This week we talk about fertilizing the seed, being captured by fear, how manifestation has a good companion in generosity, and how daily practices can nurture the “be the seed” stage.

We also touch on slow growth vs. fast growth and where AI fits into the future we want to seed. If you want to gain more knowledge on Open AI, check out the two-part episode of the podcast Corporate Gossip, “OpenAI & Sam Altman’s Sad Sack Band of Goons” and “Sam Altman & Open AI Part 2: King D*ck of Liar Mountain”

If you want to start practicing taking back your attention from the forces of AI, whenever you do an internet search, include “-ai” at the end!

As always, if you want to learn more about Christina’s and Becky’s work outside of this podcast, check out our websites:

christinawatka.com

beckydecicco.com

Episode Transcript

Christina: I am on my way to therapy right now, and I, uh, I am, gosh, this is such a funny time. This is such a funny time. Fertile, dark soil. Like I just picked up. I just went to my little local bookstore and they, I had them order me some books that I’ve been looking for that they didn’t have. So that’s like one of the ways that I choose to support community is like waiting a week or two until the books come in and then I buy them from the store.

One is this writer who’s talking about how her garden invited her into slow time. The other one is “ Lifeform” by Jenny Slate. And Jenny Slate is just funny. And it’s just essays. It’s just essays about her life. Becoming a mother, finding herself. Like, what the fuck? Why don’t I just do this? What am I doing? I wanna do this. I’m at the point right now where like I’m living a dream and I’m also seeing these other people who are doing things in the world creatively, and I’m like, Ooh. You know how I heard this one phrase once about how envy is a

is a really beautiful way to discover what we want. And like, I don’t necessarily even feel envious, envious of these people. I just feel curious like what would it be like to do that? To like release a book? To publish a book? And I think I wanna do it. I, you know what? I don’t think I want to do it. I want to focus more time writing.

Wow. I don’t know. Oh my gosh.

Becky: Welcome to Noticing: A Podcast About Nothing And Everything At The Same Time. In this episode, we talk about fertilizing the seed. Being captured by fear. How manifestation has a really good companion in generosity. The value of practicing the art of the pause in order to make conscious choice. And the dazzle of Chat GPT, and why I ended my relationship with it.

I hope you enjoy.

Christina: I have arrived.

You have arrived.

I know. Yeah. How are you arriving?

Becky: I’m arriving. Um, wonderful. I just meditated right before. Which is lovely with Jasper in his little nest. Of course.

Christina: Love it.

Becky: Yeah. And I’m arriving today with a lot of gratitude. Um, it was really hitting me last night, especially. It’s hitting me how grateful I am for this podcast, for our friendship.

It’s just been just such a beautiful practice of reflection going back and, um, when I edit the podcast, when I re-listened to it after it’s out in the world. Um, and that stemmed from just my perfectionism of like wanting to listen over and over again ‘cause I care about the quality and wanting to look for errors and things like that.

And now it’s morphed into this really powerful practice of reflection. Because I’ve always been a journaler. That’s been my primary mode of reflection in the past, but I don’t go back and reread my journals, you know? Mm-hmm. Or like, even in therapy, like, it’s so powerful. But I don’t go back necessarily and revisit, and this probably is something that I’ve learned from you because I have witnessed you doing a lot of reflection and like going back to things you’ve written and going back to, you know, your own voice memos.

And, I’m now settling into the wisdom of this is so powerful and I can watch myself go through this practice and it is a practice because at first, you know, I’m confronted with all these critical voices. Hmm. And so I have to go through the practice of sitting with those and being really present and finding safety, and then letting those critical voices go away instead of it getting in the way of something like, I can see if these critical voices get in the way I’m not going to show up for you and for whoever’s listening in the most authentic way. And so I, I have this motivation to do that work and sit with those critical voices and let them flow through so that I can come back to, just to emptiness.

It really does feel like this process of emptiness every time I re-listen and I’m hearing new things with fresh ears , and then I’m actually practicing the things that, that I say. So deepening my own knowledge and practicing the things that you say, like, I found myself last night in this vivid, visceral experience of being the seed.

Whoa. Yeah. What was that? It was, so it started in my mind as most things do with me, right? As like thinking about, I was thinking about resources , because so often I, I can go to scarcity if I’m worried about having the resources I need for my life to sustain my life. Right? Which I think in the, I think a lot of people can struggle with that because we, me too.

Yeah. Everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just noticing how quickly that takes me to the future, right. This worry of the future. Because right now all of my needs are met, you know? So it is this practice of, okay, coming back to the seed of what if I had all my resources met? The business was humming.

You know, I had all the resources. I didn’t have this worry. So that’s like the tree that will grow out of the seed.

Christina: Hmm.

Becky: So it started in a, in a thought experiment of what would my thoughts, beliefs, and actions, how would they be different if the seed had already grown, right?

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: So it started as this thought experiment and then I just shifted into like this real visceral experience in my body of, it’s hard to describe ‘cause it really is just like this feeling and knowing, but it’s like I could feel in my body what it would feel like once I have all my resources met and I don’t have to have that worry. And what would that look like? Well, I would go slower. I think so often I don’t allow myself that slowness because I’m captured by our culture of hustle and our culture of fast. You know? But if I had all my resources met, I wouldn’t care about the culture.

Christina: Right? This is so, this is why I love you so much, because you’re explaining something that like I have always done in my life, not consciously. So it’s actually, this is why I love this podcast too, and for nothing more than just deepening these conversations and all of the ripples and layers that come from them.

I remember having a conversation with my parents recently. ‘cause this, in this whole awakening time, I’ve called them a lot and been like, did you know this? What did you, what’s your what? What? And, and you know, I don’t think that they are thinking too much about, like, I don’t think they’re analyzing a lot of things, so they actually have to kind of reach in and think, which I love.

But they, um, I remember when I was talking with them about just sort of like the track of the way that my life has gone and where I’ve ended up. And I’m meaning where I’ve ended up has been in the dream that I’ve held so dear to me. And I’m, I’m very, very aware that I’m living it every day now and. And I remember my dad stopping the conversation ‘cause they were both on speakerphone together in the car.

And he was like, yeah, but Chris, how did you know? Like how did you know to follow, like how did you know how to follow your gut or whatever? Um, and it’s an important question for me to think about as I move forward and, and deepen this practice. But I think the way that you’re explaining that is helping me understand that I have always, it’s always been an obvious choice for me to be in the seed stage to like put myself in the perspective of the seed and consciously or unconsciously cultivate the soil around me.

Mm-hmm. Meaning the biggest example that I can use right now is the building I’m sitting in, like when the studio is being built, I would go into that future scary place and start to spin out. Like every human being does. Yeah. And some of us get more captivated by that spinning than others. And I would recognize it and say, oh, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Go to the fertile place. Go to the place that makes you feel the most alive in this dream and spend frequent time there. So for me, that looked like disregarding the budget, which is a real life issue that I had to face. But before I would face it, I would always go to the place where I felt the most inspired and excited for the idea, which meant standing literally in the pile of sticks and dirt that was going to be this building, this dream, and visualize it and get excited about it.

And picture myself standing in it. Sitting in it, and looking from the inside out. And I think that’s, I think that’s what it looks like looked like in that situation, to be the seed. To like be in the seeds place. And I think if we start to go into the future too much, then it’s almost as if we are giving, I don’t know if it’s almost as if I think it is, we are giving our energy towards what we fear and not towards what we want.

And so when we do that, then the fear becomes real. Right? Yeah. Like you pave the, you pave the road for that.

Becky: Absolutely. Mm. And this is such in line with everything I’ve ever known, not ever known, but since I’ve been on this path of, um, spirituality, consciousness. It’s how I understand, for lack of a better word, I know the word manifestation has some baggage, but you know, in the core sense of how do we create things in our life.

Visualizing is part of it, but it’s from living in that frequency. It’s from, it’s from resonating, like things appear in your life when you are vibrating at a frequency that matches that thing, well, that’s what you’re doing by being in that place and being the seed in what I felt in my body last night and I have felt in my body before, but this is such a conscious, um, attuning to it.

You are matching that vibration of the studio’s already there and you have all the resources you need for the studio. So that’s what kind of resonates back. And yes, when you’re going to the future, you’re offering your attention often to the worst case scenario. Right? A lot of, yeah. We’re not like going to the future when we’re captured.

We’re not going to the future and imagining how great it could be, you could, like, you could say you’re going to the future when you’re standing in that space, but you are envisioning the best case, like what you want. So you’re offering your attention and you’re vibration, your feeling in your body to what you actually consciously want and not like the fears aren’t conscious.

Those are all, that’s like your subconscious programming. Um. So, yeah, it would make so much sense that now you would be sitting in this place that you created ‘cause you did it so intentionally.

Christina: Right? I did, I did. Sometimes I, you know, if I am, if I see people talking, you’re right that the word manifestation has a lot of baggage because sometimes I’ll see people being like, manifest your dream, like bajillion dollars or your dream blah, blah blahs.

And it feels very pitchy. Yeah. And I don’t, I don’t like that. So, um, and at the same time, I know what it feels like to be very afraid of the thing that feels true in you and to bravely go after that thing by putting yourself in the place of, of like living in the dream and visualizing the dream of it.

Mm-hmm. Um, but I guess they’re kind of the same thing they’re just spoken about in different ways, maybe.

Becky: Yeah. And what I’ve observed from kind of being heavily, I started in that world. In that world meaning like the world of The Secret, the world of manifestation, and, and then pulling way back out of that world and was totally disillusioned by it.

And now coming back to it from a much more grounded place. It’s like, it’s like in a lot of things where there’s a kernel of really tr of truth. There’s a kernel of truth there. It’s, for some reason cults are coming to mind, right? Like, yeah, yeah. Most cults start with like this beautiful core, but then the ego Yeah.

Of usually the founder and the unexamined subconscious of the followers taints it completely. Mm-hmm. So. I’m coming to it now from this place of this is true, there is truth here, and it’s only half of the puzzle. So it’s mm-hmm. It’s, it’s, you know, the yin and the yang. It’s the lightness and the dark.

It’s the energetic world and the material world. It’s not one or the other. It’s, you know, what you can do with your mind and your consciousness and what your body has experienced, what your ancestors have experienced, what the other bodies in this world that we are interconnected with what they’re experiencing.

So I just think a lot of that world has so much baggage because it’s so tied to, um, I mean, it’s steeped in capitalism and mm-hmm. White supremacy and, and it’s just missing. It’s missing, it’s missing the, uh, I think a lot of times the sh the shadow or the, the physical realm. Mm.

Christina: Yeah. And, and sometimes it can feel a little performative to me like, like ma you know, get your Pinterest dream kitchen manifest, your perfect sculpted husband, man partner.

Mm-hmm. You know? And, um, I had to get over that. I had to get over that to do this. And it was, I don’t know if I’ve said this on here or not, but it was actually my grandmother. Who hilariously calls herself a cow, which stands for cranky old woman, which she’s not. I don’t find her to be cranky.

I just find her to be blunt and real, which I admire. And I remember talking to her about it and saying how frightening it was. ‘cause it was so expensive. And, um,

Becky: The studio was so expensive.

Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was like, that’s crazy. This is just a tool for you. It’s just a tool for you to use to make a bigger difference in your world, Christina.

And that was like, but she basically just wrote me a permission slip for doing it. And that along with like, I had this sort of download when I was driving that. I, it just clicked and it was like a switch flipped. All of a sudden it was like, oh, I don’t remember if grandma had talked to me yet or not, but it was sort of the same message of like, this is actually not for you. This is for you to share and the community, and it’s already happening. Like it already happens in here I hosted community Reiki in here yesterday. So it’s not just for me, I believe fully that this is a space that’s meant to be shared. Um, and once I realized that, it was like, oh, okay. I would gladly give all that money away, so I’m totally gonna do this so that I can give it away.

Becky: Yeah.

Christina: And so it aligned, it aligned with me and what I feel like my role is in my lifetime now, for me to actually be in here and make beautiful art and write or whatever it is that I do in here, sing and dance and all that stuff. And also I love generosity is a core. Uh, value for me. Mm-hmm. So being able to share it worked as well.

Um, yeah. Yeah.

Becky: I, I share that sentiment of, um, you know, I don’t want to have a big thriving business because I, I want to have a big spotlight on me.

Mm-hmm. That has zero interest. I mean, you, I was just re-listening to the podcast where I was talking about this image of me being forced onto the stage, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, but, you know, I need resources to live my life and so I can live outside of scarcity. Mm-hmm. ‘cause the more I can live outside of scarcity, the more I can be present and be the seed and, and not be captured by those thoughts. Um, and yeah, I would give every, like I, I, I want all the resources so I can give away more and more for free. I would give everything away for free. That would be a dream. Um, so yeah, that’s the dream. Hold it. Oh, I hold it. I, I definitely hold it. But it, then it has to turn into a practice. And because of my ADHD brain, I have to have a system to trigger me to do the practice. So I put it in my system that every morning before I even get out of bed, I close my eyes and I remind myself that I already have all the resources I need, how will this affect how I move through this day? And then to really anchor myself in that. And I’m on day one of it. Right. But that’s why, that’s why I have the systems though, because it’s so easy to forget.

So I literally, I have an app that I use that literally triggers me throughout my day, which I’m gonna be giving out the system for free soon, which makes me really excited because, um, so yeah, that made me lose my train of thought, but I did, something did come up when you were talking about like, um, how you kind of auto, without really consciously thinking about this, how did you live as the seed?

And what came up is, um. Your process as an artist and the type of artist, I guess it’s all artists, but like I was specifically thinking about your murmuration, and that’s kind of not where you started, but that was like your, your first big, um, focus of your career. And I remember you talking about how it moves through your hands five times.

Christina: Yeah.

Becky: And like I just had this image of, um, or this knowing of like, you have to know what it’s gonna be like. You literally are being the seed in this very visceral physical process of moving the clay through your hands five times, always holding what it’s gonna be. Mm-hmm. I don’t know if that resonates at all, but that’s what came up for me is like, you have been practicing this, whether consciously or not, but you’ve been practicing this for so long.

Christina: Yeah. Okay. So, yes. Thank you for that. This is a series that’s sort of on its way out. It’s in like it’s winter season of me. I think it’s gonna be gone soon. So it’s really cool to think about the beginnings. Mm-hmm. Um, I think I used to, because I’m very Type A, not very ADHD, but I’m very Type A and I, um, can check off to-do list to a fault and I used to blow through them and miss the moments of seediness.

Mm. I used to think about the goal more and life has rocked that outta me in a really beautiful way, in like a really like hard-ass sculpture teacher in college, in twins, in a pandemic. Like, there are many things that I can point to that rocked me out of my habitual. Like I must know how to get to the end.

Mm-hmm. Um. And, and cross off these, these things on my list. But the, the Murmuration series is a series of these small, for people who don’t know, it’s, I’m, I’m a site specific installation artist mostly. So it’s making lots and lots of small things in a process based nature in my studio that then go and become something much larger in the space that they’re meant to be.

So these are, you know, like quarter sized individual imprints of my thumbs in porcelain. And I began them as a seed, as a moment of a seed. I had been outside, I was looking at barnacle as I was looking at all these little, um, things in nature and patterns in nature, and I was just making these individual imprints and the process itself.

Otherwise called being the seed in the moment, in my little table at my apartment, pressing my thumbs over and over again was this meditative motion that felt really wonderful. And then I just went and put them up on this wall in a shop in, um, south Boston. And then they sort of took off from there. And the first time that I had the opportunity to do them in a permanent fixture, uh, they weren’t even called a Murmuration yet.

It, I had done my process and taped them all out and put them on the wall. And then we took the tape off, which is always the most beautiful reveal. And the interior designer was the one standing next to me and he said, ah, this kind of looks like a murmuration. Oh, wow. And I was like, whoa. And since then I’ve been much more conscious about the process of it and knowing that this these pieces do go through my hands five times between glazing and loading them in the kiln and putting them up finally. And it’s such a, it’s such a, um, attentive process and it’s so they’re each so cared for. And I like to think about it as this energy transfer of like, putting them in their final place, but it, they feel like they could take flight at any moment.

Um, it’s really cool to think about that right now because I’m at a point right now where I have to, um, this is why it’s helpful for me to go back and listen to my own voice memos or my own journal entries or my own conversations with you because I’m so present in these conversations that I might forget what I said.

Becky: Yeah.

Christina: And so then to go back and re-listen, I am able to teach myself things I need to remember.

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Christina: And. You always teach me, but it’s really fascinating to go back and, and hear the thing I need to hear, but I’m the one who said it because I know it, it’s in me somewhere. Mm-hmm. So I’m at this point now where I am very, very much in the place of the seed and I’ve built this dream that I’m sitting in and I think there’s like a really big pivot that’s coming, which is, um, if I were very self-critical, I could think what a waste, what a waste of time and money to spend on something like this where what, you’re here now and you wanna do something else.

Great. Good job. And I could be really critical. I live in that head space for about five seconds, maybe one not long.

Becky: I was gonna say, it did not feel like even when you said it, it didn’t feel like you at all. It’s not, no,

Christina: I know. You have to like shake it off. You just shook it off. I did. It’s not me. That’s not me.

What I, I needed to make this container to realize that I am allowed to pivot inside of it if I need to. You know, and to realize and who knows? I’m, I’m, I don’t know what it’s gonna be. I think it ha I think it has to do with writing and this maybe is part of what it has to do with these conversations, but there are so many seeds I’m planting consciously right now and just, you know, making like a delicate little hole, popping them in there and then nuzzling down and trying not to worry about money.

‘cause it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the money part because I have to make it. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s a really. It’s an equally fertile and daunting place to be in the dark. Right.

Becky: Aren’t all fertile places in the dark, though? I’m thinking of a womb. Yes. I’m thinking of the earth where the seed is nestled, like

Christina: Yes, exactly.

Exactly. All of this, this, the, what we talked about last time with, you know, good, bad, all these dichotomies, dark light. It does feel like universally we’re kind of all here, certainly in our country we’re here. I’m here. You are here. So many people that I’m talking to right now are in this place of having to be comfortable in this darkness.

Yeah. But really like that’s where the roots grow. You just have to water it and not see it and know that the seed is probably growing and some seeds take longer to actually grow bear fruit or grow flowers than others. So that’s a nice reorientation kind of mantra of like, okay, I don’t know if I have roots yet.

It’s okay if I don’t. Maybe I’m one of those seeds right now that actually takes a little while. I don’t know. Mm.

Becky: I almost got a little lightheaded right there. Like, I don’t know that something came up for me in that it felt, I felt connected to like our individual seeds and then this collective seed and like something about that different pace of all different seeds because, you know, I orient towards, um, our interconnectedness or as Thich Nhat Hahn would say, our inter being.

Christina: Mm.

Becky: And so when you said that like different pace, I just had this like visceral feeling in my. It is, I, it is like a feeling in my body and a knowing of like, what seeds am I planting and what seeds am I planting in the collective that I will probably never see grow? You know, and they’re all at these different paces.

And, um, yeah, I don’t know. It kind of made me a little, little lightheaded in a good way.

Christina: Yeah. I mean, yeah. That’s like what the, that’s what gardening is teaching me. Cultivating the land around this house is teaching me that some things grow slower.

And even some things, um, you know, like a perennial might come out very small the first year and then it needs to go dormant again.

Mm-hmm. And grow back stronger the following year. It’s, it’s just such a beautiful teacher. And just being the person who walks around and just watches it and tries not to like futs with it too much, but just witnesses these, these plants becoming what they’re supposed to become on their own time. Yeah.

And sometimes also like life wrecks them like a, a dog Mr. Can go and goop them up because he’s just being himself Yeah. Dogging around, you know? Yeah. Then they don’t get a chance to grow. It’s all, it’s all a very, very rich metaphor.

Becky: It really is. It’s, it’s really, um, it feels like such a counterbalance to this other thing that’s kind of been rattling around in my brain around, um, AI and technology and kind of, it feels like there’s these two realities that are, are trying to emerge right now and are not trying to emerge. There’s an, the reality that we’re talking about, you know, this tending, this, this like receptivity, this allowing into this darkness, these conversations we are having, which has a very different pace and vibration.

It’s patient, it’s slower, it’s in darkness. And then when I reflect on this world of like AI and, and how, like these techno oligarchs, when I start to offer too much of my attention to that world, I feel frenetic and fast. And, and it, it just feels so fast. Like they’re, there’s an urgency. Like they’re trying to race us towards something.

I mean, they’re building up these data centers like it’s so urgent because China might build theirs faster, and it’s like they’re trying to suck us in to living in this reality that we all know in our being is unsustainable and is destroying our planet and is destroying the fabric of society. We know that you don’t have to dig too far to get that knowledge right?

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: But it’s so prevalent everywhere that it’s, it’s so easy to get sucked into offering our attention to this thing that I think internally we all know is not the future we want to seed. Like those aren’t where our seeds are.

Christina: No,

Becky: That’s, those are the crops that, you know, need to be composted. Those are the crops that have had their time and need to be composted, but because it’s everywhere, like you can’t do an internet search these days without being force fed AI. Although I did learn a trick, you at the end of your search, you do “minus ai” and then you won’t get the ai. So, ooh, everyone. It’s, but it, that’s an extra effort.

Right? You have to gain that knowledge, and then you have to practice doing that every time you do a search, which is a new habit. But to me, that’s one tiny practice or one tiny effort that I am taking away my attention and placing it on the seeds that I wanna build in this world. Mm-hmm. Because I don’t want, mm-hmm.

To seed or tend to a world where there’s data centers everywhere and no one has clean water, you know? Of course. But that takes, that takes effort. Yeah. And, um, it takes friction. I’m realizing like this world that we’ve kind of been fed through all these technologies is to reduce friction everywhere. So like, imagine when you’re buying something, and this is the language that the tech companies use, right?

Like order your groceries with no friction. You don’t have to go there and order your car, your Uber with no friction. You know, get served up AI in your internet search with no friction. And it’s like, I heard someone say recently that the friction is where our humanity is.

Christina: Yes. Yes. That’s literally what I was just all, when you’re saying all of this, it’s taking, it’s taking our human connection away.

Yeah. It’s taking our human connection away. So this is reminding me, um, Paulo is eating everyone’s shoes right now, and last night he ate one of Jack’s, um, shoe laces, and he has one of those, I don’t know if you know this, parents might know this, but it’s a BOA system actually, I think they’re on like hiking boots and stuff too.

But it is like aircraft cable in this little tightener. And he chewed this freaking BOA system aircraft cable. It’s not like a replaceable shoelace. Oh. Um, so, so I went online to try to figure out if we can fix it. This relates, I promise, and

Becky: I always trust you.

Christina: Um, so we went online to see if we could fix it, and it turns out that BOA, um, has a website and you, I could have like chatted with some bot probably and, and figured out how to get a replacement.

So a replacement, here’s the silver lining. We can get it replaced. Great. And, but I, I’m going to after we record this podcast, I’m going to call the mom and shop shoe store that we always buy our shoes at, and I’m gonna talk to the man who’s, who’s been working with the BOA system for literally 75 years.

I know this ‘cause I went and bought a pair of shoes from him in person and I like have a relationship with him in the community now and I get to call him and talk to him about it and like get his, get his feedback and his wisdom and show him that he is a human being who has an opinion that I value and I just, I don’t want to have no human beings at grocery stores and things.

I want to be able to talk to people. Even my, my father-in-law was here recently and he told us a story. He went to the grocery store and the kid, probably high schooler or something who was checking out and bagging the groceries. My father-in-law was like, “Hey man, how’s it going?” Like you would do to anyone.

Yeah. “How was your day?” And sometimes you get the transactional fine. Good. How’s yours? Good. Okay. Bye. Have your, have a good day. But this kid like literally burst into tears and said, “not going well.” Oh, what? Like you have a reaction to that? I had a reaction to that in 30 years are people not going to know how to react to that?

Becky: Yeah. Yeah.

Christina: That’s where I, that’s a little, that’s pretty wild to me. I hope not.

Becky: Yeah. So this came up for me yesterday. I kind of had the, of course I had the opposite experience of you did with the uh, shoelaces. ‘cause I was looking for, I had to get kind of a random assortment of things ‘cause I’m like setting up my plants for auto watering and so I was trying to figure out what’s the best solution. Um, and so I was out in the world and I went to my grocery store, like the local grocery store ‘cause they have a bunch of different things. So didn’t quite find what I wanted and I was like, I, I found myself struck by my lack of resourcefulness.

Christina: Hmm.

Becky: Because I was like, well, shit, the only other place I can think of is Target. And I am like actively trying to boycott Target. Mm-hmm. I don’t normally go to Target this is the first time in like a. Probably a year and a half or two years. And no judgment for people who go to Target. This is, yeah.

You know, this is all a practice and a process, but it really struck me, my lack of resourcefulness Mm. In that moment. Um, and yeah, it really just struck me how we’re losing the resourcefulness and we’re actually losing the people with the wisdom, um, and with, with the knowledge. So that’s what really struck me.

I’m like, I don’t wanna lose these skills. I don’t wanna lose the skills of resourcefulness and I don’t wanna lose the skills of how to talk to people. And there is friction among people, but how, what? Like, like that’s friction in that interaction. It’s so much quicker to just get your groceries, not say a thing and move on, but to actually engage it slows it down, creates some friction, probably friction for the people behind you so you have to deal with a little bit of the pressure of people behind you want you to go fast and, but here’s this moment of genuine connection where someone is sharing their hurt.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: What are you going to choose? What, what choices are you going to have access to, because this is why I get really passionate and excited about the gifts that I have been given that I get to hopefully pass on to other people. How do you have access to choice in that moment? To step away from the automatic programming of both your individual life experience and what the culture is trying to get you to do. You have to have access to conscious choice and that is a practice.

You have to have the knowledge of how to do it and you have to practice it. And obviously this is my bias ‘cause this is my lens, but I get excited because I’m seeing more and more the value in what I, what I have been gifted that I get to share. It’s not about me, but if we all had access to choice in more moments of our life, we’d put the minus AI in our searches and take away their ability to choose for us, you know? Mm-hmm. We would go talk to the local shoe guy and keep him in business rather than just defaulting to Amazon and, you know, yeah. Take away a little, our attention is our power and that’s why they spend billions of dollars trying to steal it from us. So the more, if I could affect one person to, to like reorient their attention by accessing conscious choice a little bit more in their life, like that may brings me so much joy.

Christina: Mm-hmm. I mean, it, it, so it’s, yeah. It seems like AI’s job is to just like, make things so much easier for us, right? Is that, I mean, I don’t really know how they’re selling it ‘cause I don’t spend a lot of time paying much attention to it. But, but like, is that sort of, is that sort of the idea like this, we’ll, we’ll take care of this, like AI can take care of this so that you don’t have to do the hard stuff.

Becky: So there’s a lot of, uh, voices in AI, so I don’t think there’s one. Okay. You know, overarching voice, but I just listened to this podcast that was, um, the podcast was called, uh, it’s called Corporate Gossip. It’s kind of fun ‘cause it like, takes these really heavy topics and they, they research different corporations and really like, give you the, they spill the tea as I think they say these days.

So it, it keeps it a little bit lighter, but they’re really exposing really dark things about these corporations. And I listened to one about Sam Altman, who’s the head of Open AI, which gives us Chat GPT. And so if you were to listen to him speak and not dig any deeper, you would think that AI is meant to solve world hunger, solve the climate crisis.

Like it’s all these altruistic things, right? But if you dig deeper, he is a liar and has lied about the capability of Open AI. And they just came out with, um, Soro, which is like their video creation AI, and the technology’s incredible. It can create videos out of just texts that are super realistic. You can’t really tell the difference. So it has massive implications for our ability to discern what’s real and what’s fake.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: And yet they rolled it out as a social media platform. So like the truth of what they’re using these AI for is not altruistic in any sense. And, um, like I said, they’re building these data centers that are using potable water.

Like it, they, they can’t use wastewater. It’s all drinkable water that they’re using and they’re putting them in communities that are already at risk of water scarcity. And these are always, you know, poor communities, communities where they’re primarily people of color. So there’s a real underbelly of these AI, like Google now forces it on everyone in their search, unless you do the minus ai, they’ve stopped reporting their energy usage.

They used to commit themselves to reducing their energy emissions. They’ve now just stopped reporting it and they’ve admitted they’ll never meet their goals with AI. And so they’re all just racing towards what? They, it’s the kind of the same thing of they’re putting it under disguise of if we don’t do it someone else will.

Meaning China, which just echoes this like communist red scare bullshit that they, that they propagandize us so that they can just increase their wealth and power. That’s all it ever is about. And it’s all these systems are largely designed by white men. They’re largely designed by people who I would argue don’t have good social skills.

So yeah. Anyway, it’s um. It’s pretty dark. I mean, the training that they do on these models, they act like there’s no, there’s no friction, there’s no humans involved. But there’s entire populations in like Kenya who are looking at horrific videos, images that they have to train the model to say, don’t do this.

Like this is Oh. So yeah, there’ve been like, and they’re paid like next to nothing. They’re totally, taken advantage of. So there’s this huge underbelly of all of these tech platforms, but then it’s served up to us in the, the west as frictionless. Mm-hmm. But so you have to make the effort, you have to access choice to first get the knowledge because they’re not serving it to you, you’re not being served the truth of what AI and these tech oligarchs are doing.

So you have to access the, the knowledge, and then it takes that practice of wisdom to actually change your habits, your thoughts, beliefs, and your actions. And that takes time. So, I mean, we’ve had conversations about Chat GPT and I was very dazzled and I was kind of under this feeling of like, I’m gonna have these conscious conversations with it, and yeah.

Um, at least I’m training it and, and I have no judgment of how I perceived it at that time because I went out and got more knowledge, you know? Mm. So I have now canceled my open AI account, deleted Chat GPT. I just weighed the cost and benefits and it’s like, I think it’s actually making me a worse writer.

It’s not actually helping me. It’s helping me write copy faster. But when I read it back, I’m like, I don’t feel my soul in this.

Christina: Right?

Becky: I do use Claude, which is, um, Anthropic. It’s a two siblings who used to be at OpenAI that started their own company. They left open AI because of the ethical concerns.

There’s no perfect AI company. They still have the whatever, and I use it very sparingly. And now that I know that I can avoid the AI search in Google, I use Claude less and I just do my own research. But I didn’t intend for this to be like a dissertation on AI.

Christina: Well, it’s interest, it’s just an interesting thing because this whole time that you’re talking, I’m, and I’m, and I’m hearing you say that they’re saying, uh, if if we don’t do it, someone else will.

That just makes me realize we need to be having these conversations and seeding the things that really matter to us because even though, you know, it doesn’t have as much quote unquote impact as something as large as an Open AI company, the the small day-to-day morsels that I speaking for myself am am offered and gain from these conversations or from walking slowly around my garden and actually realizing that some plants root slower than others.

Those things are cultivating a quality of life that really, really matters to me. And then from that place, I’m able to expand into my small community here in a way that ripples out very authentically and I believe in encourages that in others. So. I think that’s really, I think that’s really important work to be doing that counteracts all of this other crap.

Becky: That is really the biggest impact you can have. And it is so easy to get caught up in the bigness of these companies and the pervasiveness of these companies and our brains just weren’t meant to process how big the world is and how complex the world is and how many people there are in the world.

But you’re not really, like, you can make small impacts on a big national scale, right? You can vote, you can call your representatives, you can stay relatively informed.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: Um, but where are you gonna make your impact? It’s not through what you are intaking through your mind, it’s through the actions of your body.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And just thinking, like, actually pausing, having this pause you even told me about you, your remembering to practice the pause and reflecting, which I think is so, so helpful.

Um. It decreases your reactivity in many situations because you’re actually able to be where you are and make a choice. You talk about this all the time. Mm-hmm. Like making a conscious choice. So even to just make a conscious choice of like, I have learned this thing I’m going to do minus ai. That’s so cool I’m totally gonna do that now when I do a Google search. Um, but just, just realizing that you don’t have to give away your authority. Right. Yeah. Even going back to when we talked about Hildegard of Bingen and you asked if she was, what did you ask? If she was like, one of my, your guide? Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I was like, I don’t really know.

And then you even said then like, yeah, I see that you’re not giving away your authority. Like you still, you still are here. You’re coming from a place of your center. And the same thing was happening when I was choosing not to get pulled forward in the fear spiral about the studio, I would always come back and go to like, where is the home in place that I feel.

So that can be that thought, that pause and centering can be applied to so many situations. As small as when your dog eats another shoelace and as big as something that’s taking over the world like AI.

Becky: Exactly. Yeah. So um, as I’ve been developing, you know, what is it that I wanna share?

What is it that I wanna offer, um, in my business, in my offering? I kept coming back to framing around do you know who Viktor Frankl is? The man Search for Meeting? He was a, um, Holocaust survivor and a psychiatrist. He wrote this book, Man’s Search For Meaning and um, it’s attributed as a quote to him. He never quite said it, but it’s a really good framing of his philosophy, of his framework. And it’s, um, Between stimulus and response, there is a space in that space lies your power to choose, and in that choice lies your growth and your freedom.

Christina: Cool.

Becky: And I love this because it kind of. It gives me something to hang the teachings on. So it’s like stimulus. What’s stimulus? It’s anything that happens to you. It’s anything that you encountered in your day-to-day. And what’s your response? Right? Well, response is going to come from one of two places.

It’s going to come from your automatic programming, so a reaction or it’s going to come from a conscious choice made by your conscious mind, by your prefrontal cortex in that moment it, And between that stimulus and response, whether it’s reactivity or choice, there’s a space. But that space is often so small that we don’t even notice it because we’re running so fast because our culture cultures so fast.

So the practice of learning meditation, of learning how to slow down is the practice of strengthening our ability to notice that space. And then notice if reactivity comes up, if reactivity comes up, what do we do? We have to be with our nervous system and regulate our nervous system so that that reactivity in our nervous system isn’t making us react.

Instead, we can pause with that reactivity, with that activation in our nervous system, an access choice.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Becky: And in that choice is our growth. ‘cause every time you make a new choice, you’re moving beyond that programming and into something new, a new version of yourself. Because if we’re always on autopilot we’re just a replica of our past over mm-hmm. And over and over again. And we’re not growing. And that’s where I get to freedom. Freedom is such a huge, um, through line that I’ve come to in my offering because when you can choose in any moment how you show up, when I choose to put minus AI in my search term, I am free of what these tech oligarchs are trying to in impose upon me.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And then the more that you practice that, the more that becomes your habit.

Becky: Exactly. Yeah. And then that becomes my automatic. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, it’s always growing and churning in this, in infinite loop. So, you know, something else is gonna come up and I’m gonna need, need to know they’re gonna get smart and find another way to try to trap me in.

Um. I, I heard a, a creator on TikTok once say that we are all living in a collective imagination. Whose imagination have we been living in? And whose imagination do we want to choose to live in? And predominantly we’ve been living in the imagination of cis straight white men. And I’m not, this is not a bash of cis straight white men.

I am just saying that we’ve had this homogenized imagination of our dominant culture. And I don’t wanna live in that imagination anymore.

Christina: Yeah. We can try something else.

Becky: Lots of different things. Yeah. Diversity, you know.

Christina: Mm-hmm. We have a new garden to seed. Ooh. What does it look like? What could it look like?

What could it look like to inhabit that imagination? That’s a nice practice to think about. Like, yeah. Thinking about it as something that grows, like what does the garden that I want to live in, what is the garden that you want to live in look like?

Becky: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And then being the seeds of that garden.

Christina: Yeah. Yep. Yep. In lots of different choices. Mm-hmm. In lots of different ways.

Yeah.

Becky: And then having so much grace for yourself when you’re not able to make those choices. Because it is a practice and it’s not a binary of you’re either tending to this future, future garden, or you’re living in the garden that needs to be composted.

It’s not a binary, we’re dancing between each.

Christina: Mm-hmm.

That’s a beautiful thought. Mm-hmm.

The music was recorded live as a part of the Sound Service at 3S Art Space in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in January, 2025, where musicians responded to the changing light in the room that reflected and refracted through Christina’s suspended artwork. Andrew Halchak, the composer of this piece is playing bass clarinet, and Tomas Cruz and Katie Seiler are singing.

Becky: I know that antsy feeling so well, like that feeling of like you can. Again, using the language of the seeds, like I can see all these little seeds and I can see what they’re all gonna become and I just am so excited and like wanting it to go. But that’s what I was trying to express. Like I usually get stuck in that.

And then there’s the frustration that it’s not happening fast enough, you know? ‘Cause I’m just like bursting and so excited for all these different things and I can see how all the little seeds will connect and create this beautiful, harmonious garden that like all harmonizes together. Like I get really excited about the connections between these seeds when I can see it.

Yeah. That is like where I’ve lived most of my life is like in that excited feeling and like seeing all of it. And now I’m learning patience of like coming back, which is such a different vibration. It’s like holding these two vibrations. I know we’ve talked about this before. Um, and I think it was from the Telepathy Tapes where one of the, uh, non speakers was like, it was the one with the, um, the tuning forks.

And he said there’s, you know, there’s two vibrations. There’s like a vibration to his body and a vibration to his soul. And I feel that so clearly. That like this patience and this being the seed is such a slow vibration in me. But then this, there’s the vision, which is so like kinetic and, and, and like loud and fast and yeah, how to hold them both and how to have patience.

That’s what I’m learning.

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