 So today we're going to talk about can trauma affect your love life and I'm really excited to have the author of some amazing books First book is called uncommon bond, which I first read years ago Then grounded spirituality, which I read thereafter and his latest book Harkulations everybody if you can see that I've got Jeff Brown in the house Oh Welcome Jeff to be with thanks man. It's good to be with you Jonathan Yeah, so what are your thoughts on the title can trauma affect your love life? Let's just jump I would probably relanguage it and just you know call it can trauma not affect your love life Oh, I like that. Yeah, so expand upon that then There's so much to say You know, I mean, I don't I don't my way of understanding human experiences that we are Intrinsically trauma accumulators Yeah, we've lived in a survivalist consciousness, which means we sort of put everything away and just deal with what's in front of us Which was necessary We stand on the shoulders of that consciousness as we're working our way to a different kind of a consciousness Yeah, and I think fundamental to that consciousness is a whole web of unresolved emotional issues patterns and conditioning that we carry within us from our individual experience and from our generational and ancestral experience to It's everywhere, you know, and I Don't know how somebody interfaces with love relationship I mean, it's one thing to go off and be on your own and be a lone wolf meditation warrior and Call yourself awakened when you're not having to push up against other people and have your triggers Rise to the surface But I think once you get into a connection that's got some real energy to it It's utterly impossible to avoid the excavation of everything unlike the love experience You know all the unresolved trauma and abandonment was a jealousy for the trail wounds of the posture syndrome, but it's everywhere. So Well, let me ask I don't really know if your little is No, go ahead Yeah, well what I was about to say and my demographic that I speak to is was folks in their midlife It's after baby making years before retirement Mostly and I find that most humans are rather unconscious or unaware excuse me of their childhood wounds and adult Traumas and when I think of trauma, I'm not talking about it had to be something radical It can be something minor that could have affected someone's life. I find most humans are unaware of this so Bringing that into the dating realm if you will people are budding up against their wounds Constantly and they don't know why they have problems in relationship Right, so there's no question the material is always there the question is how do people respond to it and if two people have sort of a Unwritten contract that they're going to maintain an unconscious love relationship that serves other purposes They can do their very best to avoid the material. They just manage the material He has his separate room where he does things She has her separate space where she does things they find all kinds of ways to Tolerate one another's material and their own material in response to it If that's what you want then you can have that Nowadays, I think it's a little harder because I think we've inched our way closer to an intrinsic awareness that we all have some stuff And I don't think we had that before so I think it's more difficult to Fane Emotional health and well-being nowadays, but you can do it But I think probably the best thing to do is to take on the process together and find someone who engaged the process with you Otherwise you got a real problem and use the relationship amongst other things as an opportunity to excavate your material and to Work through it and co-create consciously together To become the next most evolved version of your family lineage to be the pioneer in your family lineage in many cases By taking on the process and growing in the heart of it But it's up, but it's up to you, but it's up to you Yeah, you know and you may not know my backstory But I'm gonna quickly share it and get your perspective on it because I after going through a divorce and Turning 40 some years back I found myself in the dating marketplace and I went on one date after another after another after another in one year I went on over a hundred internet dates or women that I've met through the internet and I realized you know the common denominator in all of these experiences was me and This is when I began doing some personal development self-help spiritual work I got into Tony Raman's Abraham Hicks Wayne Dyer to name a few Other all the spiritual all the spiritual bypassers continue. Well, you know, well now, okay I'm gonna jump in on it because you brought that up. Okay, and I don't want to bring that up Jonathan You know, I'm gonna bring that up. Well, you know, and I'm gonna okay So this isn't a beef I have with you because I don't I actually I can handle it I wouldn't handle the beef. No, no Well, let me just share with you because I have a great deal of respect for your work at the same time I Actually, and my only beef is that all of those places that I went to led me to Working on my trauma so I don't discount and I agree about the bypassing sort of to some degree But I also felt all that was part of my journey as well So I don't necessarily for lesser better word want to poo poo it because I and at the same time I I read your content and I agree with it too. So I I'm kind of torn So that's what I want to address for a moment. That's your that's your that's your beef stroganoff right there. Yeah Well, what I what I would say is that I think that It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks so long as whatever it is helps you to grow so I always get that and Things that I call spiritual bypassing practices patriarchal spirituality and new cage movement They serve a purpose at various times in our lives But we need a broader perspective or to detach from the challenges to give them experience And there is wisdom to be found in all kinds of things including Tony's messaging and I'm not so sure but Abraham Hicks, but But various other people and practitioners But I think ultimately at the end of the day It really comes down to what your goal set is if your goal set this Tony Robinson if your goal set is to become the most expansive Connective Integrated Grounded heartfelt growthful version of yourself. You can't spend so much time in the spiritual bypassing world You've got to get into your body and deal with what you're okay if your goal is to have a reasonably okay Reality to manage things rather than to work things through then you don't have to engage at these practices And it you may not have the energy for it. It may be dangerous for you You might be opening up a Pandora's box that is absolutely Unintegratable. Yeah, I know a number of people that stay as far away from the shadow as they can because they just can't handle it So who am I to tell them they should be handling it? I can't tell yet. I can only present other possibilities for them to choose from That's all any of us can do. So I'm alive I'm more aligned with you than ever with regard to having regard for whatever it is that works for you in various times While also cautioning people to understand that there are other ways of understanding the material that you're holding and that there are Developing more and more somatically based Modalities that will grant you the possibility of going deeper into the material and working it through to some form of resolution That's all. Yeah, so and I'm a big proponent of somatic therapy And I'd like in a moment. I'd like you to share that with everyone. You may not know this about me I did the Hoffman process some years ago and Deep dive into healing my childhood my my relationship with my parents and there was a lot of physical Involvement in this releasing the energy from my body. It's a really intense Experience which I walked away feeling like I was wrapped in a blanket of self-love You mentioned somatic a moment ago and for my audience that isn't aware of this I I really want you to pay attention if Jeff if you can elaborate a bit I really want everyone to pay attention to this because this is critically important in my point of view So, you know, most of us historically engaged in something called talk therapy Which also can have a somatic or body-centered quality You hear something or share something that resonates with you You feel a certain feeling in your body emotionally and feel some kind of transformation occur So talk therapy is not necessarily disconnected from body-centered work, but there are body-centered therapies Willhelm Reich was said to be sort of the founder of them and Bioenergetics co-founded by Alexander Lohan and John Caracas and then core energetics co-founded by John Caracas And I think his wife Eva Are very emotionally charged ways of coming down into the body Excavating the material Connecting to the unresolved memories finding your voice moving the material feeling energized and empowered And then there are other practices like somatic experiencing people with beans work, which is very popular now Which is it can be all kinds of things but which is I think in many ways softer and more subtle and about titration and You know understanding the way the nervous system responded to various traumas and allowing yourself to expand your container Or your capacity to hold more of reality in my work what I call it realment I say presence as a whole being experience So my work is to invite people in the direction of being able to be here again for all of this And of course the unresolved traumas prevents many of us from Accessing certain parts of the human experience because it brings up all of our stuff and we shy away from it So the body-centered practices are an opportunity if they're intelligently held Safely contained with the right practitioner to both engage the top therapy muscle But to also go down into the issues are in the tissues. I can't remember who's quote that is Oh, I like that repeat that again the issues are in the tissues. I think it's a book. Yeah, I can't remember Okay, I remember the name of the author, but yeah, you can look that up That's everywhere and and to really really excavate the holdings and Clearing the material in my experience with all the tropic breath work and bioenergetics I did more release work in two or three sessions that I ever would have done in 15 years to talk Therapy and if release is important to you and it was to me then you need to find the modality that allows for that That was the space for it safely So, okay, let's take this into the dating conversation And and I know you're you're married. You're in a relationship You know, you've done a lot of work. I I don't know How much work she had done but how did you guys talk about this in the dating conversation? I'm curious to hear if you're open to sharing The very first date we met at a somatic psychotherapist's office and we had tea not just How have we well, I would say our styles of processing challenges is very different I'm obviously a bit more of an over communicator And Susan is a bit more of a subtle under communicator When she communicates and goes deeply into the material She has more depth than I could ever hope to achieve in my life So we've we've had to learn how to I've had to learn how to back off She's I think had to learn to some extent how to come forth you know and Yeah, it's a lean in and I've had to learn how to find ways to create the safe space for that Which has been somewhat challenging because of my active it activated intensities And I think she's have had has had to learn how to hold the space for me and my activation In a way that allows her to actually hear what I'm trying to say on a soul level So we've had work to do You know, we we have a lot of commonalities on a creative level on a soulful level on a poetic level But I had done years and years of traditional therapy to process And she had done a lot of internal internal work in the process. So It's been a unique and interesting and challenging experience But you said you said you met at a somatic therapy No, I was kidding Oh, I thought that was oh well the reason why that intrigued me is my my question is because to to some degree I feel a kindred spirit with you in the sense of I like to work on my stuff and when I say I like to work on it I'm aware when I'm out of alignment I'm aware when I'm following a negative pattern and I like to process it and so And I'm aware human beings are rather wounded and have traumas and I like to get a sense of A person before I really engage with them in a romantic, you know dynamic because I and I suspect a lot of people who watch my channel feel the same way is that they Don't want to invest in someone who isn't going to also invest invest emotionally In the growing of the relationship Particularly in the area when we butt up against our humanness if you will Are we going to hold hands together or is it just you're going to go in your separate corner and that's just it so um I just realized I didn't have a question in that That monologue there but um But I suspect that when you met the two of you had deeper conversations than surface conversations I think that's where I was going with this Um, would that be true? I don't think you could help but have a deeper conversation with susan Okay, okay, so yes, I think it's it's safe to say I don't know that we discussed I think we were more in the feelings the feeling tenor and I think I think we communicated on a more subtle Soul level for a long time. Okay, then with respect to the practical issues around unresolved material Okay, okay, that happened that happened that has happened later. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Got it. Well, thank you for It had a kind of it had like a feeling of perfection on the soul level And the challenge with that when that happens Is that sometimes the psyche gets ignored? Um, and so our work has to have been I believe on some level to integrate the psyche with the soul Um, both at the same time. Oh Oh, you know what so you just triggered me and when I say triggered me you So I want you to coach me now for a second if that's okay Because I just had an awareness that I think I'm so hyper focused on trauma and woundedness Uh that I'm kind of disconnecting from my heart And I think that's why your book really that you know heart heart articulation articulations The fact that you can't say it is exactly what you're saying right now. Um heart so So I you just so I think I've been so hyper focused of late in that area Then I'm not going into the soul area. So coach me right now And by the way for I want to witness this Um, and why is it do you think that what it is that brought you into focusing? almost exclusively on the traumatic piece relationally Rather than for example the healthy development piece or the essential soul piece What brought you there just your experiences or you are encountering people and dating people who really were Trauma fixated and wanted to bring you into that conversation So that's a great question. I appreciate this because I actually I I'm hoping people learn through this conversation. So, um So I've had a propensity to choose women like my mother. Okay emotionally unavailable Not very emotionally expressive and for my my three most significant relationships in my life. That's been my common pattern Where and then when I made requests for my needs I was kind of shut down Now and and when I go back to you were the people people pleaser Yeah, I was and by the way, I made a note about people pleasing from your book, which I'll share in a moment People please are but more importantly. So what happened is when I began Exploring their childhood I realized that they had their woundedness that most likely hadn't been significantly healed So now I think I've probably since my most significant relationship ended I think I'm so hyper focused on what happened in your childhood That I'm bypassing the other part of connecting with someone's soul If that makes sense. And yeah, I've tended to be the people pleaser in relationship Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's it's a wonderful thing I mean relationships begin and end in all kinds of different places for all kinds of reasons But I think, you know, my view is if there is some kind of a soulful Connection thread through I mean, I wrote an uncommon bond. So I carried this bias. I acknowledge that but Yeah, I think you can withstand a whole lot of the mess that is the unresolved psyche For at least longer periods of time Because there's something connecting the two of you that has a feeling of some kind of permits Or depthfulness I think if you go into connection now, of course, some people Can't get to the soul connection because they've got to work through the material first and I think often that's better to do have done that work previously So when you show up you can connect from the soul too so they can really feel your essence Those parts of you that core of you I suppose that lives somewhere below beneath or beyond The psychological material and the personas that we use the adaptations and disguises we use to get through the world But I also think the other thing that we don't talk enough about is developmental stuff Like, you know, if you're per if the purpose of the work you're doing is to be a more self-actualized person To put it in mesolovian terms for the moment Yeah, or soul or soul actualized person Then I think it's really important to do the healing work to clear the emotional debris Create space inside of yourself so you can access yourself more deeply by clearing that out And I think in that open space you find path and purpose Because it's very hard to see with a mountain of debris in the way which is on a basic physical level But I also think developmental work is important. I mean what changed me Mostly was maturing solidify Becoming a different person than I was when I was younger just through living my life and achieving the things that I wanted And connecting from those very real places those aren't all personas. That's really who you are and fundamental to why you're here And so I think ideally you're connecting in the therapeutic realms You're connecting in the developmental realms that is supporting each other to figure out what you need to grow and develop It'd be strong and sturdy and sovereign And I think you're also trying to connect on that inexplicable place that is about articulation And not articulation Where you're really trying to speak the language of the soul in ways that are almost impossible to articulate I think if you've got all those things happening at the same time You've got a real shot at having a sustainable and growthful love relationship If one of those things falls away, it may fall away Okay So I don't think there's an accident now that I'm having this conversation with you that I I'm going to be Ganted with you. I needed this conversation Because I probably have spent too much time In you know, my head And not enough time in my heart. And so when I picked up your book just I literally it was just Today's friday. I read it on a monday I did the audio version by the way And it just spoke to me so to me Articulations is about really connecting both an awareness of the trauma and the healing But at the same time really also Turning it into the soul the heart, you know, hence the title um Sure, what was your sure? Yeah Can you expand upon this a little bit more about like so how can one get more into their soul into their heart if you will So let me read you a quote from articulations about the soul. Um, okay, and then I'll move on to another quote. Yeah page 61 Okay, you can connect from you can connect from all kinds of places energetic harmony Sexual alchemy intellectual alignment, but they won't sustain love over a lifetime You need a thread that goes deeper that moves below and beyond the shifting sands of compatibility That thread is fascination A genuine fascination with someone's inner world with the way they organize reality With the way they articulate their feelings with the unfathomable and bottomless depths of their being To hear their soul cry out to you again and again And to never lose interest in what it's trying to convey If there's that Then there will still be love when the body sickens when the sexuality fades when the perfection Projection is long shattered. If there is that you will swim in love's waters until the very last breath close quote So that's about finding somebody That you're on a some level that you can't even explain really you're just fascinated by them That's not about trauma. That isn't necessarily even about the developmental thread. That's really about the soul There's just something about that soul That you know, you have to have somewhere in your life and I think Sometimes we have to do a lot of work to get to the point where we can even detect that or sense that or move from that within ourselves In in terms of how does somebody Get into their heart? How does somebody find their way into their heart? Well, I think the somatic work is important I think we have to find something more than meditation witnessing watching witnessing watching We have to drop in and they're dry as an excavated material. That's blocking the heart Which means you have to create space something I called solitude Space to be with the heart and soul so that you can prior oratize this process Connect to the material that you're holding and move the material through that needs to be moved through and Acknowledge and manage the material that isn't about it being cleared. Not everything's about clearing Sometimes it's just about connecting to it being attuned to it Understanding sense making making sense of where you come from how it connects to your family lineage That alone can be a very soothing and comforting and strengthening process So you have to decide whether or not taking the elevator down a few levels and getting out of your head to engage the material Is something you want to do and you only do it if you really want to have a more actualized experience of reality And if you don't then just stay exactly where you are and do your best to enjoy your ice cream I by the way, you know, whatever it does it for you Yeah, you know, I got you mentioned earlier meditation I got to bring this up because I saw that this morning on instagram this quote And uh, i'm just gonna show the picture really quickly But it says I never met anyone so thoughtless in my life keep up the good work And then the person says thank you master So so they're trying to get out of their heads by staying in spite of their heads In a witness in consciousness. It's preposterous. Exactly. It's a game. It's it's it's a safe game It's a way to never really engage the material but convince yourself So if you spend 16 hours a day meditating You will start to get into that meditative thoughtless stupor until you get into a relationship and within seconds your stuff rises back to the surface So I make the distinction between them in grounded spirituality I made the distinction between the monkey mind and the monkey heart This fixation on the monkey mind doesn't help us. Of course, we have a monkey mind It's not complicated, but what shifts it watching the monkey watching the monkey keep watching the monkey No, my view is you go into the monkey heart Which is the source of the mind's malaise and the perpetual and neurotic anxiety threads and all the rest of that You drop down you clear the emotional relic when you have a good cry and then your mind calms down So if you want to make this Simpler than spending 16 hours a day in an ashram for 600 years First find out just start crying and raging and I assure you at some point along the way your mind will calm down Got it. Got it. Got it. So I want to come back to Soul connections and even I mean to some degree you know, you're back. You're coming back. Okay I want to come back to soul connections because you know, you mentioned uncommon bond earlier Do you think soul connections are rare? I'm just curious your thoughts on that. Is that I mean for those that are Like my audience are people that want to be in relationships, but if we're talking about this really a conscious or relationship A soul relationship. I'm curious. Do you think they're rare or they is there Is there really a wide possibility in that range? Well, I think sustainable soul connections are rare at this stage of human consciousness Okay Feeling a soul connection isn't rare and convincing yourself that you feel the soul connection because you so desperately Want to have a twin flame in this lifetime? That's not rare at all But having a genuine Place where you're really experiencing having the capacity to experience soul connection. It happens It's it's not I wouldn't say that it's rare But knowing what to do with it and having the psyche and the developmental piece in line with that This is where it's complicated Yes, it's very rare You'll meet someone that you feel soulfully connected to who is like you if it if this is who you are Has done enough work to be able to maintain If you read it if you remember an uncommon bond, I can't remember the line. It was Great love uncovers everything unlike itself Yes, I remember who's I don't know whose line that is but I think it's important to understand that the more powerful and vulnerable to connection The more certain you can be that all of this unresolved material is comfortable service If you've had a pretty fluid and healthy loving life You're still going to have to deal with generational material family thread carry both forwards all that stuff is still in you But you'll have a better shot at it It is an interesting thing that i'm not quite clear on yet Which is why people who have often had the most profound traumatic experiences Seem to be able to have the most powerful cracked open soul connections They can't sustain them, but they can experience them. And that's what really an uncommon bond is about We were both able to experience it, but it couldn't be sustained Of course in the book I made it ultimately sustainable, but that really was a reality of that connection at all yeah So you mentioned this a moment ago about twin flames and I recall I recall what you said in the book as well um I've never been a big proponent of the whole twin flames Conversation out there many people seem fixated on this, but can you elaborate again for those watching right now? your perception on twin flames You know, I think it would just probably be better to just read the twin flames quote and yeah, yeah I I meant I'm not sure I I should even answer for questions anymore. I think I should just pull up a book and grab a quote and Give me one second I mean, I call them twin blames right because yes, so here it is. Okay ready page 79 of This sweet little book great. Yeah, articulations Twin flames is one of the most dangerous delusional terms in the spiritual world It reflects an ungrounded tendency and often attracts new cages. That's what I call the new age movement With very poor boundaries who desperately want to believe their unhealthy relationship is soul sponsored Maybe it is But that doesn't mean it's healthy or sustainable The moment someone says they're in a twin flame relationship I suggest that they buy a fire extinguisher and a burn kit because they're going to need them What we need now are soul connections that are centered grounded Sustainable chore love has feet that walk it through time So sure you have a big crack open and opening and maybe you need that And I needed that it was it changed my life that experience. I wrote about uncomfortable and maybe into a writer But you know, if you're talking about something sustainable And if they if someone reads an uncommon bond in the back, they'll see the reference to genocular groups work and Virginia Heinz work around it on common bonds I had it was a true uncommon bond experience and they're defined in the back book love dictionary and on my website jeff brown dot co and I think it's a profoundly relevance and important question If there are certain connections that hold the secret the co-creative secret to human transformation I don't think they're twin flames. I think they're much more likely than common bond experiences Which is a a term that has definitions attached to it And I do believe this may be the direction humanity is going if it can survive long enough, which is obviously an open important question Based on everything that's happening But so I I don't want to trivialize the significance of remarkably profound soul connections But I do think that the new cage twin flame game thing Is really distracting us from the depthful thing that an uncommon bond is really all about Yeah So um for those that aren't familiar with jeff's term new cage And um, I was since you've mentioned a number of times today Do you mind elaborating for those that don't understand what that is? Well, I suppose I'll have to hook up pick up red scooch reality I've got the book right here. I love it great great. By the way work for the record I bought the book and I started reading it and I'm like This is tough for me. So then you know what I did I got the audio version and I listened while I was I did both of them at the same time And this took me like 20 hours or more to get through a long book. Um, yeah, no But I will tell you I was it really helped reading your book and and actually listening to you at the same time Just a little fyi Yeah, cool. So I'm going to define the new cage movement A turn to describe the more ungrounded dangerous and simplistic elements of the new age movement Including but not limited to wishful thinking mantras spiritual bypassing premature forgiveness practices superficial healing techniques the perpetual denial of common sense realities and the insistence on inflated Fantastical perspectives for example everything's an illusion. It's all perfect. There are no victims Everything that happens is meant to be all judgments are bad Suffering doesn't exist. You are responsible for everything that happens to you Just ask the universe for what you want. You'll get it Everything you see and feel is a reflection of you change your thinking change your life, etc In bullshit meant basically what we're talking about of course sometimes these these notions of reality are helpful Sometimes it's a step towards healthy positivity to think in these ways But not always sometimes it's utterly ridiculous And I've spent years deconstructing so many of the cliches that we're familiar with in this world and You know, I got going on this that I initially defined new cage movement when somebody I knew on facebook a little bit Left her psychotherapeutic work, which he needed desperately Bought into all of these teachings then ended up hanging herself because when her stuff returned back in the middle of the night Upsolved she no longer had anybody to turn to that could help her through that Because she'd bought into all of these often ridiculous new age for ways to understand reality. So that's what I'm talking about No, and I appreciate that and and and again, I started this conversation earlier on by saying, you know I've I've studied quite a bit and I felt that with each different modality or or New cage person if you will that I've I've I've spent time, you know Gleaning from them. I've all I've felt that You know, I've I've learned a little bit from each to some degree and so And and you even said some of it is good a lot of it is not good I I think isn't the part of the process to Find what resonates with you But I'm also a believer of like listen to like You know explore a variety of different things and don't just stick with one so to speak Yeah, I think, you know being a jack of all trades master of none is probably better than Perfecting a singular thread of perception or consciousness and omitting every other one So it's you know, the patriarchal thing about mastery is not my part. I'm not particularly interested in that Because I see the price you pay for that Jonathan, I think all of this comes down to how far you want to go on the path towards a more actualized experience It's up to you If your goal is to become someone who can live in all elements of reality, hold the space be here Really be here now Not in a rom-dosy and sticky way where you think you're being here now But you have to create a whole new name and a persona for yourself in order to be here But the real here now of who you are and why you're here What it means to feel everything and be here for everything If you want to do that you're not going to spend so much time in the new k-12 You'll spend some time there and you'll adopt some principles But at some point you're getting bored and frustrated and feel like it's just not Expansively reality-based enough for your consciousness If you're someone who doesn't want to go all the way there and you just want to find a Sona or a way of being that works on a practical level of the world You can do anything you want to do What we're talking about is some vision of human possibility That is something more than just living inside of certain fragments of your consciousness while emitting all other aspects I'm talking about every part and every element of reality at the table And if you're going to go there, you're going to have to ground back into your body at some point to walk away Otherwise, you're just a floater and you will inevitably absolutely come crashing back down to earth It's absolutely Because you're not holding the space for all elements of the reality Yeah, you know you may not know this about me because we haven't interacted in quite some time You know and you said this in the book and you just said it a moment ago I I feel like one of a person Finds their purpose in life, you know and and really is able to Explore and expand that and and I'm going to bring this to a personal level in a moment um Yeah, I feel like my my dating and relationship coaching practice and my my youtube presence is really to awaken individuals to explore healing childhood wounds and adult traumas I that's like my primary message and woven within that message is the idea of self love And what birth this for me was um, and again, you may not know this. I lost my 19 year old son Five years ago to an accident and and there's a picture of him or there's a picture of him right there with his brother And it put me on a journey to write a book about self love But self love to me isn't manicures and pedicures. It's really embodying self worth self esteem self confidence self reliance and also also um really Really learning who you are as a person and your sovereignty within that space and and by the way, I'll be candid with you My book is a very light version of this. It's a very simplistic It's not like nearly even the depth of say grounded spirituality But my intent was just to awaken someone to the possibility of doing work for themselves I felt that when I read Relations was really it was embodying self love like really embodying that and I'd love your perception When you wrote the book regarding self love if you know mine expanding upon that Well, I feel like some part of my work is about Inviting myself and therefore and additionally others To understand the importance of the healthy self concept in the ungrounded spiritual world. There is no self They call it self realization, but it's self avoid realization. It's a game. They're they're dissing the human experience They're calling it non-duality, but they've omitted the ego the body the feelings personal identifications everything And my belief is I I understand dissing elements of the unhealthy ego But without a healthy ego, I couldn't have this sturdily have this conversation with you right now And so I'm really all about the building of the healthy self concept the healthy sense of self The sovereign self the center itself the clearly purple self the sacred purpose So connecting notion of self the notion of soul While holding the space for a more expensive reality. I call it western consciousness Is the blend of the quest for essence that's fundamental to many eastern traditions and the quest for a healthy self concept That's fundamental to the western psychology movement, which has brilliant and important merit and So to me that's what self love is about is the building of a healthy self concept Working through the parts of you that are self hating working through their history and their lineage And then engaging in practices out in the world, you know Achieving things that you want um learning how to form better boundaries things that communicate a message to your pained inner world And your inner child that you have value you continue to assert that until every little part of you believes that it's true And then I think everything in your life changes So by the way, I loved what you just shared. I'm and I'm really I just want you to know I'm really appreciating this conversation and your perspective on things. I think what I've observed is many people Subscribe to the notion. I need someone to love me so I can feel good about myself Hence why they they you know are desirous of relationships um But at the same time, I don't know if we ever fully achieve like people say you have to love yourself before you love another You know, I don't know if that's truly true. I feel like Loving yourself and filling the love cup is one thing But you know, are you ever going is a person ever going to be so? You know actualized so in love not when I say in love with themself I don't mean it in the narcissistic way, but in that sovereign way I think it's just an evolution and maybe moments on our death prior to our death. We we realize it. Maybe not um Could you could you draw some attention to the differentiating between you have to love yourself to love another versus just being in the face of loving yourself Sure I mean the first thing I want to say is this sort of self-hatred that threads through the human experience Is a manipulated construct for the benefit of power brokers for the most part Who consumerism prays on the uncentered and consumerism prays on the self-hating The more you hate yourself the more willing you are to get hooked into what other people think you should do The more likely you are to follow along with various influencers as they call it now The more likely you are to purchase one thing after another to make yourself feel better Because you're told that that's what it means to be cool and gratified And so there are a lot of systems that benefit from our lack of sovereignty and a lack of The absence of a healthy self-concept and it's important to say that that is really the battle that we're engaged in in this world And in terms of the question of whether you need someone to love you to build yourself concept or whether you do the work first I think it depends on the person of course My grandparents love for me In the heart of very challenging experiences with my parents was utterly essential My my best friend of 30 years has played a huge role In my having an experience of self as a valuable person because I take him so seriously That if he thinks i'm pretty cool, then I must be pretty cool and eventually that started to get to me So absolutely we are relational. We're wounded relationally. We have to heal relationship. We have to self develop relationally It's part of it But there are other times on your journey where it's important that you need to go and do the work yourself You can't hide in others You can't trap yourself in co-dependency or defeat and nourish yourself because you're doing it for the wrong reasons It's about intentionality. So if your intention in connecting Is to love and be loved to feel good about yourself and to help somebody else feel good about yourself And you're at a stage where you can do that healthily and not codependently. It's perfect It's totally fine And you know and then you'll have various times when you have to go off and do more internal work because you Realize stuff gets unpacked that is obstructing your capacity to honor your own self in your journey and and then go back Into the relational field more closely in order to get validation. We validate each other but You have to do it for the right reasons and if you're coming from a very and this is the challenge If you're coming from a very extreme setting like completely unavailable parenting and nobody replaced them to meet your needs That it's very hard to Figure out how to find it within yourself because you don't have any roots for that inside of you And you do need a fair amount from other people The problem is you're often attracted to as you said the unavailable ones that reflected your early life experiences And this is where it gets tricky You all you almost have to fake Self-regard and healthy choices until you make it because otherwise you keep trapped inside of the loop That ultimately leads you back to an essential experience of not loving yourself. So I think this is a complicated question I think it's the most important question out there You know, I think one of the reasons I don't like the No longer life like the left-leaning politic woe consciousness the over emphasis on globalism and collectivism I understand has value in a certain context is I think the development of the healthy sense of self Essential not only for you But for the collector because where do the great creations come from they come from some brilliant character Often called an eccentric who would often develop new ways of being and then brings them to the world to make the world a better place. So building the healthy self concept is Absolutely essential And it really does interface with the traumatic material big tea and small tea trauma because That stuff is all and developmental stuff is all over it. If you didn't get your needs met. What do you do now? Um, one of the most important questions all of us confront Yeah You know as you're sharing this I mean Jonathan, we are fucking we are fucking we're fucking magnificent. We are fucking magnificent And I don't mean I don't mean narcissistically magnificent. We carry such an extraordinary number of threads of brilliance genius competence capability Compassion passion aliveness within us and very few of us ever get to access it because we're walking around Riddled with self-hatred and confusion and the most important thing is that we actualize all that we're meant to be So that the collective too can actualize all that it's meant to be That's what I believe Oh my god, you know, I I'm we're starting to clap. I I'm so grateful that you just said that out loud You know, we are really we we are amazing creatures on so many different levels and and our our capacity to love Is substantial You know and and it saddens me that the focus at least in the arena that I dance in Is hyper focused on what's wrong With everybody instead of trying to find what's right and what's good and and and so right sure You know and and and again, I think you always have to be Go ahead go ahead. No, it's gonna say oftentimes you always You go you go This is the human relational field. It's very complicated. Especially on the internet Um, no, all I all I wanted to say was that I think it's important If you're committing to doing the work around the unresolved emotional material to try to stay connected to why you're doing it always And you could just be to learn how to manage reality It's not for me to judge that depends on how much trauma you have but for some of us It's really about trying to reach a place where we can actualize and experience ourselves as a whole being again Or finally, yeah And so you're you don't want to get stuck in it as a repetitive RUT that you're in forever going back to the well of trigger processing And I'll tell you why not because there aren't endless numbers of triggers to process at this stage of human development It's triggers are everywhere But it's because at some point you have to recognize you're not going to be able to work through all of it You'd want to work through them primary significant pieces And you want to learn how to manage other things which means for example If you have an abandonment you reach a stage where you no longer attract the people that will abandon But it doesn't mean the whole wound is clear. It doesn't mean you've resolved every aspect of it And you'll never be triggered again I don't think it works that way And the reason that you won't do this you don't stay in the triggers all the way to the end if you can avoid it If you can afford it is because you want to experience the fruits of your labor too You want to experience the moments of actualization that emanate from all this work You've done within the emotional physical body So you got to be clear why am I doing this and how far into I want to go At what price am I paying every time you go back into therapy to work on yet another trigger You're not doing something else with your life So you really want to be sure it's essential and it may be essential But it may not be essential and you may just be caught in your own little Trauma loop that is manifesting as your inability to stop processing trauma Hmm And I think that I think that's kind of what you're talking. I think that's kind of what you're talking about Well, I know I needed to hear this message I I really needed to hear for me personally and I'm hoping for those that are watching this you feel the same because I I do believe and I say this publicly look, you know I'm a dating relationship coach people come to me because they want a relationship I'm like look being in a relationship isn't end all and isn't the isn't the end all be all The most important relationship you ever going to have is the relationship you have with yourself And so whether it's doing this work and and going back to your past traumas or whether it's working on new stuff or just Being as you were talking about I love your book and by the way, can you show it for everyone again? articulations I love this book I I invite everyone. Isn't it cute? Does that look like a little piece of salmon sushi or vegan? Oh, is that what that I thought that was the case doesn't it feel like it could be sushi? Folks I'll put a link in my jonathan recommend book section because i'm adding this to uncommon bond and And grounded spirituality. I know you have a number a number of other books I'm going to wrap this up. Do you have any parting wisdom to share as we come to a close here today? Look, we're all a mess The human species is a fucking mess and it doesn't take a genius to see that for god's sakes And and you got to do some work if you want to have a more gratified experience you have to But you don't have to devote every second of your day to the work because you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor I mean anybody who's doing work on themselves is a pioneer in this world You're pioneering a new path through humanity. They couldn't do it before they were too busy trying to survive So it's a beautiful powerful thing kudos to you for engaging the process kudos to you for doing your best within the process And my belief is if you do enough work and find your sacred purpose of this lifetime relationship still matters But you're not dependent on it in order to get through your day And I think that's really the ultimate place that I think everybody would benefit from getting to Yeah Oh, thank you for again. I needed this message for me personally. So Send you a bill jonathan fantastic I'll write that check happily uh abundance thinking Got that on tape Folks, I hope you found value. I invite you to check out the work of jeff brown I'll put the links to his website Also in my jonathan recommends book recommended book section. I'll have a copy of his book there I highly recommend you get articulations. It's a fantastic read I did the audio version and I did it in the in the two days. So I loved it So jeff, thanks for being in the house. Uh, so to speak Thanks for inviting me buddy. See you again. Thanks