What does it mean to live an authentic life? Why is living authentically so central to Denizen's vision of humanity flourishing in harmony with life on earth? What is the work required to align with our true selves?
In this episode we delve deep into how we can live more authentic lives, in alignment with our true selves.
Our guest is Maria Camara Serrano, co-director of the Hoffman Institute's international division. In addition to her work leading the Hoffman Institute internationally, Maria is trained in Gestalt Therapy, Mindfulness, and Emotion-Focused Therapy. She has a PhD in psychology and has been studying and practicing Buddhism for over 20 years.
Jenny and Maria integrate both psychology and spirituality into the conversation as they explore the question of how we might live more authentic lives, covering the following:
Resources:
[INTRODUCTION]
"Maria Camara Serrano (MCS): In a way, we have this deep belief that there is something wrong within us that prevents us from owning our qualities, our potential. So if I believe there is something wrong in me, there is nothing I can do to live authentically. I will always have, by default, the idea that there is something wrong. So I cannot do what I want. I cannot be who I am. Or I cannot even show it. I think shame. Deep shame, we all have. Especially, I would say in the Western world, it's very, very connected to not being able to live authentically."
[00:00:42] Jenny Stefanotti (JS): That's Maria Camaro Serrano, Co-Director of Hoffman International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transformative adult education, spiritual growth and the personal dimensions of leadership. And this is the Denizen podcast. I'm your host and curator, Jenny Stefanotti. This is my first episode in over 6 months. And I am so excited to be back at it.
I've taken time off the podcast to focus on personal work, but that hasn't been irrelevant for Denizen in the least. Our tagline has changed from within after all. I'm thrilled to be kicking things off with this series of episodes, sharing what I've been learning since the beginning of the year.
In this first episode, we're discussing living authentically, which touches on our vision; humanity flourishing and harmony with nature in a very deep way. Our guest is Maria Camara Serrano. She and I met in April when I did the Hoffman Process, that institute's flagship week-long residential retreat.
In addition to her work leading the Hoffman Institute internationally, Maria is trained in Gestalt therapy, mindfulness, and emotion-focused therapy. She has a PhD in Psychology and has been studying and practicing Buddhism for over 20 years. This conversation integrates both psychology and spirituality as we explore this question of how we can live authentically.
In this conversation, we asked the basics. What does it mean to live authentically? Why is this relevant for our mission? Why don't most of us lead an authentic life? We ask what the spiritual traditions have to teach us in addition to what psychology has to say. We touch on what the work looks like to learn to live authentically. As well as what it doesn't look like in common ways that people misunderstand what the work is or try to bypass critical components of it.
Maria shares the Hoffman Institute's Cycle of Transformation. We explore all four parts of it and why each are essential. We talk about what a healthy relationship with our emotional experience looks like. And how we can heal from traumatic experiences stored in the body. We discuss why the relationship we have with our emotions and our ability to feel them is so important for compassion and forgiveness. And why compassionate and forgiveness is an essential part of returning to our authentic selves. Finally, we close with what it looks like to live authentically in our day-to-day lives and where self-love fits in.
As always, you can find our show notes on our website www.becomingdenizen.com. There, you can sign up for our newsletter where I bring our latest content to your inbox alongside announcements from our partner organizations. If you're a fan of the podcast and haven't yet done so, I highly encourage you to sign up for our newsletter. We've just started doing monthly in-person salons in the Bay Area. And I'll be distributing the recordings to our newsletter subscribers. I'm also planning to experiment with more shared learning experiences both virtual and in-person in the coming months. It's an exciting time for Denizen. Without further ado, here's Maria in living authentically.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:03:36] JS: Welcome. And thank you. It's so nice to have you, Maria. This is my first episode after a six-month hiatus. And I'm so excited to restart the podcast with a series of episodes, sharing what I've learned. We met in Petaluma where I did a 7-day intensive transformational experience called the Hoffman Process. Maria's a Co-Director at Hoffman Institute International. We'll talk about insights from the Hoffman Process. But this is really a conversation on consciousness and spirituality with this question of what it means to live authentically and why we don't live authentically. And these are some of the conversations that people love the most. Because we're talking about these very lofty questions of systemic change, they ground them in how we actually live our lives. And they make it very personal.
I always start with the basics. Because, often, we're holding very different definitions of some of the the terms that we use. I wanted to ask from your perspective, what does it mean to live authentically or as our authentic selves? Just to have some shared language.
[00:04:40] MCS: I want to thank you for the invitation. And I'm really happy. Very interested in this conversation, because really touch my whole life. It's what I do for work. And it's what I do in my spiritual path. And it's what I try to do in my day-to-day. Big word. What does it mean to live authentically? I'm going to just launch some ideas. And I know you will be very good at wrapping up and –
[00:05:11] JS: That's my job.
[00:05:11] MCS: – help me in finding the headlines of it. But I would say living authentically – to first live authentically, we need to own all the aspects of ourselves. To really listen and own that we have a body. We have a physical aspect. We have emotional side. We have cognitive side. And we have, for those who believe, we do, spiritual side.
I would say that, first, we need to listen to all the aspects and embrace it, and then own them. That's the first authenticity. That we don't disown. Or we are very polarized on one aspect like living in our heads and not listening to our bodies or our emotions. That's one big thing that I would say. That's a good start.
And another thing that I would say that is living authentic to me is aligned with my values. That what I do in my work, what I do in regular interaction in my personal life is aligned with what I believe, my belief system. And that's easy to say. But I find it's easy to be not coherent. We see now with global warming, yeah? How easy is to overuse our cars? How easy is not to be coherent? I would say it's a process. Living authentically is not a state. It's a process. And the more we work on ourselves, the more we can get closer to a more authentic life.
[00:06:47] JS: Can you say more about that process, not a state? I have a lot to say about that. But I'd love to hear more about what you mean when you say that.
[00:06:55] MCS: Yeah. Because I think that's the path itself is living more authentically. Because it's very easy to live with a mark. To be disconnected. To be biased. I would say that I know very few people in the world that live their life fully authentically. I count with one finger. I would say it's something we work on. It's a process that the more we work on, the closer we get. But it doesn't stop. It's not like I got it and it's done. Right?
[00:07:29] JS: Yeah. There's a reason that the URL for Denizen is becomingdenizen.com. And it's not just because there's a levi sub-brand called Denizen that owns denizen.com. Although, that's the first reason. The second reason is this concept of becoming, which is totally resonant with what you said, which is just you can't just flip a switch and be your authentic self or the align – she's talking about alignment with your values. One of Denizen's shared values is integrity. And integrity is really the cornerstone for the whole theory of change, which says we live misaligned with our values by virtue of the fact that we're on Instagram. Or the fact that we drive cars that use gasoline. The list is very long.
And so, how do we live more aligned, I.E., in integrity with this future that we're all in agreement needs to happen? We need to move towards. For me, I very much hold that position of it's a practice. It's a commitment to become. If you're sort of disillusioned that you can get there so easily, you're not going to continue to evolve and peel off the layers of the onions and become more aware and realize that you had these blind spots. And a lot of what I'm trying to do with the conversation is to support us all in becoming more aware and having less blind spots.
And Denizen's vision is Humanity Flourishing in Harmony with Life on Earth. And the number one regret of the dying – and this is something that I've held close to my heart for many years in guiding how I live my life, the number one regret of the dying is I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others expected of me. Number one regret of the dying. Right?
And so, if we're living authentically, we're living a life that is true to myself. From a humanity flourishing point of view, this is a real bullseye in just understanding who we are and living from that compass. And we're going to dig much deeper into why we don't do that and how we might move towards that in this conversation.
But then there's a second part of it, which is in harmony with life on Earth, as we'll discover as we continue to converse today. When we're really tied to our authentic selves, the values are very universal. And those values naturally lead to behaviors and systems, which are in harmony with life on earth, because they're understanding of our interconnectedness. But I'm curious about your take on why is it important at the societal level to learn to live authentically, to do this work. Obviously, you already mentioned it. So maybe it's already answered. But I didn't know if you had anything to add.
[00:10:01] MCS: Yeah. Well, I guess, be the change you want to see in the world. It stands on that same level, right? It's like maybe each one of us focus on different parts of that global change. And I would say my career, my passion has been focusing on the intra-psychic. How can I work on my own patterns? On my own beliefs? On my own emotional blockages? And so, that what I spread around is something more harmonious. It's more my qualities are not my shade, my pattern, my shadow, my patterns, my biases. Right?
And then the theory, the 1%. Yeah. Whatever I add. Because we are all interconnected. And that's more obvious than ever, I think in history. And whatever I add to my surrounding will make a difference. And maybe owning that responsibility will give us a higher motivation to work on ourselves. It's not something selfish that, "Oh, now I'm only thinking about my personal things."
And the example you were saying before, you stopped for three months to take care of your things so that you can be more – in six months later, more available to others. Yeah. That's how I see it. Self-care is a way to compassion. If I take care of myself, if I work on myself, I will be better to others.
[00:11:39] JS: Yeah. And we're going to get into the details of what that looks like and why that is later in the conversation. But, yeah. Again, our tagline is changed from within. This really strikes at the heart of it. Why don't most of us lead an authentic life? What is it that is inhibiting it? I know you have answers from both your long history of studying and practicing buddhism, and also from your work at the Hoffman Institute. Why don't most of us lead an authentic life?
[00:12:08] MCS: Right. I'll start maybe from a smaller level or a lower level in the sense of what psychology, or therapy, or personal development work would answer. And in particular, the Hoffman model is talking about childhood patterns. The patterns that get in our way. And when I say patterns, I include beliefs, moods, emotional stuckness, even body blockages, behaviors, roles we adopt in our surrounding. All those learned patterns that we bring with us from childhood and then get in our way to be authentic. It's like we put on a mask to survive our childhood environment to do the best we can to survive that.
For example, I took a role on being the good girl, so that I knew that I will get more love. And then when I continue with that role, then I cannot live authentically. Because if I have to please others, I'm not listening to myself. I disconnect from myself. Like childhood patterns, that would be one answer to why we don't live more authentically. Or what gets in the way?
Then something else that I want to bring light on and that we work also at the Hoffman process, but not only. I mean, there are many authors now that talk about it. Brene Brown. Is shame. In a way, we have this deep belief that there is something wrong within us that prevents us from owning our qualities, our potential. If I believe there is something wrong in me, there is nothing I can do to live authentically. I will always have, by default, the idea that there is something wrong. So I cannot do what I want. I cannot be who I am. Or I cannot even show it. I think shame. Deep shame, we all have. Especially, I would say in the Western world, it's very, very connected to not being able to live authentically.
[00:14:19] JS: And what do you think the Genesis of that shame is?
[00:14:23] MCS: The origin?
[00:14:24] JS: Yeah, the origin.
[00:14:25] MCS: Yeah. I think it's like the child. It's the explanation the child does about the fact of not getting all their needs fulfilled. It's every single child doesn't get their needs fulfilled. Because it's impossible that parents give all what that child needs. And then, children, they blame themselves for it. They don't think, "Oh, mom is busy." Or, "Now I have a new brother. So that's why they don't pay me attention." But they say, "Oh, there's something wrong with me. That's why mom is not taking care of me."
[00:15:00] JS: There's like an egocentricity of that developmental stage.
[00:15:05] MCS: Exactly.
[00:15:05] JS: Where those beliefs get imprinted. And by the time we cognitively grow out of them, it's in our subconscious effectively.
[00:15:12] MCS: Exactly. And it's from a non-developed cognitive system, so that it becomes generalized and is not specific to the situation. It's not that mom now is not taking care of me and is something wrong with me just now. It's like it's a very all pervasive belief that there is something basic wrong with me.
[00:15:35] JS: Yeah. I think there's also the cultural component of it. And I know, at Hoffman, it implicitly kind of flows through the patterns that we pick up from our parents, because our parents have picked up the cultural component of it. I just spoke in this last conversation about this pivotal moment in my life when I had my first child. And it was like this identity crisis. And I took time off to raise my kids. And I wasn't fulfilled. I knew it was the right thing to do for my family, but it wasn't fulfilled.
And it wasn't clear to me if I wasn't fulfilled because there was something that I was meant to be and do in the world that wasn't happening. It was like my soul was shriveled up because it wasn't expressed. Or it was because I just lived my whole life with my identity being about my resume. And Sheryl Sandberg told me to lean in. And I was running strategy in the Google APAC LATAM team. I'm supposed to be leaning in. Not staying home and breastfeeding for 18 months. Which one is it? And it was non trivial to discern whether it was that cultural story or if it was my authentic self that was in struggle.
You mentioned in our conversation yesterday this distinction between me and the world. This comes from your spiritual practice and tradition or in Buddhism. Can you speak more to what spirituality has to say about why we don't leave an authentic life?
[00:16:51] MCS: Mm-hmm. As you said, my spiritual background is based on Buddhism who – or it's like a methodology or a philosophy. Because, yeah, you can't even say that it doesn't need to be called religion, because there is no dogmas. And what it describes is how we function and this basic self-cleaning or egocentric way of functioning where we feel separated from the rest of the world.
And then, in a way, we feel disconnected from the world. And then everything we do is related to I like it or I dislike it. If I like it, I want it for me. If I dislike it, I reject it. Or I'm indifferent. This basic functioning, this duality makes us in a way not living. Because when we say authentically, it's not me, myself isolated from my surrounding. Living authentically means in harmony with my surrounding.
But if there is a conflict of interest between my own sake and my surrounding sake, and that's maybe where we feel some dissonance. And I think that's to begin with, because we have created that separation. One thing is my own sake and the other thing is that, "Okay, yeah. The planet's sake." Which can be experienced as separate and independent.
And one of the main values or explanations of how the world functions from Buddhism is interdependence. We are all interdependent. And this lack of awareness of it makes us not living in harmony with our surroundings. Not taking care of the planet. And living a more selfish life.
[00:18:37] JS: I love this conversation in the context of a thread that we are just investigating at Denizen, which is moving beyond the age of reason. The enlightenment. This is where neoclassical economics was born. And the overemphasis on reason in the intellect, emphasis on individual rights. And so, many of our institutions are built upon those beliefs. And how do we move to more of an interdependence and also more of an embodied state? And I'm excited to get to that part of the conversation, too, in a little bit.
But I want to transition to this question of like, okay, so we're not living authentically. And now we get why. Where do we go from here? And so, again, I love that you're coming to this from two different traditions. The tradition of spirituality and Buddhism and the tradition of psychology with the Hoffman Institute. And so, I'm interested in this question of what does the work look like to live more authentically? To your point, it's not a state. It's a process. What does spirituality have to tell us on one hand and psychology have to tell us on the other? You can start with whichever one feels in flow to start with.
[00:19:44] MCS: Okay. Now I start with spirituality for a change.
[00:19:47] JS: Okay. Great.
[00:19:49] MCS: And talking about change, I think that's the contemplations. That spirituality. Or, in particular, the Buddhist path offers is to integrate – it's not only knowing it in theory, but integrate the natural law of change, interdependence. Living change. Not only thinking change, but living change. In the sense of whatever decisions I make, anything I do, or I live, or I interact with this awareness of change has been a natural love for everything. If we are aware that everything changes, we relate to things differently.
[00:20:32] JS: Yep.
[00:20:33] MCS: And, also, if we are aware that everything is interdependent, we relate to things differently. Integration of that concept. And I think in a practical level would be contemplating that on your daily meditation, just so that we need all the time reminders again and again.
And then meditation itself is a method that helps us taming our minds or not letting ourselves being taken by our biases, our patterns or beliefs. But taking a step back and being able to connect to who we truly are. And not seeing the world through that lens of patterns, beliefs. In a way, the best method to be yourself.
[00:21:22] JS: I really appreciate a couple of points that you just made. One is that spirituality teaches us that it's an embodied experience that gets us to knowing and not an intellectual, theoretical concept. And there's just a very big difference from imagining what it feels like and then actually feeling it in your body.
In the Vipassana meditation, it's all about focusing on the sensations of your body and realizing that everything is changing has a felt experience of impermanence that then has this spillover effect into, "Okay. I really get it." And if you really get it, then you stop having the same grasping of something that you want to be and want to keep because it feels good. Right?
And then you also don't have the resistance and reactivity to the harder aspects of human experience, which I know is a big piece of what we're going to talk to soon in the conversation. And, also, I think what's really interesting, you spoke specifically to meditation as a tool to do that. And I worked with someone recently, it's actually the episode I'm going to have after this one, who works on trauma and healing the nervous system. And so, you do a lot of these exercises that just reconnect your brain to your body and healing your nervous system through that.
And she said something to me which was your senses are always in the present. And so much of meditation is bringing us to the senses, whether that be Vipassana and the sensory experience and sensations that are in the body. Or bringing back to the breaths and noticing the breath. Or just coming into pure awareness of all of the things that your senses are picking up in the moment. And all of those things are taking us out of the intellect and story. And having more ability to notice where our intellect wants to go and witness our felt experience and have less attachment and reactivity around those things when they happen.
I am curious, before we get into psychology, because I think this is really important, too. And I know this is so integrated in the Hoffman piece, too, which is the nervous system component of spiritual practices. Can you say more about that?
[00:23:22] MCS: Well, I mean, a lot of research has been done since mindfulness movement came into science and Western scientific research, even though meditation has been there for more than 2,000 years. But it's true that a lot has been found on how, when we meditate, our brain, the zones of our brain that are connected to positive emotions are permanently activated. We are more connected to compassion to our values, to our qualities and natural qualities. When we are our authentic selves, we are able to be more compassionate, loving, [inaudible 00:24:08]. All that happens while we meditate. And also, in past meditation.
That's something that is quite surprising. That when people meditate, even when they are not meditating, they are more less on the intermediate zone that we call and more in the present moment and more in their qualities. That's one thing. Obviously, there is more balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, so that you are not on distress. That's also maybe the first finding as meditation was used to cope with the stress.
But after that, so much has been found on the benefits and on meditation in your brain, in your health. And also, even something that we use a lot in Hoffman process, but not only, is the use of imagining, of guided fantasy, of division. Yeah?
[00:25:11] JS: Yeah. We're going to talk about that too. Yeah.
[00:25:13] MCS: What happens in your brain when you imagine something? And the power of it. And, also, it has been found that what happens in your brain is very close to when you actually do it. So imagining something has a strong power in guiding our behaviors later. That's something maybe to consider also if we want to live in a better world, right?
[00:25:36] MCS: Yeah. No. I love this. I just think it's really interesting how we have a conversation with Robert Gilman on optimal zone resilience and optimal zone in your nervous system. And meditation is a practice that helps you be more resilient. But when you are in that optimal zone, and I think at a deeper level when you are connected to that authentic part of you, you are naturally calm, curious, compassionate. And when you hold these qualities, a lot of the ailments that we talk about naturally fall away.
And, also, if you think about institutional redesign with those principles, you naturally wind up bending towards the outcomes that we talk about here on the podcast versus the outcomes that we see that are predominant today. I really appreciate that component of it, too.
What about the field of psychology? What does psychology have to teach us about doing the work to shift out of compulsive, reactive, lack of awareness way of living your life to an authentic way of living? What does psychology have to teach us?
[00:26:33] MCS: Right. I think it works more with the part of – I mean, in the Hoffman language, we call them these patterns that, as I said, include like moods, emotions, beliefs. But what happen with those is that they get in our way of connecting authentically to the world or even to ourselves. Because it's like, suddenly, we wear some lens that were done when you were in your childhood to survive your surrounding. And then you continue with those lens. But they distort your perception of the world. And, therefore, the main work is to take out those lens. Unlearn all those things that you had to learn to survive. But then unlearn them because they're outdated.
[00:27:25] JS: Yeah. And we'll talk in a moment about the cycle of transformation that the Hoffman process outlines. And why the different steps along the way are really critical. And before we get there though, what are some of the misunderstandings? You mentioned some misunderstandings of spiritual work and what spirituality means. Let's surface that before we get into the details about what the work looks like.
[00:27:48] MCS: I think – and that's why it's so well-combined, like personal work, therapy work, personal development work with spiritual work. Because sometimes – and maybe that's something we do in the West. Even though now things are changing and we are more globalized. But it's true that there is this idea that I often came across. That if you're spiritual means you are always in a good mood. And you should not have ugly emotions and sadness, anger, or jealousy, or to be repressed. And, therefore, you bypass all those things.
And then there are cracks. You cannot live authentically if you don't own your shadow, if you don't own your ugly emotions, if you don't own all those things that maybe are not like they spoil the picture. And that's where therapy or personal development kicks in. Because in those context, there is no way to avoid them. You can avoid them or bypass them on the spiritual world or communities. But if you really work on yourself, there is no way. Because you are looking at it. You are facing it. You are embracing it. Honor it. Understand it. And that's maybe from a place of being self-compassionate with it.
And I would say that's the most spiritual thing to do, like seeing my jealousy, seeing my pattern of perfectionism. And then knowing where it's coming from. Why is it there? And, also, doing what I need to lessen its impact. But not bypassing it.
[00:29:35] JS: Yeah. I think that's really important. Also, people who say, "Oh, you're just supposed to not think about anything when you meditate." How do you do that? How do you get there? I'm not getting there. So I must not be doing it right. One of my favorite meditation practices is someone says just sit. Just sit. I just sit every morning.
One of the things I read in a book recently, Nicole LePera. I don't know if you're familiar with her work. She's the holistic psychologist on Instagram. She's got quite a following. And so, she takes a holistic view of psychology around taking care of your body and your nervous system and really understanding trauma.
One of the things she said that I thought was really eye-opening was that you can only connect to others as much as you can connect to yourself, which we've all heard that. But she double-clicked on it, which made it really make a lot more sense to me, which is that if you don't connect to yourself, you don't connect to your shadow. If you don't connect to your feelings, if you don't share who you authentically are, you can't articulate that to other people and you can't really connect. Because it's your mask that's shielding. And if you don't have awareness of your mask and a way to break that down to get to the real human under there, then you can't connect. Because somebody else isn't going to be able to see through the mask to who authentically is you. Because that's a felt experience that then you then communicate that through behaviors, and words, and actions. That was a really big aha for me around that. But I think, also, another big aha that came from a comment that was made when I was in the Hoffman process, you've also heard, "Well, when you're judging someone else, that tells you where your shadow is." I hear that a lot.
[00:31:10] MCS: Use quoted. You got it.
[00:31:11] JS: Yeah, which is so interesting. But, also, never really landed as deeply as when Claude said the fact that you are judging, shows a lack of compassion for a human behavior that any human could have, including you. You've somehow suppressed the part of you that could do that. Not even necessarily the shadow part of you that really is this way. But even like the potential landscape of you as a human that could be this way. And so, the lack of compassion stemming from the lack of wholeness in yourself as your whole humanity, I thought that was a really big and interesting aha, too.
And it is really interesting this discomfort with uncomfortable emotions and this tendency to want to fix, or change, or make go away. And I think the spiritual traditions teach us to accept that as part of the human exp – I mean, certainly, I lost both my parents three months apart a couple of years ago. And that was a deep spiritual crucible where fighting reality only made it harder. And having to accept that, it was a really intense lesson in that principle, which is really very much a spiritual one.
I think the Hoffman Cycle of Transformation gives us a scaffolding to talk about. One of the ways that this work can happen, which I think is useful and insightful. Let's talk about the Hoffman cycle of transformation. There's four parts. Tell us about them.
[00:32:35] MCS: Totally. As you said, many of the patterns. I mean, in a way, the term that is been used in the meditation context and also in psychology is automatic. Living in autopilot. So that we are unaware. And, therefore, the first step in the cycle of transformation is awareness, which will help us identifying what our patterns are. Where did we learn that from? What is the impact those patterns have in our lives? How they get in our way? Having a whole awareness of the scope of them. To begin to work with those patterns, you need to identify them.
And sometimes we stop there. And that's why it's like, "Oh, yeah. I know all about it. I know all about me. But then I still fall on the same stones." That's why there are other three steps that make this work deep work. The second one is expression, which is once I have connected to those patterns and the pain that they are causing me and the pain that they caused me when I was a child, then there are so many emotions attached to them. So many unexpressed emotions that somehow leak in my day-to-day. And then, suddenly, I see myself raging when somebody takes my parking lot or I see myself doing exactly what I said I won't do ever again as my mom did. And I do it the same way with my kids. All those things that we wonder, "Why I do this?" And it's almost like we can't help.
And the idea is that there are so many emotions attached to those childhood experiences that let's go back to when they originated. And then let's give some way out, some unfinished business to be finished. And that's the role of expression. Using your voice. Your body. So that those emotions are not repressed as we usually tend to do. As we said before, we don't like those emotions. So we repress them. But they leak.
Then once we have done the expression, the healing of those wounds, of those traumas, of those painful experiences in our childhood, comes with compassion and forgiveness. That's the third step. And that's where we are able to turn away and say, "Okay, there is an end to it. My parents, or my caregivers, or I went through this because." There is this intergenerational trauma that comes through generations. Or there is this context that they were living in and that's why – there is always a context. There is always the other side. And that puts us in a more mature place to see things. Not from this children's self-centered perspective, so that we can heal that wounds or that painful experiences. And, therefore, being able to move on.
And that, as we were already mentioning, this compassion and forgiveness puts us in who we truly are as human beings, so that we are more connected to our authenticity, to our spirituality. And that leads us to the fourth step, which is new ways of being, which is nothing else. But I don't need to react from my patterns. I can respond from who I am. Moving from doing to the being.
[00:36:21] JS: Just to reiterate. The four components are awareness, expression, compassion, and forgiveness. And then new ways of being. And we talked about how often people try to bypass the critical effectively healing step that happens with expression, and compassion, and forgiveness. And move straight from awareness to new ways of being. And they haven't really worked it out. And that's a very common bypass that you see out in the field.
But it's so interesting. At Hoffman, you do this 10 hours of pre-work. And you go through this colossal table of patterns, which I think is very interesting too the way that they cluster them around patterns around martyrdom, or patterns around people pleasing, or patterns around money, or sex, or bias. And so, you get this really comprehensive mapping that you then trace back to, "Did I learn it from mom? Did I learn it from dad? Did I learn it from some other surate caretaker in my very early years?"
And I think it's really important to way that it notes the emotional ramifications of that awareness for a lot of people who had very traumatic childhoods. It's very interesting, too. I think a lot of us, at least in my generation, were raised by people who were traumatized by these really big global events, the Great Depression, World War II. But I think it's this really critical point around expression that we hold this in our bodies.
And Hoffman and spiritual traditions have things to teach us about what healthy relationship between our emotions look like. And that we have to get it out. Can you say a little bit more about expression and the ways that we can express? And just a little bit more about the importance of that part? And then I want to talk about the compassion and forgiveness. But I just want to double-click on expression.
[00:38:07] MCS: Yeah. It's quite interesting to see how very young children walk through emotions. They are able to just experience them. They express it. And then they move on. And as adult, that's what we can't do. We just get stuck. Because we don't express. Because we internalize them or we project them. Or there is a whole range of mechanisms we use not to do something as natural as just leave the emotion, express it and move on.
That's why we need to do it on an organized systemic context. So that, for example, there is different ways of expression. There is the cathartic way of expression where you use your body, your voice to work with deep emotions that are the ones that are more deeply rooted from the early childhood experiences. And then there is the expression of the day-to-day, where you say you have courageous conversations. You may write down. There are different levels of expressions. But it’s as needed as we need to eat and breathe.
[00:39:27] JS: Yeah. It's so interesting. Because when I found that my mother had terminal cancer, I just really sat with this question of like what does healthy emotional processing look like? When I'm thinking back to that moment where she said something that was so sad and tragic, am I laboring it or am I feeling it? Or what does it look like? I really sat with that a lot.
Animals, when they have a traumatic experience, they move their body to move the emotions throughout their body. And humans don't do that. We tend to store it. And to your point earlier, we leak it. In Hoffman, you really go intensely to get out decades and lifetime with these repressed emotions in the form of writing letters, in the form of literally taking a plastic bat and hitting it on a pillow for lots of long time. And yelling. And everybody's got earplugs in because it gets so loud in there. And it's so cathartic. It's so fascinating that you feel lighter in a way that's almost intangible and inexplicable. But you feel the difference in your body.
And so, I think it's just really – it's part of a process of becoming more authentic. But it's also part of the necessary healing process as you become more aware and you grieve the life that you've lived so far. And you feel the things that you oppressed before. And in the process, you learn what does healthy emotional expression look like.
Now, when I get angry, I take a bat and I bash a pillow. Or maybe I do a kickboxing class. Or maybe I scream into it. But it's like getting the energy out through some channel I think is just a really essential life skill that is deployed in the Hoffman cycle in a very substantial way. But what I also think is really interesting is the notion that you have to get it out before you can move to compassion and forgiveness. Can you speak more about just the linkages between that? Because I think that's really interesting, the notion that if you try to bypass expression and just forgive, you still got that latent motion just that it gets agitated. And you can't really get there. I want to speak to that.
[00:41:22] MCS: Yeah. Because that's when it becomes cheap forgiveness in the sense of because I haven't expressed, because I haven't given the room of my hurt, my pain, my frustration, my anger. I haven't given like a channel. Then they will sabotage my willingness to forgive or my willingness to experience compassion. Because I haven't addressed it. It's like it turns against something we all want. We all want to live a more compassionate life.
Unless I take care of my own – and in a way, it's just owning the impact in myself. That's being authentic. It's like that caused me pain. And then, therefore, I'm angry about it. And, therefore, I'm sad about it. And I'm grieving what I didn't have. And if I don't – and we were mentioning about this, the body keep the score. All those memories are in our bodies. That's why we need to involve body. And we know now that with trauma work, it is not going to work if you don't involve the body.
[00:42:35] JS: Yeah. I mean, interesting. Because talk therapy sits in your neocortex. And the trauma is in your limbic system. It's in a different part of your brain. We're talking about our own personal processes of moving from awareness to living an authentic and spiritual life. But, obviously, this is extremely important when we start to extrapolate to the world. If we're addressing systemic intergenerational injustice, we can talk about compassion and forgiveness and the need for that. But not bypass the need for that pain to be really felt, expressed, heard. What does that look like at a global level around some of this work? And so, I thought that the takeaway from Hoffman around the need for expression to get to compassion and forgiveness was a big one for me.
[00:43:17] MCS: Yeah. And maybe there can be different levels of expression. I think that's where it can get creative. Because when we talk more about social environments and how to do that in a safe way so that people can do their own work. Because sometimes, for people, it's a little shocking. Or they feel like afraid when they see somebody venting out and doing some work on themselves. But sometimes when you watch a football match, all those people who screaming, they're venting out. Right? In this sense, we are venting out with a focus. It's not random venting out or random workout.
[00:44:01] JS: Sure. that's the leakage that you're referring to, where you don't know where it's coming from. You're blowing up at the person at the grocery store check outline.
[00:44:08] MCS: It doesn't serve much. That's what research found. When expression is random, without any focus, it doesn't serve much. It needs to be focused. It has to have a purpose. Like I know what I'm upset about. And I know what I'm venting out.
[00:44:25] JS: Sure. That makes sense.
[00:44:26] MCS: Not random.
[00:44:28] JS: That makes sense. Then you're giving a real pathway for that specific experience to be felt the way that it wasn't properly felt to begin with. And I think, also, you start to have the tools to say, "Okay, what's a healthy way of expressing it? And what's a not healthy way of expressing it?" I think it is important to keep in mind that not all forms of expression are healthy.
[00:44:46] MCS: Exactly.
[00:44:47] JS: Even if it's I'm getting out the thing about this, maybe just not directing it at you and hammering your nervous system and having an escalated experience is the right way to deal with it. But I think that that's really important. And then you move on to – and we talked about, also, vindictiveness in terms of how that doesn't serve anyone. And just can you say a little bit more about compassion and forgiveness? And why that's so critical?
[00:45:05] MCS: Yeah. I would say that that's what heals. Yeah. And that's why it's now even being used as a therapeutic discipline, like compassion-based therapy. And that's the reason why spiritual traditions talk about love and compassion. All of them. It's somehow universal that we all can agree that that puts us in a place of connection, bounding with each other. More like better human kind or a better humanity. If we could all stay more in that place, the world would be a different place.
Now what is not compassion? Or what are the misunderstandings? Or why we are not there? Again, sometimes there is this misunderstanding that compassion means codependency. Means that I have to take on your pain. And that's not what compassion means. Compassion means the wish for somebody's suffering and the cause of sufferings to be relieved. That kind of empathy and wish for it not to be there.
It's not condoning. It doesn't mean that because I forgive you, that I deny that you hurt me. It's not forgetting. It's not condescending. Like, I'm superior. Poor you. It's based on this common humanity concept. All those misunderstandings and what gets in our way of forgiving? And compassion is, again, anger, frustration. All these unexpressed emotions. Or in a more sophisticated way, vindictiveness. I want to get back at you because you hurt me. Until I don't resolve that hurt in me, I won't be able to move on. And I will not even be willing to forgive you.
[00:47:03] JS: This is so important. And I appreciate the distinction between having compassion, but still not condoning. Not forgetting. Not having a grandiose point of view. Recognizing the humanity. But this has been a really big lesson for me in my work recently. Having compassion while having boundaries for how you want to be treated or alignment with your values and needing to hold those boundaries alongside compassion for the other person. In some sense, the adverse emotional experience that they might have as a consequence of those boundaries. And so, it's like not taking responsibility for other people's experience to the point of not doing what you know is right.
I wrote a blog post about what was happening in the Middle East. And you've got such a long legacy of violence, where violence is begetting violence. That part that says I want to hurt you back. That punitive justice is defending oneself and hurting back. And I wrote this piece. It's a provocation. Because it says we're not going to get there unless we can have compassion for the terrorists. Which, again, not condoning. But also recognizing the common humanity in them.
I think, also, the learning to have compassion for yourself. It's like the way that you judge or treat other people reflects the way that you judge or treat yourself, which I think is so critical. And I want to turn to that in a second. But I want to talk about the last piece. We have to pass through awareness, and expression, and forgiveness. And then we move into new ways of being. Because this is what I thought was really fascinating. Let's speak a little bit to – okay, so now we know what we're doing wrong. How do we actually move into new ways of being? I.E. living authentically now that we've gone through the process?
[00:48:38] MCS: It's not about creating strategy to – what we usually do is how could I be different in this situation? How could I have this next family gathering and not fight with my brother-in-law? Because he always gets on my nerves. We try to strategize with our intellects. And that doesn't work that much. And what new ways of being means is – and we have some tools for it. But what it basically means is I will connect to my true self, to my authenticity, means not to my pattern. Not to my mask. I will connect to what is behind the mask. And then whatever comes, whatever I will come across with, I will respond from a place of being, from a place of authenticity. So that I don't need to create any strategy. And it doesn't come from – it comes from an unembodied connection to your spiritual self, which is nothing else but you. That's the last step, it's not like creating tones of solutions. But more I like this distinction between the be do have, as opposed to the do have be. We usually are in the doing, so that we can have what we want and be happy. And what this step is inviting us, and not only that, even the spiritual traditions, is that we cultivate the being so that we do things more in coherence with that and then have what we need to.
[00:50:21] JS: This speaks to the thread that we touched on already, which is moving beyond an over-emphasis on the intellect into – and this is where I want to wind down the conversation, is just being more embodied and living more authentically means that we are in tune with that inner authentic spiritual. If you don't like saying spiritual, intuitive part of ourselves that just knows. And it doesn't need to have a rational story to justify. It just knows.
Tet's talk about just becoming more embodied. Okay. So we go through this – at Hoffman, you go through this thing. You could talk about Vipassana, all these other spiritual traditions that help you slough off all of these things that obfuscate you and your behaviors from what's authentic to you. But I want to close with talking about what does it look like in the day-to-day to live more authentically? To be more embodied?
I found the one of my biggest takeaways from the Hoffman experience was the quadrinity in the quad check every morning. Can you speak to that? Because I think that just gives us a valuable framework for talking about a more embodied existence.
[00:51:32] MCS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a very simple practice that is a guided meditation that walks you through a connection to the different aspects of yourself, the body, the emotional side, the cognitive side, and the authentic side of the spirit. In ways, reminding you of coming back to yourself. And that we could easily do through the day. And that's something we often do at Hoffman also. Place your hands on your heart. Take a deep breath. Just that very simple gesture, that already puts you in your body, in connection to your body, in the present moment, in connection to your feelings. And the posture of placing your hands on your heart is already helping you release oxytocin, the bonding hormone.
There are small things that we can do on a day-to-day. Like being more in nature. Yeah. When we are in nature, we are immediately on a different zone. We are more connected to our qualities. We are more in the flow, as we call it. There are things. Or I don't know. Each one finds a way with art, with music. Things that help us coming back to ourself.
[00:52:48] JS: Yeah. And I really appreciate that of what you call the quadrinity. The four parts of ourselves. Your physical body, your emotional self, your intellect, and your spiritual self. And most of us are just so overweighted in our intellect. And the body, the emotional self, the spiritual, those all come from our body. It also helps us take care of our bodies. Because our bodies are telling us, "I don't want to be late and be stressed all the time. I don't want to be overextended, and busy, and harried. I need to rest. I don't want to exercise today."
And then as a consequence of that, our nervous system is in a better place. And then, of course, broadly, we all need more sophistication and our emotional awareness and the ability to see that and express that. And the interconnection that we spoke to earlier, that comes naturally from sharing that. And then the intuition, which is really the crux of it. And I so appreciate that the Hoffman process helps you see those four parts of yourselves. Rebalance those four parts of yourselves. But then put the hands of the spiritual self, the intuitive self, the authentic self on the wheel.
And I see this in other traditions, too. Internal family systems has this. Terrene Real talks about this. And it really is this question of how do we connect to that authentic spiritual part of ourselves and let that guide us in how we live our lives and how we relate to each other? And it's such a transformational thing to try to shift in that direction.
I'm so appreciative of your work. I'm going to close with this question for you. If there was one thing you wished everybody knew, what would it be?
[00:54:29] MCS: Somehow, it came to mind when you were talking about the authentic self. And it came to me the image of an onion. How all these layers – it's the layers we need to walk through. And some layers are painful. Some layers are void. Some layers are – all these layers, so that we can reach to the heart of it, which is who we truly are. Yeah. All those layers are not letting us just being who we are. I think an onion, when you cut, it makes you cry. There are tears with it. But needed to finally reach the core of it.
[00:55:12] JS: I appreciate that. And I really appreciate the comment you made at the top about it. It's a process and not a state. It's a practice. You're committing to these practices. And, actually, I'll close with something that has been one of my big upgrades, which is, when you stumble, when you really fall back into those patterns and you're like, "God, damn it. I just did all of this work. And I'm trying so hard. And here I go just doing that compulsive thing." Whereas before, there was the inner critic, the perfectionist in me that would just have so much shame. Now I'm like, "Oh, thank you, universe, for the opportunity to practice self-love. Because that's when I need it most."
And I think that, really, that's such a critical core part of all of this is self-love and accepting ourselves and all of our imperfections. And then being able to love more authentically or with those around us and all of the ripple effects that come from there. And that's what you said. Right? That's what you said on the last day. Don't tell people about the bashing of the bats when you ask them what you did at Hoffman. Tell them that you learned self-love. Right?
I just want to say thank you for sharing all of this with us. It's just such a potent conversation. The work that you do is so important. Everyone that I know that has done this has just had such profound transformations in their lives. I'm so grateful to be moving forward with this. And thank you for being my first guest stepping back into it to share what I've been up to. I really appreciate you.
[00:56:40] MCS: I'm honored. Thank to you to do this. It's so relevant in the world right now.
[OUTRO]
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