterschool now. The farm goes out to local schools to do programming, nutrition, programming, school gardens, that kind of thing. It really is amazing. It's a nonprofit, it's a 501c3. And we just couldn't be more proud of the work that it does.

Speaker 4

That's fantastic.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it's like the family's like baby, like the family's like in it for like this, like no, we're just, we're here to do good. What good can we do here?

Speaker 1

Well, and it's so fascinating because I maybe this is a little too woo-woo, but I just think, like you met Charlotte Yep, and you've been together, I think, for 10 years.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's right For family. You did Congratulations. It's like the wedding, thank you, it's beautiful, wonderful.

Speaker 1

Yes, congratulations, and you. She just so happens to have a family farm. Yep. Because I look at it really zoomed out where, where and when. You're like, I didn't like therapy. It just didn't feel like it was enough and I'm going well, it's not so much that, it's enough that you get to grow shiitake mushrooms or that it's enough that you get to.

Speaker 1

You know that you created the chicken coop, that you created the chicken coop, that you created right Things like that. It's, it's, it's this, like larger. What have you been called to do in this lifetime? Yep, and all these different pieces have come together to allow you to actualize this thing. And then again, going back to what I was saying a little while ago, like that, you know, you were, you were going through these life experiences that were just helping to kind of nudge you along To put you in the exact place. Yeah, with the exact people. Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like it was just magic, like poof, this stork just dropped you right, it's nice.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 1

That's not what happened, you know, but because, of course, there was like a myriad of decisions you've had to make along the way, which is again. Like the whole point of our conversation is like how did you know to make those choices? That's a rhetorical. I don't need to answer that right now, but it's just like it's a little bit blowing my mind how you ended up, how you ended up where you are right.

Speaker 3

Now that it's like everything that you've lived had kind of had to happen, not everything, but most things I love, the woo, and let me extend the woo a little bit further because you know, I had been very unsuccessfully dating using, you know, online platforms like okay Cupid, when I met Charlotte, and so I was working at the parent infant center in West Philadelphia. Now that would have been like when I was in school, sort of finishing up my education degree, my undergraduate degree. Okay.

Speaker 3

So I was working with this guy and I distinctly remember plucking up my courage right, and so a little bit of context here is I identify as somebody who's on the spectrum like, and I distinctly remember plucking up my courage to like do something out of the norm for me, which is to really try to foster a kind of connection with this guy, and I thought he was just so cool. He's from Oregon, he's from Oregon and he took one look at my Subaru at the time and he said man, you would love the West Coast. And I just I'm sure I like blushed at the time.

The Pursuit of Meaning and Connection

Speaker 3

Anyway, so we have this little bit of a connection right, and it really was memorable enough that I was growing, I was in the growing edge there. I really like put myself out in a limb, and you know, in short order, one evening he said hey, man, you got a bike right, you bike here? I said yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just moved to West Philadelphia, right, which is terrifying. I finally made it out of the suburbs down to the city and I was living down in West Philly by myself, and so I said yeah, absolutely. And he said you got to come back to my house for pizza. Nice.

Speaker 3

So yeah, I was my first bike ride across the city. You know, of course, it was a whole other conversation.

Speaker 1

That sounds terrifying, by the way.

Speaker 3

Terrifying yeah absolutely my goodness.

Speaker 4

But I meet Charlotte right and so she was there the house, having pizza also.

Speaker 3

Right and the plot thickens because the way that she'd met this guy's this guy, craig's girlfriend at the time is she'd been at a karaoke bar and she caught sight of this woman. And so this day cannot tell you what possessed her to walk across the room to introduce herself, but that's exactly what she did and that's how the two of us were introduced, right. And then those folks, sophie and Craig, moved out of the city, sort of three months later, something like that.

Speaker 1

They were on their way, they did their job. So Charlotte met this perfect stranger, introduces herself and says we need to be friends, right.

Speaker 3

Yes, yes, we need to be friends.

Speaker 1

And then I think it's 10 years later I know this story because this is the story they told, one of the stories they told at their wedding ceremony that happened last month and then said and then they've been best friends for the last 10 years, but that's. You were brought to this gathering, she was brought to the gathering and you guys.

Speaker 3

And we connected, yeah, and 10 years ago.

Speaker 4

And Craig and his girlfriend had no intent of like. Oh, that's like no, no matchmaking.

Speaker 3

Yeah, it really.

Speaker 1

it really was sort of like they almost couldn't, because neither one is you know Craig or what's her name.

Speaker 3

Sophie.

Speaker 1

Sophie knew, like Sophie didn't know Charlotte well enough. Yeah, I didn't know you all, right, so but again it like, it just goes back to like when you think about you know, like when you think about your life's moments not just you but I think anybody who's listening to this, you know, because there is a level of like hindsight. You know we can kind of make those connections and go wow, like if that hadn't have happened, this would have never right Again, had you not presented in Heidi's class.

Speaker 1

Jacob would not be sitting in this room with me. You know what I mean. It's like it's really.

Speaker 4

But in each of those moments, as much of these like serendipitous divine moments as there are. It always requires the individual to act.

Speaker 1

And tune into what they're experiencing inside. Right they're, they're the guidance right. The whole point of this conversation is like what does that feel like? How do you know what that is so that you can follow it? Yeah Right, like even Nilek used to have a Charlotte. Like how did she know what was it that was happening for her to be like? I gotta go and this is there's no language, jacob.

Speaker 3

You said act, yeah, and the word that launched into my mind was resolve.

Speaker 4

A fixed meaning of anyone's experience, the opportunity to resolve, to act.

Speaker 3

But I think also there's something about. I mean, if we're all so complex and we're also interconnected all of the time, doesn't it mean that each instance is a moment in which the universe is resolved into what it actually does rather than all the things that it could have done? There's like this sort of pairing down. That's the moment itself.

Speaker 4

That's like the impossibility of an actual moment and the imperceptibility of the actual moment. There's the reflection of it and the anticipation of it, but there's no perception as it's coming. Okay, tim, I think we touched on a little bit in our pre-interview. Maybe we even touched on it a bit in the beginning of our time today, but you mentioned it. Maybe took you a little longer than the traditional undergrad to finish your undergraduate degree.

Speaker 3

What?

Speaker 4

does that even mean?

Speaker 3

A little longer. Yeah, so I guess in the States it's four years.

Speaker 4

It's a sort of unstated expectation for a bachelor's degree. And how long it take you Well.

Speaker 3

I graduated high school in 2003 and I got my undergraduate degree from Temple early childhood education. That was 2014. That's my math is about 11 years.

Speaker 4

Were you enrolled in the program that entire time?

Speaker 3

No, no, no. When did?

Speaker 4

you get enrolled into a program.

Speaker 3

That was late, and so I finally resolved to go for education, but before that I had been in theater, and so, before that, really truth be told, I was sort of by default of not having any other plans. I was at Beloved Montgomery County Community College, thank goodness for it.

Speaker 4

My mom is a teacher. This one, she loved it.

Speaker 3

I just flopped around and failed things and withdrew from classes.

Speaker 1

You failed Like you failed classes.

Speaker 3

By virtue of failing to withdraw. It was just calamitous Right. So my brother's schizophrenia continues to develop, all this through time and gets much more severe, and so really what I'm doing is my family life and just trying to navigate that as best as possible. I had a friend die in there tragic circumstances, and that was just. I'm just going to drop out again, whatever this is meaning. But why even being enrolled? Truly Right.

Speaker 4

No, I mean it. Why did you enroll? Why didn't you work? Why did you feel compulsion to be in a university?

Speaker 3

I was looking around. I was living in Ambla and we'd moved from Bluebell and I knew what it would be. I wasn't somebody who'd had any experience with blue collar trades or anything like that, so I knew damn well if I didn't persevere with higher education, the best I could do is sort of be like a manager of a retail store or something like that.

Speaker 4

And you didn't see that as your life. I just couldn't Right, but why?

Speaker 3

I listen to say this in such a flip way. But I mean, there's a degree to which an answer to that which is appropriate and true is just radiohead Like the band yeah like the band sort of blew my mind wide open.

Speaker 3

So, like I said, I moved here when I'm 12. And you know what's happening? In 1997 and music is okay computer came out and I think I listened to that album and just that album for years and to this day I would argue that they were extraordinarily prescient in their writing and producing of that album and that they captured the sort of crisis of meaning and the nihilism that came to a point years after that album came out. But they were seeing it, they were expressing it's almost a reference is also like dataism, right, dataism like post World War One. It's this like expression of the horror, it's like just letting out a little bit of the feeling of the moment. And I think that radiohead were doing that with okay computer and it really affected me and it was just such emotional depth.

Speaker 4

And that is what drove you to do your best to stay in school.

Speaker 3

Right, yeah, to do more To escape the nihilism, yeah like, yeah, it was meaning, it was pursuit of meaning, but it was also pursuit of finding something to do with myself in an incredible, like I mentioned before, in an incredible vacuum.

Speaker 1

So wrong country you were able to extrapolate all of that. No, I can extrapolate that. That's sort of a hindsight.

Speaker 3

But yes, I mean you know, and you know it speaks volumes of what is communication. But yes, certainly I mean the riches, riches game from from that album and their following albums for me and it really sort of kept me in because there's this yearning in it, right Like at the end of the day, if you listen to something like that, at the very center of it, is this really deep, very, very, very earnest desire for us to not be squandering human life in the way we are.

Speaker 3

It is atrocious, right. And so you hear in that album their dissociation, their lostness in the absurdity of just. You know you imagine being on tour and like playing stadiums and stuff like that. And you know you. You know you spend time in urban centers in the United States of America and the nihilism is there.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I had this push.

Speaker 4

Yeah, my grandfather passed away and it congratulates the sentiment of how do I get the most life for my life?

Speaker 1

I think that's the same sentiment Right? How do you?

Speaker 4

get the most life for your life and people do not. And she's like whoa man, like calm down, like you're gonna like give yourself an embolism is like you know you can. You can do that in in in a in a controlled and beautiful way. That doesn't mean to frantically grab life, yeah it means it means to create a system for yourself where you maximize your selfhood.

Speaker 1

Yes, so what a visualizing of you navigating that. Your college experience is not so much what you're describing Jacob it actually sounds so beautiful and eloquent how you described it but rather like kind of a little bit like a lost boy, you know, and and just being like this, almost like a little bit of a fear of, okay, if I don't do this, what would I do? So I'll just do this.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I hope I spoke to the seed, not the experience.

Speaker 1

But yeah, so I'm just like, but then and then you said something really important, which is a really great, it's just a fantastic thing, which is perseverance. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

And yeah, that interesting how music can really really help help people to, to kind of channel or get in touch with parts of ourselves that we need to. But, yeah, but to have I? Just how did you continue to fail classes, drop out? You know the money right, all the, the money that, like, you're not recouping if you're how is your self image being affected during? Great. That's sort of where I was like going with us yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean immense shame. You know, I just sort of came out of my, my teenage experiences with it just immense shame and gosh. You know. You know, a little bit before we got got to recording we were talking about attribution and gosh. You know, I really had concluded that I was the problem. You know.

Speaker 3

I mean, you know, let's be a little bit more accurate A part of me had concluded that yeah, at the very least yeah. And so you know it was difficult. But you know again, thank goodness for dissociation you know, especially when you don't know that it's happening. Okay, it just sort of gives you enough elbow room to like put one foot in front of you in the meantime and it's like yep, okay, you know, like gosh, you know, the image that comes to mind is working at Starbucks and being done with a shift at 1245 at night and being on the hook to be back there to open at 445 the next morning and just sleeping in the parking lot.

Speaker 3

you know that's how I got through that time One foot in front of the other, not not even knowing the degree to which I was the word.

Speaker 1

Faith, then, because I was a grit. Well, grit for sure, but, like you have to have some degree of faith in what the what am I, what it like I just, yes, you had grit, but it's like there's. You put one foot in front of the other, but we could argue that not everybody puts one foot in front of the other.

Love's Ordering Power

Speaker 3

Yeah, here we're getting to, you know, a much deeper internal conflict and existential conflict, you know. So I was. I was brought up Church of England and I was confirmed quite early on, before we left England, when I was 12 years old and I distinctly remember I mean I was on board, I was totally on board. My mom's side of the family had been very Christian. You know, my mom was like gosh she was. There's so many generations of women in her family have been married at that exact same village church.

Speaker 3

You know, back through history. So anyway, so you know, fast forward to my confirmation. My dad's side was, was atheist, you know, my, my, my grandfather. My dad's side was a research chemist with a, with a PhD, which is incredible because he came from a mining family, so that was only that way by virtue of scholarships, etc. Most of his friends, you know, stopped being in school at like 13 years old or whatever, but anyway.

Speaker 3

So he takes me aside on the day of my confirmation and this is where this grand split really first starts to take and he says listen, take this with a grain of salt, take all of this with a grain of salt and never forget the more people have been killed in the name of gods than anything else in human history. And so you know, simultaneously there's humanitarianism in that right, very secular, atheist humanitarianism.

Speaker 3

But, also in. That is a rejection of the divine that I had been feeling as a little lad sitting in church listening to him, and it does. It does feel different in the UK, the Church of England, really, it doesn't. You know. The next nearest thing here is the Presbyterian church, I suppose. But you know, I really did feel it, I really did feel it. And then there was this split that was introduced. You know. So when you're talking about that, kim, and you're talking about like, is it grit, is it something?

Speaker 1

else.

Speaker 3

And when I say faith, I'm not really speaking to religion, I'm speaking like yeah okay, right, but but yeah, like you know, and so I had you know, this one part of my intellect that you know, that you know rapidly during my teenage years, sort of internalizes everything that you typically internalize in terms of like materialist, reductionist, modern scientific thinking, right, the scientism we don't talk enough about science as a religion, scientism.

Speaker 3

So I internalize that. And yet what perseveres, despite that, is the ineffable qualities of knowing damn well that I'm a self. What does that mean? Oh, my goodness right.

Speaker 4

I know what do you say when you're well the, the, the. You know what he means. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

So when you're a self what does that mean?

Speaker 3

So let me put it this way. So here's science telling me that my experience of perception, my experience of consciousness, my experience of noticing anything, or awareness, or emotions, it is all just an emergent function of the right right, right, right, right, right the brain okay. Right, and I knew that wasn't true. Yeah.

Speaker 3

Despite also believing it to be true, right, so talk about parts work, I mean that was the sort of grand split that sets in, and so to some degree a through line for me, and, you know, one might sort of evoke the image of an ember has has has been that, knowing damn well on the ineffable level that that which cannot quite be articulated, or you know adequately, yeah, that. I am real and I am here and there is something to do with me.

Speaker 4

Science becomes science to scientism, as he said, when it makes. The science should tell you what you know. Yes, so I can talk about what you know. Yeah, but when it makes the leap and says well, you, you're, your selfhood doesn't exist, because we have no way to determine it. There's actually beyond science it is, there's not, and endlessly frustrating to me, having like studied, like you know, my background in neuroscience and philosophy.

Speaker 1

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 4

And I'm very grateful for Dr Dr Jeremy Tissere, being my advisor and his openness to, to selfhood and phenomenology and even mystical, yeah, experiences in general, but I just it's such a shame that we don't hold space for the mystery and beauty of selfhood that cannot be quantified.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you look out at the world right now and look at the folks who are teenagers right now, the folks who are young adults right now, just flailing around suffering nihilism. Yeah, needlessly. Needlessly Because I mean you can even get out at an agnostic level, right, I mean we just don't like. Why are we peddling this stuff? Even if you take the scientism worldview as it is, there is inherent meaning in engaging in compassionate acts.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah, right, and so why, you know it's. I almost get to the point where it's like, oh gosh, like me, thinks the lady does protest too much.

Speaker 4

But then it's like but why? You know yes, yeah. Cause you make people depressed. You sell more iPhones like come on.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Is it really that you know it can't be that easy. Right, right, right.

Speaker 4

Right, wow, and I was reading a book by Rolo May called the meaning of anxiety. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4

And he brings a quote from Sarenkirche Raward, where he says I'm paraphrasing, but it's something along the lines of like the scientific method gives us more facts and less certainty, mm-hmm. And that lack of certainty is what creates anxiety, and the anxiety could be like you know. In the face of that anxiety, do you accept it, which leads denialism, perhaps as a hopes to alleviate the anxiety yes, exactly. Or do you fight back against the anxiety and this may become? We can come a little full circle, a little perhaps.

Speaker 1

I don't know, guys we are, we are Bring it around, bring it around Ready. Let's see what you think of this one. Okay.

Speaker 4

You know, Tim, I see the brief, the brief glimpses of your life that you shared with us today, during the recording, is your inherent drive to order yourself.

Speaker 4

There was so much chaos, both internally and externally around you, and a constant attempt to order that by caring for yourself via caring for your mother, via caring for yourself via work, and caring for yourself via embracing the suffering of being in school or attending to complete your degree over 10 years and embracing, like there's a love of self in that, even though it's painful and in a lot of ways that's what education can be is. This is gonna be difficult hopefully not painful. This is gonna be difficult, but through embracing this difficulty we're going to grow the self Now, in continuing to do so, which you have not stopped yet it got you to right it got you to being an educator of children to an educator of yourself, an adult, via therapy to the point now where you've learned that you are a farmer.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's right, but not even just a farmer, but like he's teaching again, but like doing it in this-.

Speaker 4

That's a higher and higher level of alleviating the anxiety via embracing the ordering power of a certain type of love. Yes, and that's what I'm figuring out more and more over the last couple of months. That keeps hitting me in the face.

Speaker 1

The ordering. Can I just say that? Back to you the ordering power of love.

Speaker 4

Right, that love has the ability to create order in chaotic systems. Love, oh my God, guys, that's the name of the episode.

Speaker 1

Love has the ability. Oh my God, Ursula Love has the ability say it again.

Speaker 4

Love has the ability to create order in chaotic systems, and maybe I get the title or not, but I think that's just what I've seen.

Speaker 1

Like it's true, true again and again.

Speaker 4

And I'm just grateful that you were able to tap in in that internal love for yourself, even if you didn't know. That's what it was. We are going to find order that comes out of this type of love. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3

And what comes to mind is? I referred to complexity theory earlier, right. So, organization that is exactly what you're talking about the move to higher and higher orders of organization that work better and better. Yeah, and it's love it's love that does.

Speaker 1

What an interesting direction this whole conversation went in.

Speaker 3

I knew it would be something, but I could never predict it, I've been, so excited I've been so looking forward to this. It's been really good to be back here. It's been really nice to spend this time with the two of you. I mean just, I'm not practicing therapy right now, but I tell you what I mean to be amongst therapists is just such a joy, to be amongst people who are so thoughtful and like-minded and intuitive right and.

Speaker 3

I think it bears repeating, kim, that that is exactly what made me feel at the end of that initial phone conversation that you and I had, that I wanted to work with you. And then sitting here with you physically for that first time was what confirmed it for me. You know, I sort of knew, but it confirmed it for me and it was just, it was all about intuition. The times in my life I've refuted because it's supposedly not real right, but I've brought it along with me nevertheless out of faith, and I think that was correct to use that term faith when we were talking about that earlier. And thank goodness you know, because look at where I've been, look at where I've gotten to and you know, watch me go.

Speaker 3

As you say, Jacob, right, it's love it's love that does this. It's love that moves everything forward and continues to resolve things into the way that they will be, and we have immense power, and that, I think, is a takeaway. You know, I wanna sort of get on the top of the tallest building and just like yell it over and over and over again. When we're talking about nihilism, there is something to love. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3

And you and in everyone else. There is something there to love. There is an object that you can direct that love toward. We just have to keep refuting this insanity that we are not real. Yeah. Right, which is little meat robots. And you know we're very direct to love and when you say we, I just wanna when you say we, you mean the perceived conscious self.

Speaker 4

Yes, that's right that our consciousness is real. We have a mind, we have a soul. There is something there that is profoundly real, and that's what's to be treasured and loved. And loved.

Speaker 1

And loved you and in everyone else. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So, speaking of love, I love you very much for coming on here. It feels like a real gift. Feels like a real gift that I've met you and I just just like, I just have gratefulness losing from me All right.

Speaker 4

Thanks for thanks for Kim. Thanks for the love you have towards your clients to make a practice. So, that we could. We could meet here as well. Yeah, that's, that's coming from your life.

Speaker 3

Great for you. Thanks guys. Yeah, absolutely, it's true, okay.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like, subscribe, rate and review. You can also help us grow by following us on Instagram and Facebook at Intuitive Choices Podcast. Most importantly, make sure to share today's episode with friends and family.

Speaker 1

And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on Intuitive Choices, please email us at intuitivechoicespodcastgmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitive counseling of phillycom.