7 Keys to Courageous Self-Expression | Integrity (Part 2 of 2)
In the second episode in a two-part series on integrity, Candice tells you about some of the teachers who shaped her passions early on in life, painting a very vivid picture of sex-ed class with her college professor Dr. Dennis Dailey, a trailblazing agent of social change. We illuminate the paradox at the heart of the symbolic self - the fear of being seen and the fear of going unnoticed. What does it take to rise above self-consciousness? True belonging... only thing is, the definition might surprise you.
When we think of social movements, we most often envision massive political uprisings, collective fists raised an allegiance to a cause and fired up organizers with megaphones speaking truth to power. And yet, collective politics is shaped by intrapsychic forces, by how we each internalize and translate our experience of the world through our own unique lens. Candice invites you into a more holistic expression of purpose, using personal stories to illustrate the difference between job, duty, and calling. Rising consciousness (aka ‘wokeness’) is both a personal and social endeavor that raises collective consciousness through perpetual curiosity, applied self-awareness, and shared accountability. Integrity reminds us - the global wake-up call begins within.
Chapters
5:47 - Dr. Dailey (story)
13:08 - Social movements
14:39- The symbolic self
17:45 - Purpose - job, duty, calling
21:12 - Never Satisfied (story)
25:56 - One Of Those People (story)
28:50 - True belonging
29:52 - To the heart of the matter
In the second episode in a two-part series on integrity, Candice tells you about some of the teachers who shaped her passions early on in life, painting a very vivid picture of sex-ed class with her college professor Dr. Dennis Dailey, a trailblazing agent of social change. We illuminate the paradox at the heart of the symbolic self - the fear of being seen and the fear of going unnoticed. What does it take to rise above self-consciousness? True belonging... only thing is, the definition might surprise you.
When we think of social movements, we most often envision massive political uprisings, collective fists raised an allegiance to a cause and fired up organizers with megaphones speaking truth to power. And yet, collective politics is shaped by intrapsychic forces, by how we each internalize and translate our experience of the world through our own unique lens. Candice invites you into a more holistic expression of purpose, using personal stories to illustrate the difference between job, duty, and calling. Rising consciousness (aka ‘wokeness’) is both a personal and social endeavor that raises collective consciousness through perpetual curiosity, applied self-awareness, and shared accountability. Integrity reminds us - the global wake-up call begins within.
Chapters
5:47 - Dr. Dailey (story)
13:08 - Social movements
14:39- The symbolic self
17:45 - Purpose - job, duty, calling
21:12 - Never Satisfied (story)
25:56 - One Of Those People (story)
28:50 - True belonging
29:52 - To the heart of the matter
#15 | Wake-Up Call
Welcome back to The Deeper Pulse. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Candice Schutter. Today we're quite literally going all-in on part two of the integrity series. It's our sixth key of courageous self-expression, and we're going to shift from the realm of personal development into what it means to embrace integrity as a social responsibility. So let's dig in.
Years ago when I was living in Colorado, a friend and I met for lunch at an eatery near our local dance studio. I munched on a Turkey sandwich and she recounted to me her most recent appointment with a therapist. My friend had long been battling with feelings of deep rage and anger, and she'd sought help to mitigate the fallout in her personal relationships.
During one of their earliest sessions, her therapist had requested that she call her mother and inquire about the story of her birth.
As it turns out it had been long and arduous, and a doctor had used forceps to reach in and remove my friend from the birth canal. When she relayed the story as her mother had told it, her therapist followed up with a single pointed question:
Does that at all sound familiar to you?
My friend, well, she was a bit floored because when she thought about it, it spoke directly to an anger she felt towards so many people in her life for pushing her to move faster than she'd like, or for pulling her toward ways of being that feel out of sync with who she knows herself to be.
Now, this was by no means the end of the therapeutic journey for my friend, but her birth story provided her with a metaphor and context that helped to aluminate new understanding.
At the time, it really got me thinking about my own birth story, much of which I already shared with you back in Episode 8. To summarize, I took my sweet time in the womb and I was born six weeks after my due date. And yet, despite all that hesitation, when it was my time to arrive into the world, I came in like a wildfire backed by gale force winds.
My mother reports her labor being easy breezy, relatively painless, and it all happened in just a few hours time.
This pattern, it certainly resonates with how I've moved through life. I often play the long game. Some might even call me a late bloomer. And more often than not, courage is something I have to conjure.
This is not to say that I haven't been impulsive from time to time. All I mean to say is that when it comes to the big stuff, sometimes what I long to express is like a seed that sits dormant for a long period of time before it's ready to crack through the surface and come into full bloom. Which is why it's taken me so long to share my stories with you. True to form, they've suddenly come pouring out one after the other. Isn't it beautiful the way that creative expression often circles us back to what lies at our foundation?
I fell in love with writing in the ninth grade. Mr. Schwab was a short bearded man who wore glasses, sweater vests, and an apprehensive smile. I can't recall the name of the class. It must have been creative writing or something of that sort, because each and every class, Mr. Schwab would offer up a thematic invitation for a short story. And my classmates and I would spend the next hour pouring our words onto loose leaf paper, imagining a world of our choosing.
Mr. Schwab would circle the room with a clipboard and a red pen, interrupting our flow individually just long enough to scribble grammatical edits and words of encouragement into the margins. After a week or so of edits, we turn in a final draft of each story complete with a hand drawn title page and a plastic cover sheet. We would receive two grades. One for grammar and all the technical whatnot, and the other for our attempt at creative expression. Now Mr. Schwab loved to make his own rules. On a few occasions, I received a creativity score of 105% as a simple reward for giving myself over to the storyline.
Two years later, it was an English teacher who captured my heart. Pat Brown was a whip smart, outspoken, hippie empath who taught me all about feminism simply by virtue of her example. She'd arrange our desks in a half circle, turning us toward one another to encourage vulnerability and honest dialogue. It was in Mrs. Brown's class that I fell in love with The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, "she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom." Our discussions around that book, and many others, shaped my ability to empathize and carry life's necessary tensions in my own heart.
Around that same time, I had a gloriously wise gender defiant history teacher, whose name I'm quite sorry to say, I can not remember. She was warm, approachable, and masterful at teaching. In her class, I found myself interested in history for the very first time. She humanized the characters, encouraging us to look beyond the captions and read between the lines, offering up reality checks by tethering old news to current affairs. Her ability to look beyond the facade made me think critically about the way white men had been rewriting history since the dawn of time. It instilled a sense of compassion and connection to characters of history I might've otherwise overlooked.
It is impossible for me to name all the teachers who have shaped me over the years. Those are just a few that come to mind. And without a doubt, some of them long forgotten have also planted seeds within me that have yet to come to full fruition. Yet there's one whose way of walking in the world touched me to my core.
I discovered the force of nature that is Dr. Dennis Dailey, somewhere around my third year of college when I enrolled in a class called Human Sexuality in Everyday Life. Now I already expected to be wowed by this course. It was legendary. There was in fact, such a demand for this class that once or twice a year, he taught it elsewhere for free. Even those students received zero credits for attending, it was always standing room only. I know this because I would take his course a second time just to have the experience all over again.
But my first class with Dr. Dailey was in 120 Budhig Hall, an auditorium that seated 1000 students. From the moment he walked in the room, I was mesmerized by his ability to fill a space so large with his presence. And also by the silence that descended when he really got going.
Dennis Dailey was sex positive, dynamic, and radically vulnerable. He spoke unflinchingly about masturbation, sexual trauma, promiscuity, and protection. He treated us as if we were adults capable of hearing the whole truth for the very first time. He normalized the unspeakable through storytelling, irreverent sincerity, and the way in which his arms and hands perpetually animated his words. He'd often share anecdotes from his personal life, talking about his marriage of many years, his frustrations with outdated gender paradigms, and of course his beloved grandchildren who he was determined to raise without all the psychosexual hangups that most of us have absorbed from the culture around us. This particular topic would quite often move him to tears.
During a lesson in anatomy, where he had advised that the women in class consider peeing after sex in order to avoid UTI's, he used a visual to point out, as he described it, the unfortunate proximity between the vaginal opening and the urethra. Then he pointed his index finger to the sky. "Ya know, this is one of the first things I'd like to take up with God whenever I get there... I mean, what was she thinking?!"
My most vivid memory, however, is of the day when he chose a larger than life presentation of human genitalia. Imagine our surprise when he turned down the lights and projected images onto a 10 by 20 foot screen, a slideshow of vaginas and penises and every shape, color, and size you can imagine. I was dumbstruck as I marveled at the diversity and tried to sort through all the feelings swimming inside.
Now, please remember this was a room filled with hundreds and hundreds of judgmental and sexually unsettled 19 to 20 year olds. So as you might expect, there were a few hecklers in the crowd, particularly of the male persuasion.
But the thing is, Dennis Dailey didn't do shame, not in the bedroom nor in the classroom. So when the snide comments kicked in, he chose a path less traveled, affirmative demonstration versus flagrant admonishment.
"Now wait until you see this beauty," he'd say without a trace of irony, clicking his thumb to reveal a deep brown penis, flacid and uncircumcised.
"Ewww," half the room would reel in their discomfort.
He'd shake his head, cool as a cucumber. "You're crazy. Look at that foreskin! It's absolute perfection."
Click. Next slide. A vagina with labia that seemed to spill outwardly in every direction.
Oh God. Someone in the room would stir in their seat and jeer.
" No, no, no, no, no," he'd insist, flailing his arms about dramatically. "This one, really? This is one of my absolute favorites. She's so unique. An absolute work of art if you ask me. Then going on to point out all the many nooks and crannies worth celebrating.
Slide after vivid slide, he'd continue clicking on, sidestepping judgment and acting as a personal champion for each and every image.
Dr. Dailey was so much more than a teacher. Though he'd never set out to be a social activist, he was in possession of a podium and tens of thousands of years. He didn't just teach about sexuality. He modeled wholehearted celebration of choice, diversity, and the assertion that everything made in nature is exactly as it should be.
And he did it all while speaking a language we could understand. Engaged yet casual, when he really got going, sometimes he'd even stoke the fire of our attention and refer to intercourse as 'fucking' and send the entire class into fits of uproarious laughter.
In the fall of my senior year, I was completing my honors thesis in psychology and the hours I'd spent hunched over a table in a research lab coat were beginning to wear me down. I appreciated my academic mentors. They were kind, and I was learning a lot, but I was hungry for connection of a different sort. I can't recall what excuse I used to land myself and Dr. Dailey's office many moons after I'd taken a course with him. And I don't recall much of what was said. Only that his kindness moved me to tears. I felt defeated somehow, despairing over the fact that the social work building had been right next door the whole time.
Before leaving his office, I grabbed a couple more tissues and asked if I could visit him again sometime soon.
"If your journey leads you back through these doors, you know, I'll be here."
He smiled warmly as he shut the door behind me. And I never saw him again.
Dennis Dailey taught at the University of Kansas from 1969 to 2008. In 2003, conservative Republican Senator Susan Wagle unleashed a smear campaign against him. Wagle's platform gained some traction when she paid a visit to The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. She implied on air that, based on his teaching practices alone, Dr. Dailey was a pedophile. It was an absolutely ridiculous charge with no basis in fact. Nevertheless, some in the conservative media chose to run with it. Bill O'Reilly accused Dailey of a breakdown in ethical standards and of pushing porn under the guise of education. He urged for his immediate dismissal because he was continually "embarrassing students with his sexual remarks."
Well, as it turns out, time has not been kind to Bill O'Reilly in this regard. Sexual harassment allegations would bring him down 14 years later after it was revealed that Fox News had been paying to keep his accusers silent for years. The irony is in every sense of the word tragic. And it is a reminder to all of us how often we default to judgment rather than turn toward the shadow we'd rather not face.
Wagle managed to pass a bill that, if enacted, would pull $3.1 million in funding from The School of Social Welfare at KU. Fortunately, it was vetoed by a newly elected democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius. Allegations of misconduct against Dr. Dailey were eventually withdrawn and he was awarded a Teaching & Excellence award by the KU athletic department that same year.
Dailey continued to teach his sex ed classes until his retirement in 2008.
It's been more than two decades since I walked out of Dr. Dailey's office in tears. Later this month I will graduate with a master's degree in Social Impact. Sometimes it can take years for change to germinate and it is our job not to second guess the potency of what rises up.
When we think of social movements, we most often envision massive political uprisings, collective fists raised an allegiance to a cause, fired up organizers with megaphones speaking truth to power. This is all a beautiful thing to be sure.
And yet our collective politics are shaped by our personal psychology, by how we each internalize and translate our experience of the world through our very own and unique lens, a lens that only we can look through. Social movements are shaped by the hearts and minds of everyday individuals. By countless watershed moments when a human being evolves toward new understanding and develops the capacity within to make a different choice.
Despite our best intentions, collective change requires self-awareness, psychological accountability on the individual level. Without this expansion of personal consciousness, the changes we make - interpersonally, globally - they're tenuous, superficial, and often unsustainable.
If we don't address the root causes of our dysfunctional behaviors, we inevitably circle back to them time and time again. Individual blind spots unravel collective progress, one unconscious choice at a time. We are long overdue for a more humanistic approach to social change. One that acknowledges the realities of humanity and the physical world while also pointing us toward our common needs and the potency and power of empathic heartfelt connection.
Back when I was teaching dance fitness classes, part of my job was to regularly remind students of the amusing irony that is feeling self-conscious. I would watch as they would fidget and fuss, attempting to make themselves invisible.
In moments like this, I would turn to the group and say, "It's kinda funny if you think about it. So many of us are monitoring our movements in the mirror, feeling afraid of looking foolish while everyone around us is too busy navigating their own self-worth to even notice us."
As we grow in consciousness, we move from childlike innocence through egocentrism, and then into this sort of paralyzing self-consciousness. And at that point, some of us refuse to budge. We simply get stuck there. Not because we're doing anything wrong, but because we are holding the painful tension of two great fears. The fear of being seen and the fear of going unnoticed. This is the conflict at the heart of the symbolic self. One that we all share.
What will they think of me? Or worse yet... what if they don't think of me at all?
Integrity is the only viable solution to this soulular struggle, growing beyond egocentrism through self consciousness, into a verticality that both includes and transcends the self.
If you've ever lost yourself in a conversation, piece of music, act of bravery... you know exactly what I mean. Loss of inhibition is a surrendering to such complete embodiment that there's a disintegration of the self. It is a place of so much presence that we are no longer separate from life itself.
Mary Oliver's famous poem, Wild Geese, is one of my favorites. It is often quoted, but rarely in its entirety. I'd like to read it for you now.
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours. And I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination. Calls you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting. Over and over announcing your place in the family of things."
Mary speaks artfully of the inextricable union between self and all of life, inviting us to remember that our placement in this world, however, it might look, feel, break and shape us. It is no mistake.
Which brings me to one of my favorite topics. This thing we've come to call 'purpose.'
What is purpose anyway?
Fulfilling our basic needs. Tending to interpersonal commitments. Honoring our deeper expressional yearnings. This is all a part of life, yes? And yet, often in a world of matter and form, we must compartmentalize before we can integrate.
We grow up and we get a job hoping to express our purpose in life, but mostly it pays the bills and helps us to provide for ourselves and those we care for. As we grow older, create communities and families of connection, our sense of purpose gravitates toward these meaningful relationships, and duty is born. Duty is an expression of purpose that strengthens relationships and contributes to feelings of belonging. Our relationships nourish us at a heart level. They give us confidence as we learn to love and be loved, to need and be needed by others.
Most people spend the majority of their time juggling the demands of their work life and responsibilities toward loved ones. And this is all well and good, unless should's and have-to's have come to dictate your center of gravity. There's no shame in being generous. Hardly. And sometimes making ends meet is all we have the bandwidth for, especially if we're swimming against a current of inequity.
And yet even so, there is a third stratum of purpose I would like for us to ponder. One that drops us below the mind and its work ethics and transcends the unspoken contracts of interpersonal relations. It's the inner siren known as calling.
When it comes to our calling, purposes less about what we do and more about who and how we are at any given moment in time.
As Chögyam Trungpa once wrote, "the definition of bravery is not being afraid of yourself."
Alignment with calling is an ongoing journey of self-reflection, and it requires courage as you bushwhack your way through social norms in order to uncover new pathways and better platforms that enable you to not only survive, not only contribute, but be seen a known as you are... an essential and unique expression of the whole of life.
Now keep in mind, you may never ever get paid to express your calling. You might, but then again, you might not. That's neither here nor there, because calling isn't about how you make your money. It's about how you spend your energy.
Someone might feel called to be a full-time parent, rescue feral cats, or wander into the wilderness for an indefinite period of time. We know we're engaged with the soul, with our calling, when we yield to a yearning that defies explanation. It is something we must offer, say, or do for reasons that transcend even our own understanding.
Calling is a force of nature, and the wind can shift on a dime. It's fluid, unpredictable, and for most of us, it can't be held in the confinement of a singular identity for long. The ever evolving self is the breeze that blows through everything we claim to be. It animates our expression and then moves us toward new horizons.
Early on in my career, I was offered a position that appeared to be my dream job. I thought it was a perfect fit, but in time, not so much. So I went into the office of my superiors and I handed in a resignation letter. This would be the first of three. Each time I tried to quit, I was generously offered a new position, one that better suited my talents. So I would gratefully accept the offer and continue to rise through the ranks. I'm going to spare you the details, but after three iterations of this and a very tearful conversation with my father and every other reasonable person I knew, I decided to quit working there for good. At the time, I couldn't fully explain what wasn't working about it, and I didn't have a backup plan. But as far as my heart was concerned, this was a done deal. I was going to make this final resignation stick no matter what they offered me.
But this time, they didn't even try to convince me to stay. I mean, who could blame them? In three years time, I'd cycled through more job titles than most people did in a lifetime. So I guess I shouldn't have been startled when my female superior shook her head at me disapprovingly and said, "Candice, you're never satisfied. You always want more."
Now please keep in mind, I'd never demanded a pay raise or special treatment of any sort. I'd simply tried and failed at quitting three times in a row. It was like I was trying to extricate myself from a karmic web of my own making.
But those words, you always want more. Her tone was accusatory. I wasn't sure why it made me so angry because it also filled me with shame.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just be happy? But the thing is, there was nothing wrong with me. I was simply shedding my attachment to job titles and my dutiful commitment to my mentors for something I couldn't name. Something that I now know was my calling.
I finished out my last few weeks there with a lighter heart and head full of panic. Unsure of what else to do, I went back to waiting tables.
It would take me years to shake off the shame of that interaction and to stop apologizing for my needs and desires. I would suffer again and again over the years, confusing vocational labels with what I guess in some way I felt should be my one singular purpose in life. And this was painfully confusing because I would take on a new endeavor, rise in the ranks, only to soon after leave it all behind. To be honest, the only job titles I've ever had that have lasted have been those I've given to myself.
I'm certainly not bragging here. The pragmatic me would love it if I could just pick one thing and make loads of cash doing it until the day I die.
But ever evolving expression is my jam. So as far as I'm concerned, it's right and natural that I outgrow every role I play, as I shift and change. This is as it should be.
So I guess I'm here to say to you that, if your desire for more or less for the same or different is continually changing and growing as you do... this is nothing to apologize for. Failure is just a way of looking at the world. When we embrace changes as a reality, it frees us from this illusion. Evolving in our choices, we can continually move into new arenas of discovery, allowing for new beginnings and endings over and over again.
In a world where attention is currency, success is often won by pleasing others. But what if we built a new world, one in which we celebrate diversity and divergence as a reminder to step outside of our personal vantage point as a force of habit in order to grow in our ability to witness ourselves and the world around us.
Psychologists and spiritual teachers have been speaking of heightened states of consciousness for centuries. And yet it is only in recent years that we're hearing about it in the mainstream. Not only is there more talk of mindfulness, this word 'woke' has become a part of our cultural zeitgeist.
We are living in a time when multiple alarms are sounding at once. Waking us up from spiritual and emotional lethargy. And I can tell you... as your fellow human, a coach and a survivor, the number one thing that gets us moving in life? Crisis.
And so here we are, facing a new crisis on the daily. We are being invited to wake up, and we must find kinder ways to revive one. All the shouting, finger wagging, and canceling... it's just another diversion.
Because in order to grow in our consciousness, we must turn our attention toward all of the ways that we ourselves are still sleepwalking through life.
I grew up in a working class family that often struggled to make ends meet. I never ever went without a meal, but I do recall waiting in line for food. Together, mom and I would tote home large blocks of cheese and canned meats by the pound.
Scarcity is relative, and we were better off than most. In our nomadic community homeless, something you towed behind it nearly used up vehicle and family trips were stops along the path from one town to another. I've shared these stories before, how this was life for most of my childhood, and how mom gave her second marriage of 14 years, every ounce of her patience before leaving my stepdad the summer before my senior year. Thanks to Pell grants, student loans, and her willingness to work two jobs, I was able to attend college in state.
Midway through my first year, I began to feel a growing tension inside as I fought to straddle the divide between the world from which I'd come and the new one I was still learning to occupy. Growing up, I'd been taught that education was the way out, a way out of living paycheck to paycheck and a ticket to a financial freedom that my parents would probably never know.
And yet, I'd also been taught to be suspicious of those who had access to money. "Rich assholes" who according to my stepdad were perpetually fucking over the little guy. To say that I was confused by the mixed messages... well, that would be an understatement.
So the further I went in my education, the more self-conscious I became, particularly during my visits back home. I would downplay my intellect and desperately try not to sound like someone who was 'home from college.'
But as we know, the fragmented self cannot be trusted.
My senior year of college, I was home visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday when I casually mentioned to my uncle that my boyfriend and I had gone to see the Kirov Russian ballet. My mom overhearing this was unable to hold her sarcasm at bay.
"Please tell me you're not going to become one of those people."
Now I'm a hundred percent certain she'd meant it as a joke. But her words burned me like a branding iron, calling me back home
It is a visceral pain we feel when our new desires betray unspoken contracts we don't even remember signing.
It is important that we honor and celebrate diversity, and at the same time, cultural divisions, they teach us to mistakenly believe in the lie that we can only belong in certain places to certain people and never everywhere all at once.
You see, what my mother didn't know was that I had maxed out multiple credit cards in order to keep up with my financially-solvent friends. It was wrecking my credit in order to attend music, concerts, indulge in group dinners, and take weekend trips that I couldn't afford.
But this is what happens when we haven't yet learned to stand on our own. Community and connection is profoundly important. It is one of the most critical aspects to our survival individually and as a species. And yet, there is a big difference between fitting in and belonging.
Once again, we looked to the work of Dr. Brene Brown. In her book, Braving The Wilderness, she writes:
"True belonging is a spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness."
She then goes on to remind us that true belonging never requires us to be inauthentic or to change who we are. That instead it demands we be exactly who we are, even when it jeopardizes connection with others.
She writes, "People who have true belonging are those who are most capable of standing on their own."
Did you know that the root of the word courage is 'cor' the Latin word for heart? Back in the day, courage literally meant to speak one's mind by "telling all of one's heart." All of one's heart. Bravery as an expression of a deeper intelligence... so deeply personal it transcends the drama and it gets, as we say, right to the heart of the matter.
But long ago, courage became a thing of the patriarchy, and societal norms began to reinforce the idea that being brave is all about winning and charging forth with guns blazing. The language we use around our fears can be quite revealing. We're taught to 'conquer' our fears, 'overcome' our inhibitions, and even 'take a bullet' when necessary. We're told that being fearless means doing the thing that scares you. It's not terrible advice, if the thing you were doing is in service to something true within.
But how is it that we come to know what 'the thing' is and whether or not it is in fact brave to do it. I say, let's bring it back to the heart. Let's stop trying to prove to everyone else that we're brave and returned to the courage that lives at our core. This is deep integrity.
If you get still enough, if you go far enough within... you know what is right for you. Whether that means getting 'er done or overriding a conditioned impulse to power through. The body, the heart, the soul, it knows. Bravery is living your values as they make sense to you.
As James Hollis says, "We don't create meaning in life. We either live it, or we run from it."
The world is more beautiful and full of love than appears to be the case on the surface. Even so, so many are desperate and hungry for meaning and solutions that require we burn the map we've long been using to chart our course. The landscapes, the territory around us, it has changed.
If when you look around, you only see life on the surface... you might see madness, insanity all around you. You might yourself feel as though you're going a bit crazy in light of it all. But remember this... neurosis of any kind, be it personal or collective, is a disconnection from the deeper self.
Collaboration is deeply personal. It's an inside job. It is our deep dive transparency that will bring us back to one another. It is only through gathering together, within our own hearts and with each other, that we can take all of these desperate pieces and bring them into wholeness again.
As the one and only, fictitious yet emblematic, Ted Lasso reminds us:
"Every choice is a chance."
I'll be back in a couple of weeks to begin wrapping things up with the final two episodes on our journey through seven keys of courageous self-expression. I'm really excited about these final two episodes because I'm going to be weaving in data points from research I've been doing while exploring human agency in the context of my graduate work. I've stumbled upon some pretty phenomenal findings, and I cannot wait to share them with you.
But until then, I want you to know sincerely and from the bottom of my heart... even if you and I have never met before... I love you. And how is it that I can say this? Because I know that there is no reason that I wouldn't love you. Everything inside of you, regardless of what you might think, or you might do... the dark and the light, your expressional magnificence, and your shadow... It all lives within me too. Even though we each must walk our path alone, when I move into the heart of it all, we are the same you and me. Sure, we're uniquely moved and probably quite differently wired, but also inextricably connected through the deep through line that lies beneath our personal stories.
And so I mean it, when I say... dear listener, I want to know who you are and why it is that you listen. Reach me online at thedeeperpulse.com/share.
I wish you well, and I hope to see you next time on The Deeper Pulse.
Keep on moving toward what moves you and trust that precious heart of yours.
Ciao.
© The Deeper Pulse, Candice Schutter
Years ago when I was living in Colorado, a friend and I met for lunch at an eatery near our local dance studio. I munched on a Turkey sandwich and she recounted to me her most recent appointment with a therapist. My friend had long been battling with feelings of deep rage and anger, and she'd sought help to mitigate the fallout in her personal relationships.
During one of their earliest sessions, her therapist had requested that she call her mother and inquire about the story of her birth.
As it turns out it had been long and arduous, and a doctor had used forceps to reach in and remove my friend from the birth canal. When she relayed the story as her mother had told it, her therapist followed up with a single pointed question:
Does that at all sound familiar to you?
My friend, well, she was a bit floored because when she thought about it, it spoke directly to an anger she felt towards so many people in her life for pushing her to move faster than she'd like, or for pulling her toward ways of being that feel out of sync with who she knows herself to be.
Now, this was by no means the end of the therapeutic journey for my friend, but her birth story provided her with a metaphor and context that helped to aluminate new understanding.
At the time, it really got me thinking about my own birth story, much of which I already shared with you back in Episode 8. To summarize, I took my sweet time in the womb and I was born six weeks after my due date. And yet, despite all that hesitation, when it was my time to arrive into the world, I came in like a wildfire backed by gale force winds.
My mother reports her labor being easy breezy, relatively painless, and it all happened in just a few hours time.
This pattern, it certainly resonates with how I've moved through life. I often play the long game. Some might even call me a late bloomer. And more often than not, courage is something I have to conjure.
This is not to say that I haven't been impulsive from time to time. All I mean to say is that when it comes to the big stuff, sometimes what I long to express is like a seed that sits dormant for a long period of time before it's ready to crack through the surface and come into full bloom. Which is why it's taken me so long to share my stories with you. True to form, they've suddenly come pouring out one after the other. Isn't it beautiful the way that creative expression often circles us back to what lies at our foundation?
I fell in love with writing in the ninth grade. Mr. Schwab was a short bearded man who wore glasses, sweater vests, and an apprehensive smile. I can't recall the name of the class. It must have been creative writing or something of that sort, because each and every class, Mr. Schwab would offer up a thematic invitation for a short story. And my classmates and I would spend the next hour pouring our words onto loose leaf paper, imagining a world of our choosing.
Mr. Schwab would circle the room with a clipboard and a red pen, interrupting our flow individually just long enough to scribble grammatical edits and words of encouragement into the margins. After a week or so of edits, we turn in a final draft of each story complete with a hand drawn title page and a plastic cover sheet. We would receive two grades. One for grammar and all the technical whatnot, and the other for our attempt at creative expression. Now Mr. Schwab loved to make his own rules. On a few occasions, I received a creativity score of 105% as a simple reward for giving myself over to the storyline.
Two years later, it was an English teacher who captured my heart. Pat Brown was a whip smart, outspoken, hippie empath who taught me all about feminism simply by virtue of her example. She'd arrange our desks in a half circle, turning us toward one another to encourage vulnerability and honest dialogue. It was in Mrs. Brown's class that I fell in love with The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, "she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom." Our discussions around that book, and many others, shaped my ability to empathize and carry life's necessary tensions in my own heart.
Around that same time, I had a gloriously wise gender defiant history teacher, whose name I'm quite sorry to say, I can not remember. She was warm, approachable, and masterful at teaching. In her class, I found myself interested in history for the very first time. She humanized the characters, encouraging us to look beyond the captions and read between the lines, offering up reality checks by tethering old news to current affairs. Her ability to look beyond the facade made me think critically about the way white men had been rewriting history since the dawn of time. It instilled a sense of compassion and connection to characters of history I might've otherwise overlooked.
It is impossible for me to name all the teachers who have shaped me over the years. Those are just a few that come to mind. And without a doubt, some of them long forgotten have also planted seeds within me that have yet to come to full fruition. Yet there's one whose way of walking in the world touched me to my core.
I discovered the force of nature that is Dr. Dennis Dailey, somewhere around my third year of college when I enrolled in a class called Human Sexuality in Everyday Life. Now I already expected to be wowed by this course. It was legendary. There was in fact, such a demand for this class that once or twice a year, he taught it elsewhere for free. Even those students received zero credits for attending, it was always standing room only. I know this because I would take his course a second time just to have the experience all over again.
But my first class with Dr. Dailey was in 120 Budhig Hall, an auditorium that seated 1000 students. From the moment he walked in the room, I was mesmerized by his ability to fill a space so large with his presence. And also by the silence that descended when he really got going.
Dennis Dailey was sex positive, dynamic, and radically vulnerable. He spoke unflinchingly about masturbation, sexual trauma, promiscuity, and protection. He treated us as if we were adults capable of hearing the whole truth for the very first time. He normalized the unspeakable through storytelling, irreverent sincerity, and the way in which his arms and hands perpetually animated his words. He'd often share anecdotes from his personal life, talking about his marriage of many years, his frustrations with outdated gender paradigms, and of course his beloved grandchildren who he was determined to raise without all the psychosexual hangups that most of us have absorbed from the culture around us. This particular topic would quite often move him to tears.
During a lesson in anatomy, where he had advised that the women in class consider peeing after sex in order to avoid UTI's, he used a visual to point out, as he described it, the unfortunate proximity between the vaginal opening and the urethra. Then he pointed his index finger to the sky. "Ya know, this is one of the first things I'd like to take up with God whenever I get there... I mean, what was she thinking?!"
My most vivid memory, however, is of the day when he chose a larger than life presentation of human genitalia. Imagine our surprise when he turned down the lights and projected images onto a 10 by 20 foot screen, a slideshow of vaginas and penises and every shape, color, and size you can imagine. I was dumbstruck as I marveled at the diversity and tried to sort through all the feelings swimming inside.
Now, please remember this was a room filled with hundreds and hundreds of judgmental and sexually unsettled 19 to 20 year olds. So as you might expect, there were a few hecklers in the crowd, particularly of the male persuasion.
But the thing is, Dennis Dailey didn't do shame, not in the bedroom nor in the classroom. So when the snide comments kicked in, he chose a path less traveled, affirmative demonstration versus flagrant admonishment.
"Now wait until you see this beauty," he'd say without a trace of irony, clicking his thumb to reveal a deep brown penis, flacid and uncircumcised.
"Ewww," half the room would reel in their discomfort.
He'd shake his head, cool as a cucumber. "You're crazy. Look at that foreskin! It's absolute perfection."
Click. Next slide. A vagina with labia that seemed to spill outwardly in every direction.
Oh God. Someone in the room would stir in their seat and jeer.
" No, no, no, no, no," he'd insist, flailing his arms about dramatically. "This one, really? This is one of my absolute favorites. She's so unique. An absolute work of art if you ask me. Then going on to point out all the many nooks and crannies worth celebrating.
Slide after vivid slide, he'd continue clicking on, sidestepping judgment and acting as a personal champion for each and every image.
Dr. Dailey was so much more than a teacher. Though he'd never set out to be a social activist, he was in possession of a podium and tens of thousands of years. He didn't just teach about sexuality. He modeled wholehearted celebration of choice, diversity, and the assertion that everything made in nature is exactly as it should be.
And he did it all while speaking a language we could understand. Engaged yet casual, when he really got going, sometimes he'd even stoke the fire of our attention and refer to intercourse as 'fucking' and send the entire class into fits of uproarious laughter.
In the fall of my senior year, I was completing my honors thesis in psychology and the hours I'd spent hunched over a table in a research lab coat were beginning to wear me down. I appreciated my academic mentors. They were kind, and I was learning a lot, but I was hungry for connection of a different sort. I can't recall what excuse I used to land myself and Dr. Dailey's office many moons after I'd taken a course with him. And I don't recall much of what was said. Only that his kindness moved me to tears. I felt defeated somehow, despairing over the fact that the social work building had been right next door the whole time.
Before leaving his office, I grabbed a couple more tissues and asked if I could visit him again sometime soon.
"If your journey leads you back through these doors, you know, I'll be here."
He smiled warmly as he shut the door behind me. And I never saw him again.
Dennis Dailey taught at the University of Kansas from 1969 to 2008. In 2003, conservative Republican Senator Susan Wagle unleashed a smear campaign against him. Wagle's platform gained some traction when she paid a visit to The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News. She implied on air that, based on his teaching practices alone, Dr. Dailey was a pedophile. It was an absolutely ridiculous charge with no basis in fact. Nevertheless, some in the conservative media chose to run with it. Bill O'Reilly accused Dailey of a breakdown in ethical standards and of pushing porn under the guise of education. He urged for his immediate dismissal because he was continually "embarrassing students with his sexual remarks."
Well, as it turns out, time has not been kind to Bill O'Reilly in this regard. Sexual harassment allegations would bring him down 14 years later after it was revealed that Fox News had been paying to keep his accusers silent for years. The irony is in every sense of the word tragic. And it is a reminder to all of us how often we default to judgment rather than turn toward the shadow we'd rather not face.
Wagle managed to pass a bill that, if enacted, would pull $3.1 million in funding from The School of Social Welfare at KU. Fortunately, it was vetoed by a newly elected democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius. Allegations of misconduct against Dr. Dailey were eventually withdrawn and he was awarded a Teaching & Excellence award by the KU athletic department that same year.
Dailey continued to teach his sex ed classes until his retirement in 2008.
It's been more than two decades since I walked out of Dr. Dailey's office in tears. Later this month I will graduate with a master's degree in Social Impact. Sometimes it can take years for change to germinate and it is our job not to second guess the potency of what rises up.
When we think of social movements, we most often envision massive political uprisings, collective fists raised an allegiance to a cause, fired up organizers with megaphones speaking truth to power. This is all a beautiful thing to be sure.
And yet our collective politics are shaped by our personal psychology, by how we each internalize and translate our experience of the world through our very own and unique lens, a lens that only we can look through. Social movements are shaped by the hearts and minds of everyday individuals. By countless watershed moments when a human being evolves toward new understanding and develops the capacity within to make a different choice.
Despite our best intentions, collective change requires self-awareness, psychological accountability on the individual level. Without this expansion of personal consciousness, the changes we make - interpersonally, globally - they're tenuous, superficial, and often unsustainable.
If we don't address the root causes of our dysfunctional behaviors, we inevitably circle back to them time and time again. Individual blind spots unravel collective progress, one unconscious choice at a time. We are long overdue for a more humanistic approach to social change. One that acknowledges the realities of humanity and the physical world while also pointing us toward our common needs and the potency and power of empathic heartfelt connection.
Back when I was teaching dance fitness classes, part of my job was to regularly remind students of the amusing irony that is feeling self-conscious. I would watch as they would fidget and fuss, attempting to make themselves invisible.
In moments like this, I would turn to the group and say, "It's kinda funny if you think about it. So many of us are monitoring our movements in the mirror, feeling afraid of looking foolish while everyone around us is too busy navigating their own self-worth to even notice us."
As we grow in consciousness, we move from childlike innocence through egocentrism, and then into this sort of paralyzing self-consciousness. And at that point, some of us refuse to budge. We simply get stuck there. Not because we're doing anything wrong, but because we are holding the painful tension of two great fears. The fear of being seen and the fear of going unnoticed. This is the conflict at the heart of the symbolic self. One that we all share.
What will they think of me? Or worse yet... what if they don't think of me at all?
Integrity is the only viable solution to this soulular struggle, growing beyond egocentrism through self consciousness, into a verticality that both includes and transcends the self.
If you've ever lost yourself in a conversation, piece of music, act of bravery... you know exactly what I mean. Loss of inhibition is a surrendering to such complete embodiment that there's a disintegration of the self. It is a place of so much presence that we are no longer separate from life itself.
Mary Oliver's famous poem, Wild Geese, is one of my favorites. It is often quoted, but rarely in its entirety. I'd like to read it for you now.
"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours. And I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination. Calls you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting. Over and over announcing your place in the family of things."
Mary speaks artfully of the inextricable union between self and all of life, inviting us to remember that our placement in this world, however, it might look, feel, break and shape us. It is no mistake.
Which brings me to one of my favorite topics. This thing we've come to call 'purpose.'
What is purpose anyway?
Fulfilling our basic needs. Tending to interpersonal commitments. Honoring our deeper expressional yearnings. This is all a part of life, yes? And yet, often in a world of matter and form, we must compartmentalize before we can integrate.
We grow up and we get a job hoping to express our purpose in life, but mostly it pays the bills and helps us to provide for ourselves and those we care for. As we grow older, create communities and families of connection, our sense of purpose gravitates toward these meaningful relationships, and duty is born. Duty is an expression of purpose that strengthens relationships and contributes to feelings of belonging. Our relationships nourish us at a heart level. They give us confidence as we learn to love and be loved, to need and be needed by others.
Most people spend the majority of their time juggling the demands of their work life and responsibilities toward loved ones. And this is all well and good, unless should's and have-to's have come to dictate your center of gravity. There's no shame in being generous. Hardly. And sometimes making ends meet is all we have the bandwidth for, especially if we're swimming against a current of inequity.
And yet even so, there is a third stratum of purpose I would like for us to ponder. One that drops us below the mind and its work ethics and transcends the unspoken contracts of interpersonal relations. It's the inner siren known as calling.
When it comes to our calling, purposes less about what we do and more about who and how we are at any given moment in time.
As Chögyam Trungpa once wrote, "the definition of bravery is not being afraid of yourself."
Alignment with calling is an ongoing journey of self-reflection, and it requires courage as you bushwhack your way through social norms in order to uncover new pathways and better platforms that enable you to not only survive, not only contribute, but be seen a known as you are... an essential and unique expression of the whole of life.
Now keep in mind, you may never ever get paid to express your calling. You might, but then again, you might not. That's neither here nor there, because calling isn't about how you make your money. It's about how you spend your energy.
Someone might feel called to be a full-time parent, rescue feral cats, or wander into the wilderness for an indefinite period of time. We know we're engaged with the soul, with our calling, when we yield to a yearning that defies explanation. It is something we must offer, say, or do for reasons that transcend even our own understanding.
Calling is a force of nature, and the wind can shift on a dime. It's fluid, unpredictable, and for most of us, it can't be held in the confinement of a singular identity for long. The ever evolving self is the breeze that blows through everything we claim to be. It animates our expression and then moves us toward new horizons.
Early on in my career, I was offered a position that appeared to be my dream job. I thought it was a perfect fit, but in time, not so much. So I went into the office of my superiors and I handed in a resignation letter. This would be the first of three. Each time I tried to quit, I was generously offered a new position, one that better suited my talents. So I would gratefully accept the offer and continue to rise through the ranks. I'm going to spare you the details, but after three iterations of this and a very tearful conversation with my father and every other reasonable person I knew, I decided to quit working there for good. At the time, I couldn't fully explain what wasn't working about it, and I didn't have a backup plan. But as far as my heart was concerned, this was a done deal. I was going to make this final resignation stick no matter what they offered me.
But this time, they didn't even try to convince me to stay. I mean, who could blame them? In three years time, I'd cycled through more job titles than most people did in a lifetime. So I guess I shouldn't have been startled when my female superior shook her head at me disapprovingly and said, "Candice, you're never satisfied. You always want more."
Now please keep in mind, I'd never demanded a pay raise or special treatment of any sort. I'd simply tried and failed at quitting three times in a row. It was like I was trying to extricate myself from a karmic web of my own making.
But those words, you always want more. Her tone was accusatory. I wasn't sure why it made me so angry because it also filled me with shame.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just be happy? But the thing is, there was nothing wrong with me. I was simply shedding my attachment to job titles and my dutiful commitment to my mentors for something I couldn't name. Something that I now know was my calling.
I finished out my last few weeks there with a lighter heart and head full of panic. Unsure of what else to do, I went back to waiting tables.
It would take me years to shake off the shame of that interaction and to stop apologizing for my needs and desires. I would suffer again and again over the years, confusing vocational labels with what I guess in some way I felt should be my one singular purpose in life. And this was painfully confusing because I would take on a new endeavor, rise in the ranks, only to soon after leave it all behind. To be honest, the only job titles I've ever had that have lasted have been those I've given to myself.
I'm certainly not bragging here. The pragmatic me would love it if I could just pick one thing and make loads of cash doing it until the day I die.
But ever evolving expression is my jam. So as far as I'm concerned, it's right and natural that I outgrow every role I play, as I shift and change. This is as it should be.
So I guess I'm here to say to you that, if your desire for more or less for the same or different is continually changing and growing as you do... this is nothing to apologize for. Failure is just a way of looking at the world. When we embrace changes as a reality, it frees us from this illusion. Evolving in our choices, we can continually move into new arenas of discovery, allowing for new beginnings and endings over and over again.
In a world where attention is currency, success is often won by pleasing others. But what if we built a new world, one in which we celebrate diversity and divergence as a reminder to step outside of our personal vantage point as a force of habit in order to grow in our ability to witness ourselves and the world around us.
Psychologists and spiritual teachers have been speaking of heightened states of consciousness for centuries. And yet it is only in recent years that we're hearing about it in the mainstream. Not only is there more talk of mindfulness, this word 'woke' has become a part of our cultural zeitgeist.
We are living in a time when multiple alarms are sounding at once. Waking us up from spiritual and emotional lethargy. And I can tell you... as your fellow human, a coach and a survivor, the number one thing that gets us moving in life? Crisis.
And so here we are, facing a new crisis on the daily. We are being invited to wake up, and we must find kinder ways to revive one. All the shouting, finger wagging, and canceling... it's just another diversion.
Because in order to grow in our consciousness, we must turn our attention toward all of the ways that we ourselves are still sleepwalking through life.
I grew up in a working class family that often struggled to make ends meet. I never ever went without a meal, but I do recall waiting in line for food. Together, mom and I would tote home large blocks of cheese and canned meats by the pound.
Scarcity is relative, and we were better off than most. In our nomadic community homeless, something you towed behind it nearly used up vehicle and family trips were stops along the path from one town to another. I've shared these stories before, how this was life for most of my childhood, and how mom gave her second marriage of 14 years, every ounce of her patience before leaving my stepdad the summer before my senior year. Thanks to Pell grants, student loans, and her willingness to work two jobs, I was able to attend college in state.
Midway through my first year, I began to feel a growing tension inside as I fought to straddle the divide between the world from which I'd come and the new one I was still learning to occupy. Growing up, I'd been taught that education was the way out, a way out of living paycheck to paycheck and a ticket to a financial freedom that my parents would probably never know.
And yet, I'd also been taught to be suspicious of those who had access to money. "Rich assholes" who according to my stepdad were perpetually fucking over the little guy. To say that I was confused by the mixed messages... well, that would be an understatement.
So the further I went in my education, the more self-conscious I became, particularly during my visits back home. I would downplay my intellect and desperately try not to sound like someone who was 'home from college.'
But as we know, the fragmented self cannot be trusted.
My senior year of college, I was home visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday when I casually mentioned to my uncle that my boyfriend and I had gone to see the Kirov Russian ballet. My mom overhearing this was unable to hold her sarcasm at bay.
"Please tell me you're not going to become one of those people."
Now I'm a hundred percent certain she'd meant it as a joke. But her words burned me like a branding iron, calling me back home
It is a visceral pain we feel when our new desires betray unspoken contracts we don't even remember signing.
It is important that we honor and celebrate diversity, and at the same time, cultural divisions, they teach us to mistakenly believe in the lie that we can only belong in certain places to certain people and never everywhere all at once.
You see, what my mother didn't know was that I had maxed out multiple credit cards in order to keep up with my financially-solvent friends. It was wrecking my credit in order to attend music, concerts, indulge in group dinners, and take weekend trips that I couldn't afford.
But this is what happens when we haven't yet learned to stand on our own. Community and connection is profoundly important. It is one of the most critical aspects to our survival individually and as a species. And yet, there is a big difference between fitting in and belonging.
Once again, we looked to the work of Dr. Brene Brown. In her book, Braving The Wilderness, she writes:
"True belonging is a spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness."
She then goes on to remind us that true belonging never requires us to be inauthentic or to change who we are. That instead it demands we be exactly who we are, even when it jeopardizes connection with others.
She writes, "People who have true belonging are those who are most capable of standing on their own."
Did you know that the root of the word courage is 'cor' the Latin word for heart? Back in the day, courage literally meant to speak one's mind by "telling all of one's heart." All of one's heart. Bravery as an expression of a deeper intelligence... so deeply personal it transcends the drama and it gets, as we say, right to the heart of the matter.
But long ago, courage became a thing of the patriarchy, and societal norms began to reinforce the idea that being brave is all about winning and charging forth with guns blazing. The language we use around our fears can be quite revealing. We're taught to 'conquer' our fears, 'overcome' our inhibitions, and even 'take a bullet' when necessary. We're told that being fearless means doing the thing that scares you. It's not terrible advice, if the thing you were doing is in service to something true within.
But how is it that we come to know what 'the thing' is and whether or not it is in fact brave to do it. I say, let's bring it back to the heart. Let's stop trying to prove to everyone else that we're brave and returned to the courage that lives at our core. This is deep integrity.
If you get still enough, if you go far enough within... you know what is right for you. Whether that means getting 'er done or overriding a conditioned impulse to power through. The body, the heart, the soul, it knows. Bravery is living your values as they make sense to you.
As James Hollis says, "We don't create meaning in life. We either live it, or we run from it."
The world is more beautiful and full of love than appears to be the case on the surface. Even so, so many are desperate and hungry for meaning and solutions that require we burn the map we've long been using to chart our course. The landscapes, the territory around us, it has changed.
If when you look around, you only see life on the surface... you might see madness, insanity all around you. You might yourself feel as though you're going a bit crazy in light of it all. But remember this... neurosis of any kind, be it personal or collective, is a disconnection from the deeper self.
Collaboration is deeply personal. It's an inside job. It is our deep dive transparency that will bring us back to one another. It is only through gathering together, within our own hearts and with each other, that we can take all of these desperate pieces and bring them into wholeness again.
As the one and only, fictitious yet emblematic, Ted Lasso reminds us:
"Every choice is a chance."
I'll be back in a couple of weeks to begin wrapping things up with the final two episodes on our journey through seven keys of courageous self-expression. I'm really excited about these final two episodes because I'm going to be weaving in data points from research I've been doing while exploring human agency in the context of my graduate work. I've stumbled upon some pretty phenomenal findings, and I cannot wait to share them with you.
But until then, I want you to know sincerely and from the bottom of my heart... even if you and I have never met before... I love you. And how is it that I can say this? Because I know that there is no reason that I wouldn't love you. Everything inside of you, regardless of what you might think, or you might do... the dark and the light, your expressional magnificence, and your shadow... It all lives within me too. Even though we each must walk our path alone, when I move into the heart of it all, we are the same you and me. Sure, we're uniquely moved and probably quite differently wired, but also inextricably connected through the deep through line that lies beneath our personal stories.
And so I mean it, when I say... dear listener, I want to know who you are and why it is that you listen. Reach me online at thedeeperpulse.com/share.
I wish you well, and I hope to see you next time on The Deeper Pulse.
Keep on moving toward what moves you and trust that precious heart of yours.
Ciao.
© The Deeper Pulse, Candice Schutter