The Integrated Self

A working theory on the spectrum of "normalcy" and "neurodiversity."

• What is normal?
• Neurodiversity as a way of acknowledging needs
• Highly sensitive people and highly numb people
• The difficulty and magic of life on the spectrum in the modern world
• Weird blessings on blessed weirdness

"The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute.

The good news is, there's no ground."

- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

In this episode:

- The Western tendency to solidify concepts

- All life as a verb

- Addressing anxiety about the past and the future through the Eternal Now

Desire is a driving force of life. It can be so helpful to clarify what your desires are. But what happens when you get stuck on wanting something other than what's happening?

In this episode, we address:

- the suffering of life

- how attachment to results causes much suffering

- what happens when you loosen your attachments to the specific results you want

- not getting the job you want

- wanting something else while parenting and being present with your kids

This episode is an invitation to deepen into your own experience of your life. Including:

• A quick vent about the crunchy pressure of capitalism
• Three dimensions of reality: thoughts, emotions, and sensations
• The difference between stories and direct experience
• Feeling the body's sensations as an invitation into the unconditionally supportive presence of being

This episode is meant to help you move through Doing to come back to Being, and bring your Being into all you're Doing.

On Waiting When it's Time to Wait.

"The Master eats when it's time to eat, waits when it's time to wait, and moves when it's time to move."

In this episode:

• Attuning to timing

• The gold of accepting when it's not the right time to do, but is the right time to wait.

• Waiting as a way of widening vision and relating to what else is here.

• Recognizing what opens up and becomes possible by waiting when it's time to wait.

A quick little process on the sometimes overwhelming amount of exciting new things in the world, and how slowing down can help you choose how to use and direct your will and energy in this sea of so much stuff!

Continuing from the previous episode (2. The Essence of Healing), here I describe one method and philosophy for how to meet life on its own terms, with your own authentic responses. Drawing from a foundational principle of improvisation, you can improvise with life, jumping in the current of reality as it is and choosing how to swim within it.

• Improvisation in Comedy, Theater, Dance, and Music
• Grief as a portal to a richer and fuller life
• Empowering yourself through agency and choice
• Life Lessons from Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis
• How does suffering fit into reality?
• Buddhism's First Noble Truth
• A simple guided practice to work through irritations using Yes, And.

In this episode, I describe the fundamental cause of human suffering and its antidote.

• Avoidance, resistance, and meeting life on life’s terms.
• The intelligence of dissociation.
• Building capacity to tolerate the charge of a nervous system in a(n overly) stimulating world.
• Grief as an expression of love and a portal to a fuller life.
• The intrinsic movement towards healing.
• A guided practice for meeting your life as it is.

Who am I? Why am I here? How am I doing this? Why this way? All this and more, in less than 9 minutes