 Good day and welcome back to the 4080 podcast with your host, Mr Thomas only of course, how are you guys doing today? Not gonna lie, past few weeks been pretty rough for me, I've been going through some kind of weird mix of an autistic burnout and a period of depression. So I think it's very fitting that today's topic we're going to be talking all about philosophy. For anybody who doesn't know about my political, not political philosophical affiliations, I'm very much towards the the existentialism kind of side of things. So it's going to be a really interesting chat with our guest Emily and Emily, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks. Thanks for having me. You're very welcome and it's lovely to have you on. Thank you. Would you like to introduce yourself to everybody that was a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm an artist and let's see, I've been writing since I was a kid. So that was kind of my first foray into the realm of of art. Yeah. I'm a filmmaker, a poet, screenwriter, journalist and a songwriter. Wow. Fingers in many pies, as we say in the UK. Yes. But yeah, I love being a creator and being creative and supporting other creatives. And I also have a small writing business, so I coach writers, I work as a judge for a film festival sometimes or a script reader for film festivals. And I also just coach people one on one with their screenplays. I'm starting a screenwriters chapter of the Writers League of Utah, which will be available for others outside of Utah as well, since it will be online. But yeah, so my recent work is writing, directing and co-producing a short film called Love Spell that played in 14 festivals around the world and took home about 11 awards. So that was exciting. And since then, I've been focused on like finishing up some of my screenplays and short story writing and publishing poetry and short stories and some journalism as well. So just a bit, you know, just a little little bit of here and there kind of work. Just a little bit. Oh, my God, that sounds like a lot. It is. And I'm also putting out two songs this summer. Wow. So like, I know there is like a really big like autism stereotype about autistic people being very, very good with maths and computer sciences. And it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. And I've been doing a little bit of digging into like the common interests that autistic people have. And it seems to be like a lot of us gravitate more towards the creative kind of fields, like whether it's fantasy, you know, writing, things like that. It's it's it's been quite, quite eye-opening. Just how wrong the stereotypes have been. Yes. In fact, I attended a lecture because it was more of a conversation recently with some people from I think Nokia Bell and Google. Some female people in the like film world, just talking about like changing stereotypes. And this was more specifically towards women in film, but in technology, women in technology or in stem fields, stem fields and how they're portrayed or not portrayed in film and television and how we can change those stereotypes and more accurately represent women are in those fields. So I thought that was really cool. I had an interview in the first season of my podcast with this guy called Reggie, Reggie Herald, Reggie Herald, something like that. And he's an actor and he does like a lot of theatre related things. And he was talking to me about, you know, I asked him obviously, you know, have you done any autistic roles? Did they just, you know, hand them out on the silver platter to you because you're autistic? And he was talking about it and he's a very handsome chap and he's very kind of, you know, very mainstream kind of stereotypical attractive man. And a lot of the autistic characters that he would want to go for, they actually don't fit like his physicality. Like they have like this, I think it's called like tight casting, where they're looking for these kind of small geeky kind of people, men usually to play autistic leads. And that's really concerning because it's it's not only that there is this stereotype that's around, but it's actually being propagated by a lot of like the media, like the people who are casting people for these roles. Yes, I agree with you. And how can we change that? I think through having writers actively writing in characters who are not just stereotypes, but having writers on the spectrum, I think is really important for Hollywood to be open to that. And I think there is definitely more of a leaning or an awakening to that need. I'm not sure how how many people in the industry are, you know, actively working on implementing that. I have I have seen a little bit. I know that there's a actress called Chloe Hayden who I think it's to feel like heartbreak high that she was I didn't watch it. I'm going to be honest, but it's not really that my kind of thing drama, things like that. Sure. I'm more of like the the cartoon kind of. Rick and Morty type type of person. I like to press and I like to watch depressing things like Black Mirror. That's what that's what really helps me relax in the evening. Oh, I love Black Mirror. That's the kind of stuff I like to have you watched the latest season. Yes. And I watched a bit. I watched a bit of it. I watched like the first three episodes. What did you think? I mean, it's it's very different. Like the thing that I like about Black Mirror is that you you don't really know exactly what you're going to get with each of the episodes. Like I think the one with the the Asian girl that's kind of themed around like a 1940s, 50s kind of movie aesthetic where she puts like a bit of a blood on like a talisman and she has to go about like sacrificing people to prevent the apocalypse. Oh, I haven't seen that episode yet. That sounds really good. Okay. Sorry. I just yeah, I should really put like a spoiler on like things like this. Oh, no, you're fine. Don't worry about it. The episode where the girl finds out that her life is in a or is a TV show or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wrote something similar to that. You've had something similar to it? I wrote something I think in 2015 that was kind of similar to that. But yeah, it was kind of like she had a job as an influencer this character and she gets like sacked one day. She just gets a letter in the mail basically saying that the corporation that she worked for doesn't need her anymore and everything is let her go but she doesn't realize they have cameras in her apartment and they've been filming other elements of her life that she does not want to reveal like what medication she takes and things like that. The small print on a contract or something. Exactly. And then she finds out that they own her image but she's poor and now she's like sitting outside the shopping mall and people walking by with shopping bags with her face on it but of course she's not making any money. That's crazy. Yeah. That sounds good. Thank you. Maybe I'll make it. One thing that I'm wondering is you've obviously listed off quite a lot of things. You've told me that you do screenwriting for films. You do poetry. You do writing. You coach people. I feel like we're very similar in that way that we like to have lots of different things to do all the time. Lots of productivity related things. How do you schedule that? How do you make sure that you like water each of the plants or spin the plates on each of them? That's a great question. Okay, so part of my challenge being neurodivergent is that I really have a hard time scheduling specific times for specific things. It could be anything from like, I don't know, if neurotypical people say, okay, I eat every day at one o'clock and then I go to the gym at five o'clock or whatever. I have a really hard time with setting timed events, you know? So I would say, you know, part of it is just keeping a calendar and like I have a physical calendar and I have reminders on my phone but I also use my notes to keep track of my goals and then I might just tackle one thing at a time or sometimes depending on how I feel that day, how much energy I have left for the day, I'll say, okay, well, what else can I accomplish today? And, you know, that's what I end up doing for the day. That's really interesting. It's not like the typical idea of like the autistic routine with things. Like for me, it's very much like that. Well, it kind of is because if I don't follow this set routine in my head each day and go for each of the different things then I just finds that my anxiety is just too difficult to manage. Like I have a lot of different things that I want to maintain and do and it seems like sometimes like when your energy is low and you have, you know, you start it and you have all this energy and you want to do all of these things and then you commit to each of these things and then you have to, when your energy lowers you've got to maintain them and you've got to keep doing them and I find that balance really, really hard to strike sometimes. Like am I being too productive or too unproductive for how I like, you know? Interesting, yes. I mean, I would say I do have my own routines but they're not quite like that, you know? It's like I'll have my coffee at a certain, it's not necessarily the certain time every day. It's not really time-based, it's just like I do have certain things worked into my routine or like meditation practice but... Meditation's big. My degree was in biomedical sciences and when I was doing that I did a lot of research into meditation. I was trying very much at that period of my life to fix my brain with all the mental health difficulties that I have to deal with. I'd been going through psychotherapy since I was 14 to know result really and so I kind of... I was looking for ways to sort of improve myself and one of the ways that I wanted to do that was meditation and it actually does have physical changes on your brain. I think they did a research study on monks and compared their brains to the brains of people who don't meditate as much. They meditate like two or three hours a day or something and they showed growth in certain areas of the brain just from doing meditation over and over each day for years. I think it was to do with the prefrontal cortex maybe reduction of the amygdala which is the prefrontal cortex is what we consider to be the centre of our higher intelligence and brain, our decision making. Whereas the amygdala is kind of this monkey mind kind of emotional brain that just keeps us safe and makes us feel the anxiety and the fear and things like that which is important for survival but it's not so good in a modern time. So meditation, you know, it's definitely proven to be effective for a lot of people. That's awesome. I can agree with that and attest to that. What's your schedule like? Well, I do a specific... It's not necessary. I mean, I do meditations as well using an app that I really like called MoonX but also I do gongnyeo every day which is part of my Buddhist practice with SGI. I'm not familiar with those terms. Okay, so SGI is an organization that began in Japan under Nishiren and... Let's see if I can give you a little background on it. It's based on the teachings of the 13th century Japanese monk Nishiren. It's distinctive for its focus on the Lotus Sutra as the ultimate Buddhist scripture. Our central practice is chanting the mantra which loosely translates to I devote myself to the Lotus Sutra or I devote myself to the mystic law of cause and effect basically through sound or through vibration and by chanting the mantra we believe that we can tap into our inherent Buddha nature in our own lives and discover our highest potential. I'm just having a look at the website. It says that the word gongnyeo literally means to exert oneself in practice. One gongnyeo is a short ceremony which enables us to celebrate our inherent Buddhahood. I love that word. And offer prayers of gratitude and determination for whatever is relevant to us at any particular time. Yes. So can you read Japanese or do you have like a... Yeah, so I have my book and it is in Japanese but it also has the English translation in the beginning. So we actually chant in Japanese every day from two chapters of the Lotus Sutra. The second and the 16th chapters, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so we do gongnyeo but I also just chant Nam-yohorangekyo if I feel I need to during the day and that's had a profound impact on my life. I feel more peaceful and more grounded when I do my chanting and it usually just takes about five to ten minutes a day. So it's not a huge time commitment but the effects that it has on my life I felt substantially. Awesome. Well, I suppose that leads us into kind of like the topic of the podcast. A little bit of a background for me. Obviously, we're going to be talking about like philosophy. That's going to include things like religion but it's also going to include things like what would you say? What's the word for non-religious? Oh, it could be. Humanism, maybe. Humanism. There is like a word for it, isn't there? Word for not being religious. Secular, there you go. If I just give it a little bit of a background for my experience with religion. My parents or my mom describes herself as Christian. Kind of more towards like the agnostic kind of side of things. Whereas my dad is like a die-hard atheist. I've been to church a few times in my life. I had a Catholic friend who I went to the church with them once. They told me that anyone who didn't believe in God was going to go to hell and that they were inherently an evil person. And so I told my dad after swimming practice one time that I'd been to this church and they told me that he's evil. And he wasn't very happy about that. He explained to me about what religion is and how just because someone tells you that something is a certain way, it doesn't always mean it and everyone has their own different beliefs, ways of interpreting the world. His being kind of the more atheistic kind. I did have quite a big interest in Buddhism when I was younger. I think it's more about the teachings of it. Like non-attachment. Not being as attached to things in your life. And so not experiencing the pain when something bad happens with it or you don't have that thing in your life anymore. That was one of the things that I saw and it was also I kind of I suppose I very much like the aesthetic of it and the focus around peace and serenity and kind of meditation and things like that. I did a bit of research into it I did a philosophy and ethics and I course at my school learned a bit more about kind of the roots of Buddhism. But I think mostly for a lot of my life I've been fairly secular with things. I don't believe that there is an afterlife. I don't believe that there is a supernatural being. I don't I firmly root myself in what I know and what I don't know and what I don't know I don't think about. So that's me. I would really like to know obviously from your side because I remember you saying that you grew up in quite a religious kind of conservative environment which my upbringing was not so much like that. So I guess like what role did religion play in your life then and what kind of strayed you away from those teachings that you had when you were younger? Yeah, that's a great question. And I definitely admire you for not having a religious doctrine too because I think well we'll get into this in a second but I have very young views I guess because of my upbringing about religion and kind of its role in people's lives and things like that. I grew up in a small conservative Christian community in the Bible Belt I was raised in Tennessee on the border of Virginia and Christianity was my entire life I was also homeschooled so even our small homeschool classes with a few other children were with kids from church we met inside of a church building for most of our classes and therefore most of my social interactions were with people from either my church or other churches in our homeschool network it was it was a large network a large community and I would just say, yeah, religion is just deeply woven into our lives it did provide a moral compass, a community of shared values and beliefs but personally, you know, as I matured and began to grow and expand and move out of that community I really started to question and explore I felt that I needed to find a path that resonated more deeply with me as a creative person as a woman as I identify as bisexual so as a bisexual woman and definitely as a... doesn't tend to be things that Christianity is very hopeful exactly and most, you know, all the leaders that I knew were male so there's that element of not feeling whatever that my voice was heard or wanted growing up in that realm, yeah just kind of forced well, not forced but expected to kind of set the side and you know, listen rather than contribute exactly and, you know, I was shy growing up and so I would just kind of escape into my own head or my own world a lot of times using my imagination I felt like, you know, maybe sometimes I would go to a different place which was a lot more comfortable than being there in church every Sunday and then yeah, you know, I mean the other women in the community were usually in the kitchen like cooking when we would have church potlucks be cooking in the kitchen and then the men would be out like discussing philosophy or whatever they did but I just remember wanting to be around the men not having any desire to be in the kitchen so like, you're saying that you identify as bisexual like when did you kind of get those feelings that you might be attracted to other women because I imagine being in that kind of community where you're homeschooled and you kind of fed a lot of these doctrines and ideas about how you should conduct yourself in the world that it might be a little bit hard to kind of accept those feelings but what age did you kind of think about that or when did you kind of notice that you that you had that kind of attraction to women? I think it was about 10 or 11 when I first felt like a physical attraction to women it wasn't until high school that I experimented and then college I had like a girlfriend so yeah but it definitely it took years of especially I remember one of my best friends growing up said yeah anyone who has sexual attraction to the same sex had some kind of deep trauma in their past and so when I heard that I thought I was like oh so that's the explanation for my feelings you know it just I don't know so they didn't go with the like homosexuality or anything about that is evil and you're going to go to hell or that it's they actually like said it's caused by like trauma yeah I mean that's what I heard but then also there wasn't really any discussion on homosexuality so it wasn't like something that my family ever brought up and there were certain things that were never discussed and then later on I found my parents had these books about you know homosexuals are going to hell and I do remember that was something that my mom did tell me oh yeah she said you know homosexuals are going straight to hell and anyway she said something else about the chain IHOP being bought out by two gay men and anyway I just that was like the only reference to anyone who might be LGBT when I was growing up and then I saw someone who I thought might be gay in the mall once when I was like 10 and I thought I wonder how he feels living in this community but yeah yeah like is Tennessee like a cause I'm not very well I'm not very good with UK geography I'm not good with American geography like understanding which states are what kind of political affiliation but I mean is it is Tennessee like a really conservative state? yes extremely they wanted to ban drag and things like that recently so yeah it's really unfortunate of course hopefully you know I mean things are well I don't want to get too much into the politics of it now cause it's pretty depressing but I would say it's similar to maybe a state like Florida where we have really atrocious people and policies right now yes I think I know what you're talking about that's also being quite concerning for me so obviously you know religion was kind of a centerpiece in your life whether you liked it or not I mean what things made you stray away from it like was there like a moment or certain things or people in your life that have kind of influenced I would like to say influenced I think that kind of holds some like negative connotation but I mean influenced in a nice way like opened your minds maybe yeah absolutely so my faith began to waver when I started meeting people of different religious backgrounds and as I learned and this was mainly in college I was also I went to a Christian college for my freshman year and I was actually bullied by some of the students I felt kind of like an outcast so what was that I'm sorry to hear that it's bullying and it's very damaging isn't it like it's difficult in the moment but it also I think it really does hold a lot of like psychological significance like going into adulthood and stuff like I know there's still experiences that my brain kind of travels back to negative moments in my adult life where I'm like it really kind of affects me I think a lot of my mental health came from bullying as well I'm sorry to hear that and yeah I mean that experience really did change my view I already had kind of a negative view of Christianity from my upbringing but then I was going to quote-unquote Christian school where basically they were just very snobbish and I mean obviously not all of the students there were some good students there too but in general I would say you can't go in and say hello do you want to pause it for a second and I can get rid of it Foxley, get down please sorry she's she wants attention fair enough but just in general there was kind of a exclusionary policy towards the popular kids or those who went to that school and an attitude of we're better than like the public school kids or something and that was something that I grew up with as well being homeschooled that I remember kids on the playground outside and I remember specifically one of the deacon I think it was the elder's son was taunting the kids next door who lived in the house next to the church who wanted to come over and play on the playground and he said you're not Christian you can't come over and you're poor and stuff like that it was just terrible so that's the kind of attitude like holier than now that I really can't stand I think it's just a human behavior I don't necessarily ascribe it to Christianity or any particular religion but I think it's definitely it can be a result of religions that claim our way is the only way and so that was specific like communities and believing in Jesus is the only way to heaven or to peace that specific view is actually what began to crumble my Christian faith here's the question as I learned more about diversity of different human cultures around the world different religious practices different belief systems I began to question if God is love how could he condemn all of these people who don't believe the exact same rigid thing I was brought up to believe these people didn't grow up in my tiny community in a reformed Protestant household attending reformed Presbyterian church why are they wrong so that question nagged at me for years and the construct of Christianity's so-called superiority began to crumble for me as well during my college years as I studied different philosophies I learned more about the world and you know outside of my own bubble basically and it was illuminating in college I also read Jacques Gaul's work on universal salvation which deeply resonated with me and he basically says you know if God is all loving and there is nothing that exists outside of God then basically like hell doesn't exist and this if God says like I love everyone and we are saved through grace then the grace covers everything and it doesn't matter what sin you've done and so there's a lot of like things contradictions and stuff with like Christianity I mean just going back to my experience in philosophy and ethics the whole thing about God being all powerful so they can do anything all seeing they're aware of everything that goes on all the time they're like it's like omnipotent omniscience omnibenevolent I think it's all good all powerful all seeing I think that was the point at which I was like you know what two of those can only exist because if it's all powerful and all seeing it can't be all benevolent because there's a lot of horrible things that happen all the time and if they're all all seeing and all benevolent they can't be very powerful if they're all powerful and benevolent they can't see everything so it's like stuff like that I think is really kind of cemented atheism deep in my brain like just coming across stuff like that I can understand I do understand I know the whole thing about getting forgiveness just have a horrible life do horrible things, be evil do all that and then right before you die just be forgiven and go to heaven right sorry I'm going on a bit of a roll with my atheism I get very passionate about it it's okay it's too much Richard Dawkins sometimes I think that's okay and you know I think that's why I really like Buddhism because I also believe myself to be more of an existentialist in my own philosophical understandings in personal ethos What does existentialism mean just for anybody who doesn't know? Well personally I think it's about personal responsibility for one's existential choices or life choices and claiming personal responsibility that you know it's not God that's responsible for the universe or my parents or my environment but ultimately I am the one who is responsible for what happens in my life for the choices that I personally make It's very scary but it's also quite empowering I think Yes, extremely freeing Soren Kierkegaard Jean-Paul Sartre Frederick Nietzsche Albert Camus Martin Heidegger Jacques Couloule but these are some of my favorite philosophers and while they have different focuses and different views on the nature of humanity and the nature of God or human responsibility I think they do have some similarities like Kierkegaard stresses personal responsibility for your life choices Sartre highlights humans are responsible for their actions as they are quote-unquote condemned to be free which is kind of an interesting idea same with Nietzsche emphasizing the role in shaping our own destiny Camus advocates personal responsibility but in the face of the absurdity of existence there are definitely similarities between them Yeah The existentialism is just I've just googled what existentialism means and there's a nice little snippet of information that I'll probably read out Extentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence Extentialist philosophers explore the questions related to meaning purpose and value of human existence which I think is a very very important thing I did my years picked up when you talked about Nietzsche because I think for me I've always had a vested interest in philosophy and fx really but it's I've never been particularly studious about it I think for a lot of it for me when I went through my sort of four or five year long period of time where I was kind of writing about my own personal experiences thoughts and feelings behind things I actually kind of came to came very close to the way that Nietzsche went with the whole concept of like nihilism and things like that I've had a lot of the experiences in my life where I've had pretty horrific existential crises where I could no longer assign any meaning to anything in my life I think there was a long period of time for like a month and a half where I didn't do anything and I just kind of didn't see any point in anything and I've had periods of time like that as well and even situations where I kind of experience something and it's almost like my eyes kind of zoom out like it's the opposite of like tunnel vision and I kind of remember again about what that feeling was like and so I think obviously things like depression and negative life experiences obviously lead you to seek some kind of clarity and certainty about the world and for me that was definitely the case and I don't know if there's a specific name for this kind of thinking but I kind of went through this weird stage where I was trying to figure out what I could be certain on you know and so I'd start with something big and I was like right I want to be good at taekwondo or something because that's meaningful to me and I kind of go down and you know what underpins that and what underpins that and it eventually just kind of got to a situation where I was contrasting all of these thoughts and experiences that I was having with my knowledge of psychology, with my knowledge of biology and the fact that I am a secular person and I was kind of, I kind of came to the conclusion that there wasn't really anything that I could know for certain about anything if I actually thought about it in the level of detail that I did you know like just the physical act of thinking you know you're using a biological physical organ to think there's obviously going to be particular biases from my experience in biology that prevent me from like thinking outside of that you know so there's always these barriers in my mind you know like even though I've done all this thinking and kind of come up with my own meaning and philosophy and stuff I'm still just a human with a physical brain and there's so many things that I am unaware of that go on in my life and go on like in the world you know you have that that scientific study about your brain filling in gaps in the world and you just kind of seeing this kind of hallucinating reality to a certain extent because your brain is filling in so many of those gaps and so so there's a lot of that and it's kind of this mishmash of philosophy and science and just constant writing and introspection and I got to a point where I became very nihilistic basically and for a long time even when I was quite young I had these existential crises like I remember when I injured my hand I kind of looked at my hand and I was really confused at why there was something stuck inside my body and trying to figure out what that meant you know I was a very weird kid it's okay but that kind of nihilism very much I got to a point where I was like you know this is doing more to be destructive to me and although it feels somewhat freeing and you kind of feel somewhat superior because you kind of don't feel like there's any meaning in anything and so whenever people ascribe meaning to things and get upset about things you're like you know I joked on you nothing has any meaning and I got to a point I was like Tom like this is probably not going to be good for your mental health and so I decided at one point at a time in Thailand I was like you know I'm going to brainwash myself into thinking there is meaning I crafted like a few like a core value which was to be a positive influence on people in the world and also trying to help people avoid pain and that was kind of the thing that I sort of grew off I guess it's kind of wonderful I mean it's it's definitely being good for me because it means that I'm not so focused on trying to fix myself and how I feel just to a certain extent it's more kind of like an external meaning well maybe that's what faith is is just ascribing meaning to something having faith is believing even though we don't see anything or there's contradictions sure sure I realize I just rambled but I have I have just like monologued about my entire philosophy I don't think there's anything else that I could really really talk about in terms of just unloaded everything so I guess it would probably be good to I guess talk about you know the role of Buddhism, the role of spirituality in your life so when did you find the concept of Buddhism and spirituality and what changes occurred in your life when you found it yeah so I first discovered or was introduced to Buddhism when an Italian friend I met in Santa Barbara we were working together on a political campaign and she introduced me to the chant of Nam Mioho Rengekyo that was I think in 2015 so even though I attended a few meetings in Santa Barbara and I had started to practice chanting it wasn't until 2018 that I fully immersed myself in the practice by becoming a member of SGI in Salt Lake City and receiving Michael Hansen which is behind me right now what does it go? Is that the black thing or is that the altar very nice thank you and it has a scroll inside which is inscribed with the Lotus Sutra and names of I hope I really don't butcher this bodhisattvas and other people who are influential in this Buddhism so yeah it's a powerful thing it's like we describe it as a mirror or Daisako Ikeda it as a mirror the mirror doesn't brush your hair for you it doesn't do anything like that but it's a reflection it uses light to reflect truth from your inner life and so every morning we say we polish our mirror with the chanting in front of the Go Hansen which is what I do and another important teaching is that basically it's not outside of me it's inside of me so the power is inside of me I'm not praying to some god or deity and saying please help make my life better as I say my chants and my prayers I'm calling within the power from within inside of me my own Buddhahood and so that's why for me and yeah so anyway outside of that just in terms of kind of the trajectory of my practice I would say yeah I received the Go Hansen on International Women's Day in 2018 and shortly thereafter I think it was like the next day or the day after we started filming my movie and I will say it felt like the universal good was on my side I had this immense sense of peace a feeling of groundedness and the filming went extremely well and I felt in many ways that it was because of my practice and because of taking this leap of faith and joining personally I've never been a person to like to join clubs or groups I think it's important for me to mention that also because I never went to offend anyone by saying you know I'm not going to sign up for this group or whatever it's just because you're an individualist yeah and in you know social situations I have a hard time with so it's just always a challenge whether it's church or another just any kind of group organization so it was a big challenge for me and I had to let go of a lot of my own fears to join the organization and become part of the organization but it definitely made a huge difference in my life it empowered me to make my film creating a positive experience for everyone on set and one of the most significant transformations in my life as becoming a Buddhist was the healing of my relationship with my father which had been severely strained since my parents' divorce in 2003 so you know over the course of about 15 years of my life our interactions often in arguments and hurt feelings but I would say that the teachings that I practiced helped me develop compassion for my father and I started to see him not just as my parent but as a human being with infinite potential who had known great suffering in his own life that's a really really sort of I think that's also kind of a point in which I came to when I was going through that period of time away in Thailand I did like you I kind of got to a point where I was like okay so my dad's my dad I've always seen them as this kind of all powerful authority you know superhuman individual not like the other people that I see in my life and so I did kind of get to a point like yourself I was like they're actually a human being like anybody else but I may know them and they may have a bit more of this kind of parental bond with me and want to support me in ways that perhaps other people won't do but I really started to kind of think about the way that I interacted with them and whether I was sort of affirming them whether I was supporting them in certain ways I don't know if that came from my diving into my own brain about life but it definitely did happen at one point and I kind of you know I thought very hard about it I think it was around the passing of my granddad he died of lung cancer while I was away he's a lovely man he's absolutely absolutely beautiful with me he used to he used to come over and I used to like bring like a pile of books and sit on his lap and go through this like massive stack of books with him and he'd just sit there and read them with me and whenever I was going to a competition whenever I got an award I would always come and see him he had like a tear in his eye and he looked really like happy for me and he always supported me monetarily which is something that sort of my dad's side granddad parents didn't do so he was a very influential man on my life and to me he kind of I think he cemented a lot of the my ideas and my desire to help people into my head I was calling with him and my mom he was kind of being gradually increasing the dose of morphine that he was on but he managed to kind of you know he told me to stay in Thailand and he told me to help people and he told me to learn and so that was kind of already feeling like that would be something meaningful for me and something that I wanted to grow on and so yeah that happened and yeah it's strange isn't it when that kind of switch gets flicked and you're like oh my parents are people yes it is it's very strange but I read a quote once that said you know one thing that we can aspire to as children is to one day hopefully be friends with our parents be friends with our siblings me too so that was I think the what happened with my father is that he was very religious and we would often get in arguments over things and so I was able to focus on other areas that we could get along on or have conversations about and that was art so you know part of our reconciliation was encouraging my father to return to his art he was hesitant to do it at first when I came to visit him at his house he showed me all these art supplies he bought he was hoping we would paint together or I was hoping we would paint together but then when the moment came when I had gotten all the paints out and I got our canvas is ready I said dad let's go paint he said no you paint and he sat down and just started watching TV and it was so depressing it was so sad and I could just sense that something else was going on under the surface and I discovered and I think it was just another day I went to visit him he started crying and he said Emily he told me about this traumatic experience he had he went to art school he got his degree in art and he had this beautiful easel and all of these wonderful paint supplies and canvases and all of his artwork and he asked to leave it I think at his parents house and the garage or something and someone in his family I think had donated or given all of the art supplies to like the goodwill or given them away and he was completely devastated and I think that was a main reason why he didn't pursue art for a while but after talking about it like I helped him sign up for art classes at the local community college so he started taking art classes again he got really into it and his wife was really supportive so they started doing art together like they would go on vacation and they would paint together and when I'd come visit after that he would be like look at what paintings we've done together I've revitalized the passion it can be very difficult when I think it's probably an experience that a lot of autistic people have just in general about having these passions squashed by people in your life it can really like people ascribe a lot to what you do and what you're interested in sometimes it can be quite heartbreaking when it's something that you do a lot and it's kind of like this central part of your identity that you do this kind of thing and it's kind of disapproved of yes and I always got annoyed when people would say oh you're a hobby or something like that I'm like no you know what I'm a writer and that's even if I don't make a lot of money writing it's part of who I am and it's it's a central part of my life more than some random job or something but I do agree with you on that there's a book that I recommend that you get or any listener here check out by Julie Cameron The Artist Way is a really great book it's a workshop and can help kind of work through some of those blocks and the book actually kind of came to me it was gifted to me twice and the first time I gave it away I didn't read it and an actress in LA that I know gifted it to me again for the second time and I was like I think this is some kind of a sign I should read this book and so I did and since that I've gifted it to other people and hopefully they do read it they did not kind of follow, yeah they did okay good absolutely so but yeah no I agree like being creative and encouraging each other I think this is why the Buddhist philosophy works so well for me personally and hopefully for other people out there as well or who might be interested in it is it's about personal empowerment and also every day when I chant I'm chanting for other people's happiness as well so even if it's my ex or family members that I'm currently not getting along with you know chanting for their ultimate happiness and my own that's another thing isn't it like I think that it's weird like the conclusions or like the thoughts that we've come to with like different ways like different methods or ways through philosophy because that's also something that kind of sprung on me at one point I was as I was saying before about like understanding my brain and thinking about all the limitations of it and stuff and the fact that I am quite secular I don't believe that there's like a spirit I don't believe that there is some kind of soul or anything I do just believe that there are kind of biological matter and you know I have a having that belief I think although it can sound quite depressing to some people it really made me understand just like people in general and be more kind of compassionate towards people because you know if I'm believing that you know what makes me up is my biology, my genetics my experiences and my environment then how can I really be upset with people like who like about anything really like inside like you know it's not like I go about the world and I'm just accepting of everyone doing horrible things and things like that but I do have this general sense of understanding like the human condition or the human nature from my angle which helps me I think with that idea of like forgiving and also you know wanting positive things for people just in my core it's not necessarily always at the surface but it's something that you know I return to when I'm feeling particularly upset or angry or like discontented with people in general and that's been really transformative for me because it has allowed me to kind of be like right I get it this is you know how things go and you know that's their life and their biology and so I have a bit more kind of compassion for people despite what they're like with me and despite what they do I guess that's great and you know I think there is more of a connection between our views than one might think in the sense of you know maybe even spirituality is just science we haven't figured out yet possibly because you know I am much more you know I do believe in a soul and spirit and universal energy and everything but a lot of it intersects with physics and with theories you know scientific discoveries that we are learning about the nature of the universe and I mean you talk about biology but even biology is extremely complex and you know what matter is extremely complex so I think you know what you're saying is absolutely vital and important and even even if one only accepts I don't see like the correct word for it but more of a atheistic view of things I still in my opinion believe that atheism is highly spiritual in the sense that humanity is incredible or being human or being of the world is something remarkable and mysterious. I mean I took the like the big 5 personality test thing it's like one of the the only kind of these are in a lot of psychological studies and things like that to understand people in the world and the best kind of putting personality into boxes not always the most like tasteful for a lot of people to use but I'm very high in trait openness and I think my kind of stance on things like that is that I'm not I'm not actively wanting to disprove things in that way perhaps things around very kind of you know particularly kind of religious doctrines and things like that but in terms of you know spirituality and stuff I'm very open to talking about it it's just kind of the way that I process and understand that stuff is more you know it's fun for me like it's like theories and I hope that doesn't sound offensive no not offensive at all like I like to talk about it you know I like to hear about people's ways of you know thinking or feeling about the world and I'm also very very highly aware that you know the nature of sciences is to be disproved and I'm aware of the limitations of the technology and our brains and when it comes to basing what I do like on a daily basis I tend to go towards things that I have more of an error of certainty around just in the way that I navigate and move through the world and interact with the world but I've looked into stuff and you know the idea of consciousness is very under researched it's very very difficult to really understand what consciousness is for a scientific lens because you know you can only really go by what the definition is and even so like you know is how does one generate consciousness like is it something that the brain has is it a spirituality thing is it like a soul thing is it that there is just one kind of consciousness to the whole universe and everyone just kind of tunes in from the round different perspectives you know I very much like thinking about like what could that be and it's very much something that I explore myself it's just I think when it comes to like enacting myself in the world it's just that I don't consider that stuff I guess that's okay one thing that I find to be interesting there's this writer named Rachel Pollack she has a book so you were talking about like the big five personality tests and things like that I use astrology for a similar kind of effect getting to know people things like that but anyway this particular book is about Tarot and she talks about it's very interesting there's a chapter where she refers to specific work or specific studies that Carl Jung and Wolfgang Polly decided to to look at in the 1930s and I think it was a study of meaningful coincidence or what young terms synchronicity I've heard about that time what was that? I've heard about synchronicity there's some animes or like some films that I've watched that kind of centre around the idea of synchronicity and stuff I think there's actually this really non-spiritual anime about crazy like martial artists I think it's called I think it's called Baki okay cool it's a very gruesome physical fighty kind of anime thing they talked about synchronicity that bit and it's kind of like go on I don't want to stray off into that stuff well she basically says that you know we look at modern science which is driven by empirical and observable causality right? and we often say like it's an opposition to something like tarot or esoteric systems based on interpretations like intuition archetype, synchronicity, things like that but she's saying well actually maybe there's some connection between the two that we aren't readily familiar with or seeing so she addresses in this book the just distinction between basically like commons and dictated by science and then more of an intuitive understanding that we can receive from practices like doing terror readings or looking at your birth chart through astrology and understanding the stars and her I guess her position is that both realms of thought can exist in harmony or can kind of coexist together definitely like it's it's not like because it's about like when we look at like randomness right there's something there's this quote she has where she says like outside actual quote but I think it's something along these lines it doesn't matter if you're doing tea leaves or if you're throwing dice or if you're doing random tarot cards whatever it is you are cutting through human logic to get to a universal logic and whether you call that god or your higher self or something beyond us it's reaching into some other higher source and getting answers from it and so at least that's kind of my personal philosophy on things is that sometimes our own minds can deceive us or can just keep us in a limited loop so to speak and that there is some higher consciousness outside of that that we can tap into sure I mean I think with things like tarot and astrology it's I'm aware of it like I've had tarot readings before I've watched a lot of stuff on astrology and tarot readings and things of that nature I think it's definitely not something that I believe in like I relate to the ideas of like greater spirituality and consciousness and that we can't always understand things through I guess a scientific lens and I think that there's I think in terms of like the utility of it for life you know to some degree science is or the scientific method is about ruling out randomness with things and trying to understand things on like a broad scale and it's from reading and watching stuff and then hearing people kind of debate stuff like astrology and tarot it doesn't really feel to me like there's any compelling evidence to show that it has any application for life I hope I'm not like overstepping my boundaries or anything your boundaries or anything but it's not something that I feel or think is like applicable to life well let me ask you this just to counteract so if there are so called masculine or feminine energies in the universe and I'm not talking about like gender here necessarily but just passive the ideas of masculine and feminine energy like the chaos and order yin and yang you know I very much believe in that and so how I would describe what you just said is like the scientific method would be the masculine side of things right and then the chaos is like where the creative comes from where we birth ideas out of chaos out of confusion out of more of the passive energies exactly and so for me personally how I see tarot or anything like that is it's it is very meaningful but in a very personal way so if I do a reading for myself I absolutely feel the benefits of it but in the same way that it's not scientifically conclusive if that makes sense you know I me having a specific routine that's good for me might not be good for you and that's you see what I'm getting at or like no I know I I do I understand it's like you know sometimes when you don't kind of feel like there's any rhyme or reason or direction to things I think having something to follow or something to provide input on something that can't really be explained is obviously going to be quite useful I guess in a certain way I think go on I just wanted to read you this quote really fast from C.S. Lewis from I think the Four Loves my friend posted the other day and I feel like it's relevant to our conversation friendship is unnecessary like philosophy like art it has no survival value rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival and so I guess that's how I would that would be my interpretation of these things of whether it's poetry or anything that you know doesn't have like objective meaning subjective meaning I guess can be meaningful yeah I think I know that there's I think stuff around astrology I think sometimes it can be quite vague in a certain way that it can be applicable to a lot of people like I understand that obviously there's different parts of the astrology like it doesn't all come from like one person and one like you know there's lots of different people who do it I suppose I'm just interested because my like sign, my astrological sign, I feel like I understand like that that fact of it kind of being sort of generally applicable to people but I do definitely feel like the sign that I have and the things that are said about my sign are like very like definitely like applicable to me and like who I am and how I see the world and things of that nature as opposed to the other ones that I've read or looked into cool have you ever had a birth chart done? no I haven't I'd be interested in having one though that would be interesting my my sign is Aquarius I'm nearly a Pisces so I'm like awesome I think someone told me once that that was supposed to be like the Aquarius aspect of being quite kind of perhaps a bit like seeing all the pain in the world or something I can't I can't remember exactly what they were talking about would you be able to give me like an Aquarius person would be like whether it's something that I would I would say very philosophical thoughtful kind-hearted perhaps attracted to someone's mind first upon meeting them and a nurturing person someone who is supportive and cares about others like a natural storyteller and not a natural well I identify with all of them apart from storytelling I'm not the best for that I'm working on it and yeah with the birth chart it'll give you multiple signs so like there's your sun sign which is what I think you're talking about but then you also have your moon sign and your rising sign for example so mine is Sagittarius is my sun sign and my rising sign is on Virgo and your rising sign is how other people perceive you when they meet you so Virgo I'm like very much attention to detail with that it would make me a good editor for example but Sagittarius my sun sign makes me like the ambitious philosopher who loves to travel and it's an adventure so you know it's just kind of like the dichotomy between the different ones cause I don't sort of think of myself as either of those descriptions well okay that makes sense and we'll see someone else described it to me recently as it's like your thumbprint when you were born on the planet I don't know if it's psychological but kind of like an outline of who you are but then obviously we're different too but I like it as a or I like in it to an archetype like Carl Jung says we have these kind of ancient patterns so that's I guess as a storyteller that's kind of my interest in astrology is looking at those patterns that helps me become a better writer for all a little bit better yeah I have looked into kind of like the archetype stuff and I think you know the archetype of like the hero I think is something that resonated with me I'm not saying in like a narcissistic way I mean like for my own kind of personal journey with things it's like a lot of my life has felt very much like fighting constantly like I'm you know fighting to help people protect people in certain ways and you know taking on the burdens of things in my life and I think that was quite helpful for me trying to like understand or give me some level of direction with me and like feeling okay with the negatives that have occurred or are occurring can we talk a little bit about that you um I think you'd ask me about why autistic people might be drawn to philosophy I'm just curious yeah yeah yeah sure because I think when we were trying I mean you know I mean for me I think our kind of these I think we came up with like three different separate things like the rituals around it you know having the routine the rituals certainty and framework you know going through life it's very important for us to understand things and the things that are not so easily definable and certain like social interaction understanding people and emotions tend to be a bit harder for us and then last I think we were saying about like the interest or like the special interests of understanding like the complexity of life and stuff so which one would you want to talk on maybe let's see the first was rituals the second was certainty and framework the framework is interesting to me too and then what was the third again the interest in the complexity of life yeah the last two I guess last two go for it oh for me first okay hmm well I mean I guess I could just speak to me personally and my brother is also on the spectrum I think my father might have been as well those genetic genetic ties I asked him actually my brother and I both asked him we were like would you ever go get tested and he just smiled at me and he was like no like okay I'm still working on it with my dad he's kind of he's open with it at this point but that's great he's not got any like drive to go get a diagnosis he's you know he's in his 50s and he feels quite stable in his life he doesn't really have any issues so it's understandable I guess that makes sense just one thing I will say that connects with I guess personally my brother and I both have a ability or a way to see or to form patterns and connections between things that maybe other people might not see an inherent pattern you relate to that yeah it's the whole pattern pattern recognition stuff around autism it's very very interesting so that lateral thinking I think some people define it as like thinking laterally between different concepts and things and making connections and all that interesting there's a lot that I'll have to ask you for references because I'm certainly interested in reading and learning more about it I think that and then also just making sense of the world as much as we can having my own dedicated personal philosophy or ethos I mean I think Thomas Jefferson did this Thomas Jefferson or maybe it was I forget who it was but I think he rewrote the Bible and took out all the magical bits or the New Testament or something yeah right to apply just the basic moral ethics Judeo-Christine values and I guess I seek to do the same in my own way to take different truths that I've learned from different belief systems and my own experiences and things like that and kind of put together my own format for what it means to live a good life be a good person make an impact in the world that kind of thing and oh wow yeah I think maybe I'm forgetting sorry I think I have to have it in front of me oh here we go yeah the complexity of life yeah so that I guess I just answered my own question on the second one about certainty and framework is like I want to have my own framework that's individual and that goes back to being an existentialist is that I'm personally responsible for my own views too and so it's like making it my own as a creative person creating my own ethos or my own doctrine so to speak in a way or philosophical views taking from different people that I've been influenced by over the years and I just want to mention like Eric Fromm his reflections on love I really recommend his book The Art of Loving if you get a chance to read it it's great I think he's an atheist and a socialist Michael Foucault Michelle Foucault his dissection of power structures has been influenced in my life Henry David Thoreau and J.S. Mill personal freedom and liberty and then transcendentalist like Walt Whitman the inherent goodness of the individual the wonder of nature and that's had a profound impact on my views on the natural world and I guess our relationship to it as humans and then William Blake his poetry his exploration exploration of themes like innocence or good and evil human's relationship with the divine and lastly Hilda Gard of Benjen she was like a Christian mystic but she was also a poet a healer what else did she do composer, philosopher, mystic visionary, medical writer practitioner during the middle ages so anyway there's a lot of info dumping it's interesting when you go back in history and time and stuff the lines between science and religion and spirituality things like alchemy and stuff are very one in the same to a certain extent it's interesting like yeah that would be my life's work sorry yeah I think philosophy for me it definitely came out of my experiences now as I said trying to understand the world why things were happening to me and other people that weren't good you know going into philosophy or at least just thinking about life in solitary on my own it was important for me because I felt very much like I was out in the water like I didn't really feel like there was any rhyme or reason to anything and it was very very difficult to I guess withstand the negatives that were happening in my life without having some kind of guided understanding of things or certainty around certain things so that's definitely why I I guess gravitate towards philosophy I don't have any particular rituals that I do I know that the whole idea of autism and routine sometimes having rituals allows you to have a set time in the day to I guess think or feel or do a certain thing which is positive for your mental health and just thinking about it now I think I probably do have some rituals that I do which are not like I had something in my head which is just completely flown away do you have any night time rituals or anything or morning rituals I think particularly when I'm struggling with something that is to do with experience like my recent kind of breakup with my long term partner was obviously quite impactful to a certain extent you know for me my rituals come in like where I put my emotional energy like when and where I think I give myself time to think about certain things so I set a time particular times in the day or sometimes when I'm going through a lot of emotional turmoil where I'm sort of dividing my thoughts or my feelings you know the idea of processing things and processing events and emotions and stuff is very important and it's something that you kind of need to do but at the same time processing all of it all the time throughout the day all the time is equally not good for maintaining your life and your productivity and actually living not just just living in negative feelings and so for me setting time aside where I'm allowing myself to think and feel about that stuff and then closing off that for the rest of the day or something it's important for me you know that kind of draws on the idea of lexifying me because for me emotions are not easily recognised or identified used to be a lot worse nowadays it's a bit easier but actually leaning into possible feelings or thoughts that I have helps me be aware of what I'm feeling and helps me kind of connect my feelings to certain events or thoughts which I find very very helpful I might play some emotional music which is related to it good I think that could probably be some level of a ritual I guess with things and it's been very helpful for me sounds like a good ritual and in terms of philosophy or philosophy I think the idea of positive nihilism resonates with me probably the most of anything I do very much like all the existential stuff and obviously freedom in each other, the father of nihilism is quite a big impact on me I've read a few books they're very bad with names and people and describing what people have done and what people have said to their names but I have read a few books and there was one called like the existentialist cafe which was quite interesting for me it's kind of getting all of these philosophies together and having them discuss things it was really really interesting I'm very aware of the time and I know that you probably have a lot of different things to do it's getting quite late for me I probably have to have some food to refuel my body after my gym workout earlier so I guess trying to round things up I mean like usually there is a segment to what I do it's called song of the day should really be called son of the week but hey ho it's today today so it is the song of the day today do you have a song that kind of either means something to you or I guess relates to the topic of the podcast that you'd like to add to the growing Spotify playlist sure I like peace train by Yusuf or Kat Stevens as he was known before and I did want to ask if I could read it short quote from a poem yeah go for it go for it so the poem I found it's actually it's actually in Dossaka Akeda's book the heart of the lotus sutra about buddhism but it's also one of my favorite poets that he quotes so one self I sing with these words he begins his pay on to humankind leaves of grass Whitman his words full of strength and conviction sings and all people I see myself none more and not one a barley corn less I know I am solid and sound I know I am deathless I know I am august I exist as I am that is enough that's a beautiful beautiful word thanks I love it it's probably not the best way to characterize that but that's one beautiful street words now its I think with a bit more time to kind of digest and feel that, I very much like poetry I think it's if I had more time in my day in life I think I would definitely want to pursue More of the the arty side of life in that in that sense but Yeah, so I will put peace strain by Yusuf or cut Stevens in the 4d or d playlist Are there any links or things that you would like to share with people that you would like people to to go to? anything that you Sure and all the social medias and things like that It's just I go by my full name. So Emily Robin Clark on Instagram and my dream music on Instagram is my musical name my pseudonym and then also the IMDB and What else my website is just Emily Robin Clark net Cool. Yeah, do you have a link tree? I do You do okay cool. Oh, well, I will put the link tree down in The comments of this video whether you're on YouTube or if you're on any of the podcasting streaming services You can find that below alongside my personal link tree If you want to help support the podcast the best thing that you can do is rate it on any of the Podcasting streaming services that you are using at the moment Give it a follow If you want to get updated about new podcasts that coming out Tried to get them out over on Monday around about 5 a.m. British standards to time now. So and If you if you also want to stay up to date with the work that I do You can head over to my Instagram at Thomas Henley UK where I do but daily blogs Reels things of that nature and also updates on on the podcast and how things are going so I definitely encourage you to go check that out and If you are on YouTube make sure to like Give it a sub same same thing as the follow thing if you want to get updated about things that are happening. Absolutely. I Love your comment down below Thank you Say yeah Go check all that stuff out Sponsored podcast debuts is also in the link tree if you want to get 20% off Very special link for the 40 or D listeners Really great noise Reducing earbuds that you can adjust the candlelight loop But a little bit different and that they've been really helpful for me in situations where I'm not wearing my noise cancelling earbuds Where they've gone out of charge or something So, yeah last question Emily Have you enjoyed your 40 audio experience? Absolutely? It's been amazing and I've been listening to your podcast before I go to sleep at night by the way Oh That's awesome. I really like to hear stuff like that because it's it's I think sometimes as a creator. It's kind of You kind of feel in a sense of Isolation or like you're just producing stuff and it's not really Doing anything Until someone tells you about it. So it's um, it's thank you for that. You're welcome. I've been learning a lot too So, thank you. Awesome for your awesome And with that, I hope you all have a very lovely day and I will see you next week For a newer episode of the 40 or D podcast. See you later guys