Who is Ethan Hsieh? | Teaching, Play & What TIAMAT is For

33:29Right. So I'm doing this ecology, you know, synoptic integration in cognitive science and trying to – that's why there is no final theory. There can't be because the relation – it's a very – you're creating this very complex, dynamical, interdisciplinary system that's trying to track this very complex, dynamical, interpractice, right, system. Yeah, I mean, I have a great temptation to come up with the overall theory because I love theory. But it's been like. No, that's where that's where for me, that's when I go. I settle in and Plato and through Plato, Socrates takes priority over Aristotle for me.

34:16That's when it happens for me. It's like, oh, no, who am I ultimately following? I'm following Socrates, not Aristotle.

34:25And it lands for me that effectively what we're doing because of that orientation is we're keeping the question open such that we are always sort of open to the iteration. We're not stuck in the closed loop such that we're, again, the practice into, sorry, the practices research turns around and helps us go back up to the, okay, well, what about the introduction to practice? No, actually that part's fine. Bring it up into the design level of it of like, actually, this is misplaced or we need something between here and here, which is probably why I've really been enjoying the design part of practice with you gentlemen, as well as others, because it's sort of been that next sort of edge or challenge from the facilitation of practice, the teaching of a particular practice, but now it's like an actual pedagogical design for ecology of practices to try to afford a particular outcome unfolding is I keep coming back to that word.

35:20And it occurs to me that that's probably quite evidence of why TMX is constantly evolving. There's a lot that sort of stays and persists, but then there's always the stepping back and looking at and saying, okay, so what do we move here? What do we move there? Actually, no, we've designed this other practice and we feel like that it's actually working really well and it does the job of two other practices. So how do we make that shift to make it? Yeah, exactly. oh yeah even now just on the theory side of it i'm having i am giving myself aneurysms trying to you know sort of like understand the relationship between tma and predictive processing now that's like that's really quite at like the forefront of the of the world is a guy oh oh hey hang on wait what what is this because i used to work on like a you know sort of more um cbt kind of i used to look at cbt a lot i used to look at psychodynamics a lot right and i still do i'm still you know very much a union and then it's like now I'm bringing a different lens right it's like wow this is hard this is hard but it's also a lot of fun and it's giving like a new a new way right to offer something forward uh which is you know just nerdily exciting for me but it's also that the understanding that I at least I hold this position that all propositional knowledge needs to afford more participation right if the propositional knowledge just keeps you there at the ceiling go okay i got it right then it's like hang on what are you doing what's that there's more there's more that is in vibe there's more that can be found um and so i try and like trying to sort of bring those things together requires almost a rejigging of like certain pieces go well hang on how i have to ask questions that i've never asked before right about the theory and then you know sometimes that that needs to be challenged uh it always needs to be challenged but sometimes it gets named somewhere that, talk about independent convergence that someone else has found how dissociation works in certain practices like oh, oh that thing, ah, and then it illuminates something which I wouldn't have otherwise kept my eye on so so something about there's something in your response that has me wonder about in some ways Yeah, I feel like, oh no, hang on, I don't want to paint Ethan into a corner or put him on the spot about this, but I am quite curious what you would say about it.

37:48There's also the question of, there's the container, the training, or the workshop that we set up. And yes, there could be things that's happening within the container that feed back up into an iteration or redesign or will change the way we introduce a practice, that sort of thing. So keeping it as a living organism, ever evolving, bringing in new knowledge, stuff like that to keep it as sharp as possible. But then there's also the question of what are the containers ours really never to do? So I think it was by you bringing up dissociation, right? Like, of course, trauma is always in the room and we treat that as, you know, as a consideration.

38:21But it's also like the question of, well, what are the actual, like, what is ours to do? And then when do we sort of outsource it and say, well, actually, you know, mental health professional or, you know, trauma work or things like that. So for me, it's just bringing up that question. It's sort of like, yeah, how do we define what's ours to do when we're sort of in practice and offering? Because we can offer things, we can say they're not therapy, they can have a therapeutic effect, which tends to be that thing that's a little bit challenging to try to explain to people, because then they have it and then they sort of drop into a therapeutic mode with people sometimes, which of course we want to dissuade because that's, to me, that's not ours to do.

39:04So I just sort of handing that to you about like there's what's ours to do but then there's also the support of other types of modalities, other types of support systems that also help alleviate blocks, contractions such that they can come back in return and actually really flourish within the containers that were offered rather than again there isn't a panacea practice there also isn't a panacea modality perhaps or ecology of practices. Well I think you're pointing exactly at why the the what we're articulating with like theory informing practice and correcting and practice and correcting theory is so important because that allows us to be able to name this is the context for what we're doing for x amount of time right and so given that the both the theory right in the sense of having an understanding of what's happening and where the bug needs to stop as well as you know a historical experience of what the practice can do is is meant to do is the practices to do right holds the other book and then we can go well okay if this is happening now we can you know say okay you know we can make this recommendation um you know go call this number right or take a moment sit down it gives us certain affordances which we otherwise um say wouldn't necessarily have.

40:24So I've also been in containers called school where like in school you have somebody sort of like, you know, breaking down and losing it, right? Or going through something really difficult. But then the containers way of dealing with that is now you have to do this different thing, right? Which is within what they would then articulate as the practice. The goalpost seems to shift to be able to hold something which frankly is kind of, to my mind, not necessarily ethically, it's we made. So I'm always a little bit cautious about that and when the context is set up such that we know okay what is ours to do here, what's the practices to do here and can we stand by that decision, right?

41:16Then I think that helps to address a lot of the ethical concern.

41:24Yeah, not to pin you into a box, but...

41:31It's more of a rectangle on my screen. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a rectangle. I mean, this is a question we're often asked, and I think we have come upon it. And maybe we should at least address it, which is, yeah, okay, what is ours to do? How is it different from coaching, from psychotherapy, from common sense advice, right? And you see, just to put us in good company, you see Plato wrestling with this. How is philosophy different from poetry and how is it different from the doctor and how is it different from the lawyer and the statesman? Like we're not in like so what is I mean, I think that we've said why and we we need to be clear about what's ours to do.

42:24And you then articulated how that comes to bear. But we haven't really said what we think the what is. What is ours to do with our ecology of practices or better? What is it to do for the ecology of practices that we teach and facilitate? What is it trying to do? What's it offering for people? And there's two dimensions whenever you say something like that. In psychology, we distinguish between the pathological and the positive. The pathological is you're in some way falling below what Freud called normal unhappiness. and we want to address that, right? And then positive is, oh, no, no, no. But there's ways in which you probably want to excel beyond the normal average, normal unhappiness, and come to fullness of being, flourishing, deep senses of fulfillment, things like that.

43:24And no matter where we go, we'll find that we're bumping into people that are already there. If we go into the pathological, we're bumping into the doctor and the psychotherapist. And if we go into the excellence, we're bumping into one kind of coach. And if we say, no, but this this deep, then we're bumping into religion. Right. And while we're trying to fix the world, well, then we're bumping into politics. Right. So, I mean, we might not answer this question, but thank you. Well, no, Ethan, I was trying to give you what Taylor gave you, which is I don't want to box you in, right, or rectangle you in.

44:11But at the same time, I do think we – I mean, I think – I feel we've been led to here with good reason, and we should try and be clear. because there's a sense in which what we've been talking about in theory and practice actually occurs in all these domains where they're trying to balance good theory and good practice, you know, religion, psychotherapy, right, coaching, et cetera. So what is it we're doing?

44:42I noticed I want to try to tee it up so it's maybe a little bit easier for Ethan. um please do that even then feel free to shoot it down because maybe you actually have a through line across all the things but to me it occurs to me it's contextual to sort of the the intention of whatever the container is um so i'm wondering for you you know sort of being the cheap architect of tiamat what's tiamat's to do that's that's fair that's good i i think giving a specific case allows us to rub up against something better. Yes, that's good. Yeah, okay. So there's two kind of like paths to this question.

45:18I think sort of like lead to the same place, right? Which is, you know, depending on the context of the container, if it's like, say, a connection container, like our crossroads and connections piece, very expressly, right? But there, you know, it's offering a particular experience such that you can meet like-minded folks who are interested in the cultivation of a good life. And I think that's fine. That's exactly the context for that. And then when there is, at least in the domains which I tend to operate, which is much more of a training domain, then really it's kind of, it's inter-categorical in the way we were talking about it just now, that I cannot necessarily pin it down to one thing, but it's multiple aspects to the right degree, to the right proportion.

46:08so it's um well okay so if i give a if i give a more straight answer first right like what i'm trying to do with tms to really help people develop the necessary self-knowledge so a psychoeducation that can afford a good life that's that's the the kind of headline piece the caveat to that is um it's doing that without becoming a religion it's just it's just affording to my mind what i want to see folks be able to do is that like they come to tmf and religiosity that sense of bindedness a connectedness with self other world right to borrow heidegger is higher probability becomes more foregrounded for them.

46:58And to me, that's the win. It doesn't make TMA a religion. It just tees you up. Similarly with things like psychoeducation. So I named the psychoeducation piece and why the theory on that front is important. It's like, well, if you have an understanding of the way in which you're an epistemic creature, your knowing is being, you know and you're built or the beautiful thing that Mark said which is you are built to know the world by being in it and in that is that sense of knowing how that works how that occurs okay go live your life go enjoy your life so to my mind I think that's what that strikes me as what TMX is to do I'm not here to give anybody an answer to what their life means.

47:51I'm trying to afford them the principles and the processes by which they can discover that for themselves. Hence, that teaching piece of you should be able to go out into the world and live your life well. And then what about at the level of Spire? Because I'm imagining it's a little different. I mean, that's still included, I think. But I get the sense you're sort of transcending that as well in that context. Yeah. Yeah. Spire is like for me it's just a most rewarding piece. But yes. Maybe tell everybody what the acronym stands for. Yeah. First of all, what does SPIRE stand for? Good. So for those of you who are not familiar, SPIRE is within Tiamat, the facilitator training program.

48:35And then SPIRE stands for service, pilgrimage, inquiry, ritual, and enlightenment. And there's a caveat with enlightenment, which is understanding it as the process rather than the attainment of a state or the achievement of a state. So in that sense, I think Spire is really for folks who can already feel the call that being of service to other people's development is actually deeply meaningful. And I think those are, to a certain extent, that's everybody. You know, anybody who's had kids or, you know, relationships that are meaningful to them. But it's one thing to experience the meaning of that and the significance of that.

49:22It's another thing to be, to intentionally cultivate the capacities to enrich those relationships, not just for yourself, but also for other people.

49:35So I'm hearing sort of enriching religio and relationship and their inter-defining sort of ideas. So that speaks that we sort of have a presupposition, which I'll say I do, that we think human beings are ultimately deeply relational in nature, within and without in between. And what we're trying to do in some sense is wake people up to their relational nature so that they can enhance and improve it and come to a greater sense of fullness of being or something like that. Is that landing for you? Well, this is where I feel very strongly about it, which is that we are already connected and relational like relations are primordial so we are already connected into everything else we might forget it we might think that's not the case but i think that's the fundamental presupposition so when someone says like um uh oh i'm not real and mind you i grew up for 30 years you know with people telling me that what you're doing is not real you're not real I kind of push back and I go, no, it's all real.

50:57All of it is real. Even if you are being deceived, it's a real deception. And there's something to me which I feel very strongly about with that. And it's not a, I don't mean that in like a childhood naivety, like just take everything from your fashion. That's not what I mean. I'm not saying throw away rigor. What I am saying is that there's a recognition of relationality in his primordial form. So I'm not teaching anybody anything new, but is that question of can we maybe get out of the way a little bit? You know, talk about disastrous dichotomies, for example.

51:40I feel a bit emotional about this.

51:56I think I've just met a lot of people and I've been guilty of being one of these people myself. Or taking on a particular worldview where the viewing of oneself as an instrument that moves itself through the world and does things and this is a kind of it's a depersonization derealization thing like living in that place is actually quite terrifying um

52:36and one of the one of the best oh one of the one of the most difficult but also most rewarding worldview shifts that I've had to make is to actually like recognize and directly realize that oh all of my experience actually has a place everyone else's experience has a place too that we share that. Even though I might not want to, I might feel a certain way about it. We're still sharing that.

53:17So what I'm... And I think maybe you've already said it, but I get the sort of sense that what you're touching into is more of your deeper why, about why you do what you do, which would, of course, inform what you create and bring and deliver into the world.

53:36I see you nodding. So I think I'm sort of, yeah, I could feel it even before you had named the emotionals like, oh, hang on a second. It feels like we're getting, we're starting to touch on something. Apologize for the word right now, given what you just said, but we're starting to touch on something right now. Not to say that the other stuff was, but I could just sort of feel like more of the really real, like something like the thing that's, that is always true, but it was yet to be disclosed.

54:07And I'm wondering, do you have that sense, that elevator pitch of the thing that you're trying to do? I think I said something in that previous one about how important it is for me, at least on leadership-oriented containers, that I'm wanting people to get really clear about why it is that they do what they do, because if they're not clear about it, it has them. And when you're in a position of power and a one-up thing and you don't actually understand something else is motivating you, that's the potential where you can do harm. So the thing that I tend to get to for me about why I do this, and it's a little bit harder for me to fully touch into the place more because I just now know it as true.

54:56Whereas before it was a little bit more novel for me. It was like, oh yeah, I could feel the tenderness. But for me, it was, I just want to feel safer in the world. I'm doing what I'm doing so that I can feel safer in the world, so that I can feel safer with my daughter in the world. And I think one of the things that actually helps me feel safer about it is going back to my whole thing about control and controlling for the future is like, at least I'm doing something about it. And that at least you know, alleviates sort of that idea of mind to do. If I want something, then I should be doing something to turn around and do it.

55:31And it sort of alleviates that a bit for me. So I'm wondering sort of for you, how might you, you know, articulate that or condense that? What is that thing? So here it's related to an experience of a place for all experiences. experiences. But I'm wondering, and I can sense the personal impact for you of having that realization or I guess this is the difference between not being awake and waking up. Perhaps you let me know how it is for you, but I'm still sort of trying to get at that part of through allowing a space for all experiences to have a place. Where does that land you? what does that do for you?

56:32I think I've actually said this like multiple times in multiple different ways and it just so happens that the way that is coming out for me today is that remember that the world is open for play. It's an old thing that, it's an old documentary of Robin Williams when he was still around. but in that sense that the world is open for play simultaneously feel for me saying that like the world is not one way the reality is uncontrollable fundamentally

57:06um but there's a way to navigate it which can open up all of it all of it

57:18And that also goes like personally, like the internal sort of like landscape, the inner world, inner life, we always talk about this and I think it's also accessible through play, which is not an invitation to be flippant. it's not an invitation to not um to be to to throw it away as meaningless and not consider it too much right and just toss it over your shoulder and move on no but it's it's an invitation to keep like exploring but that's one or just one i want to check one thing john so is it But is it, so what I'm hearing in that is almost like you want to see more joy. Is something about, like, because you were saying, you know, helping people live a good life.

58:17And I'm thinking in that for you, joy must equal good. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to try and see if I can through line this. So first of all, I want to just note that you took the notion of phenomenological adequacy really deeply there. Like you're saying, like there's like you're saying all my experiences have to have a place. And I get the sense that that's just not welly nilly. There's a sense of properly proportioned placing. Right. There's a logos there, of course. Of course, there's a terrain of intelligibility to it, right? Totally. So that says to me that you're talking about something like what you're doing with play.

59:10Play is inherently developmental. It's exploratory, but it's also transformative, especially if it's serious play. And then what that serious play seems to be doing is like Plato's anamnesis. We seem to be, you said it was always true, but we have forgotten it. It's not like learning about Saturn, right? It's about a fundamental recovery of our relationality. And then what I hear you saying is you're trying to recover your relationality so people can properly proportion their experiences. such that they can better, right, couple to the complexity of the world, right? Because joy is not pleasure.

59:58Joy is I'm really in touch with something really real. So, I mean, this is a species of an evolutionary model of organisms complexify in order to keep a continuity of being coupled to a complex reality. So as reality changes, they can re-adapt to stay fitted to it. Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Because to me, that is very different. That's very different from what therapy is offering people. um it's very different from what coaching is offering people because it's those things are usually organized around specific states or goals that people are trying to get i want to feel this way now i want to right yeah where where where we of course we are bumping up against at least some religions i mean this sounds a lot like daoism in a lot of ways and important aspects of zen um uh but it's it's it's it's in that blurry line between philosophy and religion and i i kind of like being there.

1:01:11I think that's a good place to be right now. And so I just, I'm really appreciating this notion of, right, that what we're really trying to do is get people to seriously play so they can properly proportion how they experience reality so that they can make, they can stay connected to a dynamic complex reality that always exceeds whatever grasp we have on it and that's why we always have to have a playful attitude is is that right yeah and the way that we deal with the ill-defined problem of ultimate reality is we create a model of it and then we play within that model right yeah so this is why tmx comes from actor training which is where i've for bloody 35 years because it involves all of the self.

1:02:10Like all the internal faculties, your view, what you have to care about, every single action that you do and then you take a world and then you build a small world of Denmark, right? In the public theater, right? Whatever it is. And you play in that because hopefully, right? We don't experience, you know, seeing our father's goals walk down the corridor and contemplate our humanity in our life, but it allows us to do that. Which is not saying that people will come to TMA, you will become career actors. No, I'm trying to move forward the idea that there is a ritual importance here that what I think we found is across time, across history is the fully play way, the way to play most fully is with every faculty of your being.

1:03:03and that's an amazing opportunity it's an amazing opportunity that we have the facility to do that at all we are so complex that we can literally change our worlds that's awesome even if it's just for like five minutes and that helps us to understand the different facet of reality and that's play that's the kind of play i'm talking about i'm not talking about poking somebody and then going like, oh look, I'm tickling you. I'm talking about a real wrestling with stuff that matters.

1:03:42I don't know why, but there's a part of me that actually feels deeply angry that I have to say any of this at all. I find it necessary to articulate at all. And a part of me I think wishes that I didn't have to talk about this as passionately, that It wasn't as necessary to talk about it. I'm with you. And of course, you know, I had that experience that I was never looking for this work because I didn't know it was possible. I was living a life of contentment based on what was modeled for me and my family. It was like, oh, okay, well, yeah, we argue all the time. But my father and, you know, his wife argued all the time.

1:04:19So that was what was normal. I didn't know. It was only until I got into this other relationship with my now wife and started the journey through authentic relating and that where it was like, I had no idea what an experience of life was possible. I had no clue. I was completely existentially ignorant to it. I had no idea. I didn't even know to go looking for it. But it just, you know, in many ways, it happened by accident, you know, just through, you know, a willingness to stay open to new experiences rather than rehash the way I was in my previous relationship. So I'm with you in the like the challenge of trying to articulate the relevance of what we do for everyone without trying to overly dilute it.

1:05:03So there's always that frustration of like, this is for everyone. But as soon as we start talking about it being for everyone, it starts to lose the perception of a potency. So I'm with you in that struggle of like, you know, I think somebody asked a question last week about, you know, towards a deliberately developmental civilization and sort of the wholeness part, right? And there's like negative connotations around wholeness, but talking about that full expression of one's being, you know, that thing that you're sort of pointing to or adjusting to that's available, you know, and in fact, involving over the whole self, you know, to be an actor, to deeply use those imaginal muscles and to enter into, you know, another sort of way of being.

1:05:54And even through that process, learning actually something about yourself by deeply embodying something that's different from yourself. What a vehicle of transformation. I totally get the motion and the movement towards what you've developed based on what you've experienced through that whole journey. Some people, they're just a bit contracted and they never get it. They're not great actors, but then there's the actors who can just put themselves aside and go into that imaginal thing right to take in the world um for the role or or for you know however it's set up and they just they are from that place because they are just being they are just more real if this bloody word it's turning into a knot but but but you know but what i mean is like so you know to me this goes back you know it's like tangent i know we're at kind, but this goes back to the articulation from your voice coach, right?

1:06:54And that thing about real. And, you know, of course I wasn't there and I hear a part of it and I'm sort of like, yeah, screw that. But there's also that part of like the unencumbered being, right? And somehow, you know, and we're talking about remembering too, right? Of remembering something that was lost and, you know, and, you know, and the loss of it creates a certain degree of contraction, right? So if you can release that, we can remember something. But to me, when I'm talking about real here and I'm talking about like the full expression of being. That's what I'm talking about, about real.

1:07:24Anything else is a partiality of the real. I think even that full expression will never be full, full. I mean, I don't think we'll ever, we don't live long enough to probably ever quite get there. Um, anyhow, I just, I just wanted to sort of throw that out and, uh, and, uh, I'm going to shut up now and see what John might have. I mean, I know we're closer to time, so I don't, I don't, well, pick this up if you want or put it down if you want. I agree with everything Taylor said is that's one aspect of the anger. For me, when I get angry, and I don't know if this is also there, I get angry because of all of the unnecessary suffering.

1:08:07Right. And it's a weird anger because it's a sad anger thing mixed together.

1:08:19So, Taylor, I totally agree with the frustration about, you know, we're diminishing something here because we're trying to share about it and diluting. And that's there. I'm not denying that. I'm just wondering if this other thing, the sad anger about all the unnecessary suffering. it's more it's more this sad anger like underneath i don't i don't hold it so tightly that like oh i'm pissed i'm pissed all the time about something but the it's it's more the sadness and the hurt because i feel that viscerally um when like you know sometimes i hear someone say oh actually i don't matter yeah when someone says that to me wow i feel it bro like it drops like like there's a I only want to cry when I hear somebody say, especially if there's somebody that I really care about.

1:09:10Come on, dude. You know, and it's almost that piece, like, why do I have to tell you? Why do I have to tell you that you matter? Why do I have to tell you that you're real? How come you don't know that? What the fuck happened to you that you walked through thinking you're not real? You know, and talk about this, like this phone, I had a conversation with Randstor about this fullness of experience thing. It's like, I take it that even when someone is repressed, and they're struggling or they're contracted, that's pretty much as full as you can be right now. That's cool, man. Like, your repression is real.

1:09:51Your contraction is real, right? The garden-ness is real. That's cool. I try not to... I don't know. Maybe this is idiosyncratic to me. imagine taylor you have a different take on it me holy shit um it's kind of this thing of like i don't want to hold the implicit expectation that whatever is beneath or behind how someone is showing up right now right is it is more valuable than whatever is available right i try and hold the the suchness of that and what that does if i hold that pole right if i just if i take it and go okay okay this is where we're at right now then I stay I stay in relationship with the other person such that more is revealed to me I because I know I have a particular tendency that once I form an idea of a person I can just drop it and go because I'm naturally quite a highly suspicious person so all of the past few years of my life really in part of the work that we do has been affording that in a big way is to actually just be with what is with myself with the other person and trust that I'm going to see you again.

1:11:04And next time I see you, there'll be more to know. As we develop a relationship, it goes further and further. And that's the joy. To me, that's joy. Yeah. Well, I think ending on joy is a good place to end because we do want to move to practice. Will somebody put the Zoom room link? I'm doing that.

1:11:34So yeah, you should copy paste that because once we shut this off, you'll lose the chat. So just put it into a notepad or something like that. Get it somewhere to the side and we'll be there in a couple minutes as we have to logistically leave this open for a moment to finish uploading.

1:11:59But yeah, in that inviting others, Ethan's going to lead us in some practice over on the Zoom room that was placed there. We ask that if you're going to come and participate, that you have your camera on and a working microphone. And yeah, anything you want to say to close us out of the talk here, John? Nope. Okay. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Ethan. I'm still, I'm still like, I still have so much more I want to say and we'll just have to leave it here for now. Yeah. Yeah. Same boy. Yeah. All right, see you all. Hope to see you all in the practice.

1:12:56Soldiers of Stability