Stand By for Further Instructions

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Bewildered

Episode: Stand By for Further Instructions
Hosts: Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan
Date: February 19, 2025

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Overview

In this engaging episode, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan candidly explore the crucial topic of intuition in chaotic times. Reflecting on the current “spicy” historical moment, they ask what it means to live according to inner truth when society's dominant voices are calling for conformity and fear. Through humor, personal stories, and insightful observations, they argue for a radical reconnection with intuition, joy, and genuine community — even (or especially) when that looks strange to the outside world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Intuition in Chaotic Times

• Opening Theme (00:03): The hosts discuss recently reading an article that highlighted how, in dangerous or chaotic times, listening to intuition becomes essential.
• Rowan: “This is a spicy time in history, and we have been succumbing to bouts of fear... so how do we steer our way through chaotic times? This episode is our answer to that.” (00:14)
• Martha: “If you're feeling drawn to belong to a community in these troubled times, give Wilder a try.” (01:31)

2. Humor, Openness, and Living Authenticity

• The hosts weave light-hearted banter about their personal quirks, including Rowan’s ongoing obsession with van life, and the honesty required to sustain relationships during tough moments.
• Memorable Exchange:
  • Rowan: “Marty, I love you so much… but I have to tell you, like, in my full integrity, you’re not always invited in the van.” (04:17)
  • Martha: “Good, I don’t want to go in your weird little trolley wagon anyway.” (04:34)

3. Bewildering Cultural Disconnects

• Martha shares anecdotes about confusing interactions with service providers: a receptionist baffled by making an appointment, a lost airport limo driver, and a real estate agent who denied that a lake property could possibly flood.
• Martha: “Where in real estate school do they not teach people about that water and flooding go together and that lakes are generally water?” (10:59)
• The segment humorously illustrates just how out-of-step some societal roles can be, especially in turbulent times.

4. Community Appreciation

• Rowan gently reminds Martha not to disparage service workers, noting the stress and underappreciation so many face.
• Rowan: “I just wanted to, like, do a shout out for the 99%.” (13:09)

5. “How Does One Live Through Darkness?” — Navigating Uncertain Eras

• The hosts reference the article that sparked the episode: tips for surviving fascist or dictatorial contexts, including the surprising advice to “trust your intuition.”
• Rowan: “Our cultural training wouldn’t lump those things [critical thinking and intuition] together...” (17:02)
• Martha: “Your intuition will be heightened. And that’s so unusual because, aren’t those—we’ve been taught those things are opposites: logic and intuition.” (17:41)

6. Travel, Disruption, and Heightened Sensitivity

• Both share stories where intuition protected or guided them during solo travel:
  • Martha: Avoiding food her body warned against in Johannesburg (and regretting ignoring the signal).
  • Rowan: Relying on gut feelings while traveling alone in India.
• Rowan: “I think one of the big things for me was everywhere I looked, there was a really strong sense of local community there.” (29:40)

7. The Mechanics and Reality of Intuitive Insight

• The hosts explore whether intuition is simply heightened attention in danger, or if more information actually comes through during disruption.
• Martha: “I do think more stuff happens when I’m in a dangerous state, when I’m really alert and when I’m really present.” (24:13)
• “Our brains play [verbal thought] over and over again, and they actually make us blind to what’s actually in the present moment. But when you are fully attentive, you get tremendous amounts of information.” (22:09)

8. Synchronicity, Signs, and Following The “UU Phenomenon”

• Rowan recounts an uncanny experience while visiting a new town: familiar street names, serendipitous interactions with strangers, a message from Rumi (“What you seek is seeking you”) at a community prayer wall, and especially the magical appearance of bright ginkgo leaves everywhere.
• The pair experience escalating synchronicities—Martha’s historical obsession connects to the same town; a golden ginkgo leaf appears on an empty Boston sidewalk.
• Meeting a “Bewildered” podcast listener in the airport who had just visited the same town confirms the serendipity.
• Martha: "Every time I thought about it, I felt so much better... For some reason, thinking about this place that I've never been was starting to make me weird happy." (35:37)
• Rowan: "It's almost like when...the culture would say, 'Well, that's nothing, that doesn't make sense, put that away,' that's when you need to be going—hang on, maybe that's something you pay attention to." (36:15)

9. Trusting Joy as Guidance

• The hosts share their emerging plan to move to this synchronistically-significant town.
• Martha: “We are standing by for further instructions.” (37:19)
• The take-home: Intuition often communicates through joy, curiosity, and subtle signals. If ignored, warnings can become more uncomfortable.
• Martha: "Pay attention to your intuition, which will be heightened at this time. Stand by for further instructions and stay wild." (39:49)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “In chaos, everything shifts. And if...you can’t pick up an appointment card, and you’re a receptionist...run away now.” —Martha (11:10)
• “You were in a bewildered state, in the pun sense of that word. Because if you were an animal in nature, you would always be listening to your intuition.” —Martha (21:42)
• “An autocracy…will never tell you to trust your intuition. Not ever. It wants control.” —Martha (36:38)
• “All of us have this relationship with intuition where it leads with joy and excitement and curiosity, and it only gets frightening...when we ignore the happy signals.” —Martha (38:20)
• “We’re definitely planning to move to this town…but we just don’t know when or where exactly. We are standing by for further instructions.” —Martha (37:19)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening: Intuition in Chaotic Times (00:03–00:39)
• Van-life, Honesty & Laughter (02:29–05:16)
• Service Workers Stories: Comedy of Modern Life (06:18–12:04)
• Appreciation for Working People (12:04–13:16)
• Reading: Surviving Fascism Article, Role of Intuition (15:56–18:22)
• Intuition Heightened by Travel & Danger (18:22–24:13)
• Synchronicity: Ginkgo Leaves, Street Names, & Magic in a New Town (25:54–29:40)
• Airport Connection: Meeting Listeners & Signs Continue (34:20–35:37)
• Culmination: Planning a Move Guided by Joyful Intuition (37:19–39:49)

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Takeaways

• Trusting your intuition is not anecdotal fluff—it is vital, especially in turbulent times.
• Joyful “strange” experiences and synchronicity may be important guiding signals, not random noise.
• The culture, especially in its controlling or autocratic forms, will typically discourage listening to intuition—making it all the more urgent.
• Community, honesty, and authenticity are both refuge and compass.
• Sometimes, the best strategy is simply to “stand by for further instructions”—and enjoy the bewilderment.

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Tone: Warm, irreverent, deeply sincere, always laced with laughter
Best for: Listeners feeling adrift or seeking affirmation to trust their inner compass—especially as the world grows more uncertain.

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Transcript

[A]

So Marty and I read a thing recently.

[B]

Yes, we did.

[A]

And this thing said that in dangerous or chaotic times, it's super, super important to listen to your intuition, which struck us as interesting.

[B]

Interesting and frightening because this is a. This is a spicy time in history, and we have been succumbing to bouts of fear. And we got talking about, what's the strategy then? Like, how. How do we steer our way through chaotic times? And this episode is our answer to that.

[A]

That's right. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll see you on the other side.

[B]

So, as some of you listeners may know, a few months ago, Ro and I started something called the Wilder Community, which is kind of an online village where people like us who want to find our true nature, even if it's peels us away from culture, can get together, commune, make friends, and do things.

[A]

We have all kinds of regular events in there that are just so fun. We have a weekly hang where we get together and we have conversation. We make art in our own little rooms, in our own little places. But all together, there are group meditations that Martha leads that are crazy powerful, and there are just all kinds of, like, monthly themes and, like, personal development stuff that we work through together and just a hive of activity and connection among really wonderful people.

[B]

Yeah. So if you're feeling drawn to belong to a community in these troubled times, give Wilder a try. It'[e-mail] all one word. And we hope we'll see you there. Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[A]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people like you and me and Martha Beck who are trying to figure it out, trying so hard.

[B]

What are you trying to figure out today?

[A]

Many things harder by the day do I try to figure them out. But, you know, I always enjoy this part of the podcast more when I talk about us in our relationship.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

I feel like.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

I feel like the listeners get to enjoy a little glimpse behind the curtain.

[B]

And is that necessarily a good thing?

[A]

I don't know, but it does make me feel better. I don't know. It's all right.

[B]

I don't know what you're about to say, but I've girded my loins for it.

[A]

So regular listeners will know that I have this, like, side hustle obsession. Doesn't. Not side hustle in the sense that it makes me money, but side hustle in the sense that I think about it a lot. And it's like a parallel universe where I Live vanlife. And I have a van and I travel around in it, sleep in it.

[B]

Drivers, you know, different from the other times. You've talked about van life on this podcast 400 times.

[A]

But the thing is that you flop around between, like trying to support me in clearly what is just a, a harmless hobby of thinking about bands and then other times, like you say, like you just did, this is any different for all the other times. So you have different, different ways that you deal with it at different times. And I want to tell the listeners a story about not so long ago when you were trying to be supportive. And as a result, we kind of both ended up telling each other some home truths. And this is how it went. I wrote it down at the time.

[B]

Because I thought, oh, my goodness, this is.

[A]

I'm going to need this verbatim. Okay, so there were whales on Instagram, as they so often are in our, in our algo. Right?

[B]

In my algo.

[A]

In your algo. You've got the algo with all the animals and I. But it was my Instagram because you can't be trusted with social media, as we know. So you said to me very sweetly, seeing. Upon seeing the whales and where they were at some geographical place that, that I think must have been on this continent. Because what you said was we could go see the whales in the van. We could van down there, you said. And I don't know why, but it, like, maybe it's because it's like my thing or something, but I, I sort of said to you, marty, I love you so much. And I just. But I have to tell you, like, in my full integrity, you're not always invited in the. And it was hard for me to say, but like, I also felt like if this relationship is going to stand the test of time, we have to be able to be honest with each other. Right? And so in that spirit, in the spirit of honesty and the long term survival of our relationship, you replied to my, you're not always, always invited in the van with, and I quote, good, I don't want to go in your weird little trolley wagon anyway. Weird little trolley wagon?

[B]

Yeah. Well, yeah.

[A]

And that's how we both learned that RO doesn't want Marty in the van and Marty doesn't want Marty.

[B]

I have only one counter to that argument.

[A]

Go ahead.

[B]

Those whales could not possibly have been on this continent because there are no whales on the continent. Now that's been secretly. Yes, that. Because I've switched my allegiance from van to whale. Actually. It was always there, but it's now out in the open, and I guess we just try to go on from here.

[A]

I'll be driving my van, and you'll be riding a whale like a cowboy. Ooh, like with. With your hat. With your cowboy hat. Like, what. What do they do? They kind of just shake. Do they do something? I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, they. They do sometimes hold their hats, but I've never figured out why. And also, they are not on whales, but other than that, it's perfect.

[A]

Yeah. Perfect analogy.

[B]

Would be really cool if they were.

[A]

Anyway, so what are you trying to figure out, Marty?

[B]

I am trying to figure out how to interface with the service providers of the world because I keep having these experiences that are just baffling to me and. And also to people who are in positions where they're meant to make things happen. And clearly, they're just. That is not their jam. So I've had this rash of things. I went to the eye doctor, and I went out in. I had my eye exam. I went out. I was supposed to come back. So I say to the receptionist, I need to come back in two weeks, said the doctor. And she stared at me. This woman looked up and her eyes opened so wide you could see the white all around the iris. And she just said, what? And I was like, I'm supposed to come back in two weeks. And she's like, two weeks from now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then she started just pawing on her keyboard and staring at the computer in a state of great alarm. I don't know what. I don't.

[A]

So it's like she had the attitude of, like, I've never been asked something like this before.

[B]

Exactly. Like, I don't. How could you? It was as if I just told her that there was a whale giving birth in the yard and we needed, like, a tape. Yeah, there was a whale on a van. Oh, that. That brings a story to mind. No, Anyway, she looked.

[A]

Oh, I know what you were thinking, too.

[B]

Oh, never mind. She looked completely flabbergasted. And then I said, well, could you just give me one of the appointment cards you have in your little case in front of you? And she stared at them as if they had burst into flame. And then she just, with those wide eyes, started pawing at them, but her fingers were all flimsy like Vienna sausages. And this went on for some minutes until I finally said, is there something wrong? And she said, and I quote, some of them are upside down. I'm like, why are you in this job? And then you and I Went to an airport and we were.

[A]

This is years ago. And I. I want to say this is years ago because I feel like there's a chance. We've talked about it on here before. And so in the interests of, like, transparency. Okay, this one was so as a.

[B]

Driver at an airport, and we were waiting in the limo pickup thing line at one in the morning, and we called her and she said, I had to leave. The police were here. I was like, why would you have to leave?

[A]

It wasn't like a stretch limo, guys. It was. Folks. It was like. It was just a car to give us a ride.

[B]

It was a van. Let's be clear. It was a van. The woman had a van. And she sounded high off her titties. And she was like, I had to leave, man, because there were police. The fuzz were on me. And we realized she sounded like elderly. And we're like, well, can you come pick us up at the limo thing? She's like, no, you're. You're gonna have to come to me. And we're like, where are you in this dark airport in the middle of the night? And she said, I. I'm right here.

[A]

She was so frustrated. She was just exasperated beyond, like, how stupid are you people? I'm right here. Look, I can see me clear as day.

[B]

We never did find her. We had to call an Uber or something. And then finally. And this pertains to what we're going to talk about in the episode, we recently contacted a real estate agent about a property we will never own, ever own ever. Because it's this. It was just one of those things where you call a Realtor and pretend you can afford something.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This huge property with a private lake to go kayaking on and everything. And it has all these different structures. And we're looking at it on Zillow and we call this woman, and she's like, oh, you're interested in that? Why? I was just there. It has the following features. And she starts reading off the same Zillow account that we have just read. So we're like, watching her. This takes, I don't know, half an hour. It seemed to go on forever. And then she talked about the private lake and the kayaking and. And we said, well, here's the thing. There is now an automatic climate warning thing. And it says that on this property, the threat of flooding is not only extreme, but virtually certain this place will flood. What do you have to say about that? And she said, oh, well, there's no water around. And we said, but the lake. And she said, oh, oh, of course the lake, but it's not that kind of lake.

[A]

Yeah, she said, I just saw it.

[B]

You could tell it's not that kind of lake. Where in real estate school do they not teach people about that water and flooding go together and that lakes are generally water?

[A]

It was a weird moment. It was the first time she stopped talking for quite a long time. And we. We had nothing to say. It's not that kind of late.

[B]

It's not that kind of late.

[A]

It would never.

[B]

I'm just thinking we're. We're going into a chaotic moment. I fear in. In history, world history, certainly USA history. And it seems to me that people who are in the wrong jobs should run. Run away now. Because in chaos, everything shifts. And if you're not. If you can't pick up a. An appointment card and you're a receptionist with little Vienna sausage fingers who's completely baffled by a card being upside down, run and run to a job at, I don't know, a muffin bakery or something where you be joyful.

[A]

I've worked as both receptionist and bakery person. And like, I don't think you can underestimate how stressful those jobs are. I just feel like I should say that.

[B]

And I totally agree with that. And the people who do those jobs are. Oh, they are so endlessly kind and patient and everything.

[A]

And also, you're quite weird. Like, you can be quite weird.

[B]

Not so weird. That saying I need to come back in two weeks is totally, totally.

[A]

Yeah. But we have your word for it that that's how it went down?

[B]

I was both on the phone when the woman says, not that kind of. Is that my fault too?

[A]

No, 100%, not 100%.

[B]

I see the size of it. Not invited to the van. And now Vienna sausage finger lady was probably just responding to my, like, weird pheromones or something.

[A]

Okay, so I'll tell you why I felt the need to say this.

[B]

Yeah, Okay.

[A]

I felt the need to say this because what. Here's what I. Here's what my working class, like, old used to be working class brain heard you say. Can't get good help these days. I was waiting for a limo, but then the property advisor mis. Misrepresented the private lake. She was worse than the limo driver. And absolutely true.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's just. I just wanted to, like, do a shout out for the 99%.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yes.

[A]

And with that, we should move to our topic. If you are enjoying bewildered, there are a few ways you can express your support for us. You can subscribe to the POD or follow it depending on your app. It's a great way to get us in front of more people. And as always, we love a little rate and review action, especially when the reviews are kind and the ratings are high, strangely. And finally, if you really want to go to the next level with Bewildered, check out our online community, wildercommunity.com we'll see you there.

[B]

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 marthabeck.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all.

[A]

So Marty, today we thought we would have a little natter about moving into a potentially chaotic and one might even say dangerous time in world history.

[B]

Is that we're nattering about the Heart of darkness essentially and how do we live through it?

[A]

Oh my God. Nattering about the Heart of darkness would be an amazing name, like title for a book, don't you think? Nattering about the Heart of Darkness.

[B]

Except for the fact that no one knows what the word nattering means except you. And I only understood it because of context.

[A]

Well then everyone understood it because everyone's in context. It's all context. Yes.

[B]

Okay, get to work on that.

[A]

So we were just thinking about like light hearted topics like how does one live through one of the darkest and potentially most dangerous times in history?

[B]

Yeah. And we were feeling occasional, we were feeling quite lucid in between bursts of incredible blind panic.

[A]

Spasms of horror.

[B]

Spasms of horror. And we were sort of reading to each other from the Internet, from the interwebs.

[A]

Oh yes, yes.

[B]

And we read this thing. It was thing that frightened us.

[A]

Yeah, it was, but it was cool. It was like actually quite interesting. So we were online reading this piece that was sort of saying, um, here are some things that when you live in a fascist dictatorship, among the. The sort of things you want to cultivate are. And it said something about community.

[B]

Yeah. That you, you, you need to really develop. It said start introducing your friends to each other, make sure everybody knows each other and talks like once a week with everybody to be like, have a stable Base of information.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, and there were a bunch of like suggestions like that that were kind of super practical. And then he goes, oh, also make sure that during times like this, you're really, really trusting your intuition. And it was sort of interesting because he was saying it as though it was just another practical step.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it really stuck out because I think it would be fair to say, like our cultural training wouldn't lump those things together. Like the other ones were like critical thinking. What's this? You know, what's disinformation? Yeah.

[B]

Was it. What's the potential disinformation coming down? What's propaganda? Are we being gaslighted at any level and very sort of academic, almost, almost scientific ways of, of looking at data.

[A]

Yeah. Right. And it was just so interesting to me that in this piece that was otherwise, I guess, fairly hard edged, you could say there was like this little nugget about trust your intuition.

[B]

Yeah. And that he said it just matter of factly and your intuition will be heightened. And that's so unusual because aren't those, we've been taught those things are opposites logic and intuition.

[A]

Right. Yeah. Like, so you, you would expect the culture to say yes to the one thing like the critical thinking skills about, you know, is this disinformation or whatever, but would, would not say, you know, in times of collective danger, your intuition will be heightened and you need to listen to it more. That's not the, that's not the way of the culture. That's not the voice that the culture usually speaks in.

[B]

But it made such good sense to us because we started talking about, okay, what does our intuition feel like? We talked about this in another episode too. This is slightly. We're going a different direction with this one. And we started saying, when have we. What does our intuition feel like and when is it heightened? For me, one of them is travel. Because I'm in a disrupted situation in unfamiliar circumstances and things may happen to me intuitively when I'm home that I don't notice. But when I'm traveling because it's chaotic, I seem to be more open to it. And the last time I was in Johannesburg, I ordered a salad. I ate one bite and like my body, so my whole body said, don't eat that. And I was like, it's my vegetables. I have to eat my vegetables to be healthy. So I ended up with a fun and frolicsome pet aboard in my intestines. And if I had just not eaten that, if I'd listened to my intuition, maybe I wouldn't have had that visitor within. And I don't mean intuition, I mean parasites.

[A]

I had some visitors when I was in India.

[B]

Yeah. Travel again.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Also, you know, interesting stomach conditions at various times. Yeah, I was. When I was 25, I traveled around India by myself for about three months. Was going to be longer, but there was a bit of a tsunami that happened. Terribly inconvenient for my travel plans. But.

[B]

Oh, my goodness, where was the chauffeur?

[A]

Right.

[B]

The tsunami receptionist.

[A]

So inconvenient. But yeah. So for three months and I was 25, and I. So I was still like. I. I look back and I think that was. That was interesting that I did that backpack on my back. And there was definitely a few gnarly situations because I. I think often my main personality. The main part of my personality has a slightly underdeveloped sense of danger. But it was like, during that time. So one of the things that I did was I wore a ring on my wedding ring finger the whole time.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

Because that. That helped, as I'm sure that any woman who's traveled alone and in any culture could imagine how that helped. And. But I was sort of thinking about this and I was thinking, really that whole time. There were so many moments where I went to, you know, get in a taxi and then I didn't. Then I got out again, or I started to go down a certain street and then I just stopped and backed up and. And went. And it was like what you said about the, you know, the sort of high. Like when you're traveling, that disruption, those senses are heightened. I think that I spent that whole time in that state and wasn't even articulating it to myself. I was really just steering by like that with those noises.

[B]

You were in a bewildered state, in the pun sense of that word. Because if you were in an animal in nature, you would always be listening to your intuition. Because the. The way. And we talked about this in the other episode, we tend to get locked in. In thought and in the stories we're telling, and then we don't even know where we are, let alone the tiny nuances of. Of what's going on around us.

[A]

And a particular type of thought, which is like that verbal thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

These. In these groove stories that our brains play over and over again, and they actually make us blind. What's actually in the present moment. But when you are fully attentive, when you're fully present, you get tremendous amounts of information warning you in very subtle ways sometimes. And in sometimes rather obvious ways, but in. But not in a way that our culture would consider normal. So it's not somebody coming and telling you something. It's not that you see a clue on the ground. It's that your spider senses go. And that's real. Even though we don't have language for a lot of the ways in which it arrives. Spider senses works as well as anything.

[A]

Yeah. And do you think that when there is this. I don't know how. I don't really know how to characterize this, but like, when there is a time like that where you could say there's danger or there's disruption, that not only are your senses heightened, but like there's more information coming at you?

[B]

I think there is. Of course, it's impossible to test that whether it's just heightened attention or whether there's actually a bombardment of clues. But I actually. My true basic belief is that, yes, in times of chaos, when you're very attentive, you actually more into information comes to you.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

It's almost as if you become sure your attention is heightened on things, but you're also magnetic to them.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that, I think, has something to do with the. With the fractals of consciousness and the way our. Our thoughts interact with the environment. Oh, I get very California about this, but I. I've experienced it so often that I have. Enormous amounts of very improbable things happen to me when I'm in a Dane in an endangered state, when I'm really alert and when I'm really present, I do think more stuff happens and.

[A]

But not just danger. There's something else. There's something else that we haven't quite like, put our finger on, because the other night when we were reading this article and we were freaking out.

[B]

About.

[A]

You know, the planet is in this precarious place for many reasons, and we suddenly. It suddenly occurred to us, talking about intuition and trusting your intuition, that we actually have already gone a number of steps into a story that we're living about, like being in the process of responding to. To intuition and intuitive impulses that, you know, come in through synchronicities and all of that. Like, we're actually already doing that and we hadn't even recognized it.

[B]

Yeah. And it's happened to us periodically and it has marked the changes that we've made, dramatic changes we've made in our lives. And what I love about the story we're living now is that it's about the positive side of listening to your intuition.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

There's no fear. There is in fact a sense of joy and fun that goes with it, but it's also very confronting in terms of us making some major changes in our life.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So we thought we would just like talk a little bit about this thing that's going on because it's strange to the. Certainly to the. To the eye of the culture, it would be considered strange.

[B]

So you want to tell. You want to tell what you. What happened?

[A]

Do you want to go and think about what you've done? I do. I went to a concert not so long ago. I had never heard of the place where it was, but it was a within driving distance of where I live. So off I went with someone else. And I. From the time I arrived in this town, and I have to say I had no expectations. I was looking forward to the concert. That was it. That was all I was thinking about and like, cool, fun, weekend away experience. From the moment I arrived in this town, I noticed that.

[B]

I've.

[A]

I've lived in a lot of different places in my life. And I was seeing the names of streets that I've lived on everywhere, including this one city. All in this one. Yeah. Town. And like, including. And like, I just. I cannot explain, like. So the. The street I grew up on in Melbourne is called Fife street, spelled fy, double F E. That was one of the first things I saw.

[B]

I've never ever heard of it spelled that way before.

[A]

So that was one of the first things I saw when I came into the town. And that's, I think, probably why I was attuned to seeing all the others. But it was like, oh my God. That's the name of the street that I first learned my address was when I lived on that street. And so I, you know, I used to recite it. And so there was that. And then the next thing that happened was that everywhere I went, I had these like, explosively warm conversations with strangers everywhere. And they just immediately, it was like, it's you, it's you. Oh, hey.

[B]

Right, right, right.

[A]

It was this really intense sense of connection with people. Strangers kept giving me random compliments, like super random. Like, I wear these things in my ears that are called sleepers in Australia. They're like, they're there for you. Put them in overnight, they're nothing. They're just placeholders for when you do use earrings. And I had this young guy, young guy come up to me and just say, excuse me, I love your earrings. And I just, I. I couldn't understand it. But there was so There was this. It was really out of control love fest everywhere. As I went about this in this.

[B]

In a book once, I called it the UU phenomenon.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[B]

And.

[A]

Then I met an Australian woman who was working in a shop and she just happened to say, oh, yeah. I mean, I've lived in a lot of places, but nowhere is as great as, as living here. This is just a really special part of the planet. You know, it was all this stuff. And then the other thing was that it was the end of fall, just late fall. And the streets of this old town were lined with these bright, bright yellow ginkgo leaves. You know, those leaves that have that really particular shape. I've got one called by law. And they were all over the ground. So they were like littering the ground. These like bright yellow. Just everywhere, carpeting these old streets. And it felt like meaningful and important because I was like totally on board the magic by then. And I brought a few of them, these leaves with me and like sort of pressed them into a book and took them home because I was so into it. I was just so into this weird experience I was having in the town.

[B]

You told me you were going to get a tattoo of a ginko leaf as a pledge to yourself that you would go back to that town someday.

[A]

Well, yeah, I'd been thinking about it. Yeah. And so I, I was very impressed by these. Took a lot of photos of them. And there was such like. I think one of the big things for me was everywhere I looked there was a really strong sense of local community there. And like there was this, this church. And so it was like an old church, like old, old, old, old, old, old. And it's there and it's functioning as a church. But then outside there's a sign that says, come for a mystical sou on Saturday night. And you know, then there was a sign next to that that said like, community free food, Community lunch every, you know, Saturday. And so there was just this. Such a strong sense of community. And I. And actually outside that church there was this thing that they'd set up. That's why I've never seen anything like this. I don't know if you've seen this sort of thing before, but there was sort of like an. A bulletin board type thing and they had all these sort of label, like you would. Anyway these little bits of paper and you could tie them to a thing and there was a sign that said, give a prayer, Take a prayer. And so there were literally hundreds of these little blue label cards and so I, I just went up and put my hand on one and it said, what you seek is seeking you from Rumi. Which is an expression that we have thought about a lot in terms of destiny and, you know, big moments and everything. And so I think it was then was when I sent the first text to you and Karen saying, I think we might be moving to this town.

[B]

We get these texts, hi, we got to the town and I think we will move here. And I was like, what? And I said to Karen, why is this happening to us? What? We're, we're having a distressing enough season without having to move house. And Karen said, oh, she just, you know, let her play, let her imagine things. She's not serious.

[A]

You know what? She's like, what were their vans?

[B]

I was thinking, I feel like I have a new identity coming on. And I was obsessed with a certain historical figure, fabulous feminist, anti racist, literati, whatever. And I was just obsessed with this person. And I joined RO in New York City because we were on our way to Boston, we had a gig and I, I was like, okay, it's nice that you went to this cool town, but I'm obsessed with this cool person. And she said, who's that? And I said, oh, you've never heard of that? And I googled the person, guess where the person lived during their whole life in that town. And I was like, huh?

[A]

And we're, we're, we're in the elevator in our hotel going off to this interview that Marty had. And I was just, I was going to be helpful nearby, fluttering about and I was telling her about these ginkgo leaves and she was saying to me, oh, well, it's interesting, you know, because ginkgo, that's, those, that's a sim in Asia. I guess it's a Japanese.

[B]

Some places it's considered a, a sign of prosperity or long life.

[A]

Yeah, like abundance. We're like, oh, that's nice. It's a nice abundance thing. And so we're chatting about it and we get, we're waiting outside the hotel for our Uber and it's like Boston Waterfront there. I mean there is, it is just city, it is just, just cement everywhere. There is nothing growing an organic thing within a country mile.

[B]

And on this huge stretch of concrete, we look down at our feet while we're waiting for an Uber and what is there? There is one perfect golden ginkgo leaf. And then we were in the airport.

[A]

And I was just hang on, steady. The ginkgo leaf was there. I mean, take A second. That was insane.

[B]

I know. There was not a tree.

[A]

There was no tree for miles.

[B]

There were no other leaves, not a single other leaf, anything.

[A]

Yeah, it was insane. So, yeah, so we get. We see that, we freak out. We get. Marty does an amazing interview, we go straight to the airport.

[B]

And I was standing guard with the bags outside the ladies room while you were in there. And a woman came running up to me and she said, oh, my wife was just telling me that I should read your books. I can't believe it. And then you came out and she's like, oh, I listen to Bewildered. And we were like hugging and having a festive time and we went off to meet her wife and we started chatting.

[A]

It was actually weirder than that because she was in her own crazy moment where she. She looks at Marty and she's like, I am so sorry to come up to you, but I've just been on this flight from LA to Boston with my wife and we've been sitting there on the plane and she's been telling me the order in which I need to read your books. So it was like. So she was in this, like, that's freaky kind of space already. And she's like, can I just ask you to just come meet my wife? She's just over there. So we go over and we become instantly obsessed with these people. They're just like the coolest people. They're like going off to like, Como, to like some sort of like global consciousness raising thing, but they're just like super cool. So we're like, we love you. We want to be friends with you.

[B]

And guess where they had just been the day before and taken pictures.

[A]

Same town.

[B]

City. The town that Ro had fallen in love with. And I have to say, I just started feeling emotionally strangely joyful. And like, I have still never been to this place. But I just, every time I thought about it, I felt so much better because it is kind of crazy. It's a difficult, dark time in many ways. But for some reason, thinking about this place that I've never been was starting to make me weird happy. Like strange happy. And that is how I think intuition prefers to give its messages, right?

[A]

Like in the same way that you can't explain that leaf on the ground, you can't explain why you feel happy about something that there's no good reason to be happy about. You know, and it's like, it's almost like when. When something happens, even if it's an emotion internally, if it's something where the culture would Say, well, that's nothing. That doesn't make any sense. So put that away. That's when you need to be going. Hang on.

[B]

Maybe that's something you pay attention. When we were talking about this before we recorded, Ro said, an autocracy, including any form of, like, the structured, oppressive patriarchy of any system, will never tell you to trust your intuition. Not ever. It wants control. So just when the culture says, no, no, no, I like to say, oh, but I'm happy. So, long story short, no long strike. Still pretty long. We're definitely planning to move to this town, but we. We just don't know when or where exactly. We are standing by for further instructions.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it seems to be moving quite fast.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We're willing to. That is how hard. We are willing to put our money where our mouths are.

[A]

Right. So we were scared. We started paying more attention to our spider senses and our emotions in our environment, and information started coming to us.

[B]

Yeah. And so Ro got this big hit. And one of the ways you can know that your intuition is tracking well is that one person will feel something and then another person will feel something, not because they've been fired up, but because independently. Like, I was looking into that historical figure independently, and it happened to match up. And then a lot of different things seemed to happen. And we got home, we thought, how are we going to tell Karen that we're all moving to this town we've never seen? And it turned out she had started feeling weird. Weirdly joyful about it, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so Karen and I, like, we have gone through this a bunch of times. Ro has been doing it her whole life, and all of us have this relationship with intuition where it leads with joy and excitement and curiosity, and it only gets frightening. Like, get out of here. Don't eat that. When we ignore the happy signals. Like, I wanted ice cream. I ordered a salad to be good. Wanting the ice cream was actually, I think, my intuition. So go for the happy signals cave early. And so that's what we intend to do.

[A]

Yeah. And so, Marty, it's. It seems like we might just be on the brink of doing another one of those things, right. That. Those wacky things we do that look really weird but feel really good. So I hope all the listeners will stay tuned for the next installment of this story.

[B]

And please don't forget, especially in the times to come, that your story is poking at you. And it's trying to do it with joy and curiosity and fun. And if it can't get that to happen, it will start to poke a little harder and maybe things will start to go wrong. So pay attention to your intuition, which will be heightened at this time. Stand by for further instructions and Stay.

[A]

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 stories, snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the Brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.

[B]

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.