Who is Taylor Barratt? | Practice, Theory & the Ethics of Facilitation

33:37There's an implicit set of norms or standards or something. Normativity is the philosophical jargon. How do we know when we're doing this well? Right?

33:53That's a great question, John. my trajectory in the past has been if i get positive feedback and i tried really hard i did a good job what was really tricky for me is when i didn't feel like i was trying really hard and i got positive feedback i didn't trust it so it was a real process of me sort of having to learn that like life doesn't have to be hard like yes of course there's going to be the things that we struggle with but i always like taking that on that like if there's no struggle i haven't earned anything um and there's a bit of validity to that in terms of uh you know in terms of you know self-transcendence and sort of the complexity and you know the butterfly effect you know through you know that sort of thing like i think that's that's uh very much a part of one's unfolding and development but it took it took a little bit of time for me to really trust like okay hang on this is easy for me because I've been doing it for so long.

34:55So I'm just, I'm, I'm more in that, you know, as Ethan and I've referred to it, I'm more in that self as instruments sort of place that I'm not, you know, consciously trying to going back to the control thing. I'm not consciously trying to control for the moment to lead to a particular thing. I'm just actually following the moment and responding to the moment as it's happening. And that has become substantially easier. Um, but of course that's just not my experience, you know, for the previous, you know 40 30 30 plus 40 years of my life is you know protestant work ethic gotta hustle and if i'm not hustling you know i'm not actually accomplishing anything um so so there was that was sort of the trajectory for me um sometimes i still have those moments where i do something and for me i'm like i don't know was that good and i'm sort of looking for the feedback and the shares to sort of get a sense of like was that you know how did that actually land for some people But and I've learned to trust that a lot more because it allows me to recalibrate, you know, my expectations.

35:54It allows me to also be a little bit more easier on myself as well to say, like, that was, you know, that was impactful. That was, you know, that was good, especially if I've set up the container where I can invite feedback and also invite negative feedback. Because in some spaces that tends to be sort of, you know, tampered down or like, no, no, it's going to be love and light in here, you know, which is a great capacity to be able to cultivate. but it can't be the only one. Um, cause you know, then we're, we're really susceptible to the bullshit. So I really try to invite a lot more of that.

36:27And I try to do it also oftentimes through sort of modeling, um, you know, uh, contrary, you know, uh, opinions or, uh, you know, some sort of resistance, you know, like even within myself, like just acknowledging that it's there. I think the difference to whatever degree between maybe myself and a new practitioner is like, number one, you know i can notice the resistance number two i can name it but number three i can also let it go um and sometimes that can't because i'm not subject to it right it's like oh it's there and there's still something you know a young part of me or something that's happening like you know but it's not appropriate right now what's appropriate right now is for me to acknowledge it name it to tame it um model that hey that's coming up for me but then choose something different right it's not what happens it's what you do about it um so i think in that invitation of of the feedback and then being able to then trust what comes from participants that's helped me really recalibrate um that sense and then of course having a broad ecology of practices affording a broad perspective such that i'm looking at other practices that i did before where for me it was just like oh is this person you know really alive right now okay great they've got a lot of aliveness that did my job but i've it's i've also been able to sort of notice a little bit more where the container or the thing that we're doing might actually be exacerbating even though it's a positive energy it might actually be exacerbating um or enabling sort of a maladaptive pattern right um so sometimes you know that ability to step back and notice that and like ask sort of the right questions like oh i noticed this is happening you know is it like this for you is it like that for you right and then and then sort of recording and noting that like okay so maybe not you know feed that particular demon because that can certainly happen in any particular container right again we go into the into the heavy propositional set up a container where all we do is just you know uh try to make ourselves look smart well that's not what the container is for but you know then we like oh there's an opportunity for me to look smart or here's an opportunity for me to gaze at my navel the whole time.

38:41So feedback has been a big piece of it, but also just taking the experience. I think this draws the huge distinction between what is a facilitator and what is a leader. And I know there's whatever negative connotations around the idea of leading for some people. But for me, I think that's a really important distinction is that I'm taking a certain degree of responsibility for what's happening in the container. Of course, I can't take all the responsibility because there's other agentic human beings here. But I also know, and we'll talk about this as we move into our practice session, we have this golden rule generally in AR or anything we do on ATM is to honor yourself.

39:21And I actually know that some people actually don't know how to honor themselves. So I take some responsibility for the fact that one, I know that, so I need to know that. I know that trauma is always in the room. and I'm able to sort of, based on the experience and the moments and, you know, sometimes when it's gone wrong, although I think I've been fairly, I don't know if lucky is the right word, but I haven't run up against too much of the adversity in that and getting it wrong too often. I think because I've, you know, done more of the experimental stuff with a group of people that have a lot of trust.

39:55And then when it comes to the, you know, the public things, I'm not, I'm not using people to experiment on. So I think sort of that whole experience of seeing the matrix and being able to track what's happening in the room to avoid potential pitfalls and to come out on the other end of it in somebody's like, the big one that I appreciate the most is they come in and they're check-ins like, oh, I'm really tired and I wasn't sure if I was going to come today. And at the end, they're like, yeah, I feel so much better. I'm, you know, so much sort of here and alive. And it's like, okay, good. You know, yeah.

40:32Okay. Positive experience. But that just tells me like, okay, they got to express themselves. They got to let something go there. They're being more themselves. They're not stuck in the contraction of filtering or, or trying to wear this mask. I mean, I'm sure they're still doing it to an extent, but at least they were able to relax it. So it's sort of those sort of moments that helped me, you know, understand that what is happening in the space is good like you know in the transcendental sense of good um and you know going back to the thing that you named about beauty is also being able to appreciate the beauty in the negative um or the more conflict moments because there's something there's a dignity that's there for people in these particular moments and being able to just like appreciate you know the raw humanity of something that's happening um so there's lots of different touch points that sort of suggest to me that what's happening is is good um yeah yeah it's but it's hard to say there's any one thing you know well i i hear i i hear a bunch of different touch points so it's not that there's multiples there seem to be multiple kinds uh there seems to be something that is uh i hear you often refer to as landing something is landing for people and you're getting a sense of they're taking it up you can read them they can read you you're getting feedback that it's landing you've also mentioned impact which seems something like they didn't just have a pleasant experience or a wonderful experience they are reoriented in some way they're looking forward back into their life after the practice in some fashion.

42:13So I hear impact. And then I also heard aliveness, which is a sense that there's something like, you know, on the continuum, I won't go into heavy theory here, but on the continuum towards resonance and the flow state is happening for them. And so that's a reason to believe that they're having some kind of optimal experience, optimal performance. So I heard at least, I'm not saying I'm giving you an exhaustive list, but I've heard this, I've heard landing, I've heard impact, and I've heard aliveness. Is there anything else that perhaps I did miss when, in terms of, you know, the kind of, not the number, but the kinds of markers that are showing up for you to say, yes, this is a good practice, this is a good practice.

43:01You also, oh, sorry, you did mention another one. You picked up the point I asked about beauty. There's a sense of beauty. So there's four. There's the beauty. There's the impact. There's the aliveness. There's the landing. Is there anything else? Because sometimes articulating the normativity of the practice is a good place to see how the theory and the practice are talking to each other. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there can be those moments also when, you know, somebody comes back and reflects something that wasn't articulated for it. And it's like, you got it. You figured it out, right?

43:41Because sometimes, you know, I'm more guilty than this, probably than the two of you, is sometimes I want, I don't want to give people too much context depends on the exercise we're doing. I want them to have their own experience because I'm acknowledging in many ways that we all come in a little bit differently just in terms of our past experience, you know, life experience, stuff like that. But even just how we're doing that day or whether or not we got a good sleep or something. And, you know, in many ways, sometimes, you know, I'll articulate something or I'll use a phrase and they're like, well, what do you mean by that?

44:12And I'm like, just go with whatever way it lands for you first, right? Like I'm trying to get them to just have the experience because I don't want to. sometimes I'm cautious I don't want to guide or the power of suggestion too much such that then people come out and what they reflect back is the thing that I already told them yeah so there is you know as we always talk about balance you know throughout a container and stuff like that there are a number of moments where I just want you to have the experience and I want you know I wanted to hear why it was challenging or what you liked about it or what you didn't like about it and then I might make a correction or at least a offer a perspective that may actually you know reframe the exercise for the next time they do it.

44:52Right. So there's a way sometimes for me, I'm not being completely exhaustible, um, or exhaustive in my explanation of a particular practice, because I really want people to actually wrestle with the practice. Um, but, you know, of course with the appropriate guardrails, you know, that they're, you know, going to stretch and not tear and not hurt themselves. So in that, I heard another term then, which was balance. There's a sense of balance and what you're trying to, I mean, it sounds very much like Vygotsky. It sounds like the zone of proximal development. We're trying to balance between giving them enough that they can do it on their own, but they couldn't do it on their own if we weren't there to facilitate, right?

45:34Because if you're too heavy-handed, then you're not learning. And if you're too absent, right, they'll just spin off in in various ways so it sounds like you're trying to articulate there's a balance point you're sort of also looking for between those two extremes it's kind of a golden mean right between deficit and excess all right not giving enough uh context and giving too much and and so you get a sense of oh this is balancing because people are right i i'm not feeding them what they're feeding back to me. I'm feeding them a learning situation and then they give back to me their own insight, but it jives with the insight that I was holding something like something like that.

46:19Is that, is that, well, yeah, I also want to afford the truth of their own wisdom. Yeah. We were talking a lot last week about remembering and in many ways, a lot of the stuff, you know, that I'm doing is I'm helping people remember. And, you know, so, you know, the innocence of youth and childhood and things like that, where everything was sort of, you know, easy before, you know, a parent or society sort of tamped it down and put you into the, you know, the tube towards, you know, you know, marriage, kids, you know, a job, that sort of thing. So there's a lot of sort of that such that, you know, and again, acknowledging that everybody's a little bit different, there's often a lot of neuro neurodivergence, you know, in at least in my experience, in authentic relating containers, which makes a lot of sense.

47:03So there's also a way of like helping people one find their way. So affording still affording them agency, right? Like in a very gestalt sort of way of like really, um, in enabling them to do their own development, right. Rather than me saying, well, hang on a sec, you know, this speaks to the thing, you know, I'm not giving you the right way. Cause for everybody, it's not really the, there's no, there isn't a right way that what works for me isn't necessarily going to work for you. So, um, so yeah, I think that's a big part of sort of that balancing is to afford and try to acknowledge the wisdom that's already in the room.

47:38And then if we run up against something that maybe seems like foolishness or is a little less wise, then we can maybe make, you know, offer a perspective into the space that helps them reframe that, or at least to consider it, right? So another part of the balancing sometimes is sort of offering, like in some ways, it's like, I'm going to offer you your perspective. And there's a way in which I don't want to say, you know, take what works for you and leave the rest. But there's also a way in which that actually might be the wise thing for that person to do right now um so there has to be a certain degree of giving up to what's to the entire group and not to grab it and really like this has been the real thing around control is really letting go and and track the emergent of what's happening and what does this group need right now um and how can i you know bring you know bring this group more into coherence or if that feels too challenging, then how can I separate the group such that they can continue to flourish separately?

48:37You know, again, speaking to, you know, stuff more on the leadership end, then you would run into on a facilitation part of like, well, here's the next step in the practice and okay, now we're going to rotate this way. So yeah, that's what I would say about the balance. Like that's, sometimes I'm not as successful with that. Sometimes I get a little bit like on my own role and I'm just like, download, download, download. Because, you know, So I'm liking how this is working, you know, in that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, and I've gotten feedback sometimes about like, okay, you know, maybe you don't need to say it, you know, as much.

49:11And it's like, yeah, no, I know I got carried away. You know, I'm also infallible. Well, there's a balance there because sometimes when you're on a roll, I mean, I've been teaching for a long time. It's because you're learning as you're teaching. And for me, the best teaching is when you are learning as you're teaching. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. I mean, that was, I think, you know, I've said this before and this is, you know, a quote from Guy. I don't know when he said it, Guy Sengstock, but he said, you know, the person who actually gets the most out of a circle is the facilitator. Yeah. Which you, you know, it's not the way that we set it up and we're not selfishly doing it.

49:50But the fact is, is there's so much growth and unfolding and understanding of the self. And I often use, you know, the generalized frame, you know, from cognitive science as something that circling has really afforded me. It's really helped me build a very strong generalized frame of the other. Right. Such that I can notice a lot of implicit patterns and stuff like this. And this maps onto other work that I've done with, you know, facilitators, you know, a mentor of mine, Alanya Forsberg, who's, you know, slightly, I say this crazy with a lot of affection because, you know, her whole thing was, you know, trying to answer the question, why do some people end up in jail and other people don't?

50:39Plato's pivot problem. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And for her, you know, she's like, I need to get a taste of all these different types of, you know, she would call them contractions. In some ways, we could refer to them as trauma to sort of so that they can sort of live within her so that she can notice it or pick it out in other people as she works with them. Right. So she's talk about somebody who's working with sort of an ecology of practices. So a little bit more of an emphasis on some faculties than others, but just so dynamic. I mean, I've never met somebody who can switch from the feminine into the masculine as the moment calls it and so strong and of course, so, you know, generally clean, at least in practice.

51:22And I mean, I've heard, you know, answer early complaints as well, but I've been very impressed. And I've learned a lot from those particular moments in those containers. I can't I can't let that go by. I just can't. So before I explicate that piece, I also want to explicate the first thing, which is what you're describing in terms of this larger balancing

51:47where some people come into containers and they really want the explanation of how all of this works. Tell me the thing. And I'm happy to do that when we're at the dinner table and then I can wax lyrical about theory. And I know that for myself because I can sit in the besetting sin of being a teacher. But what this participant might need in the moment right now is to lean into the experience of like what it is to sit in that ambiguity. And the opposite is also true where, you know, I've even just yesterday, we ran the TMX session and folks were, you know, some folks were saying like, I really want more of an experience, but I find myself like really outside.

52:27How do I dive into that? And I see kind of what the three of us are having to do to varying different degrees in different contexts. is to kind of like bookend it a little bit such that there's a highest probability that they can have a balanced experience as much as possible that affords them something. Some of us might go the way of explaining the framework. Some of us might go in the way of try this. But this piece that you had named, first of all, doing all of that is really, really hard. Really, really hard. I don't think, maybe people who are watching right now I'll be willing to give us some credit, but I actually want to give credit to the two of you at least and a little bit to myself that this is bloody difficult to do.

53:11Maintaining that balance is difficult. But this piece that you had named of like, you know, I mean, I don't know Alanya personally, but I always wrestle with this question, having gone through many years of practice, being in the room, being a participant, that I think there's something that Sarah Bin had said in a conversation we had a few weeks ago, which is that teachers also need to be self-actualized. Oh yeah. That, you know, as we're doing the work. Yeah. It's kind of echoing a little bit of what you were quoting from Guy there, which is like, the practice is also actually like, we're learning stuff, as John was naming, right?

53:46How is the, how is the, okay, the, how is the practice of facilitation, right? Leadership, being able to hold containers like this, actually transferring into daily life. Like that for me is an important question. You mean with trust for me? um well i love your take on it yeah like how are you how are you transferring what we're doing in the work in a context in a container um and integrating it is more of an integration question

54:18oh sorry i just want to make sure i'm on the same page you're you're sort of stepping back and there's a meta practice of doing the practice of doing all these practices and and what's it like to do that meta practice in terms of it being a ritual that transfers back into your life is am i understanding you correctly ethan okay good we are the same pebble john yeah yeah that's a good question um i feel like i'd have to think fairly hard at that to figure out what the distinction is about oh no i got you know this thing that i now do i got that because I was a facilitator as opposed to because I was just doing the practice.

54:57The one thing that I do want to say though, is while I agree with you, and that's all entirely true, I want to highlight a key distinction that I'm not doing that in service for myself. I'm doing the facilitation leadership in service of the context that I sat in for the participants. I just happen to benefit from it. So I often articulate this thing where I say, I don't believe there's anything as a truly altruistic act. I believe that we do things for, and we call them self-ish reasons that are inherently good and therefore benefit others, you know, and I would love to debate anybody about that at some point to see whether or not my mind could be changed on it.

55:36But, you know, and a lot of that's just a projection of, of how I've come to think it's certain things that I accept about myself is like, oh, I, you know, I like doing this because of the value that it gave me, but also recognizing, you know, and taking on the ethical responsibility to, to do it, you know uh with with right orientation um the benefit and the good for other people as well so that that drive for me to turn around and offer that to others you know and that projection actually is like a good thing because it's like i want others to have the experience that i so so deeply appreciate it in terms of so you know there's going to be that right is that a bit it's of being of i'm in many ways it's sort of the being of service thing i actually think it maybe shows up a little bit more in my parenting.

56:21Although, you know, I have my own, as I think a lot of people with children of this generation, have my own challenges in that particular area. And I'm also co-parent with two other people. So there's a way in which, you know, I have to also include their needs and their different ways as well. And maybe part of that actually is, you know, I'm able to work within groups and recognize, you know, different needs in the space and stuff like that. So I think that might be a place where it's actually been very helpful is at least in the air traffic controlling of parenting, a single child with three adults that, you know, do things, everything a little bit differently.

57:04So it's possible that's a way in which that's shown up and has benefited me from that perspective. I think another one has been me bringing the practice back when my father was alive, I actually got him to come out to Authentic Relating and to events that I was running. And I actually got to learn and understand him in a way that I couldn't before that. So there was a way in which I took that home, but because I had the capacity in the facilitation and stuff that I could make it easier for him that somebody else who maybe has just done it and they don't have facilitation training, they can be really clunky with it.

57:43I mean, You know, I certainly remember very early on in my circling training, one of our homework pieces was to circle somebody in our life. And I remember my wife and I, we went to to go do this with one of our friends. And, you know, we articulated all this stuff. Hey, we're still training this, that. But we totally dropped the ball, you know, so there's a way in which, like, you can really sort of, you know, mess that up. Relationship was was fine and everything but that. But, you know, stepping back and look at it's like, oh, yeah, we were definitely in training at that point. Right. So there is probably something about the experience of it and the confidence and the trust and then sort of bringing it into those situations where it really matters.

58:21You know, like maybe it's a little bit safer because everybody is in this, you know, yes, I want to do authentic relating. So 20 people show up because they all want to do the same thing. There's a certain degree of safety in the shared context there. My father was not somebody who talked about his feelings ever, ever so to be able to invite him into something like that and that novelty and to to earn his trust in that place it uh so i think that was another area in which the work that i was doing was really transferring into my life in a very meaningful way i'm sure there's lots of other subtle ways um could i ask you about one sure because one that's become sort of and it goes back to Plato's pivot problem.

59:03And I don't think this is the total answer, but I've been struggling and you guys know since, since, since Bergerac, and we've actually engineered and designed practices around this, how to involve the whole of the self without becoming self-involved. And I find the more I'm doing the facilitation, I get the taste, the sense of what it's like to show up like and have my myself fully involved without becoming self-involved in a situation and it seems to me that that's beneficial to the people around me I show up to use the current lingo the best I possibly can and that doesn't seem I can't put my finger on that to any I mean it's probably the whole ecology practices but to my mind that the the facilitation because of what you're talking about, the way it's oriented, you have to bring sort of all you are to it, but it's to the other people.

1:00:04I don't know if I'm making much sense, but I've developed, I've developed a taste for like, and it's really tricky because you don't want to, you don't want to turn into a facilitator when you're involved in a existential or personal or relationship with people because that's, that's bad too. Right. But, but, but I've noticed like, it's like, Oh, I can carry, I can, I can, I can properly when I'm doing it well, and I don't always do it well. Right. But what I can, I can integrate that. I know what it feels like. I know what it tastes like. Um, if I, I, I really, you know, fully involving myself, but I'm not self-involved and that there's something, there's something deeply satisfying Because I don't know if we want to be self-involved as much as we just want to be fully involved, the whole of the self.

1:00:58And learning that and learning how to bring one in without drifting into the other. I mean, that's something I'm grateful for when I'm a facilitator. I've picked that taste up. And I don't want to, this is about you, I don't want to hug the spotlight. But I wanted to know if that's resonating for you as something. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think in many ways that's what we're trying to do at the higher levels of training. Right. We're trying to get people out of the self-involvement part. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing that I've often, you know, have sort of said is, you know, and I say this to the facilitators, you know, the thing that we need to get clear on is our why.

1:01:40Why are we doing this? Why is this important to us? And until you can answer that question, you're subject to it. and you which could then could mean you're bullshitting yourself and everything else so you know a lot of reasons why you know so inadvertently advertising this thing but you know guy runs the circling training it's a two-year training to get into facilitation for circling it's not because it takes two years to understand the structure of circling that is not what that's about it takes that amount of time similar to tm at being you know largely you know depending on how we place it.

1:02:12This is a year and a half ish sort of, you know, container, depending on how long you are inspire, you know, the facilitation end of it. It takes that long just to get out of our own way, to remember, to build up the experience, to sort of make the mistakes, to have the oversight and the, you know, the supervision from the lead facilitators, to help us do all that course correction, to shine the light on the thing that we didn't notice in the middle of our facilitation. So in many ways, that's the thing we're doing in training for sure, without a doubt. And I think the thing that you're talking about, or at least the way, the way it landed for me as you started is like, that's the self as instrument part.

1:02:51That is using yourself as the instrument of transformation, right? So that, and I think that's a big distinction between what we do and many modalities of therapy, right? Is that we are participants often, I mean, depending on the container, but we are also participating with you. We are in relationship with you. And we are also using, you know, hopefully that we've built up, you know, a fairly strong set of, you know, resilience and capacity and dynamicism or whatever the word is I'm looking for. That's the word. Yeah. And, and therefore we are very responsible, bubble, right? So again, it's not what happens is what we do about it.

1:03:34And I think that's the thing that we're cultivating, but we have to do it within ourselves. I think before we start to take on the responsibility of others, that's why, you know, the trajectory is getting you into your own self-leadership before you're in a position of power or of influence for other people, because you just got to, you got to figure out, you know, you're not going to completely understand yourself, but you got to understand yourself probably a lot more than you are. already do. And I just see that as an ethical imperative. I mean, this goes back to the thing that I was saying, you know, that Christopher helped me understand.

1:04:08It really goes back to the ethical imperative of why I believe facilitator practice, especially most of the practices we do is very important, but then also why we do training, right? We're not doing training in that like coachy way, like I'm going to coach the coaches. You know, it goes back to that thing of like there are people who are interested in doing this and my hope is to help them you know more reach that right orientation and that that real sort of cleanliness that clean up right the you know wake up grow up clean up show up i want them to clean up and i think that's basically why that you know it takes that time because we have to get in here we have to rub up against each other we have to you know opponent process all these different practices together so that we can see what, you know, see what we don't know or what we didn't know.

1:04:57And we need to do it in a group so that we can help get those reflections. So total resonance. I mean, it's the, it's the whole, it's the whole reason why I love training. Um, because that to me is the real trajectory of unfolding and practice is just a vehicle, a vehicle for us to come more into our fullness. Yeah. And I saw, I saw what you're talking about. We went in a second, I saw what you're talking about uh when you guys were running designing and running uh the extensive uh did uh course and you were like 12 weeks and and and i was like what and then i was looking at it was oh yeah there's there's skill refinement and there's some scaffolding going on here but a lot of it was like the zen socratic can you get out of your own way um right and so the logos can show up right right yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean we had a thing in there right where we were doing like rapid proposals and had like this ham horn that i would put to the microphone right and every 90 seconds you know like you got to drop it and create a new proposal like we would just squeeze them into you know and they had a lot of fun uh they had a lot of fun with it but it allows them to not be precious right to shoot from the hip right so sometimes we create a container like that so you can have that experience that you wouldn't otherwise cultivate for yourself and you come on the other end of it it's like actually that was pretty good that was actually a fairly decent proposal for courage you know and i did it in 90 seconds it didn't take me you know you know you know 20 minutes to do it or something like that and of course you know there can be a lot that comes out of uh you know the additional contemplation the additional rigor that's available there uh through your midwife but uh the 90 second you know quick rapid like just finding the beat of the practice in a way in which you can just sort of shed this stuff and start to have fun with it start to be more in it rather than you know in it up here yeah i just wanted to um pick up something which you kind of like which i want to i want to deliberately bring attention back to it because i don't want it to get lost which is the sense of like the orientation towards service but you're doing that by virtue of showing up and the way that i i I understand that difference is that it's, you know, there is one thing to practice, but it's another thing to be practiced, right?

1:07:18So there's a way in which I've definitely been guilty of like strong manning exercises that I've learned such that, you know, every conversation now becomes, you know, noticing followed by what's that like? And then now I'm going to paraphrase this thing and then that will magically make this conversation better than I've ever had. and I can go away feeling that way. But I definitely have experienced moments of like, kind of going through a conversation, coming out going, there was something different about that. I'm not in a container. Taylor's not here. Maybe it's here. But you know, there's nobody here pulling me along or asking me for shares.

1:07:57But there's something about that which is different. And only in retrospect does it come to that, oh, hey, for some reason I actually cared about, like deeply cared about it. I really could sense my curiosity here, you know, in a way which perhaps wasn't present before. So, you know, it's almost like a Zen Cohen, what you sort of like outlined. And it's actually quite elegant, right? Which is this sense of like, go in, do the practice with the right orientation, come out, keep the orientation, but keep the awareness a little bit of the ways in which that practice might be working in ways that are not here and necessarily conscious but show up in relation when they are necessary, when they're most necessary.

1:08:42And all of that is oriented towards service. Now, I mean, I've said this, but I also have to preface that we are at our time.

1:08:54so you know let's move over to the zoom room um i think uh taylor you have the link to put in the chat um right so but first you know thank you good sir um for allowing us to sort of like see into your world a little bit more the chat's been going um absolutely bonkers which is amazing to see. Now, we're going to have another one of these next week. Same time. Oh, I've always wanted to say this. Same time, same place, right? Like on Sunday. This time, I think we're circling right back around to me and then I'll be at the mercy of both of you. And then we'll be also doing another one and a half hour practice after that.

1:09:35So if you would like to get in, if you are here already, I think you guys are in the Riverside room. Hello, all of you. If you would like to be in on this while this is recorded before it gets produced so you're here live with us and in practice, please sign up for the newsletters, 5 to Midnight, lectern, awaken to meaning. You'll get the same link there just so we can all kind of be together. And yeah, tomorrow, next week will be the last one of these conversations. And then if you would like to train with us or be in our spaces and we can be of service to you in some way, we're doing containers us in toronto we've got la as well um and then maybe a few more i mean we're doing the netherlands but there's no space it's sold out no more um yeah so all the info is available on awaken to meaning uh thank you all very very much and we'll see you all uh in the zoom room yeah yeah well one one one thing uh so copy that uh that link just in case because after you close riverside you're lose the link so cut and paste it somewhere um and then also just as a heads up um please come into the the space uh being able to turn on your camera uh and with a working microphone if if that's not able to work then you got another week to to try to get that set up so that you can do it next week for practice but we will want cameras on uh due to the nature of the practice so anyhow thank you gentlemen this was a blast and i hope to see all of you over in the zoom room in a few minutes.

1:11:04Absolutely fire. Ciao everybody. Bye.