Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: In the morning when you get up, bow three times before your mirror and say, the world is a better place because I am here. And then live as though that were true. And that means you have to like yourself in order to do that. And that's a big switch because many of us were brought into this world that the self was not very likable. Never did understand how come I could like you if I didn't like myself.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to the Virginia Satir Podcast and our first episode of 2025. I'm your host, Michael Argomanese Harden, and today you're in for a real treat.
You'll get a rare glimpse into the ongoing conversation that started nearly two years ago. Joining me are esteemed colleagues Dr. John Banman, Dr. Jesse Carlock, and Dr. Richard Kennedy, each bringing a unique perspective to our discussion.
Jessie Carlock, a student, colleague and friend of Virginia Satir, is currently writing a book on parts work, building upon her extensive experience and previous publications on the topic. As she delves deeper into Satir's parts interventions, our group has come together to support and enrich her exploration. In today's episode, you'll be privy to one of our recent gatherings, witnessing firsthand the collaborative process that has been instrumental in Jesse's work. So sit back and enjoy the journey as we navigate the complexities and nuances of this fascinating subject.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: So how's the writing, Jesse? How can we help you?
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Well, working on two different chapters now, and I'm trying to get a handle on how to organize the chapter on working with parts.
And I, I just have a bunch of notes that I've written, but I haven't come up with any, any organizational scheme for that yet. So if you have any, any ideas about how to organize such a chapter, I'd appreciate them.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: What's the chapter title?
[00:02:22] Speaker C: It's on working with parts.
So it's working with the system and working with individual parts. Parts in conflict, problematic parts probably address building the resources to deal with problematic parts.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Have you got a way of surfacing the parts?
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Do you take one part at a time or do you work, work a larger perspective, or can we do both or either?
How do you. How. When do you have them? All the parts?
Yeah.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: Is that what you're talking about?
[00:03:26] Speaker A: I'm talking about when, when you start, you make contact with a client and you feel that you. There's a part missing, you take that one part and work with it. Or do you then take a look at. You have five parts, six parts they can look like. Schwartz always goes for the whole, whole picture. He doesn't work with, okay, I have a critical part, I'm going to work with it. He looks like, okay, I have a critical part and I have this part and I have that part. That's how I understand it. And I wonder if you can work out parts in a single way, just one at a time.
Am I making sense yet?
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: I mean, I would have the same question to Richard. You know, how does he.
How did he surface? What order?
How many much do you do before you work on it?
[00:04:34] Speaker D: Well, I usually go after the critical part first because it's the one that's probably going to be the most obvious to people, you know, and not that there other. Aren't other parts.
And then introducing the wounded child part in the. And the wisdom part and then going from there particularly I work with those because I want people to be able to use, understand that model of the three that are supposedly universal and then move into. If I was going to move into it, move into other parts, that would. That would come up.
But I would. My goal is for people to be able to.
Not that I don't work with them with the parts, but I'm trying to teach them to be aware of their own parts independently. You know, that they have names for them and have awareness of, you know, how they operate and that they can call them up, you know, that you can be aware of the critical part and call up the wisdom part and understand the dynamic of why the critical part comes up in my mind to protect the wounded child. So I start there as the format and then something, you know, and then other parts sometimes show themselves. And I've actually had a few clients start to name other. You come in and naming their other parts, you know, oh, you start.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: It seems like very good start. You start with critical. Go for the wounded as a beginning, beginning entry.
And then maybe new parts emerge and maybe not.
[00:06:22] Speaker D: Yeah, I do bring up the vision part because sometimes I'm.
When I'm with a client, I would might say, you know, they're talking. And I said, is that you talking or is that George? You know, I call mine George. Is that George talking? And. And then they get that I'm kind of in my mind activating the I am. Because then they step back and look at the dialogue, you know, look at what's they're hearing in their head. And then I can say to them, and what would the Dalai Lama part of you say? What would the wisdom part of you say?
And then. And then they're in this state with the I am where they can do the choosing because they've actually stepped back and we talked some about that the last time we met when we, when you weren't with us about that.
A sense of being able to consciousness, you know, where you can step back and view what's going on inside of you and from that place make choices.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Jesse, when you were talking, I guess the things that were popping into my head were for what purposes are you engaging the parts? For individual growth, for relational growth, for context. Like they're coming into the holidays and holidays are really difficult for them. So is it context specific? So you know, and again those highlight the three areas of congruence, self othering, context.
So in. So in. And then when I thought about that, I thought so is it to. Is the purpose to move towards congruence or is it for understanding? Like are you revealing the experiences.
[00:08:14] Speaker D: In.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: The ice, in their iceberg through the. So is there, I guess, purpose. What's the purpose behind engaging? Because how you would engage parts and what parts you might engage may. May be different depending on if you are going for an individual growth, relational growth or for a certain context.
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Mm.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Big question.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: For me. One of the things that depends on for me is how much time I think I have to work with the person would guide how I approach the use of parts.
So it might be from a problem they present and context. Yeah, if I am looking at it as a more longer term exploratory approach then I usually as we work, I. We work to identify the array of parts.
And then I tried to reinforce the resources that may come to bear and that can be used to create or to bring the person back to safety as you approach more traumatic parts or whatever that might be involved.
And the surfacing of the parts can come in the course of my observations of the person as well as their how they present and what they're presenting as parts of themselves. Some people say, you know, they, they don't really know about parts, but they might say one part of me wants to do this, another part of me wants to do that.
That would elicit parts.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: You know, this also makes me think about the, the five icebergs, you know, that like if, if they were in a place of suffering, we might use the, we might use the parts.
We might do work with parts to understand their suffering.
If they were in a surviving mode, we might use parts to help them identify resources and help them gain strength.
If they were in an in charge place and managing their life well, you Know, we might use parts, I mean, for all sorts of exploratory, but definitely in, in developing strengths and maybe even before being able to go forward, have to, to take care of old wounds. I, I, I can just imagine, depending on where they are.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Parts work looks a little bit different and for different purposes.
[00:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good.
[00:11:44] Speaker D: And I think I would add that I generally tend to do long term work with people, a lot of it because they come in with trauma and it takes a while to deal with that, even with emdr. And I'm introducing the parts model so I can do it over a longer period of time as opposed to Michael, when you give the demonstration at Global last time you were working pretty quickly with people because you only had that time.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: That's right, yeah.
[00:12:17] Speaker D: So I, that's the thing that I can do. And, and actually it works well for me to introduce the parts model along with emdr because they work really well together.
Yeah. Because I've just explained that a bit.
I've never seen a trauma victim, particularly sexual abuse victim, that didn't say I should have known better or I should have done something different. So they blame themselves on some level with that cognitive judgment. And then it helps to say that that's coming from the critical part and you know, and explore, but you know, help them to see that that critical part has been saying things like that all along the way in their life. And then when you get in emdr, there's a thing with somebody might get caught in a cognitive loop where they can't get out of thinking they're to blame or some negative thought. And then there was a way that we talk about engaging the left brain because the thought is the trauma memories on, embedded in the right brain. So you can kind of keep it out of the way most of the time.
But one way of going, getting to that left brain sometimes I might say if you, if, you know, if your daughter came to you and your daughter said you're, you know, she was to blame, what would you say to her? That's a way, well, the wisdom part works just as well. So in saying if that's your critical part saying you're, you know, you should have done something different, what is, what is your wisdom part say? And that works really well because it's the same process of engaging the left brain on, on a different level.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: So Jesse, we gave you a lot of information. If there's more specific questions to kind of shape the conversation, please ask us.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: I don't think now, I think you've given me some ideas about how I can begin to organize my thinking better.
And let me run with this and then I'll have more questions.
[00:14:19] Speaker D: I wanted to introduce something. John. John wasn't with us last time when the three of us met. And one of the things Jesse and I have been talking about it, the sense that the IM has a wisdom aspect to it and yet Virginia talks and I use a wisdom part.
And Jesse and I have been talking and we talked about that the I am has what we call what we named as sensual wisdom. And that the other part, the wiz. What I call the wisdom part is a developmental wisdom. It. You. You don't you. And because of our lack of capacity and experience, the. The developmental wisdom part has to sort of come of age.
And so in a sense there's the wisdom part and the essential wisdom that's embedded and part of the I am. So I just want to throw that in because we brought that up last time and that was kind of new.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Well, I. I certainly believe that the self, the I am has a wisdom of its own. And it could be more. Even more spiritual. It could be more universal. It could be a manifestation. The self could be a manifestation of. Of cosmic consciousness. If you look at cosmic consciousness manifesting itself in individual form, then that might. We might call that the wisdom manifesting itself through form, individual from a cosmic consciousness.
So we're all connected to that. We're all part of that.
Now if you want to make that apart, I mean, that is, you know, that's what up to you people. How you decide. Are you going to decide that that's a part or that is the self?
[00:16:27] Speaker D: Can it be both? Both. And you know, the Eastern.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:31] Speaker D: That the. The I am is there from the beginning and always has this essential wisdom. You know, you. The. The universal wisdom you were calling it. But there's another part of us just like the wounded child. You know, there's a development from the child to the wounded child to the other parts. There's this part of us that you. I think we called it last time also we called it developmental wisdom because we also called it experiential wisdom. In other words, you have to live and experience things to have developed that wisdom and you don't.
With the exception. I want to say that both Michael and Jesse pointed out that. That kids with terminal illness seem to be able to access the wisdom of the I am when many of us can't. There's something about that status.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought more about this too. And I think there's two things going on. There is a developmental wisdom in the material body. In form, there's a developmental wisdom. The I am, even before birth and after death, always has the wisdom connected to the universe or to the divine.
And so there's, there's developmental wisdom and conscious wisdom. I think what you see with dying children is they enter a level of consciousness that they tap into universal wisdom that they didn't have to develop into.
So it's a consciousness, It's a level of consciousness that they experience that is more aligned with the I am and universal wisdom, the divine, whatever you call that.
So, yeah, two different kind of wisdoms. The developmental physical body, physical form wisdom that we, that we practice in this world, and the, the conscious I am wisdom that's ever present.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: And you. That last part is not a part.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: It's not a part.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: No, no, it's okay.
[00:18:39] Speaker D: Just like John. Just like our brain develops while you go from a child to a wounded child because of your developing perceptions, you know, and, and so your body's developing, your brain's developing, so you, you, you experience different things, and that can add to your wisdom.
The wounded child doesn't seem to have much developmental wisdom at that point. It's. It's operating on what we've talked about before. Kind of like just, it's all about me status that are cognitive development. So all the good stuff's about me and all the bad stuff, but I don't get my needs met or I get neglected or something that. That's about me. And then I make up a story or a belief system around that.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Jesse, Jesse, do you want to comment on this, this wisdom part?
[00:19:36] Speaker C: No, this. What, what, what Richard is telling you is what we.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Is okay for you?
[00:19:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what we came to in our discussions.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: I've been looking at experience and saying that I'm not my experience.
I have experience.
And during, during a process, I can separate my experience from who I am and then work through my experience.
And I use the structure of the iceberg where I have my experience to change my experience.
So if I have experience anger, I will work and change my experience of anger or loneliness or shame. I change my experience so that my experience is more in tune with who I am.
And so that could be called a form of congruence. I'm. My experience is congruent with who I am. And the I am is the note. Like, that's the A note in a music, Richard. I am the A note. And now I try to get everybody in tune with The a note aspect of it. How does that fit in your parts conception? Does that. Is that different? Is that contradictory?
What do you think?
[00:21:13] Speaker D: I. I think of experiences being broken down into different.
I keep wanting to use the word parts. Different segments in a sense of. There's the cognitive judgment part part. You know, the part where you view your experience, for instance, before, when you're at the child state and then you begin to develop cogn enough and now you're making a judgment. You have an experience with your mother, say, and you then interpret that. You know, make some judgment about that experience.
And, and so you. When I think of experience, I think of how my body feels because your body remembers the experience, but also how you're thinking at the same time.
So I think of experiences having components that I work with.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: John, we were talking about this just today and we said the same thing, that the dimensions of experience are actually listed in the mandala and in every one of the.
The components that Richard just spoke about actually fit in the mandala.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Do I need to look at my experience in terms of parts or can I look at my experience outside of making them parts?
Or even a more difficult question, is it. What is the advantage of making my experience into parts? I have a critical. I have experienced myself critical.
What's the advantage of making the critical apart?
[00:23:00] Speaker D: Because then I can talk to somebody about it. The. The experiences.
Even when I'm. You asked a question, it's like an abstraction and I'm saying there are different segments to it. So if I make it apart, it also makes sense why the. That critical part developed. In a sense, you're getting back to the earliest memories that have been.
I mean, I. I hate to hesitate to use the word distorted, but in a sense that we. When we're at that stage of development, we're not really giving the best interpretation to an experience, you know, and so we have those sort of distorted experiences. Not only do we feel them and we remember them, but we have interpretations of them.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: We make stories. We make up stories about.
[00:23:54] Speaker D: Right. And. And we're making up stories about ourselves.
I know, John, don't. You don't like using the word stories, but. So you may end up the compilation of the experiences or stories make up a belief system about yourself and that carries forward. We've actually talked about. Is some of that critical part or other wounded child in the other parts in our lives as they develop.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I want to tell you what it looks like for me. It looks like you're doing a very clever job and you're tricking me. You're tricking me. So I want to tell you how you're tricking me. You are taking an experience and you are externalizing it and keeping it attached to me at the same time.
[00:24:44] Speaker D: Can I. It's. Isn't it. Isn't that a. Both and. Which is. It's in within me because my body remembers it and my memory remembers it.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah, but at the same time, I.
[00:24:54] Speaker D: Want to externalize it so you can make a choice.
Is that the way you.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Let me try it again. Now. You're taking an experience, obvious saying, being critical, and you externalize it. You. You say, this is a part of me. That's how it. I don't know if externalize is the right word yet, but you're putting it. You're putting it into a duality form.
You're looking at me in duality. I. And I have a part that is a duality. So you're taking my experience and putting it into duality. I'll use that instead of externalized. Okay, so now you're putting it into a duality, and then you're asking me to work with that duality.
And then somehow you bring that duality into harmony so that I can be congruent that what you're doing. Because that's a very clever way of. Of playing with my experience.
[00:26:03] Speaker D: I guess. I don't. I. I find that it's useful to use the, you know, to, to use the parts. I mean, I got into it doing. Because Virginia was doing it and I had parts parties. But it was also a way of working with someone. I didn't view it as tricking them, but to being able.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: That was sissy. That would just, Just don't take that as a ser. That was just big there.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: So. But.
[00:26:32] Speaker D: But it allowed me, you know, because I. I am thinking that I. When I asked them, is that, you know, is that that part of them?
Rather than say, is that. Is that your experience? Because if they hear a voice in their head, that is their experience, but it's not their only experience.
So.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Word, Richard. I use the word clever. You're clever. Because I think if I. If I help, if I'm a patient of yours, a client of yours, and you want me to look at myself. One way to look at myself is there's a part of me that is, you know, a problem, and I can look at it. It's much easier than I'm a problem, right?
[00:27:19] Speaker C: A problem.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: I have a critical part. You externalize or you duality.
So that I can work on it. I can understand it. You can have me understand that I can deal with parts of me or experience of me by externalizing it.
So another thing, I'll go back. One question is why do parts party? Why do it?
And it's a. It's a good form of giving you the power or the, the capacity to make a transformation.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Right.
So otherwise it's the global condemnation and you. It's hard to do anything with that. But when you can say separate it, you have more of a chance of shifting.
[00:28:26] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Particularly if you use the wisdom part because then go, oh, I can think both and they're both in me. As opposed to saying, I'm just. My experience of myself as being critical. I'm never good enough. And then I'm just stuck with that. It's kind of like struggling with, you know, and not able to.
As you say, John, it's a. It's a way of giving somebody the power and capacity because if they just think it's the only voice in their head, they don't know what to do with it. As opposed to. If you have many parts, then you can deal with them differently and you can make choices.
And I also think it can, at least in my experience, and I'm not doing parts parties, is that it activates the I am, which is an observer, has the capacity to be observer and has some wisdom and compassion for us to be able to make choices.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: So let. I like to speak into this also because I think we're. We interchange I am and self quite a bit. Would it be okay to distinguish the I am as the core self and the. When we're talk, when we're working with parts, we're not working with the I am. We're actually working with the ex. The experience does this.
[00:29:57] Speaker D: The.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Our experience of self. So the experience of self is what we're looking at the parts. Because the I am in its complete congruence with the universe has no wounded part, but we have a wounded experience and the experience. So the experience, the self experience is really what we're working with. We're not working with the core self. We're working with the experience self.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: So I, I think our use of self can be confusing because really what we're doing is working with our experience of self, not really working with self as far as core self.
[00:30:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: In writing. In writing, people very often use the small S and the largest to distinguish between those two parts. Yeah. Aren't you doing. Think I don't hear you taking enough Credit for the use of parts. And I'm trying to find out more. More purpose and more purpose. What I see it is, if I can understand what you're doing is by. By externalizing the experience in terms of form. That's form, right? Form, parts or form. And then bring about some transformation, then you have tremendous reason to do that.
And I thought that maybe. Maybe you already have that. But I was just thinking when I was looking at my. My concept of experience, I want to. I want to manage my experience.
And then you say, well, I can manage your experience through different parts.
Yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Something that I wrote at one point was parts give voice to the internal experience in absence of the five freedom.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:32:24] Speaker D: Say it again, Michael.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Parts give voice to internal experience in absence of the five freedoms.
It's like our parts are yelling for the freedom, fighting for the freedom, fighting for expression.
And we get to an understanding of the internal experience through parts.
[00:32:53] Speaker D: Well, and in sense that parts may be controlling us too. And. And therefore we're not in charge because our experience. Yeah, yeah. The.
The variety of parts can actually be in control. John, you use the term dominate.
What did you use?
Not dominating voice, but I'm forgetting now, but you had a term for the voice that may be in charge, maybe the loudest voice in your head.
And that part, even though you have other parts, may be more in control of what. How you're functioning. In other words, your experience is leading you into life or can be leading you into life.
And. And without the transformation, it can continue to do that.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: So the neurobiology of what you just said is in our first six years of life, we develop patterns of behavior and coping based on what we needed to do to survive after age 6. It seems like some people are just running on automatic and are functioning off of scripts rather than making conscious decisions in their behavior.
So if our parts function in a certain way to help us to survive, we could be in a place to where we're not in control. Our parts are in control.
Yeah. And research suggests that that oftentimes we're not responding to what. What's going on in a moment. We're responding to patterns that have been developed from moments in the past.
[00:34:41] Speaker D: That makes a lot of sense and sense of your.
I mean, particularly.
I remember Janet Christie Cey, before I got deeper into the spark stuff of my own, she asked me, she knew I had.
Had become aware of my critical part and actually had named it. And she said, how old do you think it is? And I went, geez. And I came up above 5 or 6. It's like I don't remember it before then, but about five or six. I remember this part. And of course then she asked me one other time when I was working with her. She said and who came before that? I went what I had. I hadn't thought that far yet.
And of course that's the wounded child.
But yeah, that, that fits that you, you have this lack of capacity to do this interpretation that we're all.
Once we get. Once we grow old enough to be able to do it. We all need to give meaning to things.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:50] Speaker D: And. But we're making. Doing it with a limited cognitive capacity so it ends up being negative. And then. Then we develop another pattern to survive which is the critical part. Who's trying to save us.
And we may be driven. That's what I see sometimes when. Why I end up working. What I've. Why I ended up working with people is the, the critical part seemed to be they come in, they're 45 or 50 and they're.
That's what I'm hearing. Is the critical part still there?
You know, I know I'm a good person, but the butt's all the critical part.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: So what if you get criticized for advocating multiple personality?
What. What's your defense for that?
[00:36:45] Speaker C: Multiple. In a multiple personality the parts are disconnected and not often known awareness. They operate.
[00:37:04] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean are you, are you using the term like a diagnostic term, John? Is that.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Medical.
[00:37:10] Speaker D: I actually explain that to people because you know when I. And I say you're not schizophrenic because sometimes people think that's dual personalities.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:20] Speaker D: Lay thought of it the definition of it. And some people know enough to know there's multiple personalities or did. And I have to explain that's different. You know, that's. I. I guess I say that's more hardened in a sense.
I may be aware of my critical part but the people I've worked with and I've worked with four or five multiples, there are parts of their life that they don't remember at all because they weren't sort of. It wasn't co consciousness aware of the part. The critical part. It was. That part had taken over.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: Yeah. There's amnesia.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:00] Speaker D: So I just explained to it that that's. That's different.
You know and that was defined well before, you know, I started using parts that was there from beginning of my training.
So I don't, I don't have to. I don't feel the need to Defend it. I just give that a different explanation. We're talking about this level. You know, you, you can just be an anxious person or have some depression or have something that's not as difficult and problematic as, you know, multiple personality disorder.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Yeah, but what you're saying to me is that there's definitely a difference between you're doing and what, what the psychiatrists are talking about.
[00:38:45] Speaker D: Right?
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:47] Speaker D: Hey, I have a question for you, Michael. Last time we talked about, we were talking about the, the essential and developmental wisdom, but you also brought up non dual consciousness. And it was on your, your thing, and I hope you'll send that to us because there was a new way of doing it that was great.
What do you mean when you say non dual? When I went back to my notes, I wasn't quite sure.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah, so let me bring that back up.
We talked about, you said, you know, I believe, I believe that know as we talk about first, second, third, fourth birth, we are functioning on a level of congruence. Congruence is always present. It's always present is.
And we either move away from it or towards congruence. You know, if we think about congruence being how closely we are aligned and in harmony with the universe or with the divine or with the universal life force, that's congruence.
So we can move away from the universal life force or move towards it.
At the first birth, when the sperm connects with the egg, we are naturally incongruence. If we're not, the birth never becomes viable. The, the baby never becomes viable, and, and it goes away.
So we remain congruent and, and then we enter into the second birth.
Now, second birth is when we are expelled from our mother's womb. And of course, everything's happened very naturally, aligned with the congruence of the universal life force.
But now that we're in the physical.
[00:40:31] Speaker D: World.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: After the second birth, we are controlled. We are influenced by the primary trio in our environment.
So now we have the possibility and oftentimes become less congruent. We move away from congruence with the universal life force. This is us in the material world. We are in a physical form, and our parents have taught us what they think is right.
And sometimes that aligns really well with the universal life force. But for many of us, it pulls us so far away from knowing who we are at core. It's who they are trying to shape us to be.
And at some point we go into therapy or we start wanting help because we want to be our, become choice makers in our life we don't want to be controlled by others. We want to say, I want to take control and become more congruent.
And that's all a conscious experience.
And this is a duality, the universal life force and me. I am me. The universal life force is the universal life force. And I'm trying to align with it and become in harmony with it. That's a duality.
But as Virginia Satir was talking about the fourth birth, that is a time in which we come into a level of consciousness that's spiritual, that is beyond the material, and it is a non duality in which you are one with the universe and you're one with all things in the universe and.
And you function at that spiritual energy. That's non dual. There's not. There's not the universe in us. It's. We are one and we realize the oneness we are with all.
[00:42:24] Speaker D: So you can move. We had talked about this before, moving in and out of stages. So you could be in the fourth birth and in a non duality state, and then you might move back to the real world.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: I especially think that about third birth and fourth birth.
I have a belief that we have taste in moments, we have taste of fourth birth experiences. There's opportunities where we have those mountaintop experiences where we see things differently, and then we lose it. It's like water. We're trying to hold on to it and it slips through our hands. But I do believe there are a very unique few who've been able to maintain it. And I'm not there. And I don't know what that experience might look like, but I do know I've had fourth birthday experiences.
[00:43:12] Speaker D: Mm.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: John, this is something you've thought deeply on. What would you add to this or actually challenge in what I just said?
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I really like it. But the point is that I think that, that you experience that oneness and you can move in and out of it, meaning you are still in the physical form while you're experiencing it. You don't feel that you're in physical form at that moment. That physical form dissipates. It disappears. There is just one. There is just a beautiful kind of oneness. And then. But what Richard is saying is you move back and forth. Like some people are in that state for a matter of seconds, some of them for minutes, some for maybe for days. They're in that state of bliss, we might call it, that oneness aspect of it.
And what I think the big challenge that you didn't throw out yet, Richard Michael, is this part of the Satira model. And according to her records, the answer is a definite yes. This is part of our system.
So when we include what is the satirical model, it includes a fourth birth concept. Not necessarily a technique how to get there, but a concept that it exists.
And that's exciting to me. That's very exciting. We don't have to go out into a religion or some other form in order to have that as part of our. Our reality.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: As a matter of fact, I do think that what people are experiencing with psychedelics is a. A fourth birth experience.
It may not be with the divine, as religious people might think, but it is a. It's a spiritual experience that people are having. That's a non. Dual experience.
[00:45:27] Speaker D: It at. Some people describe it as if it avail is removed and there's a oneness with what's around you and. But also the larger universe.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:45:42] Speaker D: But I really like, Michael, the idea that you may experience for minutes and. Or John said you might have days of it, but you don't really stay in it. So it's something we can achieve. And I, And I think the sense that I have of it, because I've had brief minutes of it myself, is that it makes you aware that there is something else. There is that connection.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:46:08] Speaker D: I may not experience because I'm in my physical form and have to deal with traffic or, you know, getting something to drink or something like that, but I have an awareness that there's this connection. I may not have the full awareness, but the taste is still left in my mouth.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
And from my Christian experience, the language I would add to that is because of the concept that all of us are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. We actually have the spirit of the divine in us, so we can actually feel aligned and in a very personal way because. Because of.
There's an experience of congruence with the Holy Spirit.
That, that is. It is not just a cosmic. I want to experience the universe, but there is a very personal.
[00:47:07] Speaker D: The.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: The universe actually enters me. I. I can become one because it. It has made itself available in me.
So it's a very personal oneness that can be experienced.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: Well, I like my quote. Can I use my quote, Michael?
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Yes, please.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: My quote is, I'm not the. A drop in the ocean. I'm the ocean in a draw in the form of a drop.
I am the ocean in form of a drop.
I'm not at a top in the ocean.
And I think that to me gives me the picture that you're talking about the oneness of all.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: That's right.
And for that reason, for that reason that John, you know, John's quote, I have actually made the iceberg with a I am looking like a drop.
So that I am always reminded that I am a drop. I'm not a drop in the ocean. I'm an ocean in a drop.
As we conclude this episode of the Virginia Satir Podcast, I want to leave you with a reminder that the journey of self discovery and transformation is ongoing.
Virginia Satir's wisdom continues to inspire us to nurture healthier relationships, foster open communication and embrace, embrace personal growth. Remember, you hold the power to create positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. That's it for today's episode. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Virginia Satir Podcast. Be sure to, like, subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend. Also, for more information on Virginia Satir, you can go to satirglobal.com or liveconnectedtherapy.com until next time, be kind to yourself and to others. You are a miracle.
