Authorize Your Knowing

Summary

Bewildered: "Authorize Your Knowing"

Podcast: Bewildered
Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Episode Date: January 14, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this rich, funny, and deeply sincere episode of Bewildered, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan explore the central theme of authorizing your own knowing—reclaiming your instinctive, internal wisdom from the forces of cultural conditioning and external authority. Inspired by Dr. Lisa Miller’s research on spirituality and mental health, the hosts discuss how society teaches us to distrust our own guidance and why rekindling that sense of inner knowing is vital for personal healing and the co-creation of a compassionate, sustainable world.

The hosts' signature blend of personal anecdotes, sharp humor, and philosophical musings creates a lively and relatable conversation designed to empower listeners who feel just as "bewildered" by life as they do.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Opening Stories & Household Chaos

(00:54 – 10:45)

• Tool Aprons, DIY, and Domestic Disasters:
  Martha’s attempt at DIY plumbing repair leads to flooding and chaos—serving as a metaphor for navigating life’s "walls" without always knowing what lies behind them.
  • "I take this massive portable saw and I put it to the board and I turn it... and the ricochet from it throws me across the closet." — Martha [03:25]
  • Humorously highlights the unpredictability and “kickback” of trying to take action without full information, and the necessity (and comedy) of improvisation.
• Children and Language:
  Their daughter, Lila, learns new vocabulary from witnessing the chaos, dropping her first F-bomb in response to the disaster.
  • "She walked in and saw the water spraying out of that closet and said in her little baby voice, ‘fucking shit.’" — Martha [05:26]
• The Relatability of Everyday Struggles:
  These stories set the tone for the episode, blending vulnerability with light-heartedness and introducing the idea that real life (and real knowing) is messy.

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2. Navigating Bureaucracy: Culture vs. Knowing

(10:21 – 17:00)

• Moving, Pharmacies, and DMVs:
  Rowan shares her experience as a people-pleasing Australian navigating American bureaucracy, whose encounters with pharmacy and DMV staff embody the tension between following "the rules" and seeking human connection or intuition.
  • "I was ready for the full CVS experience... No. And I was like, wow, I’m sure getting the CVS experience here." — Rowan [11:47]
  • Encounters warmth, helpfulness, and unexpected assistance—people going beyond bureaucratic scripts.
• Culture as a Limiting Authority:
  Martha and Rowan joke about the external authorities that control access to everyday necessities, highlighting how reliance on external validation or permission can be both restrictive and arbitrary.

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3. Introducing "Authorize Your Knowing"

(18:27 – 25:38)

• Interview with Dr. Lisa Miller:
  Martha recounts her interview with Dr. Lisa Miller, Columbia University psychologist and scientist, who found statistically significant positive effects of spirituality on mental health, particularly for women.

  • "She got up in academic meetings and said: spirituality has this incredibly positive effect on people’s mental health. And she got pilloried for it... but she wouldn’t let go because she knows she’s got the science right." — Martha [20:03]

• The Phrase that Shifted Everything:
  Both Martha and Rowan were struck by Dr. Miller’s advice: "Authorize your knowing."

  • "You had taken one note and it said, all caps, bold, ‘authorize your knowing.’ And I was like, that one hit us both so hard in such a good way..." — Martha [21:18]

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4. What Is "Knowing"? Culture vs. Inner Wisdom

(22:00 – 33:50)

• Nature of Knowing:
  Not logical or factual, but a deep, inward sense of what is true for oneself.
  • "It is not a mental way of knowing. It’s a deep, inward sense of something being true or not true." — Martha [22:14]
  • Marriage of humor and insight: "[Life coaching could be] someone comes in and says, ‘I don’t know what to do with my life.’ You just say, ‘Oh, yes you do.’ They start to cry, and then they give you money. And that’s the whole profession." — Martha [23:07]
• How Culture Disrupts Inner Knowing:
  From early childhood, society teaches us to ignore our instincts in favor of fitting in—leading to estrangement from our genuine sense of what is right for us.
  • "A baby cries and is told not to cry and sucks it up... that divorce from the self, the split, starts really young." — Martha [27:16]
• Types of Knowing:
  • External knowing (data, factual information).
  • Internal knowing (personal truths, life directions).
  • Only some things can be known inwardly; culture tells us otherwise.

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5. Restoring and Trusting Your Knowing

(33:51 – 44:00)

• The Feeling of Knowing:
  Described as a calm, relaxed sureness that occurs even amid cultural pressure to conform or obey.

  • "What happens is you just sink into a kind of rightness that feels profoundly relaxing. And that’s how you know it’s right." — Martha [36:45]

• Muscle-Building & Authorizing:
  Authorizing knowing is like using a new muscle; you must both listen for your knowing and act on it, even (or especially) when it contradicts cultural norms.

• Personal and Dramatic Example:
  Martha shares a near-death surgery experience where an anesthetist chose not to follow orders but trusted his inner knowing, which was ultimately correct and potentially life-saving.

  • "He looked at me and he said, ‘I was going to give you more medication, and something just said, no, don’t do that. She’s happy.’" — Martha [35:10]
  • Rowan: "Talk about the most loaded situation... and to go against, like, that’s massive." [35:36]

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6. Why the Culture Distrusts Individual Knowing

(44:42 – 50:11)

• Culture Sees Inner Knowing as Seditious:
  • "To me, I reckon that the culture is threatened by our knowing. The culture, for the culture, our knowing is perfidious." — Rowan [45:09]
  • "It’s more than that. It’s seditious. It’s insurrectionist." — Martha [45:12]
• The Authority Pyramid:
  Culture establishes a hierarchy where we’re trained to look up the pyramid for validation, making self-authorization a cultural taboo and even a revolutionary act.

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7. Escaping the Pyramid: Charisma and True Authority

(48:38 – 52:07)

• The Paradox of Charisma:

  • Genuine inner knowing and authority not only liberate the individual, but paradoxically, others start to treat them as authorities.
  • Roots in sociology: Max Weber’s concept of charisma ("the person who is listening to the gods and not to anybody else"), leading to new social groupings forming around those rooted in their knowing.
  • "[Charisma] literally meant the person who is listening to the gods and not to anybody else." — Martha [48:40]

• Dangers of Being Propped Up:
  Even as people try to build pyramids around those who know, true teachers continually hand back authority to others, sustaining real community rather than hierarchy.

  • "The more you give people their own authority back, the more they love you, the more they value you." — Martha [50:27]
  • "If you don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m an authority figure in the hierarchy... what you experience with people who are in that state is just love." — Martha [51:13]

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8. Practical Steps to Authorize Your Own Knowing

(52:35 – 61:08)

• Trust and Act on Your Knowing:

  • Make choices based on your deepest sense of rightness, even when reason or society argue otherwise.
  • "That’s maybe the key to how we come to our senses... is someone presents you with an opportunity. Culture says, ‘Absolutely!’ But I turned in [to my knowing]." — Martha [58:38]
  • Examples include major life and career decisions, such as turning down prestigious offers when instinct says otherwise.
  • "I just can’t do it. And they’re like, ‘Why not?’" — Martha [58:45]

• The “Author” in Authority:

  • True authority is being the "author" of your life—speaking and acting from your own knowing, not from repetition of what you’ve been given.

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9. The Magic and Synchronicity of Living from Knowing

(61:40 – 67:13)

• Synchronicity & Life’s Game:
  Acting on your knowing changes the “code” of your experience—opening up to synchronicity, magic, and unexplainable good fortune.
  • "It’s like you are a character in the video game who learns to write code for the video game. Because that knowing is writing the code." — Martha [66:47]
  • "Here is a synchronicity, and here is impossible scenario taking place that you would never have thought possible." — Rowan [63:11]

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10. Quotes, Literature & Summing Up

[Throughout, Highlighted at End]

• Anais Nin:
  • Referencing the knowing and the children’s book/song by Ani DiFranco:
    "Underneath all that I know is the knowing." — Rowan quoting Ani DiFranco [53:49]
• Upanishads:
  • "Not that which the eye sees, but that whereby the eye can see. Know that to be Brahma, the Eternal..." — Martha [54:35]
• Byron Katie:
  • "Do you know to do it?… I just knew to do it. Don’t you know to do it?" — Martha sharing Katie’s words [57:16]
• On Not Explaining:
  • "I just knew to do it. And they can just... put it in their pipes and smoke it." — Martha [66:06]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "Authorize your knowing." — [21:18]
  The episode’s central phrase, first credited to Lisa Miller and resonant for both hosts.
• "You know exactly what to do with your life. And then they start to cry, and then they give you money, and that’s the whole profession." — Martha [23:07]
• "It’s not a mental way of knowing. It’s a deep, inward sense of something being true or not true." — Martha [22:14]
• "The more you give people their own authority back, the more they love you, the more they value you. But it’s not the kind of... transactional relationship that you get on the pyramid." — Martha [50:27]
• "When you authorize your knowing... it’s like you are a character in the video game who learns to write code for the video game." — Martha [66:47]

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Segment Guide / Timestamps

• 00:54 – 10:45: Opening stories, house chaos, setting the tone
• 10:21 – 17:00: Bureaucratic run-ins, culture vs. connection
• 18:27 – 25:38: Lisa Miller and the impact of spirituality, coining “authorize your knowing”
• 22:00 – 33:50: Defining and reclaiming knowing; culture’s interference
• 33:51 – 44:00: Trusting and acting on knowing; building the muscle; clinical example
• 44:42 – 50:11: Culture's fear of personal knowing; the authority pyramid
• 48:38 – 52:07: Charisma, groups, and how pyramids form around authentic knowing
• 52:35 – 61:08: Practical steps for authorizing knowing; key stories of choosing knowing over culture
• 61:40 – 67:13: The magic and video game metaphor; synchronicities; closing reflections

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Tone & Style

This episode’s tone is intimate, hilarious, and earnest. Martha and Rowan’s playful banter, self-effacing humor, and unpretentious wisdom are as notable as the content itself. They frequently interrupt each other with jokes, gentle ribbing, and pop culture references—making the episode as much a comedy as a philosophical treatise.

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For Listeners

If you often feel lost in a culture that prizes external validation over inner truth, or wonder how to trust yourself after being taught not to—you’re in good company here. Martha and Rowan won’t just tell you why it’s important to reclaim your own knowing; they’ll make you laugh, wince, and feel a whole lot less alone in the process.

Final message:
You don’t need permission to know what’s right for you. Authorize your own knowing—and the world will transform, from the inside out.

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Memorable Sign-Off
"I just knew to do it. And if they don’t like it, they can put it in their pipes and smoke it." — Martha [66:06]

Transcript

[A]

So, Ro.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Can you tell the peoples what basically they will be hearing in the upcoming episode, please?

[B]

The forthcoming episode of Bewildered is a wonderful rollicking ride through the concept of authorizing your own knowing. What does it mean? Well, I've brought along Martha Beck to tell you that very thing.

[A]

And that's just a party. You will.

[B]

We'll talk about what it is to know what you really know. And P.S. you do really know.

[A]

We'll talk about how to take back possession of your own guidance through life.

[B]

And why, when we're at home, Marty insists on wearing an apron.

[A]

Hear us now, understand us later, maybe. Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[B]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out. Out. What are you trying to figure out these days, Marty?

[A]

Oh, Lord. I'm trying so hard to get my proper lesbian credentials in the like, tool using category. I don't have a tool belt. I will say you have a tool belt.

[B]

You have a tool apron.

[A]

I have a tool apron.

[B]

Lame.

[A]

Well, it's kind of a fembush hybrid. Hybreed hybrid.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I have a tulle apron. I do.

[B]

It's not impressive.

[A]

I waddle around the house with various tools. They're very heavy, so you should admire me for that. But in between my zillion trips around the world this last few weeks, I had one day where Karen Carrie Coo, our third, our beloved. Yes. She had gotten the proper blade for our electric saw, which we purchased. You will remember to make this very podcast. When we were just doing all kinds.

[B]

Of random things, we did a little bit of DIY at Old House. Trying to make a studio.

[A]

Literally sawed down walls and desks.

[B]

Yeah. Drew would not have approved.

[A]

Yeah. But so I had this saw. The blade was lost in the move. So Karen got the blade and then she said, saw through this board in my bedroom for that. I think there is moisture behind it.

[B]

If not actual mice.

[A]

Yes. We definitely thought there was wildlife involved. There usually is in the house. We just got.

[B]

Sometimes mold is so advanced that it becomes wildlife.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It starts to like move as a unit, like slime mold. And then it starts forming opinions.

[B]

Yeah. It becomes self aware really early.

[A]

Yeah. And that's what's happening. But Carrie didn't want it happening in.

[B]

This particular closet, so she went, get your apron.

[A]

Here is. I put on my tulle apron. It's heavy. It's a heavy tulle apron.

[B]

It's a fucking apron.

[A]

Yes, it is. Well, it's Made of shiny stuff. I'm just gonna say tough shiny. Like trampoline? No, like parachute fiber. It's. It's a butch apron. Anyway.

[B]

It's very femme apron.

[A]

So I went in and this thing, it weighs like 45 pounds, the saw. And it's violent. Like, you turn it on and you go. It's not like. No. And so I applied it to the board and turned it on.

[B]

And this is inside. I just want to.

[A]

In a closet.

[B]

In a closet inside the house, there's.

[A]

A boarded off section for some reason. And we want to get in there. So I take this massive portable saw and I put it to the board and I turn it. And the ricochet from it, like, it throws me across the closet because the blade is moving so violently. And I was not holding it tight enough. I didn't realize there would be the. It's not the ricochet. What is it? When you.

[B]

It's the blowback, right?

[A]

No, when you fire a gun.

[B]

Kickback, recoil.

[A]

Kickback. That's political.

[B]

That's a bribery thing.

[A]

Yes. But you can do it in the closet if you want. Anyway. So the recoil. I factored that in. I. I would. I was brave because this was like. It was like fighting an alligator or something. And I applied it to the board and I turned it on and I held solid. And it ripped through the board and water. Ta da. Started spraying out of this thing, which still only had, like an incision about 2 inches wide, but out of that was spraying all this water.

[B]

Can I just pick up the story for a second? For. I was sort of present for this in the next room, in the living room with our daughter being a real lesbian, thinking, wow, I sure wish we'd just gotten a man in to do this. My grandmother would have. And so they're in there doing their thing, and I'm just like, I'm taking no part in this. I have no interest in this. And then I just hear both two lesbian falsettos going, fuck, fuck. And it was pathetic.

[A]

It was. It was.

[B]

It was the falsetto expletive of a lesbian in an apron.

[A]

And so I was like, what do I do now? I still couldn't get behind the board. It was a huge board. So I tried to solve them in the. At that point. Well, sort of. But to get to whatever was spraying water, I had to get that board away. So I threw the saw down and started just yanking on it with my body. But it was. It was a large board, and it would not come free. And it was built in many Ways, and there's still water spraying out. So I started shoving things out of the closet because it wasn't that mellifluous. It was much more high pitched shriek.

[B]

Yeah, well, both you and Karen were doing it.

[A]

You know, it's so interesting how children, they hear us swear and they pick up all kinds of interesting words. You know, Lila has started saying things like, there is a certain time when I wish to go to bed. Like, she does a large vocabulary, but I never heard her really drop an F bomb until she walked in and saw the water spraying out of that closet and said in her little baby voice, fucking shit. And so, yes, we ran around about and ended up. Ended up under the house catching water that was dripping through floors.

[B]

Before that. I know, I'm sorry, I have to set the record straight here. Before that, there was a lot of shouted demands for towels, as though towels were gonna do the job.

[A]

Oh, they helped. They stemmed the tide. You were not in that closet. You weren't there, ma'. Am.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

They stemmed the tide. And then I thought of using the plastic tubs that we'd been storing clothes and blankets in. Just chucked it all out onto the bed, went under the house, put those plastic tubs in there. It's dark. We've got flashlights. It's like pouring rain under our house. Call 911. I kept saying, call the fire department because there's a firehouse really close to our house. They just walk over, right? Anyway, I never did get the bored san apart when we.

[B]

Minor detail, son.

[A]

The right conjugation. Okay? But the weird thing was we had just had that under the house, like the crawl space or whatever had been covered with plastic.

[B]

We had the basement. We had a moisture vapor barrier.

[A]

Oh, God. All these things. All these things. Because everything in the house wants to kill us. It's like the Amityville Horror. But we love it.

[B]

The trials of the house continue for regular listeners.

[A]

There are like three people who are in the middle of house and we're going, yeah, tell me more. And everybody else is like, yeah. Anyway, yeah, it was good because the moisture barrier meant that we weren't like, neck deep in mud under there. So we are counting our blessings. But then the real saw people came.

[B]

The real saw people with their saws.

[A]

Which is like another horror movie, isn't it?

[B]

Well, first the plumbers came.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

They did. Yeah. And what I really enjoy about this story is how quickly you and Karen regrouped to telling the story in a. It's so. It was just Meant to be because we'd had the basement done and otherwise it would have been muddy. And it's just so perfect that I soared into a wall, into something I couldn't see with an electric saw and was surprised by.

[A]

There should not have been pipes back there. There should not have been. By all the logic in the universe, there should not have been pipes back there. That's just what I'm saying. I have a tool apron. Ro. I would think twice before you contradict me. It was horrible.

[B]

It was great.

[A]

It was hilarious. It was. But I. And then Lila put the F bomb away in her back pocket to use the next time we do something that stupid, which will probably be like in an hour.

[B]

Can I just say something off topic real quick? That she said last night while she was. No, yesterday afternoon, while she was having a. Not a meltdown, but like, I cry, a good cry in the back of the car about me taking her to the doctor before the school day was.

[A]

Over, because it was Willa's birthday. And while I don't know if it was her birthday today, I think her.

[B]

Birthday might have been two days ago.

[A]

If I recall correctly.

[B]

If I recall correctly, she said.

[A]

If I recall correctly.

[B]

I think what's happening is she is watching Minecraft playthroughs on YouTube and if I recall correctly, is like a common abbreviation on the Internet. And so I think all these autistic, you know, kids doing playthroughs of Minecraft, they just think it's normal to go, if I recall correctly.

[A]

Yes. So what are you trying to figure out, dear? Oh, you hate it when I use the word dear. So, dearie, now that I've got my apron story done, get me a cup of tea, dear. I'm just trying. By the way, that never said anything about what I'm trying to figure out, which is how the hell to use that. So anyway, what are you trying to figure out, honey buns?

[B]

It's not the word, it's the implied threat in how you used it just then.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Kind of liked it.

[A]

Okay, I'll talk later. Okay.

[B]

I'm trying to figure out how to be like a sort of nervous, people pleasing Australian who's now a New York State resident, but that's what you are.

[A]

Well.

[B]

And I'm working on it.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[B]

Can I share?

[A]

Is this a. Well, yes, please. All right.

[B]

Well, that's what you are. And that's it.

[A]

You're done.

[B]

You're done. So I went. We moved to the Hudson Valley. I went to the pharmacy to Ask if I could have my prescription from the same pharmacy in Pennsylvania. Mm. There was a little bit of palava, you'll be shocked to learn. Um, and so I went in and I was ready. I was ready for the full CVS experience. Sorry to name them. And sure enough, the woman behind the counter goes, what is it? I'm like, well, I, you know, I have this prescription. You have to imagine her with the accent, because I'm not going to try and do the accent. Um, I have this prescription. I was wondering if you could fill it here. And she goes, well, if I fill it here, you. Your insurance won't apply. And I'm like, okay, well, I gotta have my meds, so I'll just pay cash. And she goes, no. And I was like, wow, I'm sure getting the CVS experience here. No. And I was like, okay. Like, I didn't know if it was like a computer says no.

[A]

Right, right, right. No. No use trying.

[B]

Yeah. But instead she was like, no, I would never do that. I never do that. I will find you a discount card.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And I was like, what's happening here? Because she didn't change her affect at all. No, she was just like, I will find you a discount card. And I was like, I'm sorry. And then she goes, she's like, doing my card and everything. Got me my meds. And she's like, I have the same hair as you. You just can't tell because it's tied back. I think it's fantastic. And I was just like, okay, I love you. Oh, but I'm. It's disorienting, right? And then just before we did this podcast, I had another one. You were there. We had to do a DMV thing. DMV experience being much like a CVS experience. I don't know if it's like those three letters. Just turn it into any three letter thing. Bureaucratic hellscape.

[A]

But nas, ira, everything keep going. Okay. Dmv.

[B]

Marty. Sorry, I have to say it. Marty doesn't know the difference between the IRS and the ira. I keep telling her there's a pretty big difference. So we go to the dmv. We've brought every piece of paper you could possibly imagine possibly needing. We didn't have the right piece of paper. So we went. We were told that if we went to the county clerk's office, maybe they would give us a different kind of title about our house that would magically unlock the computer to. A computer says yes. So we went to the county clerk's Office. And I encountered the most officious bureaucrat.

[A]

She was quite something.

[B]

And she wasn't like CVS New York. She was like a sort of, I don't know, like a different flavor New York. But yeah, she's actually quite like New Englandy.

[A]

Like a New Hampshire. Like tight upper lip. Not firm, stiff upper lip. Now like tight upper lips comes from being cold all winter long. Anyway, go on.

[B]

She was. My whole story is about New York. Okay, you don't. New Hampshire.

[A]

She drifted south. She drifted south.

[B]

So she says there's no point me giving you the title. And we're like, no, the dmv. And also I was very hungry and my blood sugar was low. And I was like, put the dmv, ladies. And we came on here and it was. And she's like, no, absolutely not. It's just. It's not gonna work. It's got your Pennsylvania address on won't do any good. And I was like, but they weren't gonna do. And meanwhile, another woman comes in, recognizes Marty, and they start having like a sort of fangirly conversation where Marty's pretending to remember her from.

[A]

I do remember her. I remember that day. It was one day though. I mean like 10 years ago. So.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, she was amazing. And there she was.

[B]

Body's worried. She's listening. She's not listening.

[A]

I see you.

[B]

Okay. So a county clerk lady says to me, the only thing you can possibly do at this point is get one of those. Get a bank statement or one of those things. And I'm like, work. And I get that printed in this God forsaken state. And she's like, oh, there's nowhere. I mean there's nowhere. Unless you just wrote it to my personal email address right now. And I printed it out on my work printer. And I'm like, do you mean you're willing to do that? Cause and I'm like, would you do that? And she's like, of course I would.

[A]

It's hard. It was so weird for me because I was in on the conversation. It's absolutely no good. You are basically screwed. Screwed. Yes. Then I have my encounter over on the side and when I came back, you two were practically slow dancing. She was like, yes, I will do that for you. I think it's just because she probably quite taken in by you once I was out of the picture.

[B]

Can I just say, taken in is not the same as taken.

[A]

Taken. She would take you in. I think she would take you into jail to many things. No, she was. She had A little crush on you after the first minute and a half. No, no. Yeah. No, she was. She was really lucky.

[B]

She kind of had a.

[A]

Maybe she was listening.

[B]

A like sort of soft dumpling, Martha Stewart kind of hair. Yeah, all right. I could. Yeah.

[A]

Soft dumpling, Martha Stewart. I don't think those go together.

[B]

Like, if Martha Stewart was softened and dumpling.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You know, bit more powder on the face, you know.

[A]

Anyway, I'm not sure Martha Stewart would have printed out our bank statement on her own personal account.

[B]

She might have. I just realized she would have printed it, put her name on it.

[A]

Yes. Now, this rando woman from the county clerk's office has all our banking details. I just noticed that.

[B]

Oh, boy, she does.

[A]

She doesn't seem like an organized crime kind of person, but I'm not sure. Very organized crime. Well, they pay over there, so, yeah, very organized.

[B]

And that's step one in organised crime.

[A]

Do you know what should we do?

[B]

A podcast. Hi there. I'm Ro and I'll be your podcaster for today. Do you know how to tip your podcaster? It's actually pretty easy. You can rate our pod with lots of stars, all your stars. You can review it with your best superlatives. You can even subscribe or follow Bewildered, so you'll never miss an episode. Then, of course, if you're ready to go, all in. Our paid online community is called Wilder A Sanctuary for the Bewildered. And I can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Rate, review, subscribe, join, and you all.

[A]

Have a great day now. Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five Paths to your Purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is, how do I find my purpose? Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose. And I broke them down into five and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it, just go to marthaveck.compurpose and you will will be able to watch it without any charge at all.

[B]

So what are we talking about today, Marty?

[A]

We are talking about a phrase that you and I both picked out of a longer set of words. I had the honor of interviewing a really great scientist and psychologist named Dr. Lisa Miller, who is from Columbia University.

[B]

She's amazing.

[A]

She is incredible. You told me not to fangirl Too hard. But it's hard not to.

[B]

Oh, I know.

[A]

Because she's a great scientist and. Well, go look her up. Follow her work.

[B]

She's a spiritual scientist and a scientific spiritual teacher. And it's a really. Sorry, sexy combo.

[A]

It is. It really is. Yeah, you get that one free. Anyway, as she was talking about, she was saying that basically she's done all this statistical analysis of huge data sets on depression, anxiety stuff and what is related to that in our behavior. And she has found. And this is where she just went maverick. She found a few variables that measured people's spirituality or participation in spiritual thinking and whatever, and found these massive effects on diminishing depression and anxiety, especially in women. And when you start talking about spirituality in the Ivy League, she was a Yalie, then went to Columbia, like, very top tier scientist. And she got up in academic meetings and said, spirituality has this incredibly positive effect on people's mental health. And she got pilloried for it, she got bullied for it, and she just. She wouldn't let go because she knows she's got the science right.

[B]

Yeah. And it's so. It's really fun story in a weird way for those of us who have a strong spiritual dimension, but also, you know, like, have to work within the culture and know something about and trust science. Yeah. And so it's just like. Because I think most of us know how materialists can have that, like, condescending, like, yeah, oh, did you have a feeling?

[A]

Right?

[B]

Or, congratulations, sweetheart. And she's like, yes, I did. And here is my, like, triple blind thing.

[A]

Well, here is my incredibly highly statistically improbable result. Like, the statistical evidence for this relationship between spirituality and mental mental health is just. It's undeniable. It's huge. It's a huge correlation. So I was interviewing her and she said. I said, so how do we do this? Like, what's the practical implication? And she said a lot of things, but in the course of explaining a lot of things, she used the phrase, you have to authorize your knowing. And I sat there and she'd said other things, and they were great too, but I was like, authorize your knowing. And then I looked over at you and you had taken one note and it said, all caps, bold, authorize your knowing. And I was like, that one hit us both so hard in such a good way that we want to do a whole podcast about it.

[B]

So I think. And tell me where you differ. So to me, that authorize your knowing in the context of what Lisa was saying is Like, I feel like what she. I said this to you earlier. Like, what she's saying is, you know that thing that you don't know how to do. Yes, you do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And to us, that felt like such a rich topic for this podcast because it's the culture that tells us, no, you don't.

[A]

You don't know.

[B]

You don't know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have no idea.

[A]

Yeah, you can't do that. You don't know enough. You're not important enough. Yeah. And I said, okay, so tell us about this knowing. And she said, it is not a mental way of knowing. It's a deep, inward sense of something being true or not true. And I had a therapist friend who used to say, you know, that. You know that, you know, and that seemed to somehow reach that same place. And what I always joke about with life coaching is that the whole practice could be just this. Somebody comes in and they say, I don't know what to do with my life. And you just look them dead in the eyes and you say, oh, yes, you do. You know exactly what to do with your life. And then they start to cry, and then they give you money, and that's the whole profession.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Yeah, it works. Well, I knew to do it. I knew that. I knew that I knew. But really, I mean, there's more than a grain of truth in that. When somebody comes in and they. They feel totally confused and you just tell them, but, you know, it takes them to something different.

[B]

Yeah. And I feel like it's a. It, like short. It's like a short circuits. All the cultural layers of. You can only know because of. You've got a degree or you've got a certification or you've got, you know, some sort of, like, we. We externalize.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Knowing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's fine. Like, because I don't. You know, just as a totally random example, if I needed to cut into my own house with a saw, I would probably call someone who's done it before. But that. I mean, that's just a. That's just me.

[A]

Do you know that there's a pipe? No, you absolutely don't. You need a plumber. Go on.

[B]

And so the thing. One of the things that I first loved about your work is the idea that we do always know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that a lot of our education, our experience in the culture, the way that we develop as someone who can interface with society, is about teaching you to distrust what you know to the point that you no longer know that you know it. And that's like the best trick the devil ever pulled.

[A]

You have no authority over your life. And that's why I think we both grabbed the phrase authorize your knowing. Because where do you look to? Where do you look to? Who are we supposed to look to? The authorities? We should call the authorities. You don't have the authority to say that. And what she was saying is, grab that back and put it inside you.

[B]

Authorize your own knowing.

[A]

Make your knowing the authority.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And also, I mean, that's doing what you know to do, and then saying what you know to do makes you the author, which means to speak out, the one who speaks it. So the center of truth and establishment of your sense of rightness and how you talk to the world. If you authorize your knowing, it really flips the script. It really takes you right out of culture that fast.

[B]

So there's two directions I want to go in. And one is, what does the culture say about that knowing? And the other is like, how do we. Like if we've been that divorced from our knowing, how do we wreak form that connection? So let's start with that one, right? Oh, if we have. If we don't know at this point how to. How to access the knowing, what does that look like? Where does it. Where do you feel it? At what point did your friends say, you know that you know that you know that you know, at what point did she say, like, when in. Like you were saying that she would say that to clients. Yeah, but she wouldn't say that to clients. You know that. You know that, you know that, you know that I'm on the second floor.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's like a specific moment.

[A]

Yeah. It's about. It's not knowing information about the factoids about the world. It's not knowing what other people are feeling or thinking. It's a very specific kind of knowing. And I think we get cut off from it as children because we're trying to. We naturally follow our inclinations, our true nature. Right. And I think the moment, I think it starts so young, a baby cries and is told not to cry and sucks it up. Or a little kid says, I want to go home now. And a parent says, no, you don't. You start to have your own knowing question really, really early because the adults around you are trying to make you fit into society. That's their job. So.

[B]

Yeah, or you, you had. No, you had a super fun day today. It was a super fun day. Mummy and Daddy worked very hard for you to have a really fun day. So you did yeah.

[A]

And then you get to, you know, and there are things like going to school and thinking, I look fabulous today and having kids bully you for the way your pants are too short or whatever. That happened to me once. I'd grown over the summer and I loved my new pants. But the second I got to school they were like, where's the flood? And I was so confused because they were called high waters when your pants weren't quite long enough.

[B]

So it's a very witty way of bullying.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I went to a school with a lot of witty bullies. It was witty bullies.

[B]

They'll put that on the brochure.

[A]

Elementary school.

[B]

Wittiest bullies in Utah.

[A]

But you start to get undercut a lot. But just the simple relaxation with following your natural inclinations that you can see in any dog or cat. Well, dogs, not as much cats, definitely. They just go with what they know. You can say to a cat all you want, there's nothing dangerous in there. And they will be like, fuck you sideways. A dog will go, but it scares me. Dogs are more like us. But yeah, that divorce from the self, the split starts really young. And then there's a sensitivity. It's like it cuts a wound open inside us. And then each cut that comes after that hurts more. Until we learn to always look outside ourselves for what to do next. And never to authorize our own knowing, because that means putting it out there to be ripped apart by an electric saw wielded by an apron wearing lesbian.

[B]

Well done. Thank you. That was excellent.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

What kinds of knowing are we talking about here? And what kinds aren't we talking about? Could we, like. Because I feel like we're going deeper and deeper and I want to say it's the. It's on the what should I do next in my life level. Right. It's not on anything. Like, what should I do this weekend? Should I go out or should I stay home?

[A]

I think it's. I think you have to split it at the level of where you know something. So there are things you know only from your internal. You would know them sitting in a room by yourself. You could sit and think, what can I know right now? And then there are things that you can only know by getting data you can only get. Like if I want to know what you're thinking and feeling, I need to ask you if I want to know what's the capital of Uzbekistan? I have to go check. I can't just know those things internally. So when you are making a decision, what do I need to do to get my New York driver's license at the dmv. That's an external way of knowing where you have to go to the authorities. Oh boy, do you have to go to the authorities.

[B]

Because it's culture. It's the culture. The county clerk was an invented category and so was a bank statement, Sandra.

[A]

And then there are things that you can only know by going inward, but people look outward for them. Like where how do you want to spend whatever is left of your wild and precious life that you cannot know from the external authorities?

[B]

That's really the question, isn't it? That's the question that you'd guaranteed know the answer to. If you can just refuse that connection again.

[A]

Yeah, it's funny, I could say, you know exactly where to go to lunch and people would go, not really, I've never been here before. But if I say you know exactly what to do with your life, they're like on hold. Holy crap, I do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Isn't that interesting that like the. The process of. Of confronting someone with that knowledge, it's almost like when you slap someone to break a paralysis or something, you know that it's like the shock of being told something countercultural is enough to push us back into a pre cultural.

[A]

Well, I think we're also always yearning to go back. So the moment someone external, because we're used to externalizing everything, you go to a life coach like me, and I'm an externalized authority, and I say, you know what to do. And suddenly this thing that has been robbing you of authority is bounced back to you. And it doesn't take. It may take you. It says in, I think, the course in miracles. It has taken your whole life to take you away from what you were, but takes no time to become what you really are. And they just go. You tell someone you know these deep things and it just snaps back in place. It really is. Joking aside, it is one of my favorite things about what I've done with my life. Telling people that stuff.

[B]

She knows. So first we reforge the connection. And ironically, one way to do that, like people are listening to this. It's like, you know, you do, you know, okay, she's an authority. She's got a PhD. Don't know if you've heard of a little place called Harvard.

[A]

We have to.

[B]

Yes, we do. Okay. And so that authority has now spoken. You now are authorized to your own knowing. Now you have to authorize it yourself. You have to become the authority of your knowing. And what does that entail two steps?

[A]

And they're both. It's that play on words of authorize. First thing is you have to start choosing your activities based on what you know. I kept asking Dr. Miller, you know, but how do you know? And she said, you just know. Like there's no other place to go with that than just it is in you and you know it. And you make your decisions about activity based on that. And it's not every single step of the day, you. You can decide where to go to lunch, five different places, and they'll all be equal. But then for some reason, you'll decide whether you want to go to a meeting or go home. And for some reason, there's an inner knowing that says, go home. Maybe you're getting sick. Maybe you're just picking up with your spider senses that someone is at home sawing through a board with an electric saw. But there will be these odd places when you're given permission to authorize your knowing. You will start to realize that you have lots of degrees of freedom with most stuff. But then sometimes this deep knowing says, do this now.

[B]

And it's not here in your brain box. It's like a sort of settled, lower down feeling in your waters.

[A]

In your waters.

[B]

I feel it in my waters.

[A]

Or down deep in your plums. If you're a man.

[B]

Men can have waters.

[A]

Okay, down deep in your waters. Can I give, I mean, kind of a serious example? I think I've talked about this before, but I had just very briefly, I had this surgery when I was 29 that I had kind of a near death experience thing happen. And the anesthesiologist was told to give me more medication because I reacted to what I was experiencing by crying. And the doctors could see it. And, and later he told. I asked him, what did you give me? Because I wanted to know if it was a drug effect that I'd experienced. And he just looked at me and he said, I was going to give you more medication. And something just said, no, don't do that. She's happy. And he looked at me. I'll never forget his round eyes, just saying, did I do the right thing? I just did it. I just did it. And I was like, no, no, I wasn't in pain. You did great. You were awesome. But that thing of. He just. During the surgery, when the chips were really down, he just accepted what he knew. That is the first way of authorizing it.

[B]

I haven't thought a lot about that scenario in terms of how deeply countercultural his Move was there. I mean, talk about the most loaded situation in an operating theater with all these surgeons. You're the anesthetist. The buck stops with you. And they're telling you to give more meds and to go against, like, that's massive.

[A]

They're telling you the patient is feeling the operation. This is absolutely untenable.

[B]

You're causing pain.

[A]

You are allowing this horrific thing to be happening. And he just went to do it. And, I mean, I was looking at him even though my eyes were shut. I know that sounds weird, but I remember him doing this and then just stopping and relaxing completely.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It was so interesting. Anyway, that was a really dramatic one. But because I've been listening to my inner self for a long time, I've noticed it'll come up at the strangest moments, and you can't really predict when it's gonna come. But it's like this little weather vane inside you that goes, nope, that way, that way. It's not this. That.

[B]

And I think what you're suggesting is that by using the muscle, like, once you've made that connection, starting to use the muscle, because trusting it is the biggest thing.

[A]

Right. Authorizing it.

[B]

Yeah. But then taking the first physical step in the real world towards the knowing and away from the external authority, and.

[A]

You know what happens. It's so interesting to remember that maybe I imagined it, seeing him do that, but it seems so crystal clear in my mind, and it's the same thing that he did. You move in the direction of knowing, even if it's totally countercultural. And what happens is you just sink into a kind of rightness that feels profoundly relaxing. And that's how you know it's right. Not because you've got a list of things that you could hold up to other people to prove, but because everything in you relaxes and fits in that moment.

[B]

That's so interesting because I think that so often where we go wrong with this is when we're trying so hard to do something the right way.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it just so clearly brought up for me the process of having a baby.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And having a newborn. And I mean, from. Because we did ivf, and that was a rocky road. I'd really surrendered my authority over my body and its processes and. And all of that.

[A]

Like.

[B]

Yeah. Long time ago.

[A]

Long time ago.

[B]

And was sort of letting myself be a little. You know, it's horrendous. I mean, like porn in the. In the system. And I didn't have to, but I'd done that. I had Just decided the safest thing to do is let outside. Because I've never done. Trust the authorities. Yeah, trust the authorities. But, like, to the point that I think probably the. Like that fourth trimester, that newborn time, I was going entirely on. What do the message boards say? What do the. You know, what did the books say? I had all the books, and I was like. And I was never relaxed. I was not present.

[A]

Now that you're saying it, I remember the sense when I think about you now where you're very. You parent very much by inner knowing. And when I think about you, then the image that I have. I know it's not true, but it's of you physically spinning. You seem to always be spinning between this person says this and that person says that. And there's. But if this condition, if X equals R, then, you know, it was just constantly looking to authority of all kinds on the Internet. And you can find authority of all kinds on the Internet. And now you're so settled. Just like that saying. Reaction. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place. You're right. You really. I don't know when it switched over, but it did.

[B]

I think we should have another baby. See that I can get it right this time.

[A]

You know what? I deeply know that we should.

[B]

Weirdly, now that you say that, at.

[A]

Least not that we know of. Yeah. It's so. Boy, when you give your body over to that IVF process, it's horrific. And not coincidentally, Dr. Miller had the same. She went through IVF too. So you're just being stabbed and your body is completely taken over, and yet you still have even deeper. That, like, you cannot get deeper than one's own knowing. Yeah.

[B]

And I was so scared of doing it wrong that it never occurred to me that I had access to an. A set of instincts that I could steer by at that time. I mean, you know, like, I was on the other side of the world from all my family, my female family, and the people who would have been my village around that time. My.

[A]

It was pandemic.

[B]

It was. It was the pandemic. So we were so isolated and. Yeah. And it was. I can see myself doing that, like making that decision because it's kind of. There is a sense of relief. I think it's why people who have spiritual experiences sometimes end up very embroiled in a church.

[A]

Yes. Because external authority.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Is that you want to kind of affiliate with an institution because they'll, you know, they have it all figured out.

[A]

Yeah. And actually, that's so interesting because I was in the middle of trying to do that, when I had that experience in surgery, because I just had Adam, I had the whole down syndrome thing. I had weird psychic experiences. And I thought, okay, so there's something to this. People know the truth. There are authorities that know the truth. And I was reading, like every spiritual text of all religions, spinning just the way you said. And I was just. I was spinning so hard and so confused. And when I went into that surgery, I remember, remember pacing around in the waiting room in terrible pain, going, who knows? Who knows for sure? Who knows for sure? Who knows for sure? Who knows for sure? And just thinking about all these different opinions and then coming out of the surgery going, I know for sure. Yeah, I know for sure. And then. So that's the choosing your path. And then there's the second meaning of authority, which is that you speak as an author. You write down, you speak, you communicate from your own knowing instead of replicating or leaning on authority figures other than yourself.

[B]

And this is the second step. Yes.

[A]

What do you behavior and then what you say and what happens then? This is so weird. Oh, gosh, this is so weird. I came out of that, I started. I realized that I had to speak from that place, and I started. That was the year I decided I wouldn't lie for an entire year. And I didn't. And my entire life blew apart. It was great. And I would have to stop and think when people ask me questions like, how are you? I'd be like, wait, I'd have to go in and find it. And then I'd say the truth for me. And what happened is people started thinking of me as an authority figure, and they still do. I write this stuff down in books. Trust yourself. And they're like, on page 93, when you said, trust yourself, I'm having an argument with a friend about what you really meant. And I'm like, what do you fucking care what I meant? I just made that up in the middle of the night, you know, they immediately try to authorize me.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, it's crazy. Why do you think we do that?

[A]

I think it's because we're social apes that are highly dependent at birth and very intelligent as compared to many animals as adults. And that therefore we are biologically programmed to be to completely hand over our authority. Because adults really do know better when we're infants.

[B]

Right. And we've talked before about the way that we structure our society being a version of the parent child kind of thing, where you get your homework and then you get your allowance and then, you know, if you're good, you can get a 401k or whatever. And so. So it's like, all right, so we have this tendency. It feels safer to be the child than to step into the adult role. So I'm guessing that in that bit where the recognizing our knowing becomes authorizing it in the real world with detail and with words, that's gonna take courage.

[A]

I think that's really where the line is drawn between child mind and adult mind.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where the people in charge becomes. I am the person. I am the people in charge. Shoot. You know, like, call the fire department. See, we reverted right back.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wait, conflation. That really was a place where the authorities outside us knew better than we did how our plumbing worked.

[B]

Like I've been saying.

[A]

Because you. You knew to call the plumber.

[B]

I just knew to sit back and wait for what was going to unfurl.

[A]

It unfurled.

[B]

So let's just take a minute then, to look at what the culture actually says about our knowing. Because I think that. And tell me what you think about this. But to me, I reckon that the culture is threatened by our knowing. The culture for the culture. Our knowing is perfidious.

[A]

Yeah. It's more than that. It's seditious.

[B]

That's actually the word I was looking for.

[A]

It's also perfidious.

[B]

Perfidious. Mean.

[A]

It means just generally. Scoundrel. Like.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But it's also ubiquitous. What did I even say? Okay.

[B]

Seditious.

[A]

Seditious. Ubiquitous. It's insurrectionist. There's a lot of ists. Okay. Yeah. Because the whole. Once you've abandoned your own knowing as a child, you start looking around for authority and you immediately notice the pyramid of authority in the culture and that getting to the top is the place that's your goal in life. And that. Oh, there's a way of going up. And it has to do with fulfilling steps that have the authority figures tell me that I'm authorized to know.

[B]

Dude.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is. I think we've just decoded capitalism.

[A]

Well, yeah.

[B]

Because what we're told is get to the top of the pyramid. The way to do that is to be the child and say that the person right above you is the adult. So you're never gonna get to the top as long as you stay the child.

[A]

The promise is you'll get up to the very top and you will kick in the face the few people that are at your level up there, and you will reign supreme at the top. And then you can say whatever the hell you think, and they have to tell you you're right.

[B]

Right. But you don't ascend its own structure by obeying what it tells you to do, which is to stay obedient.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you have to invert that as the first step and, like, refuse to externalize authority when it comes to your own life.

[A]

So I'm confused now. Is that how you actually climb the pyramid? By refusing to, like, are you saying, authorizing your knowing? Awesome.

[B]

Okay, let me figure this out. This is very fresh. All right, so what you. Yeah, what you invert is the externalizing of the authority not to climb the pyramid, but to. To know. Like, to be in integrity. To be in whatever. Like, for whatever goal you're not. Actually, you probably will climb the pyramid, but it'll be a byproduct.

[A]

Yeah. Because that.

[B]

I mean, look at you.

[A]

I know.

[B]

It's like you make people cry and they give you money.

[A]

I know. And I left, like, a very prestigious career path to do one that was like. And I always say, I'm a life coach. I'm a life coach. And it's like, I'm a life coach. Here's the status. Supreme Court justice, Harvard professor, dentist, cosmetologist, sex worker, life coach. That's the order in which those things get esteem. And I chose, like, the lowliest thing. And yet somehow it's like, people still authorize me because all I wanted to do was stop spinning.

[B]

And that's another trick of the pyramid is the second you stop climbing, you rise.

[A]

Well, actually, it's a different. You enter a different set of a different area of physics, almost.

[B]

Yeah. But what I'm saying is, within the pyramid, you're being authorized. You're becoming the object of the external.

[A]

That's the weird thing. Yeah. Well, interesting, because this is quite fun.

[B]

I know.

[A]

And I'm about to get very sociological.

[B]

So I hope so.

[A]

Buckle up. I know you love it when I talk sociology. The original spark that takes a group from being just a bunch of people to being, like, a group with a group identity is that one person or more. But there will be one person in the group who has a connection to the gods. This is what Max Weber said, and he brought a word out of obscurity to use to describe that one person. And the word was charisma. Right. But it literally meant the person who is listening to the gods and not to anybody else. So just as we have an internal biology that makes us want to turn to authority figures, we also have an internal Biology that says we don't like to spin. And when we go off by ourselves and authorize our knowing, something clicks in and we're on a whole different trajectory now. And pyramids will start to form around us like we. Because the sense of having one's own authority is so strong, it actually communicates to everyone else. And they start to try to build another pyramid. And the people who are really charismatic, your Buddhas, your Jesuses, are like, why are you trying to prop me up? There's nothing here. There's nothing here. You know, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't believe in that. Anyone is superior to the authority of your own deep knowing. Yeah.

[B]

Or as Bob Dylan said, I would hate to be Bob Dylan.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

So people are going to try and build the pyramid around you then for the exact reason that you've stepped away from the pyramid. So then what do you do?

[A]

You have to just continuously give it back to them all the time. But weirdly, the more you give people their own authority back, the more they love you, the more they value you. But it's not the kind of utilitarian, transactional relationship that you get on the pyramid where you're groveling to someone in authority and kicking people below you in the face and all of that stuff. It's like, if I just keep giving you back to yourself and then I just go away, you will not disconnect from me. There's a kind of tie between souls. I think that when someone gives you back the authority of your own knowing, one thing you know is that they're part of it. They're going on their deep knowing. And now you're going on your deep knowing. If you don't make the mistake of thinking I'm an authority figure in the hierarchy, and by this I mean anyone. If you don't make that mistake of seeing it as a vertical relationship, if you really go to your own knowing, what you experience with other people who are in that state is just love. So I interview Lisa Miller. She's this great scientist at Columbia. I'm all fangirly, but she doesn't want my fangirling.

[B]

No, that's true.

[A]

She actually stopped me and pushed. She said, I'm going to push back. And she gave me back to myself.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And now we're equal. And it's not because we have educations. It's because she always gives people back to themselves. And I try to do the same thing. And here's the weird thing. It's like relationships. The moment you say to someone, I set you free, they don't want to leave.

[B]

There's so many paradoxes in this that it becomes unavoidable that there is a certain amount of magic.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So how do we figure this all out, Mari? How do we come to our senses?

[A]

We will talk about it right after this.

[B]

Yay.

[A]

So, Ro.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What is our takeaway from this? How do we go from consensus to our senses? How do we go from culture to nature?

[B]

Well, I think that we should turn to the authority on these things, the poet laureate of Bewildered, Anita Franco, of course, who has. Who wrote a children's book, if you can imagine such a thing, called no Coincidence, the Knowing. There it is, also available as a lovely song. It is a beautiful song, one of Lila's favorites. And it's just this very, very cool idea with a child kind of reciting some things about herself or himself and then saying, but this is not all of who I am. Underneath this is something more. All of these things are just what's showing. Underneath all that I know is the knowing. And that feels so true to how we've been discussing it today, is that it really does feel like something that's at the foundational base level, otherwise known as my waters.

[A]

I actually think that that's one of the best phrases to connect us with the sense of what that is, because it defies language, really. You get to the word no, and you're just sort of stuck with it. But to say, underneath all that I know is the knowing. It's like the Upanishads. I think it's the Upanishads that say, not that which the eye sees, but that whereby the eye can see. Know that to be Brahma, the Eternal. Not that which the mind thinks, but that whereby the mind can think. Let know this to be Brahman, the eternal. And it goes through all the senses. So not what the senses do, but the. The possibility by which they are made conscious. That is the eternal. That is the knowing.

[B]

Or the line about, you are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good one, too. Yeah. Or you are the sun. The clouds come and go, but the sun is just shining away up there. Yeah.

[B]

So, okay, then give us the how to. You're the life coach.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Well, I learned a lot of how to from not just one, but two.

[B]

From the Upanishads?

[A]

Well, yes, partly from Brahman, the eternal. Okay, yeah, you mock. You mock my knowing.

[B]

After all this, Upanishads are an external Authority. Tell me what moths are.

[A]

So is any DiFranco acknowledged?

[B]

Gladly.

[A]

Well, as I said, after I had my surgical white light experience and then didn't lie for a year, I got really much, much more closely in touch with the knowing. And I thought it was steering that way pretty much. And then I went to see not one, but two authors, authors, I use that word advisedly, that I greatly respected Byron, Katie and her husband, Stephen Mitchell. Katie is a spiritual teacher and Stephen is a brilliant translator and writer. And I read both their bodies of work and thought they were absolutely amazing, like foundational for my life. So I got a chance to be in the same interview thing with Katie and they did it at Katie's house. So Stephen and Katie were both there. So I was like, whoa. And went down, did the interview, got to watch her being interviewed, I got to talk to Stephen. And like, I was. I was just so like in hero worship. And I had stayed at a hotel near their house. And the next day I was eating breakfast and someone brought me a phone and said, are you Martha Beck? Stephen Mitchell wants to talk to you. I was like, did I break something in the house? And he said, we want to drive you back to your house. Which was a three hour drive. I think I'd come down with someone else. And I was like, I mean, there were like 10 people there being interviewed. And Steven said, yeah, we're going to drive you to your house. And I said, why? And he said, because Katie knows to do it. And I was like, really? So I get in the car with them, don't really know them yet. And I'm like, katie knew to do it. And Katie just beamed at me and said, yes, I knew to do it. Don't you know to do it? And I was like, well, I do.

[B]

I know to do it, now that you mention it. Byron, Katie.

[A]

And so, and you know, Steven has that. He was a Zen monk for a while, so he has that way of always turning you back to your own, not your mind, but turning you back into. Through your own confusion until you find that thing that is bedrock. And so I got to just sit in the car with them for three hours and get just this incredible lived example of people who had fully authorized their own knowing. And it changed the way I did everything. And now it's like, do I know to do it? Do I know to do it? I just got a wonderful invitation to do something. A fabulous. Looks like a fabulous career move. And I went inside and I'm like, nope, like all the external factors say this is great. You must do this. You'd be an idiot to pass this up. And I go in, and it's like, absolutely not.

[B]

And maybe that's the key to how we come to our senses, is someone presents you with an opportunity. Come to prestigious place, you know, do exciting thing, and brain and surface and culture. The culture that we have internalized says.

[A]

Absolutely, of course they will.

[B]

But you said. So then I. How did you put it? I turned in.

[A]

Yeah. Then I went into my knowing. I went. I. I checked with my note with the knowing, because it doesn't even feel personal to me. It is the knowing, and it just says no. And I feel it in my body. I feel. It's just. It's a really difficult sensation to describe. I kept trying to get Lisa Miller to describe it, too. And she's like, you just know that. You know that. You know. And my brain is, like, freaking out. Why are you turning this down? This is insane. And the people who organized it are making the offer sweeter. And I'm like, oh, this I cannot do it. And they're like, why not? Yeah. It's another time that I did this. I was a columnist for Oprah's magazine for 17 years. Never missed a month. And the day I was supposed to sign, I got an offer from that magazine. The day I was going to sign up with another magazine for a sweet deal. I was going to be a columnist, but also they were going to pay me a fortune. They were going to give me a personal wardrobe assistant and a wardrobe budget to write a column and fly to New York once a month to be on Good Morning America. And then. Yeah. So I was going to sign that contract on a Monday. On Friday, the editor of the Oprah Magazine called me and said, would you do an audition piece for us? And I sent it in, like, the next day. I was very excited. And she wrote back and said, we'd really like to work with you, but here's what we can do. And it was, like, pathetic compared to what the other magazine could do. So I went out and I bought a copy of each magazine. I read the one I was going to sign with, and I was like, that's a nice women's magazine. And then I read this copy of the Oprah Magazine, and it had a very long article by Wiesel, the guy who lived through Al Wiesel or Eli Wiesel. He was a Holocaust survivor. And they put in this long, beautiful philosophical essay by him. And I sat there with the two magazines, and I said, I Can't believe I'm going to turn down all this money and attention and wardrobe, but I know I have to. I knew that if I went the way my entire culture brain was taking me, I would regret it. Who can tell?

[B]

I love the idea, just to take a little side moment of you having a wardrobe assistant as a columnist and, like, having someone go. So to write this month's column, I think you're gonna wear this. It's really cute. It's like, it's a great color on you and then cut to you at, like, 12:30am in your bed covered in crumbs in this cutest outfit in an.

[A]

April, I'll be in that outfit.

[B]

And just the cutest thing in your bed, like, munching on cookies.

[A]

Sitting in there and Saks Fifth Avenue. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right. Covered in paint.

[B]

Can I make this weird?

[A]

Oh, please do. I love it when she says that.

[B]

So I think that as we talk about this and, like, look at it from different angles and everything, and I'm thinking about my own experience of accessing the knowing. And I just think that. And actually, Lisa Miller said this too, is that once you start honing your receptivity to the knowing and then being brave enough to step forward, to do what you know to do, she gets really magical.

[A]

She does.

[B]

And I feel like there's this. All right, so we're walking around, going to the DMV and stuff and pretending that we're just these little animals, you know, la, la, la. DMV stamp this piece of paper.

[A]

Yay.

[B]

10 points. Off I go. And. But we're not, right? This is all. You know, it's a fun game. Yeah.

[A]

It's a video game. Living in a video game.

[B]

And so one of the little tricks that they've built into the video game is the second you start playing it on the other level and you start going, good one, culture. I see what you're doing there. I'm gonna step this way because even though my brain's saying it's the career opportunity of a lifetime, you'll have a wardrobe assistant over here. There's this, like, beautiful, calm lake of knowing. And as you move in that direction and you start playing in that way, the universe is like, oh, I see, I see. Okay, we're gonna do this. Now. Here is a synchronicity, and here is impossible scenario taking place that you would never have thought possible. And here's like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna see you're playing the knowing, and I'm gonna raise you the weirdest stuff that's ever happened to me.

[A]

That's really cool. Well, when we went to see Ana in concert, she played that song. No, she played a different song. She played them both, actually. But she said, there's a line in the song I'm going to sing that is, I am not my body, I am not my mind. And she said, I just want to explain before I sing this that there is something that is not body and that is not mind, and that thing is what I have become. And she said, I just drifted away from the rest. And I was like, almost fainting with joy in the audience because that is. That's the essence of the experience of going wild or call it enlightenment or whatever. I really think that she has literally experienced what Byron Katie's experienced, what Zen monk's experience. And it is magic.

[B]

It's magic and it's playful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, it's a playful way to be where there's that. You know, you've used the expression a lot, the splendor of recognition. Right. So we might have talked about this on Bewildered before, but, like, the process by which we came to live here. Yeah. We picked up our lives, went through, like, untold inconvenience, Like, I cannot stop doing it. Even begin to describe the amount of palava that has been involved. And almost every day it feels like I have a conversation with someone who's like, so why'd you move?

[A]

And I have to.

[B]

And I don't know what to say. It's like those people who want you to go for that brilliant opportunity at the moment.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

And they're like, but why? Why wouldn't you.

[A]

I think I'm getting old and craggy enough to just use Byron Katie's phrase and just say, I just knew to do it. And they can just. If they don't like it, they can put it in their pipes and smoke it. Because I'm just not even going to explain anymore. I knew to do it.

[B]

And that's maybe a fun note to leave it on, is that we don't have to explain it. And maybe if we try to explain it, we're going to end up back on the pyramid. And maybe it's only in going.

[A]

I don't know, I wanted to say one more thing about it. And that is when you're authorizing the culture, you're playing the video game of life, and it's hard and there are traps everywhere and things keep kicking you, you know, killing you. So you have to go back and get more lives and Whatever.

[B]

More documents.

[A]

More documents. And when you authorize your knowing, what happens then is that it's like you are a character in the video game who learns to write code for the video game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because that knowing is writing the code for the video game.

[B]

And that's why all the synchronicities start.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Oh, that's fun. I love that.

[A]

Yeah. We could talk more about it, because this has been my experience of the last 30 years of my life, is there's a code and there are ways to write it, and you do it with your knowing.

[B]

Okay. We have to do that next episode.

[A]

Okay, I know to do it.

[B]

But will you remember? That's always the question.

[A]

I will not.

[B]

And staying in the uncertainty of will she remember is one way in which we stay wild. We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word wild to 570-873-0144. We're also on Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Fox Forster with support from the brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.

[A]

People are always asking me, how did you get into training life coaches? And the answer is backwards. I did it backwards. That is, I didn't set up a program and then look for people to fill it. It's just that so many people were coming to me for coaching that I realized in order to serve the market, I was going to have to train other people in my methods. That was decades ago. And now the Wayfinder program contains all my very best wisdom and tools for living, boiled down to their savory essence. Now, if that sounds interesting to you, head on over to MarthaBeck.com and find your way.