194 Sarah Marshank === Monica: Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Monica: Hello, dear listeners. Monica: And welcome to another episode of the revelation project podcast today, I'm with my beautiful guest, Sarah Marshank, who is the founder of selfistry and integrative system for mastering the art of being human. Monica: She's the author of the award winning memoir, being selfish. My journey from escort to monk to grandmother, which right there and then I just want to be like, what, tell me more, where she tells the story of her decade in spiritual retreat. She's also the author of selfless street, a guide for embodying timeless spiritual wisdom. Monica: Her teachings weave together spirituality, psychology. Neuroscience in an innovative way, integrating Eastern and Western philosophies with meditative and somatic practices. She's based in San Francisco, well in the San Francisco Bay area, and she teaches and speaks internationally. She also consults for organizations and works one on one with individuals. Monica: When she's not doing her work, you might find her walking along the beach, shopping at the local farmer's market. I love farmer's market with her husband or making art with her granddaughters. And I learned about Sarah's work through the incredible. Heather Ash Amara, who wrote Goddess Warrior Training and is just become near and dear to my heart. Monica: I love her so much. So I would love to actually start by just asking how did the two of you meet? How did you and Heather Ash meet? Sarah: That's a beautiful question. So Heather Ash was dating a guy who I met when I was actually in retreat. And so I met her just as I was segwaying out of my 10 years in retreat and she had just met up with this guy and then over the course of the next, so that was almost 20 years ago, I want to say, and then at some point her. Sarah: So she's a Toltec teacher, as you mentioned, teaching out of Austin and a lot of things blew up in her life and she was running a school and she invited me to come teach with her there. So she was really the sister that helped launch me into teaching once I came out of retreat. And we've been teaching together and hanging out together ever since. Sarah: And you mentioned earlier, it's interesting, the collaboration of women like us teaching and sharing and all of the women that are listening and girlfriends and how we're kind of, you know, domesticated to be in competition. And when we can overcome that trance and really step into collaboration and co creation, it can get messy sometimes, but it's so yummy and fun and Monica: Oh my gosh. Sarah: Heather Ash is one of those girlfriends for me. Monica: Yeah. Monica: I love knowing that because I didn't know that I didn't realize that the two of you had taught together or that she really helped you because I really have started to understand more about my own human design. I might have mentioned that when we'd spoken before and one of my. Monica: Key components of my own design is partnership and it's where I actually come alive is in partnerships. And that seemed really tricky for me in the beginning, because I'll never forget saying to the woman who became my partner, I don't even know if I like women. And she just like laughed, like you're laughing right now. Monica: And she was like, well, Monica, you wouldn't be doing what you you're doing, you know, unless you actually loved women, you probably have a trust issue. Yeah. And of course she was exactly right. Monica: And so many of us have the sisterhood wound. So it's really been powerful to, as you mentioned, break the trance that comes with all of these ways that we've been conditioned to think about ourselves and to think about each other. Sarah: Yep. Monica: And the more I do this work, the more I really reveal the magic of being in partnership with other women. It's just been the most nourishing thing. Sarah: Yay. Ditto. Yeah. So good. Monica: Where would you like to start? I mean, you and I tried. So for my listener, we took, we were like almost like 40 minutes into another interview and the program shut down. Monica: So of course we were like, all right, well, we'll just do it again. And we were. Making headway with a great conversation. I have no doubt we'll do it again, but where do you want to start Monica: today? Sarah: I think where we started when we just started chatting before we went live here is a nice place to just enter, which is how much besides just naming the sisterhood piece, right? That you and I, what we share is we share a willingness. Sarah: And a capacity, a growing capacity, a learned capacity to hold space for what's happening to humanity in these times. And the holding space for that can often feel very frightening, definitely filled with a lot of chaos and uncertainty and a lot of You know, knee jerk habits and patterns and fears that arise around change, um, whether it's climate change or political change or our children growing up and leaving the house or our own aging bodies. Sarah: You know, there's this fear of change and when it amplifies in many areas what some thinkers are calling the meta crisis, right? So many crises happening right now on the planet simultaneously. It's often a time where the seers, the wisdom keepers, the wise elders come forth. And the thing that's unique in these times, and I'm curious about your perspective on this, is that We are those wise elders in the making, that for some reason we live in a time because so many philosophies and religions and even science have been dismantled in a way that we don't trust. Sarah: We saw this in the pandemic, our level of trust for government. for health agencies, for our neighbors, for family members. So there's a way in which those, a lot of those elders and wisdom keepers and experts are not being trusted. Sarah: And so we're in this really interesting process, which is very emergent of holding space for us to become those wise elders. Sarah: And the only way to do that is to show up in the ways that you are helping. Other women show up, and you yourself are showing up, and I myself am showing up, and listening deeply for what life is asking of us. Not what we want, but what is life wanting from us. So, we could start there. Monica: Oh, well, I love that place to start because I love the simultaneous, the calling forth of the wise women into what I call saying yes to the mass, which is the place where we're becoming as we're showing up. Monica: And it can be very daunting. It can be very scary. It can be very confronting. And yet it's in this realm that. My former partner in wise woman would say, Monica, dare to know what, Monica: you know, Sarah: Beautiful. Monica: And it is a dare, you know, there's a dare in the space because oftentimes we're daring to show up in a space that hasn't certified us when you and I started talking this morning, we were talking about how there's no. Monica: Model necessarily for female partnership, female business partnership in the world that feels healthy, that feels something like, Oh, you know, we'll design our partnership after this wonderful model. And so. Oftentimes it's like we are building the plane while we're flying it as my other partner Libby would say, and as you'll notice, I am literally threading in these comments from the wise women that I have partnered with and that I have had the. Monica: Incredible experience to learn and grow from their wisdom and part of that, daring to know what I know is being in those partnerships with those women who have encouraged me, who have called me forth in my own leadership. Yeah. In the moment who have Heather Ash did made space for you and said, come on, you're a leader too. Monica: You, you know, I want to hear your voice. And by the way, you're a teacher and, and, and there's that way that we witness and mirror to each other that begins our process. Of what you write about, which is you write about the witnessing, you write about the way that we start developing the artistry of the self. Monica: And, and I want to tell you that I had done this post right in this same realm this past week. And I know your favorite word is the crone. So it's a quote with the crone in it, but it's entitled wise woman and it's a quote by Marian Woodman and it says. The crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Monica: Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power. Without the crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible. Hmm. Hmm. So Whether you use the word crone or wise woman or sage, there is this urgency, I'll call it to, and, and also a hunger to hear from the wise women now to hear from the grandmothers, to hear from the sacred feminine. Sarah: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because some of what comes up for me around that is. Feeling like this moment is calling for a different kind or a different expression of the wise feminine and the wise masculine to come through our species. And it's not just going to come through older people. It's also going to come through the young ones. Sarah: So here's where we need to be mindful. As we are becoming totally right as we are becoming grandmothers that that just we don't just because we have silver hair doesn't mean we have wisdom, right? And just because you haven't cut your teeth, it doesn't mean you don't have wisdom, right? So, so there's an opening and that see right there. Sarah: That opening is the sacred and wise, masculine and feminine saying, okay, we can trust life. Yeah. Since we're a part of it and how do we trust life and become midwives for future generations of this planet and our species and all the other species that are here. And so I feel like this is subtlety, you know, there's a nuance there as teachers when we move into the space. Sarah: It's like there is sometimes I say the genius is in the room. It's like the old Quaker, you know, church, you know, whose voice is it going to come through? And then our individual job, and this is the artistry you speak of in Selfistry, yeah? Our individual job is to clean our own vessel so that we can be a voice for that wisdom. Sarah: So that's the mess that we're cleaning up while we're tuning into what I call Source or Life or Gaia or the Great Mystery. Because she's really in charge and she's going to take care of us. We just need to listen for her orders and follow them. Monica: You are a wise woman. Yes. I love this so much. I love what you're saying too. Monica: Ah, there's again, this simultaneous mutual, both, and it's what you just said, and it's, and the wise ones, and in all ways show up in a myriad of different ways, and it's our job to really listen. Listen for the wisdom, listen for the wisdom and to invite each other to speak. Sarah: And express and move, invite and listen. Monica: Mm hmm. Yeah. And it's really, it's, God, it, it feels so raw and tender out there right now. I want to kind of check in as we're, as we're kind of servicing all of this, what's it been like for you? Like to be in this feels like a wild west right now or something like, I'm not sure what term to use, but this there's this really edgy energy out there right now that feels really Monica: raw. Sarah: Yeah. Well, for me, the primary. Sarah: Medicine is to go slow, right? So just slow down. I'm a big advocate for the slow movement in every domain. The slow food movement really started my love of slow, but basically slow is to be willing to take the time and we live in a, in a hustle culture. So there's not a lot of. Sarah: Support to take the time to really feel what we're feeling to learn how to witness what we're thinking and feeling this discernment that comes from being able to witness our story, our traumas. Our habits, you know, we talked about Paul Levy's work, right? What Tika, there's a lot of different names for the sickness that we're experiencing as a species, how we're treating ourselves and the planet and each other. Sarah: And one of the medicines for that is to slow down and to be able to discern what is a trauma pattern wanting to release. And what is a, you know, a rage full wise. Kali goddess ferocity statement that wants to come through. And those are like, they're just all over the place. So it's very chaotic. It's very confusing and disorienting. Sarah: And I think we just need to slow down. I say to my students sometimes, imagine you're on a hike in the forest and you have your map, you've been given a map at birth, you think you know where you're going, you trust the destination on the map, because why not? And then at some point, and all of us have this, what's often called the dark night of the soul, you realize you're lost and you don't know where you are, you don't even know if you want to go to the destination that this The stupid, ridiculous map that you were given, right? Sarah: So you start to question everything and what our culture might support us unconsciously to do in that moment when you realize your losses, just keep going, just keep going, just try, just keep going rather than, okay, stop and. Look where you are, regroup, take a moment, take a rest, as long as you're not about to be eaten by a tiger. Sarah: Let's be clear, this is not for people who have a gun pointed at their head, who are starving, who are under the throes of addiction, this is for our listeners. Who are and our audience and our sisters and our friends and our families who have enough capacity and resource to just slow the fuck down and take a moment and regroup, start to meet, see who's around you, what's in your backpack and to reconsider where do I really want to go? Sarah: And. What do I need in order to get there and who's here with me, you know, Monica: I do I, I love what you're pointing to Sarah and I, I'll be honest, what comes up in my consciousness as you're saying that is this. Voice that says how privileged and that immediately though, as we're sitting here as two white women talking about slowing down, I also am thinking of a quote by. Monica: Biookumalafe that says, these times are urgent. We must slow down. And it's actually the wise woman in me that stands up in that moment and says, and discerns the difference between privilege and urgency and intention. Cause there's, again, it's, I go back to what you talked about before it, there are a lot of nuances and the genius is already in the room. Monica: So it's really hard to be out there. When you haven't yet been in here in our own embodied experience of understanding what the hell is going on with me first, before I think I ever have something to offer. Sarah: Both and. Sarah: I'll push back a little on that too, because I feel, again, we're, we're probably going to keep falling back and collapsing into the both and. Sarah: Yeah. And the privilege note, it's a huge, huge note. And then the question is, is, okay, what are we going to do with our privilege? Not do we have to feel shame that we have it? Not should we deny that we have it? I've been confronted by women of color. On this journey about my privilege and I do carry some shame around it and some guilt around it and to be honest, I also, you know, carry some gratitude, like some relief that I got this life that I got. Sarah: But then the next question for me is, okay, if that's what I got, then how can I use what I got for the good of all? And so there is something about titrating between serving and doing your inner work because you can get into your inner work and I call it the self realm and selfistry and you could just spend your whole life spending in the self realm, healing your trauma and you know, and it can become a certain self absorption. Sarah: And a self importance that is debilitating. This again is where the nuance comes in. How do you know, should I be doing trauma work? Should I go out and feed the poor? Should I, you know, work on my own health and my diet? Should I take care of my kids? And the answer is it's a case by case self inquiry. Sarah: There is no one size fits all. You are on, and again, it's that paradox that you speak beautifully to, like, we're alone in the forest on our hike, but we're never alone. We're a part of this whole organism that's living and breathing with us and as us. So, it's living in that paradox, which is what I speak to in the selfistry book as well, these deep esoteric teachings that aren't that complex or complicated to understand, that can really help frame. Sarah: What we're up to and what's possible. Monica: Yeah. And maybe I love that this has become the portal into your work. And I would love to dive in more because you really have mapped this out. Like, let's say we were to use what's happening in the world right now as our backdrop, and when I say this, I'm. Referring to what's happening in Israel and Palestine and all over the world, really, because we're all impacted so deeply by this. Monica: And by the way, I want to acknowledge that even that I feel is. Us as a human species moving toward more and more unity and connection, and I'm going to call that really a good thing that we're all so impacted and affected by this because there was a time in my life where it was happening over there and I didn't feel, I didn't feel how I'm feeling, I didn't feel like I was coming out of my skin. Monica: In fact, I didn't. I wasn't really, wasn't really on my radar. Yep. And it is so on my radar. And I'm noticing that everyone in my space and everyone around me are, are being deeply, deeply impacted by this. And so this is where I find your works to be so helpful. So I'd love for you to take the reins here and just frame more, tell us more about selfistry and just, Where it began for you, your why behind it, and then we can talk more about how our listener can practice some of this. Sarah: So it began with my feeling lost in the woods, my version of that at 22 with a second. Pregnancy unwanted pregnancy. So, and that resulted in a second abortion. So I was 22. I just had two pregnancies within a year and two abortions. And it basically wrecked me even though I was raised. Um, so I was born in the sixties, you know, coming of age in the late seventies, early eighties, and then into the eighties. Sarah: And I felt liberated, you know, privileged white woman, you know. I'm second generation, first second, second generation American. My ancestors are from Eastern Europe and I just felt liberated like I can have an abortion, you know, and but it wrecked me on some deep level and that set me on my quest and the quest was more like, you know, does anybody really know what's going on around here or how to do this human thing? Sarah: And so I went back to my roots, which is. Judaism and studied Kabbalah and I was raised in a, in a conservative Jewish family. So I had, I know, spoke the language, read the language and really took a deep dive into it. And I also went to psychotherapy and I also started studying yoga and also Native American traditions. Sarah: And I really started to dive into where are the wisdom teachings because growing up in the family that I grew up in, it was very culturally Jewish, but I didn't feel a spiritual connection. You know, it was very. Felt very disconnected from what I would maybe call God. And so my quest ended up taking me to Southern Oregon, where I met a man who was just a few years older than I was, who was also on this quest, and had been living in San Francisco, studying Zen and Eastern traditions, and felt like there were so many teachers who So this was a time when a lot of the Eastern teachings were coming to the West. Sarah: There was a lot of male teachers coming, not knowing how to handle their sexuality or being in the West. So Sam is the name of the man I give him in my book to protect him and his innocence. And so Sam basically said, I just need to sit down and shut up. On my own, like I trust that if I do these meditation practices and yoga and pranayama, which are breathing practices, that insight will come that quote unquote enlightenment will come. Sarah: So the short story, and you can read more about this in the book being selfish, is that I said to Sam, I'd like to take a sabbatical. I was teaching fifth grade. I'd like to take a sabbatical and come and meditate with you for a year. And he said, yes. And that year ended up being 10 years of really dedicated practice and study Monica: Like a monastic life. Sarah: Yes. It was very, we were both, um, celibate monks basically living together and we practice meditation and silence, which was my favorite. We fasted. Um, we lived a very, very simple life. We had a garden. I did not work. We didn't interface with the outside world. I cut off my relationship with all my friends and my family. Sarah: And I really took this very, very deep inner dive with him in a small group of people. Cause I mentioned Heather Ash was part of the link to that very small community. And Sam provided me the opportunity to just Sit down, shut up and listen. And this goes back to what we were saying earlier, like to slow down. Sarah: The wisdom is in us. We're so running on autopilot of what we're chasing after and believing. And these are, there's a neuroscience to this. Those neural pathways are habitually firing. We have generational trauma that's mapped in our neurophysiology. All of these teachings that are coming to light today that many of the listeners are familiar with. Sarah: are accessing to, to try and reorient. I feel like we're in this grand reorientation moment as a species. So my 10 years broke something open inside of me, you could say. And that realization brought me back into the world. Sam was not interested in coming back into the world. He's still out there doing the radical monk thing. Sarah: And I said, Sam, all the best to you, you know, and, and there's a place for that. Like the space that he created for me to do that was just such a huge gift. And so. I will forever love him and be grateful to that opportunity. And then coming back into the world, I knew I wanted to be of service in some way. Sarah: It was actually nine 11 that cracked my heart open. You know, it's sort of like what you were saying that on some level you weren't necessarily tapped into what was happening in the world. And then something shifted at some point and now tuned in like. 9 11 got in to our little bunker, where nothing else did. Sarah: We didn't have TV, we didn't have radio, we didn't So it's a mystery. It was beautiful how it got in and then how that ushered me out. And so that was 20 years ago, and in the last 20 years I've been integrating that experience and that perspective. And I'll pause here for a moment to see if you have any questions before I then answer the next question that you posed. Monica: You're seeing a smirk on my face because I have really wanted to go where Sam is many times where I've been like that that actually that lifestyle feels so appealing. To me. Well, I also learned that I'm like, part of my human design is hermit and the other part. So I have the, like, the other part is opportunist. Monica: So I have like the, I have to wear the, like the, I hate people shirt some days. And I love people. It's very bipolar. Yeah. But the point that I'm making is that that. Is such a beautiful thing that you had that experience and that, and that you were called back to the world after 10 years of really, wow, that is, I'm so curious what it was like for you to come back to the world. Monica: And that would be my question is like, what was it like to come back to the world? Were you overstimulated? Were you. Sarah: Super hard, super hard. And one of those moments where I questioned myself, but I also didn't, you know, it's like the daring to know what, you know, like I knew if anything, what's sitting quietly and letting. Sarah: The discursive mind and the beliefs kind of, they don't disappear. They just recede into the background and something else comes online. I call that the witness. The first step is the witness to be able to just sit with your desires. And be able to observe them now, one caveat for people who have a lot of psychological disorientation that sometimes meditation in this way, isn't the best first step that there needs to be some work in the cell phone. Sarah: That can help us just recalibrate. Sometimes it's through meds. Sometimes it's through therapy. Sometimes it's through plant medicine. Sometimes it's through somatic work, a way to just reorient the self enough so that you can step into the place inside of you. That's able to witness the self. It's not dissociated. Sarah: It's present and curious. It's like Ram Dass calls it loving awareness, right? So there's this open curiosity. So I knew when I left my retreat that it was the right thing to do, but all my selves right in my self realm got activated and they were scared and excited, right? What are you doing? Or yay, but there were like, finally we're getting out of prison. Sarah: That's not romanticize those 10 years. Try sitting in meditation for 10 or 12 hours a day. I know. I'm like, uh, days in a row. I mean, it is hard. Work to be with yourself and to be bored in a way, you know? Monica: Well, and I wanted to piggyback on what you're saying and also say, you don't have to go and do that in order to have this experience that you're speaking of. Monica: Correct. And as, and I was saying, like, I feel I am actually a good model for other ways of, I didn't do the 10 years. What you're speaking of has been very true for me. It's been a very gradual process that has allowed me to become more and more familiar with what you're calling the witness or what some of us would call our higher self or what some of us might call our inner sage or what's, so whatever the, the language is for other people. Sarah: Yeah. Beautiful. And it's, you know, I say to people, sometimes I did 10 years, so you don't have to, but that notion of what we were saying earlier, being able to slow down and put our attention into this capacity and into this interior landscape, that's the kind of slow that you don't have to be a person of privilege in order to create space for that. Sarah: Because it's more about quality and the quality of our attention than it is about quantity, just like a slow life in the way that bio is talking about. It also is not about speed. It's about attention and it's about nervous system. It's about having a nervous system that is regulated and that is able to be present with what's actually happening here and now. Sarah: So, yay for that, and that's, I'm all about that, and that's what selfistry really is, it's a simple system to help people grow their witness capacity and lean into source, and that's what I want to speak to for a moment now, because it answers your question about how are you, how am I, framing Living in these times, right? Sarah: Specifically what's, you know, had we spoken two years ago, we would have been talking about the pandemic. Then we would have been talking about Ukraine. Then we've been talking about the American political system, you know, and now we're talking about Palestine and Israel, which is Obviously ancestrally really close to my body, heart, and soul. Sarah: And so there's a way in which my body is taking it personally, even though my mind is quite liberated from identifying as a Jew, which I really don't identify as that. If anything, I identify as the witness, but I recognize the mask that I wear or the self or the part of my personality, my ancestry, my history. Sarah: That carries that Jewish line, but here's the thing, what I realize in retreat is that I'll say it this way. I realize source, I'll call it source because that's what I call it in selfistry because it's the Eastern orientation towards what happens when you really like just right before you're going to die or when you really quiet down the system and there's this vast emptiness. Sarah: And it's quiet and it's empty, but it's full and it's expansive, but it envelops you. It's safe and it's terrifying. I mean, it's, it's, it's this, what, you know, many traditions will call in, in Judaism, it's called the Ein Sof, the without end, you know, it's called the great spirit. It's called emptiness. It's called by all these different names, the void. Sarah: Yeah. And it got To be called God at some point. And so that's, you know, where the story starts to take a different turn. And we could go there, but I don't want to go there right now. The purity of source it from the metaphysical perspective is that we There's only energy here. Like relax, everybody. Sarah: There's nothing to worry about. Death is perfectly safe. And it's not that you don't exist, but you exist in the context of this great mystery and it's just happening. It's in control. You're not. So that metaphysical frame really helps to then lean into, and I'm here having a human experience, the both and. Sarah: And what I've discovered over the last, I want to say, 10 years, because the first 10 years I was pretty much of a emptiness zealot. What I realized, and you'll love this, is what I realized is that is the masculine face. Of source, the feminine face is what you could call Gaia and so it's from the metaphysical perspective. Sarah: Everything's okay on the very physical, biological, cellular level. Everything's okay, too. It's like life itself knows how to live and we are a part of that life. We're not separate from it. Just like we are energy and matter were one. Organism. Again, this is where language gets weird and the listener might have a different language for it. Sarah: But if you just feel for a moment, what, you know, Monica and I are pointing to here, there's a big frame that's holding us. That's perfectly safe. And there's this human experience where. I'm looking at her face on this machine. She's living on the other side of the country. She's nodding to me. We're having this connection. Sarah: We're having this human experience and we want to make it more magnificent and more beautiful and more fun. for everyone. So how can we hold the frame of everything bad that's happening is fine. Look at nature. It does quote unquote, bad things, hard things, difficult things, all fine. And leaning into the ouch, but we could be having so much more fun. Sarah: Don't you think we could be taking care of the planet rather than raping it? Don't you think maybe more of us can be doing that? Right? So, so that's, that's the game I'm playing. That's the life myself is devoted to. But when I start to really freak out, I just go on my meditation cushion, and I just relax as Source, as Gaia, and trust her, and trust the life that's living us, and listen deeply. Sarah: That's where I listen from. This goes back to the beginning of our conversation. That's where I listen from. What's mine to do today, you know? This morning, I woke up a little bit sad, and sat on my meditation, and I'm like, what do I have to do today? And, you know, the answer was, just talk to Monica. Just Just talk. Sarah: That's all you got to do. Right. That's all you got to do. Everything will be good. Monica: Okay. Monica: There's so much here that you just said that I am like absolutely loving this conversation and I I want to laugh at myself because I'm like, I want to get this right, but what I'm really doing is just checking in about a couple of things that you said, because you said you, you'll love this, the emptiness was, was the masculine. Monica: So am I to hear that the feminine is like the fullness, everything that's happening is trustworthy. Yes. And the emptiness is where we, where these two meet. Yes. The empty and the full. Is in this place of creation of something new. Sarah: Yes, which you'll find in every esoteric tradition speaks to that, that polarity, it makes a third. Sarah: It's the Trinity, the Holy Trinity. It's everywhere. So, yes. Monica: Right, which is exactly what you point to when you do your diagram in the book is you point to the way that these three things occur. And I want to. Underscore for my listener that you heard Celine Lily talk of this third thing, this third entity, this third creation with thunder perfect mind that actually in that particular episode, what she was talking about was that this divine feminine being was having a thunder moment. Monica: Or was thunder speaking herself that was talking about, I am the whore and the Holy one, she was canceling the opposites and in doing so creating a third thing. Okay. Sarah: Nice. The only place where I'm going to caution us here is that my sense of it is that we want to identify that third thing, not in order to collapse. Sarah: The polarities of emptiness and fullness, but in order to amplify them, enhance, enhance, integrate, those are good words, right? The holy dance, because right now we get fixated, and you can take this teaching on to any polarity, right? Monica: Okay, so keep going. Right. You want to get fixated back and that's that forgetting. Monica: It's like the either or or the both and right. And what what I call the sacred and because it somehow takes the forgetting and even makes that sacred. Sarah: I love that. That's so beautiful. The sacred and Monica: Well, because that's just what we do right as human beings. And actually, it's really interesting. Well, you would appreciate this understanding, forgetting, actually, as I think there's a word for it, but it's in the, at least the Buddhist realm, I think it means forgetting, like suffering, forgetting and suffering are the same thing. Sarah: Yeah. Well, in Hebrew, the word for sin, chet, is actually means you're just missing the mark. It's not like you're bad or wrong or you're in trouble. You're just like, you need the sacred and like move to the other pole. That's all, you know? Monica: Right. And so there is this dance, there is this continuous movement. What I'm hearing is it's not static. Sarah: It's artistry. I call it artistry. Monica: Okay. It's artistry. So, so take us, take us higher. Monica: Take us to the next place. Sarah: We just went to the highest. There is no higher. Libby: Unbecoming. Adjective. Not flattering, shocking, unsuitable, not appropriate, unseemly. What does it mean to be in the unbecoming? For me, it's been years of unbinding myself from the impossible rules and expectations it is to be a woman. Breaking the chains my mother wore, and her mother wore, and her mother's mother wore. Libby: Refusing to settle for what patriarchy and trauma were trying to mold me into. It's unbecoming to sit that way. Cross your legs. It's unbecoming to speak up like that. Be polite. It's unbecoming for a woman to be sexual. Don't be a slut. It's unbecoming to express anger. Put on a happy face. These are just a few of the insane messages I was waterboarded with by culture, advertising, TV, and even by many of my well intentioned female role models. Libby: But the ultimate bind is that the only way for me to heal requires me to be exactly all of the most unbecoming things a woman could be. It requires me to express my rage and make it right instead of making it wrong. It requires me to include my grief and allow my tears to fall. It requires me to stop asking for approval and to approve of my own damn self. Libby: It requires me to be in full ownership of my intense sexual and sensual power. It requires me to put myself before others, even when speaking my truth pisses people off. And believe me, it pisses people off. It requires me to be scared and sometimes even scary. In other words, Not flattering, shocking, unsuitable, not appropriate, unseemly. Libby: The only way to become who you're meant to be is to unbecome from these impossible binds you think are keeping you safe when they are really keeping you stuck. More space and freedom to live fully are on the other side of this work and you are so worth it. Libby: Enrollment is officially open for our four month unbecoming coaching circle and sisterhood and we kick off in January of 2024. Libby: This is an intimate space, so spots are limited. I'm inviting you to be the most unbecoming you the patriarchy could imagine. Will you unbecome from the binds of patriarchal programming with us? Check out the details and book a call with me, Libby Buntin, and your favorite Monica Rogers by going to jointherevelation. Libby: com slash unbecoming. That's jointherevelation. com slash unbecoming. See you there, sister. Monica: So we have this piece, which you call selfistry is to know thyself and that is. An invitation for everyone to know themselves and what I've come to really recognize is that that seems to be the scariest place for people to be is in the void, in the quiet of their own mind. Thank you. Experience because it's not because it's anything but quiet, you see, and these are these voices that you're speaking of that, you know, you said for 10 years, like you think this is easy. Monica: It's really not an escape. It's very much confronting in so many ways. All of these torturous voices that come to distract us. Tell us we're crazy. Tell us. So. We're not enough. Monica: Tell us that we're unworthy, whatever the internal programming is, because this is actually such a great segue to pull the trance up and say, all of those voices that. Monica: Mind chatter, the monkey mind is Monica: the trance. Sarah: Yeah, all of it. Sarah: And this is where it gets tricky because what you're speaking to, I feel in these times for people of all ages of all backgrounds, there's this rising up of the self inquiry process. So, and we're seeing the extremes of self absorption, but ideally the self inquiry process is a way of. Sarah: Knowing the nature of our mind, and our psyche, and our soma, our bodies. Sarah: And, in the process of knowing ourselves, we actually come to know the other, because though the flavor of your psyche might be a little bit different, colored rainbow, right, you have a different design than mine, the notion of detaching Not becoming non attached, but detaching, which to me just means putting it in its proper place. Sarah: It's, again, this sacred reorientation. So all of these neuropathways is a way to call them. You call them trances, traumas, psychological states, habits, patterns. Monica: Internalized programming. Sarah: Internalized programming? Monica: Whatever phrase works for you, yes, absolutely. Sarah: Yes, and whatever tools that you can use to learn to start to observe it. Sarah: And here's the tricky thing where I feel like it's helpful to have a guide. Because, If you don't understand the objective of a meditation practice, what you just said is highly likely and probable for many people is they'll sit down. No quiet will come. They'll just be the raging what I call selves or all these different voices and that come to life that can lead to a psychotic breakdown for real. Sarah: And so there's a way in which you want to, you know, slow, caution, take a moment, learn the map. That's why I offer a map. I'm like, before you go delving into your psyche, can we just orient it on the map of your soul, of spirit, of God, of form, of formlessness? Let's find a language. You can call source whatever you want. Sarah: Let's just make sure we're talking about the same thing as best as we can. You can call the cell phone, whatever you want. Let's just make sure we're talking about the same thing Area the same landscape and then when we talk about the witness Let's make sure we're really talking about and then you can start to see how the artistry can happen and the quiet of source Becomes more accessible when the psyche or the self is not freaking out about its own death or its own demise. Sarah: And then lo and behold, when that artistry starts happening, and I know you've experienced this, all these other selves, all these other potentials of ourselves start to come forward. They've like been in the background dominated by our trance or our training or our domestication. This is the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. Sarah: Coming forward with love and creativity and play and, and that's to circle it all the way back to that my time with Sam, that I realized much later, not at the time. Sarah: There was such a deep healing for me to just live a simple life. I got to bake bread. I lied, got to have a garden. I got to sew my own clothes. Sarah: I didn't go shopping. I didn't do my hair. I didn't do my nails. I didn't, everything was, was voluntary simplicity. And there was something in my whole organism that went, Whoa, this is. This is what human animals are supposed to be doing and take it from there. It doesn't mean technology is bad or cars are bad or look at none of that. Sarah: It's just coming from that place of creativity and love and connection and recognizing who and what we are and what life and death really mean. Sarah: That's if we can reorient that we start to have different conversations, we start to have different relationships with food, with sex, with families, with buildings, with technology, and all of the quote unquote problems that we're noticing start to, I don't know if we solve them, but we engage with them in generative ways. Monica: You know, what I'm hearing in your time with Sam was that you got to Be with yourself, right? Like you got to be with yourself and it was the simplicity that was such a gift because it took all of the noise and the distraction and all of the ways that we're taken away. Beautiful. From being with what's here now, what's here now, how about now? Monica: How about now? Because there is nothing else to take you away. So you're present, right? You're present to yourself and you're considering yourself in a way that you've never considered yourself before, which is the opposite actually of the selfishness. Yes. It's actually a self compassion and kindness that considers the self in its relationship to source, which in a lot of cases is its relationship to everything. Sarah: Amen. Sister. There's the genius in the room coming through you right there. Monica: Oh my God. I get it. I get it. I have full body chills. Sarah: Me too. Full body. Monica: Now you say. On page 84, I've like just got it highlighted the ones, the, the sentence of brilliance here. Okay. Soon the realm of source is where the self regularly turns for inspiration and revelation without an intermediary and without fear. Sarah: Beautiful. Monica: So I want to know, tell us now more about the witness because when I hear the word intermediary, I'm like, well, the witness is not an intermediary. The witness is simply a witness. So tell us more about the witness. And then I want to talk about fear. Sarah: My experience is that when I can stop and pause and be present. Sarah: Like you just spoke to, and all my years of practice, which is why I teach practices that help grow these capacities, the witness is like another neural pathway. It's simply the self inside of us or the part inside of us that can be fully present and isn't lost. Thanks. Thanks. worried or scared. It's just curious. Sarah: It's really wondrous. And from that place, turning towards source, there's no fear there. Like it recognizes itself as source and as a self, the, the, it's divinity and it's humanity, it's formlessness and it's form. So the witness can like hold both. That's why it's like the third thing, right? And so then let's say I'm having, I'm wondering about Um, my programs for selfistry, let's say, and I'm, I'm looking for inspiration and I'm looking for guidance. Sarah: It's like, okay, how do I know? Should I offer this program? Should I charge this much? So first I get busy with all of the self realm stuff, which is what will the market bear? What did I charge last year? How many people are on my list? You know, all that good, very, you know, sacred masculine structure, good stuff. Sarah: I do all that stuff. Some people call it the right, left, right, and stuff. Then I just get quiet. And I just, I open and, and I let the witness come forward to observe all the thinking and strategizing I've done and then I just land in my body and I land in the space and I have, you know, my little corner, my meditation and my altar and my And then I listen. Sarah: That's when I turn to Source. I'm like, Source, ultimately, I know you're in charge. You're everything, right? So, I know this may be a stupid question, but without going through Jesus, or a rabbi, or an imam, Or an elder or, and not to say that intermediaries aren't valuable because for many of us they are, but only if they're legit, right? Sarah: And legit means they work for you. And just because they work for your mom doesn't mean it's going to work for you. So this is something else we have to sort out as we go. Mother Mary may work for people. Doesn't work for me. Source, direct connection to source works for me, but source is also Gaia and nature. Sarah: So, so for me, then I might go for a walk in nature and I might just listen in nature as well as in my very Zen Buddhist meditation practice. And then the inspiration comes and you know what, Monica, sometimes it doesn't come on my timeline. Monica: Really? Sarah: Cause sometime. Yeah. Monica: It doesn't? Sarah: You think after 10 years, it would be on demand. Monica: No. I know. I know. I'm like, okay, thank God. You know, like it's just one of those things. Is this ever going to get easier? And of course it does, but it is this practice or this remembering of, okay, now that I've put all the logistics out on the table. Okay. Monica: Now I need to like, just relax with what is and listen. And so what I'm hearing you say is that the witness is where kind of it all gets to belong. Yes. It's where we go into the trustworthy part of it, which is more to be revealed is what I call it. Monica: I call that place the revelation project. Sarah: I love it. Sarah: Yeah. Monica: It's the place where there's more to be revealed and that we actually don't know until we know. Exactly. And that we can also say, well, I don't know, but I'm going to put this foot forward and see what happens. And that is also living your revelation project. Partnering with The entity of myself, but in this very generative, open handed way that is of service to something bigger than myself, actually. Monica: Okay, so I love this and I'm curious what my next passage is that I highlighted. Sarah: Well, one thing I want to say about the fear there also is to remember because this is so here's another like new age trance that says that, oh, and when I get good at doing this, it means all my desires will get manifest. Sarah: And so I really want to call out bullshit on that one because I feel like so many people are susceptible to that. I, you know, call it a lie. It's not, it's just not true. Like often, and this is the thing, often sitting in that place, you will get asked to end a relationship. You will get asked to maybe surrender to your cancer and not go through treatments anymore. Sarah: You will get asked to not be in communication with the child of yours. You will be asked very hard things that aren't what a lot of yourselves would desire. And that's where The regular practice, the deep dedication and devotion to not my, but thy will for real is like, well, that's why our ancestors, you were raised Catholic, that's why they prayed three times a day, not just because they had nothing better to do. Sarah: The originators of every religion, I believe were devoted and dedicated to their relationship with source and to listen and to trust and to do good in the world from that place. I believe. Fully in that intention, and so that often meant being asked to do hard things, which our culture doesn't like endings. Sarah: It doesn't like death. It doesn't like grief. It doesn't like fear. And somehow we think we can just eradicate all that stuff and get whatever we want on demand. And yeah, even Netflix, we're not getting everything we want on demand anymore, right? Nothing does that. Monica: Well, I also, what it's actually bringing up in me in this moment too, is this. Memory, which is also connected to Heather Ash, which is so funny. She's all over this interview, which I love. Sarah: Oh, I love it. Yay. Monica: But so Clark Strand, who Sophie Strand and Perdita Finn and Clark are all part of the family, and they've all been on this podcast. Oh, yay. And Clark wrote a book called waking up to the dark and what I loved so much about his book, and he'll be on in the next, he'll be on it actually in the new year to talk about this book, waking up to the dark. Monica: But what it's making me think of Sarah is he talks about. When we were familiar with the dark, we understood that the holy hours or the hours where we came into communion with spirit were in those those We hours where you might wake up from three to four thirty. And that's when you would commune or listen or discern or make love or whatever the thing was, but what he was talking about was this, again, this spaciousness where you weren't waking up like fear, like, why am I awake? Monica: Like I should be sleeping through the night that there were these very natural rhythms that came with having enough darkness in your life. Gorgeous. So it's like, Oh my gosh, it makes me think of what you're saying, because again, it's this way that we've been conditioned go at what I call the patriarchal pace, but also that there's this Dragging everything to the bright, I could say bright side, but also into the bright light all the time. Monica: And it's okay. Yes. But where's the balance there actually? Because the darkness, the feminine journey is so much about, and this includes men too, this part of our, our. Involution or our, our inner verse that is inviting us to go in and down into what we call the descent into the place of the darkness, where we actually, so some might call this the void, the silence, the right, but there's so much of this occurs for me in this place of remembering, like, Oh yeah, like I remember and connecting the dots. Monica: I feel like the more we can kind of catch glimpses of these places as we're practicing, but to actually begin this practice of creating, maybe it begins with just creating more space. You were going to tell us more about how you had said for some of us, it's not going right into meditation. It's starting with maybe a walking. Monica: Contemplation, or maybe it's other things you want to mention, but I'd love to spend the next few minutes talking about just some suggestions for people to really begin to tap in. To themselves in a deeper way and what that invitation might look like from you. So I was actually just loving this passage that I came upon. Monica: And I, it might be a good segue here in selfistry. We're not looking to dissolve into source forever. Still, we are looking to have some time there. It's upon our emergence from this dissolution. When we must be cautious in the self's effort to understand what it encountered there, it will begin to weave a story, but the experience is not the story. Monica: And the story is not the experience. The experience is key. The story is not so. I love what this is speaking to, because as I asked you, it's like we talk about what is it to begin getting into a practice, to touch into whatever our source is, to begin to develop the witness. Yep. And. What I hear in that is it's like that Chinese or Eastern, at least philosophy of like down seven up eight, it's this way of tapping in to whatever is going on, but coming back to the surface of life. Monica: With something new that you've seen or that you've revealed or that you're integrating and it then helps you out in the world. So it's the more we can do this, all of us, every one of us, which is to find that quality, whatever that is of the silence and encounter it to actually. Get curious about it and listen as we are talking about, and this is where I want to turn it over to you is because I feel like there are all of these illusions about how it it's supposed to be. Monica: So how in the modern world, when we're no longer waking up to the dark, or maybe we are. But using those moments instead of being fearful of them, actually engaging with them in a way that is nourishing. Sarah: Yeah, it's a beautiful question. And the first thing that comes up for me is to encourage people to two things. One, trust that life is on their side. So that what you and I are talking about here today, and many others, you mentioned Clark, and Paul, and lots of other teachers are talking about, that life is on your side, and that there is support for you. There are teachings that, and practices that can help you. And here's the thing, and I'd be curious to get your perspective on it as well, what I'm noticing with my students, and the women and men who are drawn to spend time with me, to learn with me, to practice with me, Is there something about having a personal relationship with a guide? Sarah: So I become the, I am not the guru. I'm the guide. So I'm the person like that's walking with you. So, so there's something about having that intimate relationship. Now, here's the thing. It's not scalable from a business perspective, right? So anybody in the field that we're in as far as. Teaching spiritual teachings or awakening or whatever you want to call it. Sarah: It's tricky because the kind of intimacy and the kind of relationship I'm talking about is not scalable, but it is organically growable. And if there's enough of us, right, we start to like mycelium, right. Which is something Sophie talks a lot about, right. We'll start to connect with each other and support each other. Sarah: We spoke about me and Heather Ash and you and your partner. And, and there's a way in which we start to really. Be that guide for each other. And so, especially when you're beginning, right? And none of us are really beginners. Anybody who's asked, who's listening to this has been asking the question, who am I? Sarah: Why am I here? What the hell is going on for a little while, at least. So then the next step is the slow, slow down and call Monica. You're listening to her podcast right now. Call her, dive into her work a little bit. Talk to her. See if there's resonance there. Call me, check into my work. See if there's resonance here. Sarah: Find somebody who can grow with for a while to get your footing. And then you can. Start to spread your wings. There's lots of, and I outsource a lot of teachers in the cell phone and I bring in all sorts of teachings and teachers just like you're doing so beautifully in this podcast. So for the listener, it's like trust that life is on your side and follow that little kernel that crumb that's sitting in your lap right now, listening to Monica and I have this conversation and take the next step. Monica: Mm hmm. I love that. And I love that you brought up the scalability because this is, Oh gosh. I mean, back to like the, the need for it is so urgent and it's so paradoxical. Monica: And what I'm finding actually is that this is scalable in sisterhood. Sarah: Nice. Yes. Monica: When I say that, I don't mean to be exclusive, because it sounds like we're not including men in that, but there's a wisdom in this part of it first, because what I'm finding, Sarah, is that women need to remember that In order to, and there's this way that in sisterhood, we're actually kind of like being guided along the heroine's journey in a way that we don't have to suffer like you going out for 10 years or me having a nine month dark night of the soul that almost took my life. Monica: So it actually. Brought me into an awareness about what is possible without needing to suffer to that degree. Right. And to be able to come back to the world, to be able to go down seven, come up eight, to come back to the world with an insight that actually is that women, we have to remember in order to then expand the circle. Monica: And bring the men in, but it's, it's, there's some kind of remembering that's happening. And I don't need to gender this, but there's something in me that is saying actually that in order to break the trance, that the trance busting part of it is where I feel. Because I want to go back to where we started this conversation and I'm not attached to this. Monica: I'm just saying, this is my theory is that if women were not. In the trance, if there hadn't been so much suppression of the feminine and why I think we're having all of this chaos is that it is actually the path to more consciousness and with that, there's a lot of suffering and so. If we're to come together in community and in sisterhood, what we're able to do in sisterhood is to create a context for us to witness each other while we are simultaneously developing the witness in ourselves. Monica: Yes. And that it's through the witnessing that we remember. It's almost all of those fractured parts. We're calling them home because I can see my part in Amy and I can see my part in Libby and I can see another part of me over here in Sarah and all of them are representing parts of myself. And so it's actually achieving the goal quicker, but actually through the practice of slowing down. Sarah: Yes. Beautiful. Monica: And then, and what I find is what I've learned about the heroine's journey is that when we come back to the feminine, we're including the masculine and we're healing and integrating now. So, I don't know, there's something there for me about the scalability of it in sisterhood. Sarah: I love that. I think I'd offer just a slightly reframe or slight reframe to that. If when I go meta, when I go meta, I see as a function of community. So, and I think the men, when we go another octave down, I do feel like the sisterhood and this is traditional societies, many of them, the women would be with the women and the men would be with the men, at least for a period of time in their coming together. Sarah: And so, so I do feel like as there is this awakening to the, the metacrisis, we would say. That women are being called to come together to heal their womanhood in a way that we can't do with men. But when we do do it, we bring the men along with us in beautiful ways. And, and I have a husband who's doing a lot of the men work with his brothers and how they orient in business in the world and what they're doing for the planet and what they're doing for their families and, and coming together in a certain way. Sarah: that feeds that collective, you know, is, I think it was Thich Nhat Hanh that said, the next Buddha will come in the Sangha, right? So it's like the next, and there's talk, you know, there's even talk in the next Messiah in the monotheistic traditions. It's, it comes in the form of community waking up to the revelation. Sarah: To the remembering that we're all one organism here. And my, what happens to me impacts you. What happens to you impacts me. And, and I also think people of color are coming together to remember in certain ways, and because of the traumas are the same in a way, there's value. It doesn't feel. If that's a word like segregating, it actually feels rejuvenating for us women to come together in the way that you beautifully spoke. Sarah: And selfistry actually has a practice, a somatic practice that does exactly what you described in witnessing each other. And then we feed the whole community from that place. Cause there is that subtle tendency to blame the patriarchy or to exclude men. And I just, I want to caution us. from, from doing that. Sarah: And I know you agree with me on that. And at the same time, celebrate the sisterhood, you know, Monica: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Back to the both. And yeah, exactly. And there being like the time and the place, right. For that, but, but knowing that that's actually the intention. Yes. It's is very helpful. Sarah: Totally. Monica: Because I think that that's where we're at. We're like longing, I think, to really see each other, listen to each other, hear each other. And so back to, you know, I want to circle back and come full circle. Maybe back to the wise, to the wise woman back to now, what I'm actually starting to see is that there's really cooperative or collaborative role here in the witness and the wise woman, that there's something there too, because I don't know, I'd have to like explore that more, but it feels, you know, the wise woman, um, This century is, I think, all about wisdom. Monica: This century is all about the, the facing all of these fears. It's about this time of great revelation of lifting all of these veils of illusion and staring the boogeyman we've been running from in the face. And so when I think of wisdom, I think about. Someone who has been able to cleave through the darkness and to actually come back to life with a higher perspective so that they're able to hold both and the individual perspective and the simultaneously with the, with the perspective of community and that that wisdom, but it's having gone through the darkness and allowing, you know, the darkness to be what it is that it. Monica: Okay. Actually transmutes and allows that metamorphosis to happen. So I don't know, it feels very esoteric or like out there, but it also feels very much. No, that feels really true to my experience that in order to be with what's happening in the world, not from a place of, I'm not suffering. I am, I'm in pain, but I'm not. Monica: In this reactionary needing to cause more harm or or feeling out of control in this way that I'm seeing so much more harm being done because we're. Choosing sides and not being very conscious or aware of the words that we're speaking or we're not being very generous with our listening. Sarah: Yeah, I guess what I would say to that is that there's a certain frequency and a certain cadence to wisdom that we all recognize. Sarah: I feel that's so deeply true. We really know on a very visceral level in our hearts and our bodies and in our minds, what is good and true and beautiful and the disorientation around it. Feeling safe enough to remember that, to drop into that, to move from that place of, of wisdom, of goodness, of kindness, is the disease of, of our species right now. Sarah: Somehow we've gone astray, and what we're experiencing is the process of coming home to ourselves. And it's, it's a little bit. bumpy, and it's a little bit chaotic, but it's also quite exquisite and quite generative and quite promising when we reorient in the way that you and I have been talking about for the last hour or so. Sarah: And so when we're able to really inhabit polarities, the dark and the light, the self and the other, the form and the formlessness, and make art From that place, we listen well, we play well, we create beauty, we are generative, we're generous, and at the same time, we fully honor that. Yesterday I had this insight, you'll get, you'll appreciate this. Sarah: I was at the dentist and I had nitrous, right? Which I love, right? So I had a nitrous moment and it was, you know, basically source was saying to me, sweetie, you're not meant to live forever because lately I've been feeling a little bit like, Oh, I'm, I'm getting old and I'm feeling sad. Like my husband's going to die at some point, like in that, you know, just the grief and the tenderness of the impermanence of my human life. Sarah: And source is basically saying, sweetie. You're not meant to live forever, and life never dies. So just be in service, just keep showing up for that. You're doing great, you know. And so that's what I would say to our listener, you know, none of us were meant to live forever or always have the sun shining bright, but the lives we have been given are a holy mystery. Sarah: And when we can remember that and, and slow down enough to inhabit that. We do good things. We do. We do really good things. Monica: We do good things. I love that. Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, and amen for nitrous. Sarah: Yeah. For so many reasons. Monica: Oh my gosh. Yes. And I also want to invite the listener to Go back and revisit. Monica: If you haven't yet, there is an episode that I did called the secret dowry of Eve. And I think it piggybacks nicely with what we're talking about today, because what Glenda Lee Hoffman talks about is that, and this ties in with so many of the teachings that I've brought to the podcast of Lynn twist and the Sofia century or what she calls the century of wisdom. Monica: Um, And it's so many indigenous cultures as well have talked about this as the return of the divine feminine or the return of the feminine to our consciousness. What's really interesting is that when Glinda Lee Hoffman wrote this book, it was 20 years ago, and she was studying at the time, the Kabbalah or the language of light, like the Hebrew alphabet. Monica: She had to pull over on the side of the road because. It was only through contemplating these letters that she came to learn that the letters, the language of light would reveal itself to her. And what it was telling her basically was that we're still in the seventh day of creation. That if we were to look through the lens of the Genesis story, that it was actually a story about the development of the human brain and that the frontal cortex. Monica: Is the feminine part of the brain that comes online and unites the opposites. Nice. And it's the time where the wisdom begins to occur for us as we get into a more settled nervous system. And the way that we do that is by practicing. More of this spaciousness, more of this quiet, or finding a guide. As you mentioned, Sarah, to lead us through some of the somatic practices that can help us remember what it felt like to be free. Sarah: Yeah, or even to just share the stories like that. That's a beautiful stories. And we said, you know, the story about source is not the experience of source, but the stories can ignite and orient us towards, okay, the frontal cortex can integrate the polarities in the brain, right? And what happens to the amygdala? Sarah: And what happens to the reptilian brain? And we're again, reorienting. That's a beautiful story. And it's resonant. Again, you can feel how there's something True. Now, whether it's going to come through the Hebrew letters for everybody, no, it diversity isn't inherent in the ecosystem of all life. No, but her telling that story from a place of experience, not just repeating the story, it activates something. Monica: It does. And it's all of these teachings like you coming in today. I feel like they're cumulative. Like at some point there's like a hop, like there's something to this. And so I think that that's sometimes also what we're looking for is enough evidence to be like, you know what, I'm going to sit down for 10 minutes today. Monica: Like, you know, no matter what. So you know, like if we've accomplished that today and I know we have in so much more than our work here is done. And I'm just, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here. These are both of Sarah's books. Monica: I highly recommend both. I'm still reading this one now, which I started this one. Monica: And then I went, I, so I started being selfish and then I stopped and did the small book first. And now I'm even more compelled to go back and read this one, because this is the story about you before you. Went down. So this was the down seven and this is the up eight. Sarah: Beautiful. And it's the heroine's journey. Sarah: And it's funny. I'm, I'm republishing. I'm doing, I'm publishing the second edition of that in the new year and I'm changing the title to redefining. Being selfish, my journey from escort to monk to grandmother. And I put in a whole section for book clubs with questions in the back. So that might be a fun thing to, for us to do, or for the listener to do is get a group of women together, read this story and then let's talk about what it ignites in you. Sarah: You're not going to ever go on retreat for 10 years. That's not the purpose of the story, but what does it ignite in you? Monica: I love that. I love that. So where does our listener go to learn more about you and what do you have going on in the next whatever so that we can be there, you know, be part of it. Sarah: Well, selfistry. com. That's where everything I'm doing is and where you can contact me. And everything is a little bit in flux right now around programming, but I do retreats three times a year. My signature retreat is in Mexico and that'll be next June. I'm doing one in Austin and one in the Pacific Northwest. Those are super fun. Sarah: And then I'm going to do. some online courses as well. And you can always work with me one on one. I do private mentoring. I love that as well. And yeah, or just when you're in the Bay Area, give a shout out and we can go for a walk on the beach. Monica: My gosh, I love it. Okay. And huge thanks to Heather Ash for, you know, making this connection. Monica: I have enjoyed this conversation so much. And for my listener, I'll be sure to put all of Sarah's links in the show notes and until next time more to be revealed. Monica: We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us at jointherevelation. com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. Monica: We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.