Restorying the Culture with camille and tanya podcast

June 24, 2020 The Relational Impact

In this episode of Restorying the Culture, Tanya and Camille discuss the significance of our human footprint and "The Relational Impact."

How do we understand this idea of our human footprint around drama?
How much drama do we have in our lives, around our emotional footprint, our psychic footprint? And how do we change that?
What is the ripple effect of how we walk in the world? What is our impact, and what are we leaving behind? What are we sending out into the future?

A part of restoring the culture is becoming more intimate with our own life, the environment, the natural world, and growing our awareness about our human footprint. We have narratives that tell us in a way, to charge forward, be independent, there are all these messages that we're living with that, in some ways, impact our human footprint in a way that isn't supportive of us walking lightly on the planet.

"In spiritual circles, we often bypass our own shame. And until we feel our shame related to holding whatever privilege we hold in the world, we're dissociated from that aspect of our humanity."

Tanya Taylor Rubinstein

[00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubins Steele Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together.

[00:00:52] Welcome, everybody. Last week, Tanya surprised me with the topic. And this week I'm actually going to be surprising her with a topic. So this is not something we've discussed. And rather than beginning with a quote, I'm going to share a dream I had in early 2000.

[00:01:09] And actually it was like mid 2008. So in March 2008, my documentary film, Solace, Wisdom of the Dying premiered at the Scottish Rite Temple in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And a couple of months after that, I had a dream. And in the dream, I was basically in the void and in the void there was a wall. And I heard a voice that in the dream. You know, I've sort of it felt like the voice of God for lack of other languaging. That's what it felt like to me.

[00:01:46] And. And the voice said.

[00:01:52] You have one question, you can ask any question. As your reward for making solace, wisdom of the dying, because this movie will help the world. And so my question was not a verbal question. It was. It was like a. It was almost like something. It was a reflection of something about my own being. Like the state of my being. And it was sort of an inquiry about something. That I already sort of knew, but I wanted confirmation and it wasn't even a formed idea in the dream. So without using words, there's this this, you know, communication between us of of my request. I'm taken over the other side of the wall. And. And I know that I am on the other side. As in after death.

[00:02:51] I'm in a living room. And I start walking quickly across the living room.

[00:02:58] And I'm so I'm walking like I'm in a hurry, which is, you know, it was sort of like Carolus and I bumped the side of the couch with my leg.

[00:03:08] And I looked down and I realize that the area around me has been bruised. So I realize the answer to my my non-verbal inquiry was on the other side.

[00:03:25] That there's there's no gap between doing and consequence.

[00:03:33] That we see the results of our actions immediately and that on this side of the wall, there's a delay, right? Which in a way makes you know, it makes me think about things like karma. You know, it's the delay between cause and effect and how, you know, we are learning our lessons in a much more slow down, you know, way that that likely has to do with being embodied and being in physical form. So.

[00:04:04] It was such a profound.

[00:04:09] Like teaching? Almost. And so what I'd like to talk about today is a concept that is that has come to me since that dream. And we talk a lot about carbon footprint. You know. Ah. And I'd like to talk about our human footprint. And that dream reminds me of the.

[00:04:32] The carbon footprint. We leave. All around us in ways that we're not aware of.

[00:04:41] By moving quickly, by not being mindful, by not being in our center, as my friend Michael Stillwater says, you know, when you go outside of your own medicine, you know, you're not operating from that set, that place.

[00:04:59] And so. I think also in terms of I've been thinking more about. How do we. How do we understand this idea of our human footprint around drama? How much drama we have in our lives, around our emotional footprint, our psychic footprint? And how do we. My hope is that that with the pandemic, we're gonna be more conscious about our human footprint so that it's not just about our carbon footprint, but also like.

[00:05:41] What is the ripple effect of how we walk in the world?

[00:05:45] What is our impact and what are we leaving behind? What are we sending out into the future?

[00:05:52] So, yeah, that's what I want to talk about, just that, like just last like just that cameo.

[00:06:01] So I thought you were good. See, you told me the other day you're like you're going to surprise you with a really light topic. I think fun. Is it okay.

[00:06:15] Life and death and living and dying. And because both an environmental equate should all psychic footprints. But like just that. Where do you want me to start?

[00:06:31] So, you know, it it's like whatever podcasts.

[00:06:39] I totally shocked you with the question. You were like, why? I like what's hardest thing in our entire being 20 years. Like what? That's how it feels. Right. I like. I think you're talking and I've got a whole DAP gig covered in notes that they're all Braddick and I like. I don't know. So do you want to focus at all? What would that be? Why would they be Burri?

[00:07:06] So this idea of I mean, the dream is the dream. And it was an important dream for me and still is. Yeah, I've been I think it's this idea of a human footprint. And if we talk about restoring the culture. A part of restoring the culture is like for me right now, is becoming more intimate with myself in my own life, with the environment, the natural world, and growing my awareness about my human footprint. Definitely.

[00:07:35] And we have narratives, right, that tell us like in a way, like charge forward, be independent, you know. I mean, there all these messages that we're living with that I think in some ways impact our human footprint in a in a way that isn't supportive of us walking lightly on the planet.

[00:07:53] Totally.

[00:07:55] It's a huge question and certainly an incredible inquiry, I'll just start with what is arising for me in this moment. I woke up this morning and. There was a few things that were coming to me. The first thing that came to me was a voice kind of in my head. You and I both get these deep voices that feel like they're part of us. And also beyond us in whatever way we define that in it. The voice said to me first, then when I woke up, you're out of exile.

[00:08:26] And I was like, oh, wow, I'm out of exile.

[00:08:31] I moved to Nashville this week, as you know, and 30 years ago.

[00:08:38] I was directed by an inner voice to go to Santa Fe, sight unseen. And I left in New York City. I think I've been an exile in the desert for 30 years.

[00:08:53] And I had to be because what I had to walk out.

[00:08:59] And it totally addresses what you're talking about. What I had to walk out was my shadow, my family's shadow.

[00:09:08] I had to walk in to cemeteries and sit with the dead myself. I had to you know, I grew up in Washington, D.C., a Republican family, pretty conservative, pretty elite, pretty privileged, as we've talked about here. Went to New York City. Was part of the AIDS pandemic. Not directly, but my my community as a theater artist died. A lot of people died. And that was the door to my awakening and where I got the directive. Come to Santa Fe.

[00:09:39] Go to Santa Fe. And I woke up this morning at fifty five years old. I was twenty six when I was sent it to exile by my inner guidance in the midst of my spiritual awakening. It wasn't to go to the light like I thought it was to go live in the darkness and to learn from the darkness. That's what New Mexico did for me and. I have such a deep attachment to the land there because it taught me everything. It wasn't it's not going into the light is going into the dark that I feel that exile was necessary for me to become somebody who even cares about my human footprint, who's even.

[00:10:28] Right. I didn't. I get that. I didn't care. I wasn't conditioned to care. I know you weren't.

[00:10:35] I mean, there was an inner empath in me that always cared about when we'd go to Beirut or Syria and see the children who were beggars. I was this little white privilege girl with my grandfather, who was the vice president of a university in Beirut. They had seven servants. I had we had we would travel around with what I call my Uncle Intune, a Lebanese man who was my grandfather's bodyguard, and we'd get out of the car and swarms of children who had nothing would try to sell us chocolates.

[00:11:09] The gum and I've talked about this before.

[00:11:11] And there was there was privilege in my my heart when my grandfather explained to me they didn't have food and they were trying to sell chocolates to buy their family bread and milk. There was an awakening in me and a natural empathy, but I didn't.

[00:11:27] And then I was cracked open by my friend dying of AIDS.

[00:11:32] It opened me to like the shock of life and death and lack of privilege.

[00:11:44] And New Mexico took me into exile where I had to go low, not high.

[00:11:51] And every time I tried to go high, which was the inner sense of privilege, I would get pulled down and knocked down into the knocked down, actually knocked down.

[00:12:01] The image I'm getting knocked down over and over.

[00:12:05] And that was completely necessary. I had to become a human. Most of us, I don't think, are human. I think what patriarchy and white supremacy in these 5000 years of patriarchy as women and being marginalized and in these relationships where we have to cut off aspects of ourselves with men in our culture, we are d humanized.

[00:12:31] We are so dehumanized. And can I just say one thing, because this is something I've been getting a little tripped up on lately. Around duality. Like, just the one I hear. I mean, because, of course, there's white privilege.

[00:12:43] I'm not at all discounting that. I'm not discounting the patriarchy. But I do think that part of humanizing is maybe dropping some of our labels. Right. Because, I mean, all of that affected everyone in the world.

[00:12:57] But I disagree. I disagree. For me, I really do. Like, I hear where you are, where you're coming from.

[00:13:03] And I think when we call it do ality, we bypass our own shame. And until we feel our shame as holding whatever privilege we hold in the world, we're dissociated from from that aspect of our humanity.

[00:13:23] And and while we've all suffered, that's that's inherent to the human experience and our ancestors suffered.

[00:13:32] But I do think there's a bypass that can happen even with what you're saying. Yeah. For example, the patriarchy is incredibly strong among women. Of course, women will not carry a lot of the patriarchy. So that's all I'm talking about is just I think it's more complicated than just sort of.

[00:13:52] Well, I think that when we humanize when you humanize something, right.

[00:13:57] Then it's like it's like that saying, you know, be kind to everyone, not just be kind to those, but want to be kind to, but be kind to everyone.

[00:14:08] I mean, this is really about moving out our humanity and not. I totally agree with you about the bypass.

[00:14:16] Well, I mean, yeah. And and and and it's just acknowledging our human placement in the hierarchy in the rank because there's hardly conscious rank and unconscious privilege.

[00:14:29] And yes, many women have adopted the patriarchy by taking on the characteristics of patriarchy.

[00:14:35] But it becomes nuanced for me. And what I realized is my deepest humanity.

[00:14:42] I've lost my taste for cruelty of any cop of any kind. But I also am developing my empathy because, again, I've had people in Santa Fe, people of color, say to me that Santa face an unusually racist place. And we I perceived it as an unusually kind place. So it was my job to listen to them rather than just go from my own experience, because we all have blind spots. Right. So I'm just talking about. I wanted to do the spiritual bypass. It sort of came to me having psychic giftedness and everything to just sort of want to go into. We're all one. And I don't see skin and I'm not a renaissance.

[00:15:28] And that's not at all what I'm saying. And that was when I was very young. No.

[00:15:32] And I just want to say, though, that it's been part of my human walk to actually feel the sting of shame, of the unconscious, unconscious.

[00:15:43] The privilege of I don't want to get too caught up in that, but it's coming back the way we're talking about. You know, I wanted to say that's a human footprint.

[00:15:50] I would have to say that I think there's a this is a really good distinction about what could sort of increase our I think shame increases our human put me to. I think it actually makes it. I think that. And I think guilt in terms of the way we talk about guilt and constellation work is you carry your own guilt and that makes us stronger. So we use guilt in sort of a different way. You know, people could say, oh, that's splitting hairs. But there's actually a very big difference between acknowledging totally I what I agree, harrying the guilt of your of your ancestry, of your lineage, meaning that you acknowledge exactly as you said, that's really important to life.

[00:16:30] And that's like the John John Bradshaw work. The difference between guilt and shame, guilt. I'm not familiar with that, but I'm like, take that while he talks. His book was the shape of something about the shame that binds us. It's like that guilt has the opportunity to help us be more responsible, take responsibility does. It's like waking up. And it made me become toxic. But I absolutely I think if the energy suppressed in us is shame, it can also protect in a way where it has to be felt to be transformed.

[00:17:02] And that's what happened to me in the desert coming out of exile now.

[00:17:06] I feel like in exile that I had to go in and do I had to just walk with the dead, with the shame, with my ancestors, with my privilege to become human. And now I'm feeling the only way to serve.

[00:17:21] And so you had to go through that and you feel like going through that time is in coming out of exile. How will that impact your human footprint?

[00:17:30] Well, now I'm prepared to serve from a much more humble place.

[00:17:34] That's what I was going to talk about. Humility. I'm so glad. You said that because I do, I believe there's a healthy kind of you know, I've always talked about that there's a spectrum. You know, this humility spectrum that's, you know, like healthy humility on one end and humiliation on the other. And and there again, it's like where where shame comes in. So I think.

[00:17:56] Yeah, I think I think healthy humility is something that helps us to be human and to be right in the world and does support our human footprint. Right.

[00:18:08] Yeah, because we draw line under it's. Yeah. It's a lightning.

[00:18:12] It's a lightning. And I'm curious about the connection between humility and this understanding of us as interdependent beings.

[00:18:21] Yeah. Right. Yeah. And we are. And every life matters. It's like. And every story matters. And how do we come into relationship now? Right. Right. With that as leaders. But also I see it as a circle now. You know, to me, the circle is part of the practice of humility. And and it's always been my impulse and story work to sit in a circle not as to not be on a podium or on a stage, but in a circle leading by being and leading by sharing and inviting people into the circle.

[00:18:59] It's interesting, you know, when you talked earlier about. Being in the desert and sort of having a desert as this, as sort of a it is a symbol of exile in a way.

[00:19:13] And I've been in the desert as long almost as long as you were. All right. I mean, my daughters my youngest daughter's twenty nine. And, you know, so I'm actually I moved to Taos 30 years ago in Santa Fe now. But it's it's. That's three decades. It's a long time to be at 7000 feet. And to be sort of drying out. And you can just almost hear your bones clattering sometimes. Right?

[00:19:40] Well, there is a quality to it.

[00:19:41] And where was I going with that? Oh.

[00:19:47] Thirty years. Thirty years. Yeah. But there was another point. I'll just come back to it if it comes to me. But just. I guess now where I'm going.

[00:19:58] Thank you for just my brain for just flowing somewhere else.

[00:20:03] It always does. It does.

[00:20:06] Right. So you're in Nashville after three decades in the desert. And I'm leaving tomorrow to go back to Oregon, my home state. So you've returned east. And I'm going west for a month. And it feels like a very purposeful time for me to be going there for some deep reflection.

[00:20:25] And I'll be close on the coast, just, you know, a couple hours from where I was born. And there's some potency in being able to, like, go out.

[00:20:36] And experience yourself in the world in a different way. And then sort of come back home and and to me, there's like there's a kind of integration that does deal with humility.

[00:20:45] I know what I was gonna say before, which is you talked about your lack of humanity around privilege and you had money and it was East Coast and it was all of that and what and what it was like being a very sensitive child.

[00:21:00] Also in the midst of all of them.

[00:21:03] And I actually think that mine. My way that I avoided that and made my footprint larger has to do with some of the Valkyrie energy, the, you know, being the oldest child and and and being a caretaker and then becoming a nurse and all the ways in which we try to serve and trying to like, navigate, negotiate between how we serve. And are we going to be the wounded healer or are we going to be a wounding healer? And you know, I've had astrologers tell me that my Kairouan, which is the wounded healer, runs and it does it runs right through Santa Fe. So I've been here doing this wounded healer stuff, which is, I think, my version of your going into darkness and exile for 30 years. Yeah.

[00:21:58] And when you talked at the very beginning about your dream and the fact that you were given the information that on the other side we go quantum. So we're its immediate manifestation.

[00:22:10] That's right. So that we have the opportunity that there's that it's not a better than less than. And I won't know. Also thinking which I expressed to you at the big before we got on this podcast. Yeah. That I had a recognition that we have other word, the dead, that we might time others and the other side would really it's just that's the ultimate split. The ultimate othering is to say we're only alive over here on this side. There's an aliveness and death. And there's a dying aspect of being alive.

[00:22:44] All the tiredly, a lot of dying about being alive, which means that.

[00:22:48] Yeah. Which means that it's the ultimate split. To see those two is separate.

[00:22:53] And if we're here, you and I talk all the time. Right. About healing splits in ourselves, embracing our full humanity and the divinity.

[00:23:02] To me now it's the integration. Because if I'm out of exile here, I can be more full and whole and firm in the world. But to me, New Mexico is the mother and that the darkness is the mother. It was me, the healthy mother, because I was never mothered. So the land itself and walking into the shadow became the mothering I needed to become a full human being.

[00:23:28] And now I know it's going to be always and when I was driving out in New Mexico's crying the way I always do and I just made a promise and I said, let me go the way maybe a young adult would say to their parent.

[00:23:40] Let me go and do my own thing in another place in the world. And I will always return to you. Huh? Right. So thinking about returning and life and death.

[00:23:51] Yeah. I mean, and the mother, you know, the the mother is the one that holds the death, right. I mean. Yeah. The feminine is that that holds the dark and the death and the unconscious and the underworld and all of that. So yeah. Interesting to think about being re mothered in the dark in the desert where there's actually so much light. It's really kind of a beautiful contrast. Right. And there's a and there's a lack of consciousness to that. I mean, it's almost like to be re mothered. You can't track that consciously, right? It's like you're being worked on. Maybe who knows the small self in relationship to the big self. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm. That's just fascinating. And I but I love this idea of becoming more conscious about our human footprint. And it makes me think about things that I'd like to do differently in my life, about how I make my choices totally, totally new and totally. Yeah. Specially like like I mean, not just in the outer world, but like in my body. And my personhood is its own universe. How is my footprint with myself? What are my critical thoughts like? Do I beat myself up my loving you know and why. Easy on myself and my hard on myself. Right. Why do I take up do I use up too much energy? Right. I mean, you think about like the carbon footprint has a lot to do with energy management and sustainability.

[00:25:26] Do I know how to ask and ask for help and collaborate even? That's my own needs getting met.

[00:25:33] And the interdependence must be a part of that, too. Right. Like, we just don't do this alone and. No. And yet no one can do it for us. So we're you know, we're on a dual path. This is a dual path of of, you know, individual wholeness and individuation and Škoda Viduka nation. And as we've talked about before, sort of this energy of the two by two and how two people can create something that one person will never create a clearly thing create.

[00:26:00] That's right. Her identity.

[00:26:02] And that's also returning from what you will. You would turn me on to that webinar with Tom Brady, the astrologer. That was amazing. But the return to the I vow, you know, the movement away from the right, just the individual, that relationship to the Dow, to the collective, to this pre verbal. And I'm not talking preverbal individually. It was before we had written language, right. To start to codify everything with the left brain. This returned.

[00:26:33] I posted something by Nina Simonds of the Bioneers today that she wrote about third stage leadership.

[00:26:40] And it's all very much about in the circle at the collaborative and what's happening now.

[00:26:46] Well, and I love. Yeah. Sorry. Gone again.

[00:27:00] It's not you know, it makes me think about.

[00:27:04] I think about all the people with dementia that I've, you know, been involved with in my hospice days and. And one of the practices that I have is like, you know, as I'm an aging person or in the youth of my older hood, you know, that's another way of being gentle on myself is like I forget something or. Yeah, if I know I know what I was going to say. It usually does come back.

[00:27:30] It's just being gentle with myself and going, oh, I guess I just don't have to work that hard to hold on to something. Like my mind is just a little softer than it used to be. And allowing that to be creative. So what I was gonna say is, I'm glad you brought up the left hemisphere of the brain, because I actually think if we were to go full circle and wrap up our conversation today, we could say something about all of what we talked about.

[00:27:52] When you product white privilege and beat people who are marginalized and sort of our rugged individualism and all of this stuff, that's all left brain told hemisphere up action.

[00:28:07] Right. And I think part of reducing our human footprint, not just our carbon footprint, but if we use carbon footprint, we use ecology and we use, you know, how we think about sustainability in terms of the natural world. And we apply that to the relational realm. That's all right. Hemisphere stuff. So it's like, what are the things that we can do to decrease our our human footprint at the same time, paradoxically, becoming more human just become more relational. It's to acknowledge our interdependence. It's to look at the human ecology.

[00:28:49] Well, and it's one of the reasons that and I moved to Nashville, even in the midst of the pandemic is two is there's community here. And one of the things I truly believe is that it's going to be really important that we move or live and deepen our roots systems in our local communities. So I'm like, be happy in your local community now where you want to be, because we're going to have to. I believe this is one of the things coming up for me. Let go of our addiction to cheap travel. Getting on an app. So whenever we feel like get in the car. So how can we go deeper and create really deep roots that are satisfying in our deep community and relationships that are satisfying. So we're not always getting on a plane because getting in a car, because it's not sustainable. Right.

[00:29:41] Not sustainable. The way I think about that. The way I buy my clothing. Yes. Where I buy my food, I try and buy food as locally as seasonally as I can. It's the same thing about clothing. You know, we've like there's so much now that's like, you know, fossil fuel based cheap fibers, sheep's clothing.

[00:29:59] It exploit Zachares. Yeah. You know, all of these things, they.

[00:30:05] Exploiting people and damaging the environment. It's all connected. So it's like, yeah, that like, how can we go really deep locally?

[00:30:13] Because now online we can be expensive globally. Podcasts. Technology. Zoom meetings. We have the whole world. Yeah. To be available and to that way. So how do we go. Really deep and small and intimate locally is something I'm totally interested in shifting my human footprint in that way.

[00:30:34] Me too. And I think our generation as generation X, we're older generation X. Yes. I think this is part of what how we need to differentiate ourselves as as, you know, going into the youth of our older hood. I mean, I think it's really important, which makes me want to end the podcast with a shout out to the millennials in particular about our daughters, Hayley, Claire and Chloe. I really have a certain kind of genius and brilliance within them about, I think, carrying the creative vision for how to live differently, how totally with more sensitive to their to their human footprint. I think they've got that in them to do that. And I'm. That makes me feel happy.

[00:31:23] I love that. And also a shout out to the baby boomers who came before us for breaking and cracking the culture open. They weren't explorers of consciousness. And it's interesting because once once again, Camille, here we are as the bridge walkers and I think is bridging generation knows were bridge our ages where branches have felt that that Generation X, that a lot of our job is to bridge.

[00:31:48] The baby boomers with the millennials because the baby boomers are such a big generation. Absolutely. I mean, energetically. And also numbers wise. And. And there's a big difference between the baby boomers and the millennials. Absolutely. And I do think that that's our our place is to be the bridge generation. And I think, you know. One thing Tom Brady said about the baby boomers is, you know, that it's, you know, the 1960s was about shocking transformation. Yes. And I think we're we're coming back into a time where we're going to see more and more shocking transformation. Absolutely. Some of these patterns are repeating themselves now. And how do we restoring that? Because the 60s won't happen again. But how do we restore the energy so that we can, you know, sort of harness it for as much as possible for the greater good?

[00:32:42] Absolutely. And to take what was learned and to look at honestly what didn't work as much as what did. And to know that as bridges, it doesn't mean we're marginalized as bridges. We're playing a really important. It's an rule.

[00:32:57] That's right. Hallelujah.

[00:32:59] Yeah. Great topic. I get a little light earlybird in conversation here for us with myself. Brain subject, shaft brain. I love that. Oh, my gosh. I love that. I've no shame in any.

[00:33:17] No. No shame in our humanity. Just letting ourselves be fully seen and seeing each other. Of makes us feel intimate and close.

[00:33:24] Exactly. I love it. So. So we'll end with intimacy. To be continued. Always. Thank you.

[00:33:36] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture.

[00:33:42] If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.

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