Transcript - from Kitchen Sinkin’ Your Magic Live on Magical Experiments Substack

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Welcome, everyone.

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This is Taylor Elwood with Magical Experiments,

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and today I’m happy to have Diana Rogel on from The Spirited Witch joining me as we

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end up talking about how to simplify magic.

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And as people pop in, I will briefly greet them unless we get a whole bunch of people.

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And if there are questions and comments, I will definitely read those aloud.

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But in the meantime, why don’t you introduce yourself?

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Tell us a little bit about who you are and

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We’ll get into it.

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Okay.

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Hi, I’m Diana Rachel.

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I am a sub-stacker from a while ago now.

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I run the Spirited Witch Practical Living for Spooky People.

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So more of a mouthful than I expected today.

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I am also the author of books you may or may not have heard of,

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like Urban Magic,

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A Guide for the City Witch,

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Hex Twisting,

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and these cute little Sabbath books for Maven and Samhain that I wrote a long time

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ago that have now followed me across countries,

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which is kind of fantastic.

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So that is me.

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Hi!

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Hi.

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Welcome, welcome.

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So welcome, Sheena.

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Welcome, Thion and Aya and Noctua.

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Glad to have you all here.

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As we end up talking about this, if you have comments or questions, feel free to drop those in.

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So,

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you know,

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I thought that it would be kind of fun to do an interview talking about how to make

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magic simpler.

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And part of this was because,

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you know,

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I kind of had a little back and forth where I made a note and then you kind of

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commented on how like sometimes you have the kitchen sink and learning to like let

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that go and

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I think this is not an uncommon thing, I think, for a lot of people.

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Like,

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people get into magic and,

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you know,

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they read a spell book or they read something else and they make it a lot more

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complicated because they’re thinking,

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like,

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I have to have all the things.

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I have to have the candles,

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the incense,

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the oils,

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the ritual clothing,

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the tools that I’ve handmade,

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all the other things.

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And it can be a little overwhelming.

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Yeah.

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And I have definitely...

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One, there is also the inner magpie aspects.

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Like I,

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I think you may have seen some of the pictures of my herb shelf and like my living

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room has my altar and my stuff.

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And you can see that there is a little bit of shiny hoarding going on.

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There really is.

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Um,

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But oddly, especially since I met my spouse, Sinti, and Sinti is very much an animist.

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Like, animist, animist.

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And it has shown me deeply how much I can simplify my work.

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So while I have all of the bells and whistles and I enjoy them,

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some days you can get by with just a bottle of water and conversation and you don’t

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even necessarily need the bottle of water.

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And that has been...

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It has required a radical worldview shift,

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but the old worldview hasn’t entirely gone away because folk magic works,

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spells work,

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and they work in this very visceral,

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easy-to-please-the-inner-child part of your brain.

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But then,

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unfortunately,

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if you’ve got an inner child with parent damage,

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there’s just where things can go awry.

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And so this is kind of where we ended up having the back and forth because I

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recently had a few things go awry because I was kitchen sinking everything in my

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life,

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including my spouse.

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Yeah.

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So first, I just want to welcome Allison and Elena to the call here.

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Welcome.

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And again, if you have questions or comments, please drop those in.

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So yeah, well, let’s talk about that because I think you make a really good point.

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There is a place and a purpose for having the ritual.

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And I mean,

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even though I am very much a person,

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I have a mantra kind of like get rid of the needless complexity in one’s life.

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Like I’m a firm believer in that.

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Get rid of the needless complexity,

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the things that you don’t understand or the things that are like that,

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that,

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that makes something far more complicated than it needs to be.

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I’m also a firm believer that it’s really important to,

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to incorporate the right elements in that sometimes the

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Having something that seems more complex is actually the right call because it

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makes a lot more sense.

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So, Sherry, I’m curious, like, what’s an example of kitchen syncing in this case?

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And what does it mean, actually?

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We just got a question from Aya.

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So that does a perfect segue into this.

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So kitchen sink is kind of a U S American aphorism where it was a running joke

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where like,

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if somebody was like ordering a super big sandwich with all of the fixings,

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they’d say all that in the kitchen sink,

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like throwing in everything in the kitchen.

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So that’s where that comes from.

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So we talk about kitchen sinking it.

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It’s for example, if I’m working on prosperity magic, I could just do something.

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I could just put out, you know, a ball of water with the Rose of Jericho and

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And if I’m feeling fancy, add a dime.

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But I am an overdue chronic overdoer.

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So there are times where I will have that

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20 minutes of some type of prayer ritual to go with it,

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a couple of candles burning,

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and sometimes it may do the whole casting sacred space,

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calling in different beings.

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When most of the time,

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the way things work with me,

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especially as I have really come into my city priesthood,

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again,

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it’s a bottle of water conversation and a crossroads.

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which I don’t even really have to walk that far to get to.

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So part of this is,

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I think,

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comes from,

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I was one of those 80s kids that got put in the gifted and talented programs,

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and I think that warped all of us that were in them.

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I don’t remember being given weird pills or anything,

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but I do remember they would put me with the kids that were more definitely

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neurodivergent,

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because even though my IQ was a little bit lower,

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I could persuade them not to do things that would end in destruction.

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So,

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and it did turn into this constant pressure of I had to prove why I was there,

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prove that I was good enough,

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prove that I knew what I was doing,

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and...

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It was that combined with kind of a very femme upbringing in a conservative home of

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with girls,

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it is always you are not doing enough.

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You are never good enough.

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You need to earn your keep.

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No one’s going to want you unless you are able to do all of this and look this way.

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And hey, kid, you’re not going to look this way.

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So you need to be able to do the other part times three.

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And so there is that damage coming in with it, too.

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And I’m not going to say it’s not even necessarily patriarchy.

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This is very much woman to woman transmission of damage.

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So which.

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Yeah, I know it’s a complex conversation.

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Well, it is interesting because, I mean, you know, as you know, I do.

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I also do a fair amount of work in like the men’s men’s workspace and stuff.

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And so one of the things that we end up talking about a lot is the not good enough wound.

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yeah and and so you know this is this is something that as a man i’ve definitely

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experienced like if i’m i’m not good enough if i’m not like getting the straight

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a’s i’m not good enough you know if i’m not excelling in sports i’m not good enough

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if i do all these other things so i think that there is something very there’s

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something very poignant about that and very profound and and it’s like yeah there’s

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this this bring this comes into our magic like

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Oh, if I don’t do this, it’s not going to be good enough.

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And so it becomes that sabotage that kind of almost in a way like it’s like,

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oh,

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OK,

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I’ve got to over magic in order to make sure the magic lands.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I think it is also that.

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And here’s the thing is when you first start practicing,

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especially if you’ve been raised in the that’s not real unless the church says it’s

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real or that’s not real unless it’s like a very defined physical way.

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So you’re actually going against all the voices telling you there’s no such thing.

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And then when you have a spell fail,

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there’s more of a sense of embarrassment to it because it failed because,

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well,

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what were you doing something so stupid for anyway?

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It wasn’t real.

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And that real,

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like,

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I see a lot of people who can’t quite get past the real,

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not real divide and

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I’ve been fortunate in that,

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you know,

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my childhood damage didn’t really involve a lot of church.

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And so I don’t have that,

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okay,

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if I’m going to work with a deity,

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and I don’t do a lot of deity work anymore,

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but,

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you know,

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if I’m going to invoke a deity,

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oh,

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is this deity going to be mad at me?

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Is this not going to be good enough if I approach,

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you know,

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am I going to get struck by lightning for saying the wrong thing?

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And I can tell you, I have pissed off one deity, I know for sure.

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It was very definitive.

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Very hard to miss.

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And it was definitely not from overdoing or underdoing.

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It was from being inappropriate.

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It’s very rare.

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It’s hard to fuck up that much.

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It takes a Diana level of fucking up.

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You can’t do that.

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I promise you.

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I want to welcome Hans,

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and we have a couple comments here,

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so I’m going to read the first one from Thion.

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He says he has a question.

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I have one.

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Do you ever feel forced to perform spells,

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or let’s say so strongly pulled that it’s easier if you do?

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Not for a long time, and this is before... So there is an intersection.

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So these days I tend to call myself a spirit worker almost more often than I call

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myself a witch.

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And

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Again, there’s overlap with everything.

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So the witch side tends to be more the spells.

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And the overlap is the spirit work where your spirits may push you to do certain things.

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And until you cross over into that comfort with recognizing spirits around you,

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you may not realize that they are what is pushing you.

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And if you can’t recognize that, you can’t set boundaries with them.

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The other part,

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but here’s the other part,

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because there is one,

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and again,

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I live with an animist who does heavy shadow work through dealing with the

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animistic spirits of emotions.

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There is one particular one that haunts me that I think haunts a lot of people,

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and that is anxiety.

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And anxiety, and so it takes some practice to discern between, is this my anxiety or

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Or is this a genuine spiritual call or an intuitive call to go,

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I need to move these moving parts into this position?

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And that discernment can be really tricky.

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And I don’t know where you’re at in your journey.

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If it’s near the beginning, it’s going to take a while to know one from the other.

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And what I would recommend is if you’re at the beginning level,

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set a schedule and set a bar one of the things that i i can’t remember where i read

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it recently or it was possibly like one of those motivation tiktoks that i will

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watch sometimes but someone talked about one of the problems we have with

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productivity culture and this actually goes back to the never enough thing is a lot

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of us never learn to set a bar for what enough actually is our parents didn’t set a

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bar it’s excel excel excel it’s capitalist thinking

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which is non-sustainable, and it is non-sustainable to our actual bodies.

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But setting a bar of after this is done, you know, okay, here’s where I’m done for the day.

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Here’s what I need to do for the week.

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Okay, it’s working and it’s no longer screaming.

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We’re good.

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And getting to that point,

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getting to that setting your bar for,

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okay,

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I’m going to do this much magic and we’re done.

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You know, it might be one spell.

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It might be, okay, I will repeat this spell once a week or three weeks, but set your bar.

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This way you get used to setting boundaries as you advance,

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as boundary setting and negotiation becomes more important in the day-to-day magic.

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Yeah, I am...

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I resonate with that.

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I mean,

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that’s kind of been my own experience that,

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you know,

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there was one time earlier in my magical life where I would be doing magic all the

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time and part of it would be kind of feeling like,

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okay,

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I have to do something.

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And one of the things that I’ve really learned is that the act of doing magic all

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the time didn’t necessarily allow everything to land,

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you know,

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so I’d be doing magical working.

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But then that magic wouldn’t necessarily fully land in my system,

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and so things wouldn’t become fully realized.

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And I think that it’s really good to kind of sit with that idea of,

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okay,

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I’m feeling the call to do magic on something.

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Well, what’s that call?

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Honoring that there is some awareness there,

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but also really looking at the situation and being like,

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and what is it that I also need to bring to rest right now that’s going to allow me

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to close a loop and fully be

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present with that magic so that when I’m doing it,

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I’m going to actually allow it to come into my life more effectively.

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And it could be multiple iterations of a spell.

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Like I’ve done long-term workings where I’ll do something every day and kind of

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build up,

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build up,

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build up.

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That’s fine.

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But it’s having that,

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it’s also being able to create the space to actually let it land and receive it,

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which I think goes hand in hand with the boundaries,

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like that ability to actually receive something and fully experience it.

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And that is resonating with me very much, not just the rest cycles, but the ability to receive.

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Again,

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a lot of us come from religious cultures in our youth where it was,

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you didn’t really receive from God unless you were part of one of those MLM style

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churches.

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So most of the time it was you had to give and you weren’t giving enough and you

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weren’t giving enough unless your every thought was of Jesus,

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whatever.

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I mean, personally, I think Jesus would get a little creeped out by the level of obsession.

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But again, it’s a radical shift into magical culture.

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And so it’s very hard.

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Every time you think you’ve unpacked it, it’s still packed.

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The other part is magic kind of evolved from humans as a way to deal with our anxieties.

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It gives us control over the uncontrollable.

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That’s exactly why I got into magic,

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is my parents were trying to force me to drop out of college,

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and I found magic as my way around it.

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And it worked.

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It was controlling something uncontrollable.

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I just created new circumstances where, in that position, I was very willing to receive.

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And in retrospect,

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I realized I had some ancestors doing some very heavy lifting and probably keeping

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me from getting struck by lightning a few times.

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But I’ve learned that

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Yeah, that’s important.

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We’re going to come back to that receiving.

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I want to welcome Odor, Sierra Sierra.

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Thanks for joining us.

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Noctua said,

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women internalize patriarchy and in the worst case scenario,

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police other women for the patriarchy.

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Yes, they do.

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Very much so.

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And every so often they snap out of it and you never know how long it’s going to

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last,

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but you try to encourage them and nourish that.

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There’s no way they snap out of it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It’s interesting.

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I’m saying the ones that are snapped out of it,

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those are usually the ones that other women will go stay away from her,

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so watch for a while and see if there’s any truth to the stay away,

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but chances are that’s really who you want to be hanging out with.

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You know,

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reading that comment,

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I mean,

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I’m a man,

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so I’m just going to own that,

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but just speaking to it,

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there’s something that lands in me when

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that experience,

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the patriarchy,

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where it’s like I see the subtle ways as a man,

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it ends up being policed for men as well.

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And how that actually prevents genuine connection with other men and with women

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because of those structures.

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It’s something that it’s really,

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especially in the last couple of years,

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has become very apparent to me and changed the way that I relate to people because

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it’s,

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there’s that,

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it’s not,

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patriarchy isn’t very relational.

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It doesn’t really bring

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a deep sense of relational.

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It’s all based on hierarchy and structure.

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And it creates a lot of the complication in that not good enough wound that we talked about.

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Oh, yes.

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Something I have noticed,

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and let me,

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I would love to hear your observations to whether this is true,

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but it feels like in that hierarchy,

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there is a lot of pressure on men to achieve status,

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which kind of puts them in a position where they have to objectify everyone,

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even their close relationships.

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Yeah.

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I would agree with that.

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Yeah.

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I mean, that’s definitely been a huge part of it.

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It’s objectifying success.

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It’s objectifying status.

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It’s objectifying themselves as well.

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Like,

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there’s just this very...

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Yeah,

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there’s just this constant...

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And I see it even in some of the men’s movement where it’s kind of like the

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prevailing message sometimes is,

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well,

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men,

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you need to lead.

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Okay.

(00:17:01):

Well...

(00:17:02):

What happens when a man doesn’t want to lead?

(00:17:04):

What happens when a man wants a different type of relationship?

(00:17:07):

Like all of those things, like there’s so much to unpack there.

(00:17:12):

But it definitely, there’s that objectification.

(00:17:14):

And there’s also the men you need to lead.

(00:17:18):

And my question has always been,

(00:17:19):

and maybe this is just the men that I’ve been around my entire life is lead what?

(00:17:25):

What are you leading?

(00:17:27):

Do you know where you’re going?

(00:17:28):

Yeah.

(00:17:30):

Isn’t there like this stereotype about refusing to stop and ask for directions?

(00:17:33):

So how would you even know?

(00:17:35):

Exactly.

(00:17:40):

They’re just like chasing each other in circles.

(00:17:43):

It definitely can feel like that.

(00:17:46):

It’s one of the reasons I’m exploring an alternative take on that in my own life

(00:17:51):

and also with what I share with men.

(00:17:54):

Okay, we’ve got a couple more comments here, and also AC joined us.

(00:17:59):

Thank you.

(00:18:00):

So I’m going to read both of these comments aloud because I think that they’re kind of related.

(00:18:05):

Diane said,

(00:18:06):

I feel that sometimes it seems impossible to set boundaries since I’m not sure who

(00:18:10):

I’m working at.

(00:18:11):

They keep changing voice slash state sometimes.

(00:18:14):

Receiving seemed impossible until almost relatively recently.

(00:18:20):

And then Noctua added to that, how does one feel worthy to receive?

(00:18:24):

So I feel like both of those are kind of related to each other in a way.

(00:18:29):

I think so too, very much.

(00:18:32):

I think the second one’s easier to answer than the first one.

(00:18:35):

Is you feel worthy to receive, you fake it till you make it, until you just get used to it.

(00:18:42):

It’s just, this is one of the places where a little delusion applied correctly can be